Interview with McGeorge Bundy, 1986 [1]

Item Information

Title:
Interview with McGeorge Bundy, 1986 [1]
Description:
McGeorge Bundy was special assistant for national security affairs to U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1966. On October 16, 1962, Bundy told President Kennedy that CIA photo interpreters believed that Soviet launch sites for ground-to-ground offensive missiles were under way in Cuba. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, Bundy describes the two weeks of intensive closed-door debate on how best to get the missiles out of Cuba—a situation that had caught him and his colleagues by surprise. As the members of the Executive Committee (ExComm)—the president’s handpicked group of nineteen men who advised him through the Cuban missile crisis—debated scenarios, Bundy saw his role as ensuring that all sides would be considered. He recalls balancing the needs to debate and to act, the president’s focus on maintaining political control over delicate decisions that could lead to a military escalation, unexpected events along the way, the worst day of the crisis, and Nikita Khrushchev's October 28 decision to withdraw the missiles. The interview closes with Bundy’s commentary on Berlin, the other nuclear crisis that marked this period; Defense Secretary McNamara’s “flexible response” strategy; and the United States’ survivable strategic force as a vital deterrent to “anybody’s first strike.”
Interviewee:
Bundy, McGeorge
Date:
March 20, 1986
Format:
Film/Video
Location:
WGBH
Collection (local):
WGBH Open Vault
Series:
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
Subjects:
United States. Air Force. Strategic Air Command
First strike (Nuclear strategy)
Nuclear survivability
Kaysen, Carl
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear weapons
Great Britain
United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff
Single Integrated Operational Plan
Flexible response (Nuclear strategy)
Nuclear weapons--Testing
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)
Deterrence (Strategy)
Soviet Union
LeMay, Curtis E.
Mutual assured destruction
Intercontinental ballistic missiles
Nuclear arms control
Berlin (Germany)
Acheson, Dean, 1893-1971
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969
Castro, Fidel, 1926-
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
McNamara, Robert S., 1916-2009
Places:
New York > New York
Cuba
Germany
Extent:
01:00:59:00
Link to Item:
https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_53FC9FAF7F3A4292ADC51F0E1A4C6127
Terms of Use:
Rights status not evaluated.
Contact host institution for more information.
Publisher:
WGBH Educational Foundation
Identifier:
V_53FC9FAF7F3A4292ADC51F0E1A4C6127