National Security Council and McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant for National Security Affairs,

The John F National Security Files, 1961-1963, were the working files of McGeorge Bundy as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, 1961-66. Bundy was formerly a political analyst, Council of Foreign Relations, 1948-49; Harvard University visiting lecturer, 1949-51; Associate Professor of Government, Harvard University, 1951-54; and Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science, Harvard University, 1951-61. The documents in this collection originated in the offices of Bundy and his assistants, Walt Whitman Rostow and Carl Kaysen and consist of communications traffic between the various executive departments and agencies of the US government, especially those concerning US foreign affairs and national defence. To meet the challenges faced by his administration, US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy re-modelled the machinery of US foreign policy and established a small cell within the National Security Council (NSC) to enhance his executive control over the foreign policy decision making process. Kennedy enlisted advisers from top positions in academia and industry, including as his special assistant, McGeorge Bundy. Bundy eliminated the committee system of previous administrations and instead made the NSC a compact policy making body which included Robert Komer, Gordon Chase, Michael Forrestal, David Klein, and Bromley Smith. Soon, the White House and the NSC established its own situation room and installed equipment that gave it direct access to State Department, Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency cables. The NSC maintained effective liaison with the State Department, particularly with Secretary of State David (Dean) Rusk. The NSC under Bundy managed the flow of information, intelligence, and decision papers to the president, cable traffic between the departments and agencies in Washington, DC, and embassies abroad; memoranda of conversations between US and foreign officials and among top US officials; intelligence reports assessing foreign policy issues, especially those from the Central Intelligence Agency; internal memoranda, including those from Bundy to Kennedy; and, agenda for and records of executive meetings. It remained, throughout the Kennedy administration, the president's major foreign policy instrument.