THE SECOND MOST IMPORTANT BROTHERS IN WASHINGTON

AS the crisis in Viet Nam unfolded, President Kennedy naturally consulted with Brother Bobby. Later he conferred with Special Assistant McGeorge Bundy, 44, the former Harvard dean who now supervises national security affairs from a White House office. Having heard what Mac had to say, the President asked: "Why don't you find out what your brother thinks?"

The question came naturally--for McGeorge and William Putnam Bundy, 46, have become the New Frontier's No. 2 brother team. Mac is the more widely known. But Bill, a twelve-year veteran of Government service, is regarded as one of Washington's most knowledgeable men on Asia and on the U.S. military assistance program. In September, he accompanied Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Joint Chiefs Chairman Maxwell Taylor on their Viet Nam tour as a top adviser. As the newly named Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, he runs a 360-man shop and is, in effect, the Pentagon's "Secretary of State."

"Which One?" Both Bundys are close to the mainsprings of power. Last fall, while McGeorge was setting up the now-famed "ExComm" to handle the Cuba crisis, Bill was running a command post of his own at the Pentagon to rush arms to India in the wake of the Red Chinese border invasion. During last week's Viet Nam crisis, the two sat side by side at conferences in the White House Cabinet Room. When Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger announced after one meeting, "Bundy was there," reporters shouted, "Which one?" The brothers phone one another frequently--and not to chat about Bill's three kids or Mac's four. Says Bill: "He will start, The President wants . . .' and I will answer, The Secretary doesn't know about this yet, but . . .' "

Like the Kennedys, the Bundys grew up in a big, lively Boston family that put performance at a premium. Their father, Harvey Hollister Bundy, was an outlander from Grand Rapids who made good as a lawyer in Boston, later served as Henry Stimson's assistant in the Hoover and F.D.R. administrations. Their mother, a niece of longtime Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell and Poetess Amy Lowell, was a leading light of Boston's intellectual and social communities. Around the Bundy dinner table, conversation among the parents and five children was always so spirited that the family motto became DON'T TALK WHILE I'M INTERRUPTING.

Hairline Edge. Except in height--Bill is a spidery 6 ft. 4 in. tall, Mac a solidly built 5 ft. 10 in.--the two look remarkably alike, with Wally Cox-type faces and plastic-rimmed glasses. A year apart, both finished first at Groton. Both were Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, and both were tapped for Eli's elitest society, Skull and Bones. Both enlisted as privates during World War II, emerged as officers. But Mac always seemed to have a hairline edge. "He was more outstanding at Groton," says a friend, "a little more dazzling at Yale."

Bill, a lifelong Democrat, joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951, soon locked horns with the late Senator Joe McCarthy over a $400 contribution he had made to a defense fund for Alger Hiss. "I believed him worthy of a full defense," he says, "and the Hiss family didn't have the means." The fact that Bill was married to the daughter of McCarthy's archfoe, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, did not exactly endear him to the Senator. Neither did the fact that McGeorge Bundy, though a Republican himself, had edited Dean Acheson's state papers, The Pattern of Responsibility, and written a foreward pointedly rebutting McCarthy's diatribes.

CIA Boss Allen Dulles fended Mc Carthy off, and Bill Bundy served as his deputy for nearly ten years. In 1961, Kennedy moved him to the Pentagon, and his new office in the outermost "E" ring is just down the hall from where his father used to operate under Stimson.

God on Sunday. Mac joined the Government via a more circuitous route. After the war he helped Stimson write his fine memoirs, On Active Service in Peace and War, joined the Harvard faculty in 1949 as a lecturer. Within four years he became the first Yale-educated dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, one of the top jobs in U.S. education.

McGeorge Bundy was only 34 at the time, and the combination of his meteoric rise and his abrasive mannerisms made him a juicy target. Harvard's humor magazine, the Lampoon, found the mark:

McGeorge Bundy, Born on Monday, Groton on Tuesday, Yale on Wednesday, Army on Thursday, Harvard on Friday, Dean on Saturday, God on Sunday.

As dean, Bundy renewed his acquaintance with Harvard Overseer John F. Kennedy. The two sat together during the 1960 commencement, and not long afterward Bundy publicly endorsed Kennedy for the presidency.

Kennedy made Mac his chief aide on national security. Operating out of the west wing of the White House, he funnels important reports to the President, sees him half a dozen times a day. Partly because he owes no political debt to Kennedy, partly because the two are temperamentally alike in their appreciation of power and their delight in decision making, their relationship is frank and unstrained. Kennedy has no Sherman Adams, but Bundy is one of the handful of men who comprise an informal general staff for the President.

"Big Mac." Both Bundys come in for a good measure of criticism, McGeorge more than Bill. Because of his deep involvement in foreign policy and his closeness to the President, State Department types call McGeorge "the usurper" and "Rover boy." Three years in Washington have mellowed and humbled him somewhat--he was particularly shaken by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a project he backed wholeheartedly--but some acquaintances still complain of his intellectual arrogance, and one official refers to him as "the coldest fish around." At the Pentagon, Bill is occasionally accused of a lack of imagination and a Brahmin disdain for his colleagues, but that is a minority view.

Inevitably, the two are also avidly compared by acquaintances. "Bill is less driven," says one friend. "Mac is tougher and more aggressive and perhaps more incisive," says another. Watching the two Bundys operate during the Viet Nam crisis, newsmen came up with their own evaluation. Inspired by the references to "Big Minh" and "Little Minh" in dispatches from Saigon, they took to referring to the Bundys as "Big Mac" and "Little Mac." By "Big Mac," they meant McGeorge, who though the younger and shorter by half a foot is presently the more powerful of the two. From the looks of things, though, a little fraternal rivalry can be expected from now on.

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