William Bundy - Positions Held

Positions Held

During the 1950s he worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was 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. During the Kennedy years he was deputy to Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs Paul Nitze and worked for the Secretary of the Navy. During much of the LBJ era he was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs. After resigning from the executive branch in 1969 he taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1972 he moved to Princeton University where he remained for the rest of his life. He edited the influential journal of the Council 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 (1919–1996), was also an integral part of the both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was also a member of Yale's Skull and Bones. Bill was married to Mary Acheson, the daughter of Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Bill and Mary had three children, Michael, Christopher, and Carol.

Bill Bundy 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.

Bundy's most noted work is A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (1998).

Bundy was Honorary American Secretary General of the Bilderberg Meetings from 1975 to 1980.

Bundy's papers are held by the Seeley G. Mudd Library at Princeton University.