This series contains letters and copies of letters addressed to President McNamara by heads of States, international organizations and regional development banks, government officials, U.S. Senators and Congressmen, economists and lawyers. It also contains internal memoranda addressed to the President by the Executive Directors or the staff. Incoming letters and memoranda are often annotated or accompanied by notes by McNamara or minutes of his responses. Although generally incoming items, the series also contains a small quantity of outgoing letters and memoranda. Correspondents include heads of State Indira Gandhi, Yahya Khan, and Gamel Abdel Nasser; U.S. Treasury Secretaries Henry Fowler, John Connally, William Simon, W. Michael Blumenthal and G. William Miller; UN Secretary Generals U Thant and Kurt Waldheim; various directors of WHO, FAO, the UN Environment Programme and World Food Council; and public figures such as Barbara Ward. The correspondence deals with the general issue of development, development programs of other agencies, relations with the U.S. government and Congress, and governments of other member countries, in particular India and Pakistan. The internal memoranda addressed to the President mostly concern the IDA replenishments and the situation in India and Pakistan, but there are also some exchanges on joint financing, World Bank borrowing, relations with OPEC countries, energy, the World Development Report of 1978, and a number of memoranda regarding the U.S. Congress' committee investigation on the Bank's effectiveness in reaching the poor (1977). McNamara's minutes and notes include his letter to Lester B. Pearson asking him to organize a committee to study development in the next decade (1968); letters to various U.S. Treasury Secretaries and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the IDA replenishments and the Foreign Assistance Appropriation Bill, the Bank and the OPEC countries; memoranda of conversations with Executive Directors and notes on the IDA, the India-Pakistan war, and Bangladesh; and an annotated draft of the World Development Program proposal (1977). The series also includes two photographs of Robert McNamara with U.S. President Richard Nixon in the White House at the signing ceremony on 10 March 1972 of the bill authorizing the United States' contribution to International Development Association (IDA).
