Boston, MA – The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum announced today that it has processed and made available for research a portion of the personal papers of McGeorge Bundy, former Special Assistant on National Security Affairs. The papers, a collection of approximately 24 cubic feet, consist of materials related to Bundy’s work as Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard (1949-1959), Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1960-1965), and President, Ford Foundation (1966-1979). The collection spans from 1928 to 1979.
Among the many items included in this newly released collection are correspondence with government officials and academics, personal research files on American Foreign Policy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War, incoming memos from John F. Kennedy regarding Vietnam and foreign policy, a selection of McGeorge Bundy’s personal daily observations of White House activity, correspondence regarding the planning of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and Bundy’s professional and personal correspondence with President Lyndon B. Johnson.
McGeorge “Mac” Bundy was born on March 30, 1919 to attorney Harvey Hollister Bundy and Katharine Lawrence [Putnam] Bundy in Boston, Massachusetts. Bundy was an elementary school classmate of John F. Kennedy at the Dexter School in Brookline. He went on to graduate from Yale University, majoring in Mathematics and serving as a member of the Skull and Bones Society. After his 1939 graduation, Bundy became a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, was trained as an intelligence officer and served as a Captain in the United States Navy.
On December 31, 1960, President-Elect John F. Kennedy appointed Bundy to be the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. Bundy’s assignment granted him the status of an informal cabinet member for the Kennedy administration, a key advisor to the President and an insider to the inner workings of the National Security Council. Bundy worked alongside President Kennedy and assisted him with decision and policy-making during the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. After Kennedy’s death, Bundy continued to serve a national security advisor to President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. Bundy was also involved in the development and planning of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Bundy left politics in 1966 to become the president of the Ford Foundation. Despite his official change of institutions, Bundy maintained a close relationship with President Johnson, serving as a Special Consultant to the President for several years after his departure. As Foundation President, Bundy pursued interests in population control, civil rights, foreign policy, arms control and the Vietnam conflict. He died in 1996, and his papers were deeded to the Kennedy Library in 2004.
The McGeorge Bundy collection has been added to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s Archives, which include 48 million pages of documents from the collections of over 340 individuals, organizations, or government agencies; oral history interviews with 1,300 people; and more than 30,000 books. The audiovisual archives administers collections of more than 400,000 still photographs, 7,550,000 feet of motion picture film, 1,200 hours of video recordings, over 7,000 hours of audio recordings and 500 original editorial cartoons.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through scholarship, educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.
The Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with the exceptions of Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. The Research Room is open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each weekday, and is closed on weekends and Federal Holidays. Appointments may be made by calling (617) 514-1629. The Library is located in the Dorchester section of Boston, off Morrissey Boulevard, next to the campus of the University of Massachusetts/Boston. Parking is free. There is free shuttle-service from the JFK/UMass T Stop on the Red Line. The Museum is fully handicapped accessible. For more information, call (866) JFK-1960.