William P. Bundy

William Putnam Bundy (September 24, 1917 to October 6, 2000) was a staff officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, a Defense Department and State Department official, and editor of Foreign Affairs.¹ He was the son of Harvey H. Bundy, the older brother of McGeorge Bundy, and the son-in-law of Dean Acheson.²

Family

The Washington Post reported that Bundy was born in Washington, where his father was serving as counsel to the World War I Food Administration.² Antony C. Sutton wrote that Harvey Hollister Bundy was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1888, died in 1963, was initiated into Skull and Bones in 1909, and served as law clerk to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in 1914 and 1915, a clerkship Sutton noted Alger Hiss also held in 1929 and 1930.³ Henry L. Stimson appointed Harvey H. Bundy Assistant Secretary of State, and Stimson's memoir records the appointment as filling a gap left by the death of a senior officer with economic experience.⁴ Harvey H. Bundy was present by invitation at the meeting of the wartime Interim Committee on May 31, 1945, whose secretary recorded him among the attendees with Stimson and the committee's scientists.⁵

Sutton listed the elder Bundy's five children: Harvey Hollister Bundy Jr. (Yale 1938, which Sutton recorded as not initiated into Skull and Bones), William Putnam Bundy (initiated 1939), McGeorge Bundy (initiated 1940), Harriet Lowell Bundy, who married Gaspar d'Andelot Belin of Covington & Burling, and Katharine Lawrence Bundy, who married Hugh Auchincloss Jr.⁶ The Post obituary calls William Bundy the older brother of McGeorge Bundy and records that he was sometimes known as "the other Bundy."²

In 1943 he married Mary Acheson, daughter of Dean Acheson.¹ The couple had three children.² Sutton described the connection as the "Whitney-Stimson-Bundy-Acheson Chain of Influence," wrote that Dean Acheson was a member of Scroll and Key at Yale, and that Acheson's son David was a member of Skull and Bones; Sutton also wrote that Acheson and Belin were former partners of Covington & Burling, the firm where Bundy worked from 1947 to 1951.⁷

Groton, Yale and Skull and Bones

Bundy attended Groton School (completed 1935) and Yale University (Yale College, 1939), and he attended the Harvard Graduate School in 1940.¹ The Post reported that he was a trustee of Yale for 20 years.²

Sutton's index of members by class year lists "William Putnam Bundy" in the class of 1939 of Skull and Bones, with the notation "CIA, Editor Foreign Affairs."⁸ Ron Rosenbaum wrote in Esquire in September 1977 that a reader could ask Bill Bundy or William F. Buckley, "both of whom went into the C.I.A. after leaving Bones," whether the society's experience was useful training for the clandestine trade; the same passage names McGeorge Bundy.⁹ The Covert Action Information Bulletin stated in 1990 that "William Bundy is a Bonesman from the class of 1939."¹⁰

Army service and Bletchley Park

Bundy served in the United States Army from 1941 to 1946. During the war he commanded an Army Signal Corps unit that worked with the British at Bletchley Park on the Ultra operation, which broke high-level German Enigma ciphers. He received the Legion of Merit and was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.¹ The Post quoted his later writing: "Although I have done many interesting things in my life and known many interesting people, my work at Bletchley Park was the most satisfying of my career."² The Covert Action Information Bulletin wrote that his intelligence career began in the Office of Strategic Services during the war.¹⁰

After law school at Harvard Law School, which he finished in 1947, he worked for four years at Covington & Burling in Washington.¹

Office of National Estimates, from 1951

A CIA letter to Joseph McCarthy dated July 22, 1953 states that Bundy joined the agency in June 1951 and was attached to the Office of National Estimates, and that from June 1952 he served as assistant to the agency's adviser on the National Security Council's planning board.¹¹ A report by Allen Drury of August 4, 1953 describes him as assistant to the adviser of the Office of National Estimates and as serving on the planning board of the National Security Council.¹² The Princeton finding aid records his post as chief of staff of the office and liaison to the National Security Council staff.¹ The Post wrote that his work in the office included evaluating information gathered by field operatives, and quoted him: "I'm not the kind of fellow you can make a spook out of."²

The Covert Action Information Bulletin gave his CIA service as 1951 to 1961, and Sutton gave the same years, adding that Bundy's four years at Covington & Burling suggested to him that Bundy "probably had CIA dealings" in the 1947 to 1951 period.⁶¹⁰ In 1960 Bundy was staff director of the President's Commission on National Goals.¹² The Bulletin quoted a foreword by Bundy to a book on the counter-insurgency era in which he wrote that "the preservation of liberal values, for America and other nations, required the use of the full range of U.S. power, including if necessary, its more shady applications."¹⁰

The Hiss defense fund and the McCarthy letters, 1953

In July 1953 McCarthy, as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote to Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, about Bundy's contribution to the defense of Alger Hiss. McCarthy's information was that Bundy had given $400 to the defense and had joined the United Public Workers of America, which McCarthy identified as the Communist front organization to which Bundy belonged.¹¹¹³

An FBI memorandum of July 10, 1953 recorded that Dulles told the Bureau's liaison agent, Sam Papich, that he had taken the position that it would be prejudicial to the interests of the United States to permit CIA employees to testify before the McCarthy committee, that he had been in touch with the White House about that position and had its support, and that he wanted to know where McCarthy obtained his information. Papich answered that the Bureau was not supplying it.¹⁴

The agency's reply of July 22, 1953 confirmed the $400 contribution. It said that the reasons Bundy gave for the contribution were not in accord, in substantial respects, with the reasons given in the matter then under review, and that comment on those reasons would await a re-evaluation of his case under Executive Order 10450. The reply stated that the agency's files showed a field investigation of the three general allegations and a favorable determination by the CIA Loyalty Board and by the Loyalty Review Board of the Civil Service Commission. It also stated that Bundy had joined the union, attended one meeting and resigned, and that the record did not indicate membership in any other organization within the scope of McCarthy's third question.¹¹ Drury reported that Dulles had told McCarthy that Bundy had joined the union in the summer of 1940 while working at the Library of Congress, and that the exchange followed a conversation between the two on July 14.¹²

According to the Drury report, Bundy's explanation was that he had contributed to help his father-in-law, Dean Acheson, in clearing Hiss.¹²

McCarthy replied on July 27, 1953 that the confirmation of the contribution "raises the gravest question as to his holding a sensitive post in an intelligence agency," adding that a good part of that work "must involve the detection of activities of people such as Alger Hiss."¹⁵ He asked Dulles to explain Bundy's reasons more fully.¹⁵

Dulles replied on August 1. The Drury report quotes the reply: "After most careful consideration of your letter, I feel that the proper course to pursue is to follow the procedure described in the President's executive order," and Dulles declined to comment on certain phases of the matter pending the conclusion of those proceedings.¹² McCarthy's letter of August 3 answered that Dulles's position was extremely revealing, and that Congress was entitled to information about improper conduct by the agency's top officers. He wrote that "the last man in the world who would try to protect and hide the facts" about an officer's "contributions to a convicted traitor" would be the head of the CIA.¹⁶ The Drury report of August 4 carried McCarthy's statement that the full matter would be submitted to his subcommittee and to the Senate when it returned.¹²

A syndicated column clipped into the FBI's liaison file described Bundy as "the CIA man under both Smith and Allen Dulles, who gave the $400 for the Hiss defense," a son-in-law of Acheson and "a member of the Acheson coterie," and reported that Senator Mike Monroney had defended the agency on the Senate floor against McCarthy's inquiry. A later Bureau memorandum noted that "the wide publicity given to the William Bundy matter" and Dulles's encounter with McCarthy had placed Dulles in "a most uncomfortable position."¹⁷ Sutton wrote that McCarthy "wanted to call William Bundy as a witness before the Committee and found the establishment strongly arrayed against this idea," and suggested that the establishment's reaction concerned more than McCarthy's treatment of witnesses.⁶

Defense Department, 1961 to 1964

The Princeton finding aid records his appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in 1961 and his service as Assistant Secretary of Defense for the same office from 1963 to 1964. It describes him as a political appointee under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1969.¹ The Washington Post wrote that he was a lifelong Democrat who joined the Kennedy administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense.²

The Foreign Relations of the United States volume on Cuba lists him at the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion. On February 7, 1961 he attended, for the Defense Department, a three-hour meeting in the office of Assistant Secretary of State Thomas C. Mann, chaired by Adolf Berle of the State Department's Latin American Task Force, with Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes and Colonel J. C. King of the CIA, Richard Goodwin of the White House staff and Haydn Williams of Defense.¹⁸ The President's appointment book places William Bundy at the White House meetings of March 11 (Trinidad plan, with Allen Dulles, Bissell, Robert S. McNamara, Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy), March 15 and 16 (the revised Zapata plan) and March 29, 1961, at which the tentative D-Day of April 5 was postponed.^19202122 The Princeton finding aid places the Bay of Pigs deliberations in the years of his State Department post; the operation took place in April 1961, when he held the Defense appointment. The Post obituary describes his participation in those deliberations, and in those on the Cuban Missile Crisis, as part of his service as deputy assistant secretary of defense.¹²

In the summer of 1961, apparently at his instigation, an interagency group began meeting at lunch on Tuesdays. His record of the October 3, 1961 luncheon lists Walt Rostow, U. Alexis Johnson, George McGhee, Robert Amory, Bissell, Fowler, Paul Nitze, General Parker and Bundy, and records a discussion of Vietnam.²³ After the Maxwell Taylor mission to Vietnam, McNamara asked Bundy to draft a memorandum on whether the United States should make a "Berlin-type" commitment to Vietnam; the draft is dated November 5, 1961 and the editors of the Foreign Relations series state that Bundy recalled finishing it on a Sunday and sending it to the President only after extensive discussions with the Joint Chiefs and revisions to its last part.²⁴ His drafts of a McNamara memorandum of November 8 (marked "Not used") and of a November 28 telegram to the Pacific commander are also printed.²⁵

In September 1963 Bundy accompanied McNamara to Vietnam; on October 3 he appears as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the record of the meeting that prepared the report on that trip, and an October 3 draft of its annex on Vietnam named him as drafter.²⁶ On November 20, 1963, after the Honolulu meeting, McGeorge Bundy sent him a draft of National Security Action Memorandum 273 for comment.²⁷ When Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. sent W. Averell Harriman a paper on "neutralization" of North Vietnam in December 1963, William Bundy, reviewing his papers after leaving State, called it "a bizarre aberration" that was "never considered or taken seriously by anyone, so far as I know."²⁸

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 1964 to 1969

Bundy held the post of Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (then titled Far Eastern Affairs) from 1964 to 1969.¹ On May 15, 1964 he wrote to Rusk that Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was urging covert air strikes against North Vietnam and that the record of Lodge's earlier talk with Rusk in Saigon did not support Lodge's account of it; he called Lodge "fairly woolly."²⁹ The Pentagon Papers chronology records that President Johnson designated him coordinating executive in National Security Action Memorandum 288 and that on May 23, 1964 he presented members of the Southeast Asia executive committee a 30-day scenario of graduated military and political pressure on North Vietnam.³⁰ On June 3, 1964, after the Honolulu conference, Bundy sent Rusk his notes, which McNamara, Taylor and John McCone also received; McGeorge Bundy wrote on the source text, "Hitting the North is required," and Johnson met the two Bundys with Rusk, McNamara, Taylor and McCone that evening.³¹

The Pentagon Papers record that McGeorge Bundy's memorandum of June 15, 1964 announcing a meeting on a Congressional resolution on Southeast Asia enclosed a memorandum by W. P. Bundy dated June 12 on "Probable Developments and [the] Case for Congressional Resolution on Southeast Asia," together with a draft resolution.³² The chronology entry for that memorandum states that it "called for a Congressional Resolution right away to demonstrate U.S. resolve (especially to Souvanna and Khanh) and provide flexibility for executive action."³³ A draft resolution on Southeast Asia prepared in the State Department is dated May 24, 1964; the editors describe it as among "working papers, no official standing" prepared for the executive committee meeting that day.³⁴

On August 4, 1964, the day of a second reported attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, Bundy was on vacation in Massachusetts. Rusk called him back to Washington.³⁵ The National Security Council met that evening, and the summary of the meeting printed an attached "Draft Joint Resolution on Southeast Asia"; the editors state there is "no indication on the source text of the drafter."³⁶ A Department of State telegram to the Embassy in Saigon sent at 6:35 p.m. that evening was drafted by Michael V. Forrestal and cleared by William Bundy.³⁷ In a telephone call with Rusk on August 5, Bundy asked about the resolution; Rusk replied that McGeorge Bundy and George Ball were "going over the final touches," and asked him and John T. McNaughton to prepare a ten-minute statement for the next morning's House and Senate hearings.³⁸ The Pentagon Papers chronology records that the President sent Congress a message requesting a joint resolution of support, and that "identical draft resolutions prepared by the executive branch" were introduced by Senator J. William Fulbright in the Senate and by Representative Morgan in the House.³⁹

A University of Houston Digital History essay describes Bundy as "one of the chief architects of the Vietnam War and coauthor of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution."⁴⁰ A 1972 press item likewise described him as having been "an architect of U.S. policy in Vietnam" at the State Department.⁴¹

In the NSC Principals' deliberations of late 1964, a working group paper of November 21, 1964, "Courses of Action in Southeast Asia," was drafted by William Bundy and McNaughton; the editors state that Bundy prepared a first draft on November 17 that was revised after the working group's meeting of November 19.⁴² The Pentagon Papers record that after the Principals' meeting of November 28 to 30 Bundy was charged with preparing a draft National Security Action Memorandum on a two-phase program, a thirty-day period of slightly increased pressure followed by air strikes against North Vietnam, and that the Principals decided not to call his draft a memorandum.⁴³

On January 6, 1965 Bundy sent Rusk notes prepared with Forrestal and Leonard Unger on the South Vietnamese situation: "Saigon morale in all quarters is now very shaky indeed," he wrote, and he attributed it to a widespread feeling that the United States was "not ready for stronger action and indeed is possibly looking for a way out."⁴⁴ On February 15 and 18, 1965 he sent Rusk a memorandum of unresolved questions on a negotiating position and a draft "Sequence of Actions" reflecting a proposal discussed that morning at the White House with the President, McGeorge Bundy, Ball and Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson.⁴⁵ After helping Ball prepare his June 28, 1965 paper urging withdrawal, Bundy disagreed with its conclusion and wrote a "Middle Way" course of action sent to the President on July 1; the editors cite his unpublished memoir for the account.⁴⁶

The Foreign Relations volume on Indonesia, Malaysia-Singapore and the Philippines prints two memoranda addressed to Bundy by William Colby, then Chief of the Far East Division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations: one of November 1, 1965 in the Philippines file and one of December 3, 1965 in the Indonesia file on State Department liaison.⁴⁷ On November 5, 1965 Bundy sent Rusk an assessment of the Philippine election between Ferdinand Marcos and Diosdado Macapagal, drafted by the officer in charge of Philippine affairs.⁴⁸

Newsweek, MIT and the Council on Foreign Relations, 1969 to 1972

Bundy left government in May 1969 and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Post wrote that he joined the staff of the Center for International Studies there for three years.¹² From 1970 to 1972 he was a part-time columnist for Newsweek, rotating with George Ball and Zbigniew Brzezinski.¹ He served on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1964 to 1972 and was a trustee of the American Assembly from 1964 to 1984.¹ By the end of 1971, the Post reported, he had concluded that all United States forces should be withdrawn from Vietnam, and he said that the Johnson administration had made "considerable mistakes" in informing the public.²

Foreign Affairs, 1972 to 1984

A 1972 press item from the CIA reading room reports that Bundy would succeed Hamilton Fish Armstrong as editor of Foreign Affairs, a post Armstrong had held for 43 years, beginning in the fall of 1972. The item describes him as a former Assistant Secretary of State who was then a senior research associate at MIT; Bundy says in it that he has "been in this field since 1951" and planned a book on American involvement in Vietnam, written as history rather than as a personal reminiscence.⁴¹ The Princeton finding aid gives his editorship as 1972 to 1984. Bundy donated the journal correspondence series to the Mudd Library of Princeton University in 1994.¹

From 1985 to 1987 he was a visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.¹

A Tangled Web, 1998

After 1987 Bundy devoted his time to a critical history of American foreign policy in the Nixon and Kissinger period, including the later years of the Vietnam War. The book was published in 1998 as A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency.¹⁴⁹ The Post quoted a Book World review calling it "a sharply critical study of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy."²

Death

Bundy died of heart ailments on October 6, 2000, at age 83, at his home in Princeton, New Jersey.¹² His papers are held at the Princeton University Library as the William P. Bundy Papers (MC189).¹