- William Bundy
William Putnam "Bill" Bundy (
September 24 ,1917 –October 6 ,2000 ) was a member of the CIA and foreign affairs advisor to PresidentsJohn F. Kennedy andLyndon B. Johnson . He had a key role in planning theVietnam War . After leaving government service he became a historian.Early years
Raised in Boston,
Massachusetts he came from a family long involved in politics. His father,Harvey Hollister Bundy , was a diplomat who helped implement theMarshall Plan . Bill was raised in a highly accomplished, highly intellectual family. After attending theGroton School andYale University (where he was one of the first presidents of theYale Political Union ), he enteredHarvard Law School but left to join theArmy Signal Corps duringWorld War II . During this time he worked atBletchley Park in Britain as part of thetop secret ULTRA operation to break Nazi codes.Positions held
During the 1950s he worked as an analyst for the
Central Intelligence Agency . During the Kennedy years he was deputy to Assistant Secretary for International Security AffairsPaul Nitze and worked for theSecretary of the Navy . During much of the LBJ era he was anAssistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs. After resigning from the executive branch in 1969 he taught at MIT and then edited the influential journal of theCouncil on Foreign Relations (of which he was a member), "Foreign Affairs ", from 1972 to 1984, after declining the offer of the Council's chairman,David Rockefeller , to be the Council's president.His brother,
McGeorge Bundy , was also an integral part of the both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Bill was married to Mary Acheson, the daughter of Truman's Secretary of StateDean Acheson . Bill and Mary had three children, Michael, Christopher, and Carol.Bill was somewhat to the left of his brother politically, and was a spirited opponent of
Joseph McCarthy . He was also considered one of the administration's more dovish members on Vietnam.He left politics in 1969 to teach at MIT. In 1972 he moved to
Princeton University where he remained for the rest of his life. His most noted work is "Tangled Web" which explores the foreign policy of the Nixon administration.William Bundy's papers are held by the Seeley G. Mudd Library at Princeton University, where he was a professor until his death at age 83.
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.
External links
* [http://www.mishalov.com/Bundy.html "New York Times" Obituary: "William P. Bundy, 83, Dies; Advised 3 Presidents on American Policy in Vietnam"]
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