The National Security Advisor who chose not to wake the president on the first night of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Ray Cline's voice on the phone: 'Those things we've been worrying about, it looks as though we've really got something.' Bundy asked, 'You're sure?'
National Security Advisor (1961–1966) under Kennedy and Johnson, and a key architect of the Vietnam War escalation. On the evening of October 15, 1962, the CIA informed him of Soviet missile bases in Cuba; he decided to wait until morning to tell the president, fearing that a hastily called nighttime meeting would blow secrecy. After leaving government in 1966, he served as president of the Ford Foundation and, in his later years, helped lead the campaign to renounce first use of nuclear weapons.
Career Timeline
- 1940AB in Mathematics, Yale University
- 1943–1946US Army intelligence officer
- 1949–1953Professor of Government, Harvard University
- 1953–1961Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard
- 1961–1966US National Security Advisor
- 1966–1979President, Ford Foundation
- 1979–1989Professor of History, New York University