Critics such as Kai Bird have suggested that since McGeorge Bundy's brother William worked for the CIA for 10 years, the Ford Foundation may not have been independent of US government foreign policy during that period (see The Color of Truth).
A former war crimes prosecutor indicated that because of his strong encouragement of the bombardment of North Vietnam in ways predictably expected to kill large numbers of civilians without any military advantage apart from scaring the population, it is likely that McGeorge Bundy would have been judged a war criminal had he been brought to trial under international law, following in the tradition of the Nuremberg trials.