He personally closed Springfield Armory because they disagreed with his Hair-Brained ideas... namely the SPIW and the fact that he was under the impression that the AR-15 was fully developed in prototype form!!! The Emperor has no clothes... McNamara... Gah, don't get me started.
have to add that this situation was exacerbated(sp?) by the fact that the Armory WAS being obstructionist, and had even sabotaged tests to make the AR-15/M-16 look like COMPLETE junk instead of simply a prototype in need of refinement (as you said even stoner didn't truly think the prototype was "ready for field use"), this IS moderated by the fact that SA was doing so out of both hidebound ideas about design and FEAR (untill the m-16 SA WAS the US Military rifle design firm, those men KNEW that if accepted the M-16 was the end their jobs). but then again McNamara was as my father once put it "so smart he was stupid" maybe the "fully developed in prototype" cocept was a result of his time working For Ford Motor Co.??? i truly think that his out look from other industries made him not understand how Firearms design works.
oh and on the subject of your implication fo Stoner passing the buck and saying it was the powder instead of a design flaw.... it WAS the powder!! the gun was never, and is still not designed for use with higher pressure, dirtier, Ball powder.
Stoner based his design on the use of newer Extruded "stick" powders that were cleaner burning and produced lower port pressure, this was also the reason Colt marketed the gun as "self cleaning" in comparison to say a garand or other earlier gas-operated guns, when use with the right "food" it WAS. the military's edict that the older Ball powder be used (numerous reasons for that one, use up the vast post-WW2 stores, the increase in velocity and cyclic rate etc) caused such wretchedly excessive fouling, and over stressed a design NOT designed for such high port pressure.
is the AR-15 a flawed design?? possibly but with the numbers out there right now i don't see that it's flawed enough to matter (ALL firearms have flaws no gun is perfect). WAS the M-16 ready for service? NO!! it needed some of, if not all the refinements it received in the course of the past 30-40 years. BUT most if not all of the major faults and the deaths that resulted from said faults, found it's early service life can NOT be placed at the feet of any one man.... Stoner made a prototype that, once they started evaluating it, he fully expected to be DEVELOPED by the military (ie addition of the Chrome lined bore/chamber, and other small changes, which were unneeded for development/civilian use) and he expected them to pay attention to the specs he gave them with regards to what ammo to use. then Armalite sold the rights to Colt, colt decided that they could capitalize on how much cleaner the rifle stayed when loaded with "stick" powder when compared to other Autos when loaded with Ball. Ordnance decided that Ball powder MUST be used (higher velocities and "we have it by the barge load"), guns sent out to un-familiarized troops with no cleaning kits (Colt DID say it was self cleaning!!.....) other ammo problems (there is a reason GI ammo is neck annealed).
Ok, so an underdeveloped rifle being fed unsuitable ammunition, was issued to troops not familiar enough with it's mechanics and woefully under equiped to clean and maintain it, fighting a country that was wet, and dirtier than a begger's underwear... end result, men died trying to figure out WHY the gun they were told by their superiors was a "wonder weapon" suddenly stopped working.
blaming Eugene Stoner for the ALL AR-15s service faults is like blaming the architect if your contractor reads the plans the wrong way around and screws up your new house!!
but i digress.
