Bundys’ comfortable upbringing as Boston Brahmins and their schooling at Groton and Yale. At the university, of course, the brothers were tapped for Skull and Bones. Bird details their service as junior officers in World War II, when family connections helped them secure sensitive assignments. After the war, they cultivated influential mentors—Henry Stimson, Walter Lippmann, and Felix Frankfurter, to name only a few. By 1953, McGeorge Bundy, age 34, was dean of Harvard College. Elder brother William was serving the government behind the scenes as an influential official with the CIA.
After the election of John Kennedy, William Bundy would occupy key posts in the Defense and State departments, where he became increasingly enmeshed in Vietnam policy. Kennedy lured McGeorge from Cambridge to serve as his national-security adviser. He finally left the White House in 1966 with the United States fully engaged in a war that both brothers doubted it could win.
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