Robert Komer; Led U.S. Program in South Vietnam

Robert W. “Blowtorch Bob” Komer, 78, Army and CIA veteran sent to South Vietnam in 1967 to run the pacification program. That program, described as the battle for the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people, ran parallel to the U.S. military effort. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had named Komer a year earlier as a presidential assistant to energize the shooting war, also gave him the pacification post. William E. Colby, the former CIA director who worked with Komer after the war, wrote in his 1978 memoirs that Komer “was about the best thing that had happened to the Vietnam war at that date.” Colby wrote that, although many saw Komer as “brash, abrasive, statistics-crazy and aggressively optimistic,” he saw him as “quick and intelligent” and “fearless and tireless” in getting military and civilian bureaucracies to perform. Johnson rewarded Komer’s efforts by appointing him ambassador to Turkey in late 1968. Born in Chicago and reared in St. Louis, Komer earned a bachelor’s degree and MBA from Harvard and served in Army intelligence in Europe during World War II. He joined the fledgling CIA in 1947 and was later assigned to the National Security Council, where he became a trouble-shooter for the Johnson administration. Komer, who held the National Medal of Freedom, worked on Vietnam and NATO issues for the Rand Corp., both in Santa Monica and in Washington, D.C. During the Carter administration, Komer was undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon. On Sunday in Arlington, Va., of a stroke.