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.
Activities and affiliations
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
Related historical events
Late-career nuclear arms advocacy
After leaving the post of National Security Advisor in 1966, Bundy served as president of the Ford Foundation until 1979, then returned to academia as a professor of history at New York University. Around this time he helped found the group known as the "Gang of Four," whose other members were George F. Kennan, Robert McNamara and Gerard Smith; together they wrote and spoke about American nuclear policy. Their influential 1983 Foreign Affairs article proposed ending the US policy of "first use of nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet invasion of Europe," drawing wide attention. Bundy joined this debate with his book Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (1988), and their work has been credited with contributing to the SALT II treaty. From 1990 until his death he worked at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, serving as chair of the Committee on Reducing the Nuclear Danger (1990-1993) and scholar-in-residence (1993-1996), continuing to take part in nuclear disarmament discussions.