William P. Bundy Papers

Bundy, William P. (1917-2000)

William Putnam Bundy was born September 24, 1917 in Washington, D.C. to Harvey H. and Katherine (Putnam) Bundy. He was educated at Groton School (1935), Yale College (1939), Harvard Graduate School (1940) and Harvard Law School (1947). In 1943, he married Mary Acheson, daughter of Dean Acheson, secretary of state under President Harry Truman. Later, they had three children, two sons, Michael, and Christopher, and a daughter, Carol. He served in the United State's Army from 1941 to 1946. During World War II, he commanded an Army Signal Corps unit working with the British at Bletchley Park on the ULTRA operation breaking high-level German Engima ciphers. He was awarded the Legion of Merit and was made a member of the Order of the British Empire. After finishing law school in 1947, he worked for four years with the Washington, D.C. firm of Covington and Burling. In 1951, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, Office of National Estimates, working as the chief of staff and as a liaison to the National Security Council staff. In 1960, Bundy served as staff director of the President's Commission on National Goals.

Bundy served under President Kennedy and Johnson as a political appointee from 1961-1969. In 1961, he was appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA), then from 1963 to 1964 as Assistant Secretary of Defense, ISA. From 1964-1969, he served under the Department of State as the Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. During his time as Assistant Secretary, Bundy participated in deliberations on such matters as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Later, he became a central figure in shaping Vietnam policy. Bundy left government in May 1969 to teach at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1970 to 1972, he served as a part-time columnist for Newsweek, rotating with George Ball and Zbigniew Brzezinski in the international edition and briefly in the domestic edition.

He edited Foreign Affairs from 1972 to 1984, contributing several articles of his own. Later he served as a Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University from 1985 to 1987. He was a Trustee of the American Assembly from 1964 to 1984 and served on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1964 to 1972. After 1987, he devoted his time to writing a critical history of American foreign policy in the Nixon-Kissinger Era including the later years of Vietnam. In 1998, he published A Tangled Web: the Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency. Bundy died from heart trouble on October 6, 2000 at age 83.

Ball, George W.

George Wildman Ball was born on December 19, 1909 in Des Moines, Iowa. Named after his paternal uncle, George, he was the youngest of three sons born to Amos and Edna Wildman Ball. Ball grew up in Des Moines and Evanston, Illinois, where the family moved in 1922 after his father received a promotion to the Standard Oil Company headquarters located in Chicago. Edna decided the family should settle in Evanston due to the proximity of Northwestern University, where it was decreed all three sons would attend. According to Ball, his mother was determined to keep the family intact as long as possible. There would be no reason for her sons to leave home for college, if home was located near a college.

Ball attended Northwestern (as did his brothers Stuart and Ralph) where he served as president of the university poetry society and first editor of a new literary magazine entitled MS. He graduated in 1930 and entered Northwestern Law School after briefly considering pursuing a doctorate in English. Prior to the start of his second year of law school, Ball married Ruth Murdoch whom he had met on a European vacation during the summer of 1929. He graduated from law school in 1933 at the top of his class and served on the law review editorial board. The law school dean nominated him for a position in the General Counsel's Office, under the direction of Herman Oliphant, in the newly established Farm Credit Administration. Ball accepted the position after consulting with his family and headed off to Washington, D.C. in May 1933. His work included developing credit facilities for farmers and negotiating a contract for the sale of $75 million worth of Federal Farm Bureau cotton.

Ball moved to the Treasury Department in November 1933 upon the appointment of Henry Morgenthau as secretary of the treasury. When Franklin D. Roosevelt named Morgenthau to this post, Morgenthau appointed Oliphant as his legal advisor, and he, in turn, brought along Ball. In his new position, Ball prepared briefs on international trade and tax legislation. Despite working on major New Deal policies, Ball felt his law training was too narrow and returned to the Midwest in 1935 to "master the profession of law." He joined a Chicago law firm where he served as a tax attorney before moving to the prestigious firm of Sidley, McPherson, Austin & Harper in 1939. Ball's work involved the reorganization of railroads but more defining was the close relationship he developed with junior partner Adlai Stevenson while at the firm. It was also during this time that Ball started to become interested in foreign affairs. He began to attend Friday luncheons hosted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, which Stevenson chaired.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the German declaration of war against America galvanized Ball into action. He conferred with Stevenson, who was now an assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, on his course of action. Stevenson could have arranged for a commission in the Navy but encouraged Ball to put his Washington experience to better use. Following Stevenson's advice, Ball accepted an associate position in the General Counsel's Office of the Lend-Lease Administration under the guidance of Oscar Cox. Ball spent the first months in this new position investigating the synthetic rubber program and monitoring Englishman Geoffrey Pyke's plough project. Pyke theorized that if the Allies mastered the snow, they would control Europe, and he proposed parachuting men and tanks into snow covered areas. Although the overall goal of the project never fully materialized, the project did produce an amphibious vehicle later known as the Weasel. These duties soon evolved into serving as operating head of the office and thus legal adviser to Edward R. Stettinius, Administrator of Lend-Lease.

Ball resigned in August 1944 after the Lend-Lease Administration merged with the Foreign Economic Administration, claiming he could no longer work for the combined offices' inept chairman Leo Crowley. He accepted a position as a civilian member of the Air Force Evaluation Board to study the effects of tactical operations in Europe. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed director of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which would appraise the whole strategic air offensive. Ball was specifically responsible for assessing the effectiveness of the Allied bombing of German cities and transportation systems. In May 1945, Ball and John Kenneth Galbraith debriefed Albert Speer, the Nazi minister for armaments and war production, in an effort to confirm their speculations on the ineffectiveness of Allied bombings. Ball was awarded a Medal of Freedom for this work. After the war, Ball returned to Washington, D.C. and took an interim assignment with Jean Monnet as general counsel of the French Supply Council. Ball had met Monnet during his years in the Lend-Lease Administration. In this new assignment, Ball worked with Monnet to promote France's post-war recovery. Ball agreed to serve for a three-month period prior to the official opening of a law firm he had formed with friends. Ball's departure was delayed when Monnet asked Ball to serve as former French Premier Léon Blum's advisor during his mission to Washington to discuss Franco-American relations.

Ball was finally able to join his firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Friendly & Cox in July 1946. Monnet retained the firm to represent the French Government, and Ball soon found himself conferring with Monnet's deputy Robert Marjolin on the creation of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). He continued to work with Monnet on establishing a European economic plan throughout 1949, and this preliminary work laid the foundation for the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Despite his close relationship with Monnet, Ball was not involved in authoring the final proposal, later known as the Schuman Plan, to establish a European common market for coal and steel under an independent authority. He was not brought into the fold until a month after the proposal had been given to French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. After the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in August 1952, Ball was retained as the ECSC's adviser and later served as an adviser to the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the European Economic Community (EEC).

His interest in European affairs did not preclude Ball from taking an interest in American politics. In 1952, Ball established Project Wintergreen, the code name for the Stevenson information center established in Ball's Washington, D.C. office. Ball tested the waters for a possible Stevenson presidential campaign, while at the same time trying to convince Stevenson he should be a candidate. When Stevenson finally declared his candidacy, Ball served as executive director of Volunteers for Stevenson. Ball continued to advise Stevenson after his defeat and later served as his director of public relations during the 1956 campaign. Even after the 1956 defeat, Ball remained loyal to Stevenson and supported his candidacy in 1960. As the pressure on Stevenson to support John F. Kennedy mounted, Ball urged Stevenson not to endorse Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention, reasoning that Stevenson had an obligation to his supporters who wanted him to remain available for a possible draft.

After the nomination of Kennedy, Ball sent Stevenson a memorandum encouraging him to suggest a study of post-election foreign policy to Kennedy. Kennedy approved the idea and asked Stevenson to undertake the study. Stevenson passed the responsibility to Ball since he would be campaigning on Kennedy's behalf. The Stevenson report laid out immediate and long-term goals for American foreign policy. Ball cited the gold drain, NATO strategic deterrent talks, new initiatives in disarmament and formation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a few of the issues requiring immediate attention. Kennedy viewed the report favorably and requested additional task forces be formed. Ball spent the next six weeks preparing task force reports on the OECD, balance of payments, and foreign economic policy. Ball's hard work eventually led to his appointment as under secretary of state for economic affairs. In his new position, Ball worked on issues regarding trade and tariffs, economic affairs, the Congo, and European integration. He worked closely with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and dealt directly with the President on these matters. As the year progressed, Ball became more involved with political matters and eventually replaced Chester Bowles as under secretary of state. This promotion allowed Ball to play a key role in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. While Ball's tenure as under secretary of state is most noted for his vociferous opposition to the Vietnam War, other highlights include participating in Kennedy's inner sanctum during the Cuban Missile Crisis, negotiating a wheat deal with the Soviets, attending National Security Council meetings, brokering an international textile agreement, and serving as a mediator of crises in Cyprus, Pakistan, the Congo and the Dominican Republic.

As the war in Vietnam escalated, Ball realized his ability to influence policy had diminished. He submitted his resignation to President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 17, 1966, effective September 30. Citing personal and family reasons, Ball stated he must return to private life, and he accepted a senior partner position with the investment firm of Lehman Brothers. However, he had not completely disengaged himself from governmental service, and was frequently summoned to the White House in an advisory capacity. In 1968, he served as chair of the committee investigating the U.S.S. Pueblo incident and was asked to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations upon Arthur J. Goldberg's resignation. Ball initially refused but found himself outmaneuvered when Johnson pressured his partners at Lehman Brothers to support his nomination. Ball resigned his partnership in the firm in May.

Ball's service as permanent representative to the United Nations was short-lived. Fearing a Nixon victory in the presidential election, Ball resigned in September to campaign for his friend Hubert Humphrey. After Humphrey's defeat, Ball returned to Lehman Brothers where he remained until his retirement in 1982. However, Ball remained active in political affairs throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He served as an adviser to President Jimmy Carter during the crisis in Iran and on the Panama Canal treaties, delivered numerous speeches and lectures, testified before Congress, appeared on various news programs, and penned five books and scores of articles. In fact, he was working on his sixth book when he entered New York Hospital on Wednesday May 25, 1994 and was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died the next evening. Ball's wife Ruth predeceased him in 1993 after battling Alzheimer's. Two adopted sons, John C. and Douglas B. Ball, and two grandchildren survive him.

Kennan, George F. (George Frost) (1904-2005)

George F. Kennan (1904-2005) was a diplomat and a historian, noted especially for his influence on United States policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War and for his scholarly expertise in the areas of Russian history and foreign policy. While with the Foreign Service, Kennan advocated a policy of "containment" that influenced United States relations with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War and served in various positions in European embassies, as well as ambassador to the Soviet Union. His career as a historian was spent at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he continued to analyze the history of Russia, Soviet Union and United States foreign policies, and foreign affairs.

Kennan was educated at St. John's Northwestern Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin and earned his B.A. degree at Princeton University in 1925, where he studied history with an emphasis on modern European diplomacy. Following graduation, he entered the Foreign Service. His first post was as vice consul in Geneva, and in the next year he was transferred to Hamburg, Germany. In 1928, Kennan entered a training program though the Foreign Service, studying Russian language, history and culture at Berlin University. The United States did not yet have diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and so Kennan was assigned to "listening posts" around the U.S.S.R. in Tallinn, Estonia (1927) and in Riga, Latvia and Kaunas, Lithuania (1931-1933).

His first assignment in Moscow came in 1933 under William C. Bullitt, the first United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, aiding in the establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and the Kremlin for the first time since 1917. He held positions as third secretary from 1933 to 1934, second secretary from 1935 to 1936, and from 1944 to 1946, minister-counselor (the second highest rank at the embassy), first under W. Averell Harriman and then under General Walter Bedell Smith. During this period, he was also appointed to positions in Vienna (1935), Prague (1938), Berlin (1939), Lisbon (1942), and London (1944). Kennan was detained in Berlin for five months after United States' entry into World War II.

Kennan rose to prominence in February 1946 when he wrote what became known as the "Long Telegram." Written in response to an inquiry from the U.S. Treasury regarding Moscow's refusal to support the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the telegram outlined Kennan's assessment of the psychology of the leaders of the Soviet Union and provided principles on which the United States should base policies towards the Soviet Union. Kennan wrote that Stalin was "impervious to the logic of reason but highly sensitive to the logic of force," by which he meant primarily diplomatic and economic force more so than military. The telegram resonated in Washington, D.C.--although the interpretation of the Soviet threat became predominantly described as a military one--and Kennan became an influential figure in the State Department on Soviet affairs. Kennan further developed his views in "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" published under the pseudonym X in Foreign Affairs in July 1947. In this article, he used the term "containment" to describe his philosophy for dealing with the spread of Soviet power and influence. Again, this was interpreted by others in Washington as a military strategy, although Kennan intended it to be primarily achieved through diplomacy, economic sanctions, and covert action--anything short of war. Containment became one of the primary rationales for United States' Cold War policies, including the Marshall Plan, the founding of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in 1949, the commitment of American forces in Southeast Asia in 1965, and the Reagan administration arms buildup during the 1980s.

In April 1946, Kennan returned to Washington, D.C., where he taught at the National War College, and in 1947, he was appointed director of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. In this capacity, he was a principle architect of the Marshall Plan, which sent billions of dollars of aid to help rebuild Western Europe following World War II. When Dean Acheson became Secretary of State in 1949, Kennan remained in the State Department as one of his principal advisors. However, during this period Kennan became increasingly critical of United States policy, especially the military interpretation of containment and the entry of UN troops into North Korea, and so in 1950 Kennan took a leave of absence to devote himself to research and scholarship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Kennan returned to the State Department in March 1952 when President Harry S. Truman appointed him Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. The assignment was short-lived, however. Kept under heavy surveillance by the Soviets, in October 1952 he compared conditions to those he suffered under his Nazi internment during World War II, and the Soviet government declared him persona non grata, which forced his return to the United States. Because of policy differences between Kennan and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (who found containment too passive), Dulles employed a technicality to force Kennan's retirement from the State Department in 1953.

He returned to the Institute for Advanced Study, where he became a professor in the School of Historical Studies in 1956. Kennan became a prolific and respected diplomatic historian, studying modern European and Russian history, international relations, and American foreign policy and diplomacy. He also remained an important, often critical, voice in the ongoing debate about American foreign policy, advocating the use of diplomacy rather than military force and for foreign policy that was "very modest and restrained." Kennan was critical of the buildup of conventional and nuclear weapons during the arms race, which many argued for in the name of containment. He also advocated against military involvement in Vietnam, indicating that it was not an area of the world critical to American security. Later in his career, Kennan became a supporter of Russian and Soviet studies in the United States, identifying scholarship as a productive means to establish favorable relations with Moscow.

Over the course of his career, Kennan wrote numerous influential and critically acclaimed books, including American Diplomacy 1900-1950 (1951), Russia Leaves the War (1956), Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin (1961), two volumes of memoirs (1967, 1972), The Decline of Bismarck's European Order (1979), The Nuclear Delusion (1982), and Around the Cragged Hill (1993). He won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for Russia Leaves the War and the other for the first volume of his memoirs. Though he remained at the Institute for Advanced Study until his retirement in 1974, Kennan did return to government service briefly on two occasions, as ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1961 until 1963 for President John F. Kennedy and traveling to Switzerland in 1967 as a representative for the State Department to help convince Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Josef Stalin, to immigrate to the United States.

George Frost Kennan was born on February 16, 1904 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Kossuth Kent Kennan, a lawyer, and Florence (James) Kennan. He met Annelise Sorensen of Norway while studying in Berlin and they married in 1931. The Kennans had four children: Grace Kennan Warnecke, Joan Kennan, Wendy Kennan, and Christopher J. Kennan. Through the course of his career, Kennan was the recipient of many honors for his work in the field of international affairs, including the Albert Einstein Peace Prize (1981), the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1982), the Gold Medal in History of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1984), the FDR Freedom from Fear Award (1987), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1989, the highest civilian honor in the United States). George Kennan died on March 17, 2005 in Princeton, New Jersey at the age of 101.

The William P. Bundy Papers are arranged by form and consists of correspondence, speeches, articles, memoranda, appointment books, and trip and book notes. A small portion of the collection documents Bundy's career in public service including Deputy Assistant Directory, Office of National Estimates, Central Intelligence Agency; Deputy Assistant Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs; and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. His appointment books, diary highlights and memoranda reveal Bundy's involvement in policy decisions made by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, especially concerning Vietnam.

A large portion of the collection relates to Bundy's 1998 book, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency. Included within are his reference material, chapter drafts, interviews, reviews and correspondence with family, including brother McGeorge, and friends, such as Winston Lord and Marshall Green, who offered constructive criticisms.

William P. Bundy donated the Foreign Affairs correspondence series to the Mudd Library in 1994 (ML1994-20).

For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. All analog audiovisual media must be digitized to preservation-quality standards prior to use. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed through the Ask Us Form.

This collection was processed by Jennifer Walele in Summer 2003. The Foreign Affairs correspondence was initially processed by Theresa Marchitto, February 1995. A preliminary inventory of two subsequent accessions in February 2002 and January 2003 were combined with the initial collection of correspondence. A finding aid for the entire collection was written by Jennifer Walele in Summer 2003.

No information about appraisal is available for this collection.

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Preferred Citation

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); William P. Bundy Papers, Box and Folder Number; Public Policy Papers, Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Publisher

Public Policy Papers

Finding aids author

Jennifer Walele

Date

2003

Creator

Bundy, William P. (1917-2000)

Subject

International Relations -- 20th century

Nuclear arms control -- Soviet Union

Nuclear arms control -- United States

Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- United States

Memorandums

People

Ball, George W.

Bundy, McGeorge

Clifford, Clark M. (Clark McAdams) (1906)

Halle, Louis Joseph (1910-1998)

Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines) (1908-1973)

Kennan, George F. (George Frost) (1904-2005)

Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald) (1917-1963)

Nitze, Paul

Nixon, Richard M. Richard Milhous (1913-1994)

Organization

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II

Place

United States -- Foreign relations -- East Asia

United States -- Foreign relations -- 20th century

United States -- Foreign relations -- Vietnam

Language

English

Form

Correspondence

Speeches