Elder McNamara

Elder  is the current elder and leader of part of the west-coast Brotherhood of Steel living at the Hidden Valley bunker in 2281.

Background
He assumed control after Elder Elijah vanished after the NCR takeover of the Helios One powerplant. He put the Hidden Valley bunker on lockdown due to fear of the NCR, not allowing anyone but small scouting parties to leave and none of the BoS who were outside when the lockdown began to enter. He still fears the NCR and believes they are still "hunting them" when they are a lot weaker than he thinks and are not even looking for them. Edgar Hardin is also looking for a way to usurp him.

Quests
Still in the Dark: McNamara will ask the player to do various tasks for the Brotherhood, such as looking for Brotherhood patrols, getting reports from scouts, and helping repair the air filtration system by retrieving different parts from the Mojave's vaults. He can also be overthrown by Head Paladin Hardin with the help of the Courier in this quest.

Eyesight to the Blind: McNamara will task the player in planting a bug in the radio equipment at Black Mountain, and to deal with the super mutants there.

Bugs
After Elder McNamara grants you full access of the bunker, heading for his chair, if the player sits in his chair he will stop his action and stand still forever. [PC] This can be fixed by going into the console, selecting Elder McNamara with your mouse or typing "prid 000e2f87", then "kill", then "resurrect".

Note: if you can't find him type -> player.moveto 000e2f87 and warp to where he's stuck contemplating a wall/air vent

This character and Scribe Ibsen both use the same voice recording for the word "Later" at the end of their dialogue, and in both cases the pronunciation is... unusual.

After completing Still in the Dark he will be unavailable for dialogue and will indefinitely respond to attempts to speak to him with a comment stating that he is busy with efforts ending the lockdown, thus preventing the character from finding peaceful resolutions during quests such as For the Republic, Part 2.
 * This is likely just a minor scripting bug. Once you reach this point, exit the entire bunker complex (so, breathe some fresh air), then re-enter the bunker and talk with McNamara again.  Exiting and re-entering the bunker flips a trigger switch and allows McNamara to offer you the next quest in the BoS Chain (Eyesight to the Blind) that offers you the chance to become a member of the BoS, which then allows you to ask the BoS for their support in the upcoming battle.
 * NOTE: You may have to wait 3 days or so after exiting the bunker complex before re-entering will work. What's happening in the mean time is the Elder is lifting the lockdown.  The 3 day wait corresponds to the universal refresh time that also affects vendor inventories and NPC respawns. However, this may still not allow the courier to intiate conversation with the Elder.
 * If you have tried above solutions and still lack results, you can open the console (using the tilde or "~" key) and enter this command:

/set "000E327C".LockdownLifted to 1

Appearances
appears in Fallout: New Vegas.