McGeorge Bundy

McGeorge Bundy
McGeorge Bundy during a 1967 meeting in the Oval Office
6th United States National Security Advisor
In office 1961–1966
President	John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson
Preceded by	Gordon Gray
Succeeded by	Walt Rostow
Personal details
Born	March 30, 1919(1919-03-30) Boston, Massachusetts
Died	September 16, 1996(1996-09-16) (aged 77) Boston, Massachusetts
Resting place	Mount Auburn Cemetery Cambridge, Massachusetts
Alma mater	Yale University
Profession	Foreign and defense policy advisor

McGeorge "Mac" Bundy (March 30, 1919 – September 16, 1996) was United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 through 1966, and president of the Ford Foundation from 1966 through 1979. He is known primarily for his role in escalating the involvement of the United States in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Early life

Raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Bundy came from a wealthy family long involved in Republican politics. His mother, Katherine Lawrence Putnam, was the daughter of two Boston Brahmin families listed in the Social Register. His father, Harvey Hollister Bundy, was from Grand Rapids, Michigan and was a diplomat who helped implement the Marshall Plan.

Bundy attended the elite Dexter School in Brookline, Massachusetts and then the Groton School, where he placed first in his class and ran the student newspaper and debating society. He was then admitted to Yale University, one year behind his brother William. At Yale, where he majored in mathematics, he served as secretary of the Yale Political Union and then chairman of its Liberal Party. He also wrote a column for the Yale Daily News. Like his father, he was inducted into the Skull and Bones secret society, where he was nicknamed "Odin". He remained in contact with his fellow Bonesmen for decades afterward.

Career

From 1945 to 1947, Bundy co-authored recently retired United States Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson's third-person autobiography, On Active Service in Peace and War, which was published in 1947.

In 1949, Bundy took a position at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York to study Marshall Plan aid to Europe. The study group included such luminaries as Dwight Eisenhower, Allen Dulles, Richard M. Bissell, Jr. and George Kennan. The group's deliberations were sensitive and highly secret, dealing as they did with the highly classified fact that there was a covert side to the Marshall Plan, where the CIA used certain funds to aid anti-communist groups in France and Italy.

Bundy was one of President Kennedy's "wise men" and also served as a tenured professor of government at Harvard University, despite having only a bachelor's degree and never having taken any classes in government. In 1953, Bundy was appointed dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard at the age of thirty-four, the youngest in the school's history. An effective and popular administrator, Bundy spearheaded modernizing policy changes aimed to revamp Harvard into a class-blind, merit-based university with a reputation for stellar academics.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1954. He moved into public life in 1961, becoming national security adviser in the Kennedy administration. He played a crucial role in all of the major foreign policy and defense decisions of the Kennedy and part of the Johnson administration. These included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, most controversially, the Vietnam War. From 1964 he was Chairman of the 303 Committee, responsible for coordinating government covert operations.

Bundy was a strong proponent of the Vietnam War during his tenure. He supported escalating the American involvement and the bombing of North Vietnam.

He left government in 1966 to take over as president of the Ford Foundation, a position he held until 1979.

He was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson, one of 20 to receive the medal "in the last 24 hours of [the] presidency in January 1969".

He was included on the "master list" of President Richard Nixon's infamous "Enemies List".

From 1979 to 1989, he was a professor of history at New York University. He was scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Corporation from 1990 to 1996.

Death

Bundy's death was the result of a massive heart attack.

Legacy

Gordon Goldstein's 2008 book Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam was reported to be, in late September, 2009, the "must-read-book" amongst President Barack Obama's war advisers, as they contemplated the alternative courses ahead in Afghanistan. Richard C. Holbrooke, who had reviewed the book in late November, 2008, was in 2009 a member of the team of Presidential advisers.

Bundy in film

In the 2000 film Thirteen Days, McGeorge Bundy is portrayed by Frank Wood. In the 2002 HBO film Path to War, Bundy is portrayed by Cliff DeYoung. He was also played by James Olson in the 1974, made for TV film, The Missiles of October.

See also

• The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
• Ford Foundation
• Carnegie Corporation
• Council on Foreign Relations

Further reading

• Bird, Kai. The Color of Truth: McGeorge and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. ISBN 0684809702.
• Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. ISBN 0394522788.
• Bundy, McGeorge. "The Issue Before the Court: Who Gets Ahead in America?", The Atlantic Monthly 240, no. 5 (November 1977), pp. 41–54.
• Gardner, Lloyd. "Harry Hopkins with Hand Grenades? McGeorge Bundy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years", in Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898–1968, ed. Thomas J. McCormick and Walter LaFeber. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. pp. 204–229. ISBN 0299137406.
• Goldstein, Gordon M., Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2008. pp. 300. ISBN 0805090878.
• Halberstam, David. "The Very Expensive Education of McGeorge Bundy". Harper's Magazine 239, no. 1430 (July 1969), pp. 21–41.
• Kabaservice, Geoffrey. "The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment." New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004. pp. 136-140. ISBN 0805067620.
• Nünlist, Christian. Kennedys rechte Hand: McGeorge Bundys Einfluss als Nationaler Sicherheitsberater auf die amerikanische Aussenpolitik, 1961–63. Zurich: Center for Security Studies, 1999. ISBN 3905641615.
• Preston, Andrew. The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN 0674021983.
• Stimson, Henry and McGeorge Bundy. On Active Service in Peace and War. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.

External links

• McGeorge Bundy at Harvard
• Interview about the Cuban Missile Crisis for the WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
• Biography of McGeorge Bundy (in German)
• Review of biography of brothers William and McGeorge Bundy
• McGeorge Bundy headed the Ford Foundation from 1966–1979
• point of view of Nuremberg trial prosecutor Telford Taylor on McGeorge Bundy
• Pentagon papers: Telegram From the Ambassador in Vietnam (Lodge) to McGeorge Bundy on US Options With Respect to a Possible Coup, mentioning the term "plausible denial" Alternative link: Pentagon papers, Telegram 216, same cable
• Annotated bibliography for McGeorge Bundy from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Video of assassination denials made by Bundy
• NY Times Obituary
• Oral History Interviews with McGeorge Bundy, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library

Legal offices
Preceded by Gordon Gray	United States National Security Advisor 1961–1966	Succeeded by Walt Rostow