McGeorge Bundy

McGeorge Bundy (1967)

McGeorge "Mac" Bundy (March 30, 1919 – September 16, 1996) was Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson from 1961-1966, and then headed the Ford Foundation from 1966–1979. He was also a member of the well-connected Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University.

Raised in Boston, Massachusetts he came from a prominent, wealthy family long involved in politics. His mother, Katherine Lawrence Putnam, was a child 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. McGeorge attended both the Groton School and Yale University one year behind his brother William Bundy.

He was one of Kennedy's "wise men," a noted professor of government - although not a PhD - at Harvard University. He moved into public life in 1961 becoming national security advisor. 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.

He was a strong proponent for participating in Vietnam early in his tenure. He supported escalating the American involvement and the bombing of North Vietnam. He later came to strongly regret the decision, one of the first administration members to do so. He spent much of the rest of his career trying to understand how he and so many others had made such a terrible mistake.

He left government in 1966 to take over direction of the Ford Foundation. Some critics such as Kai Bird have suggested that the Ford Foundation may not have been independent of US government foreign policy during that period (see The Color of Truth).

From 1979 to 1989, he was Professor of History at New York University.

His brother William Bundy was also a foreign policy figure during the Vietnam War.

See also

• The Best and the Brightest

Further reading

• Preston, Andrew. The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. 334 pp.
• Nünlist, Christian. Kennedys rechte Hand: McGeorge Bundys Einfluss als Nationaler Sicherheitsberater auf die amerikanische Aussenpolitik, 1961-63. Zurich: Center for Security Studies, 1999. 229 pp.
• Bird, Kai. The Color of Truth: McGeorge and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. 496 pp.
• Lloyd Gardner. "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 by Thomas J. McCormick and Walter LaFeber. Madison: University of Wisonsin Press, 1993. pp. 204-229.
• Halberstam, David. "The Very Expensive Education of McGeorge Bundy." Harper's Magazine 239, no. 1430 (July 1969), pp. 21-41.
• Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

External links

• McGeorge Bundy at Harvard
• 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