acheson said how do you convince the paranoid a character like stalin, and acheson was quite right, apair of white man and a paranoid world, how do you convince him not to engage in this kind of development of such a weapon, do it secretly. kennan's argument was the united states had 50 power bombs ready and now scheduled of the building of the 300. the soviets had exploded their first atomic bomb in september of 1949. this was a 1950 now. maybe he had two or three atomic bombs. we had a huge of an issue for them, and kennan's argument was that if we went to stalin, and if we raised this issue of trying to avoid an arms race in building this with him, that could as robert oppenheimer, the physicist, said to only be a weapon of mass destruction, using it in civilian populations. kennan believed that if we approached stalin, and if leader he went forward and sanctioned the building of this within we would benefit your quickly because they exploded a test bomb we would know about it, and then we, of course, could have built anyway. and at that point, we still would have had something lik

general marshall, indeed for a reason, was described by president truman and dean acheson as comparable only to george washington in the american pantheon. >> this is footnote 30. you say here, and it's talking about mcgeorge bundy and the "path to war in vietnam," a book, 2008, quoting bundy regarding the right decision. are you disclosing that for the first time? >> yes. the original book got much attention in the press and was read in the white house, etc., the memoirs of bundy apparently by a young scholar, but it was highly controversial. remember that the interviews were declined by the bundy family and there was reason for that. it strikes me as really, really farfetched that mcgeorge bundy, who i worked with occasionally in the 1970's, would be so contrite in his last final years. and indeed he might not have been in the best condition to offer candid, honest, insightful interviews. >> who was he, by the way? >> mcgeorge bundy was the youngest dean that harvard college ever had at 34. he was the start intellect of his generation and a boston brahmin aristocrat who kennedy brough

and, you know, dean acheson used to say, complaints are a bore and a nuisance to all and undermine theenity essential for endurance. we've got to endure. our country's had a lot worse times right now than mild recessionary times. the 9.5 percent unemployment is not acceptable. we've got to bring it down. but there's a lot of positive things going on in the private sector, at research universities. and just to pick on the federal government for it -- what about core companies that have been outsourcing? well, the companies will say well, that's the labor unions' fault, that we were forced to outsource. the blame's there to go around why we're in the mess we're in, why these investment banks have gotten so rich. so, what we need is some leader -- and maybe obama couldn't do it because there is a lot of racism. maybe there's 25 percent of the people that think he's a muslim. and lot of -- there may be a lot more racists than we think. i mean, george wallace ran in '68 and could win the south on a segregationist ticket. but for whatever reason -- and it may be his own shortcomings and not