William Putnam Bundy (September 24, 1917 – October 6, 2000) was an American attorney and intelligence expert, an analyst with the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. Bundy served as a foreign affairs advisor to both

presidents President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

and

Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

. He had key roles in planning the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

, serving as deputy to

Paul Nitze Paul Henry Nitze (January 16, 1907 – October 19, 2004) was an American politician who served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. He is best kn ...

under Kennedy and as

Assistant Secretary of State Assistant Secretary of State (A/S) is a title used for many executive positions in the United States Department of State, ranking below the Under Secretary of State, under secretaries. A set of six assistant secretaries reporting to the Under Secret ...

for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Johnson. After leaving government service in 1969, Bundy served as a historian of foreign affairs, teaching at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) and at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, from 1972 to his death. His book ''A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency'' (1998) is considered his most important work.

Early years

Born in 1917 and raised in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

, he came from a family long involved in Republican politics. His father,

Harvey Hollister Bundy Harvey Hollister Bundy Sr. (March 30, 1888 – October 7, 1963) was an American attorney who served as a special assistant to the Secretary of War during World War II. He was the father of William Bundy and McGeorge Bundy, who both served at hig ...

, served as an assistant secretary of state to Colonel

Henry L. Stimson Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950) was an American statesman, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. Over his long career, he emerged as a leading figure in U.S. foreign policy by serving in both Republican and D ...

beginning in 1931, and later as his special assistant on atomic matters when Stimson was

Secretary of War The secretary of war was a member of the U.S. president's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War", had been appointed to serve the Congress of the ...

under President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

. Bundy as a diplomat also helped implement the

Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...

. Bill was raised in a highly accomplished, highly intellectual family, with a brother

McGeorge Bundy McGeorge "Mac" Bundy (March 30, 1919 – September 16, 1996) was an American academic who served as the U.S. National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 through 1966. He was president of the Ford Founda ...

who was two years younger. After attending

Groton School Groton School (founded as Groton School for Boys) is a private college-preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts. Ranked as one of the top five boarding high schools in the United States in Niche (2021–2022), it is affiliated ...

and

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

(where he was one of the first presidents of the

Yale Political Union The Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society at Yale University, founded in 1934 by Alfred Whitney Griswold. It was modeled on the Cambridge Union and Oxford Union and the party system of the defunct Yale Unions of the late nineteenth and ...

and a member of

Skull and Bones Skull and Bones, also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death, is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior class society at the university, Skull and Bone ...

), Bundy entered

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he left to join the

Army Signal Corps The United States Army Signal Corps (USASC) is a branch of the United States Army that creates and manages communications and information systems for the command and control of combined arms forces. It was established in 1860, the brainchild of Ma ...

. In August 1943 he led the nine-man 6813th Signals Security Detachment to the UK secret code breaking '

Government Code and Cipher School Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

' at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

. He and six other cryptanalysts worked in

Hut 6 Hut 6 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, Britain, tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine cyphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma. ...

and the two translators worked in

Hut 3 Hut 3 was a section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park during World War II. It retained the name for its functions when it moved into Block D. It produced military intelligence codenamed ULTRA from the decrypts ...

. They fitted in well and he later described his time there as "the most satisfying of my career."

Career

After finishing law school in 1947, Bundy joined the Washington-based law firm of

Covington and Burling Covington & Burling LLP is an American multinational law firm. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the firm advises clients on transactional, litigation, regulatory, and public policy matters. In 2021, Vault.com ranked Covington & Burling as ...

. While there, he contributed to

Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...

's defense fund in the Hiss-

Chambers Chambers may refer to: Places Canada: *Chambers Township, Ontario United States: *Chambers County, Alabama * Chambers, Arizona, an unincorporated community in Apache County * Chambers, Nebraska * Chambers, West Virginia * Chambers Township, Hol ...

Case. In 1953, Senator

Joseph McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visi ...

cited his $400 contribution. Bundy explained that

Donald Hiss Donald Hiss (December 15, 1906 – May 18, 1989), also known as "Donie" and "Donnie", was the younger brother of Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss's name was mentioned during the 1948 hearings wherein his more famous and older brother, Alger, was ac ...

, Alger's brother, worked with him at Covington & Burling.

Allen Dulles Allen Welsh Dulles (, ; April 7, 1893 – January 29, 1969) was the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), and its longest-serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he ov ...

and Vice President Richard M. Nixon defended him, and the matter dropped. (Bundy's father,

, Sr., served as chairman of the board at Carnegie from 1953 to 1958, not long after Hiss served as president from 1946 to 1949.) In the early 1950s, Bundy was recruited for the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, serving as an analyst and as chief of staff for the Office of National Estimates. In 1960, Bundy took a leave of absence from the CIA to serve as staff director for Eisenhower's

Commission on National Goals The U.S. President's Commission on National Goals was organized in February 1960 as a non-official body whose purpose was to develop a broad outline of national objectives and programs for the next decade and longer. Composition The commission o ...

. During the Kennedy years, he was deputy to Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs

and worked also for the

Secretary of the Navy The secretary of the Navy (or SECNAV) is a statutory officer () and the head (chief executive officer) of the Department of the Navy, a military department (component organization) within the United States Department of Defense. By law, the se ...

. During much of the LBJ era, he was

for East Asian and Pacific affairs. He continued to serve as an advisor on Vietnam following the election of President Richard M. Nixon, but resigned from government in 1969. Bundy moved to academia, teaching at

(MIT). In 1972 he moved to

, where he served as a professor for the rest of his life. He edited the influential journal, ''

Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...

,'' of the

Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, mi ...

from 1972 to 1984, also serving as a member of the Council. He declined an offer by the Council's chairman,

David Rockefeller David Rockefeller (June 12, 1915 – March 20, 2017) was an American investment banker who served as chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation. He was the oldest living member of the third generation of the Rockefeller family, ...

, to be the Council's president. His brother,

(1919–1996), also attended Yale and was a member of Skull and Bones. After being involved in intelligence and the Council on Foreign Relations, he served from 1961 to 1966 as the National Security Advisor to both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Bill Bundy was somewhat to the left of his brother politically, and was a spirited opponent of

. He was also considered one of the administration's more dovish members on

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

, and was an advisor to three presidents. In 1989 he acknowledged the complexity of the presidents' decisionmaking, saying, "In a nutshell, my present feeling is that it was a tragedy waiting to happen, but one made much worse by countless errors along the way, in many of which I had a part." Bundy was Honorary American Secretary General of the Bilderberg Meetings from 1975 to 1980. Bundy's most noted work is ''A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency'' (1998). His papers are held by the

Seeley G. Mudd Seeley Greenleaf Mudd, M.D. (April 18, 1895 – March 10, 1968) was an American physician, professor, and major philanthropist to academic institutions. Early life Mudd was born in Denver, Colorado in 1895, and was the son of noted mining engine ...

Library at

Personal life and death

Bill Bundy married Mary Acheson, the daughter of Truman's Secretary of State

Dean Acheson Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...

and his wife Alice. Bill and Mary had three children, Michael, Christopher, and Carol. On October 6, 2000, William Putnam Bundy died at his home in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

at the age of 83 from heart trouble.

References

* * *

External links

William P. Bundy Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton UniversityWilliam P. Bundy in 1981
discussing his experiences with the Vietnam war, and Lyndon Johnson's strategies.

WGBH WGBH may refer to: * WGBH Educational Foundation, based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States ** WGBH (FM), a public radio station at Boston, Massachusetts on 89.7 MHz owned by the WGBH Educational Foundation ** WGBH-TV WGBH-TV (channel 2), ...

Open Vault.
William P. Bundy Papers (MS 1761).
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bundy, William United States presidential advisors Lawyers from Boston Writers from Boston Groton School alumni Military personnel from Massachusetts Members of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group Bletchley Park people 1917 births 2000 deaths Harvard Law School alumni Yale University alumni People associated with Covington & Burling Assistant Secretaries of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs 20th-century American lawyers

Early years

Career

Personal life and death

See also

References

Further reading

External links