Source:The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996: Historical Roster of Directors and Officers

Controversy

The Council has been the subject of many controversies, partly due to the number of high-ranking government officials in its membership, its secrecy clauses, and the large number of aspects of American foreign policy that its members have been involved with, beginning with Wilson's Fourteen Points. The John Birch Society believes that the CFR plans a one-world government. Wilson's Fourteen Points speech was the first in which he suggested a worldwide security organization to prevent future world wars. » "For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents ... to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we're part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I'm proud of it."


   :- David Rockefeller, "Memoirs" autobiography (2002, Random House publishers), page 405
   Historian Carroll Quigley included the CFR in his discussion of the Anglo-American Establishment's efforts to shape international developments during the 20th century. His book "Tragedy and Hope" was cited by conspiracy theorists as showing that the CFR was engaged in a conspiracy against American interests, though Quigley himself denied this.
   Assistant Secretary of Commerce David Bohigian says that there's no truth to the rumors. Senator Kit Bond, who is a member of committees that would have to authorize funding for a NAFTA superhighway, has said that there are no plans for a North American Union and the theories are not valid. However, Rep. Ron Paul has said that Congress has provided "small amounts" of money to study the feasibility of such a highway. Paul also suggested that because the funding constituted "just one item in an enormous transportation appropriations bill... most members of Congress were not aware of it." Rep. Virgil Goode introduced a resolution in September 2006, with 21 co-sponsors, to prohibit the building of a NAFTA superhighway and an eventual North American Union with Canada and Mexico. The resolution remains in committee.
   In 2005, CFR task force co-chairman Robert Pastor testified in Congress in front of the Foreign Relations Committee: "The best way to secure the United States today isn't at our two borders with Mexico and Canada, but at the borders of North America as a whole." The CFR task force he headed called for one border around North America, freer travel within it, and cooperation among Canadian, Mexican and American military forces and law enforcement for greater security. It called for full mobility of labor among the three countries within five years, similar to the European Union.(External Link) He also appeared at a CFR forum called "The Future of North American Integration in the Wake of the Terrorist Attacks" on October 17, 2001, discussing the prospect of North American integration in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly wrote of the 2005 report, "This CFR document, called 'Building a North American Community,' asserts that George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin 'committed their governments' to this goal when they met at Bush's ranch and at Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and assigned 'working groups' to fill in the details." The document advocated allowing companies to recruit workers from anywhere within North America and called for large loans and aid to Mexico from the US. It called for a court system for North American dispute resolution and said that illegal aliens should be allowed into the United States Social Security system through the Social Security Totalization Agreement. The report called for a fund to be created by the US to allow 60,000 Mexican students to attend US colleges. The report says the plan can be carried out within five years. Other members of the task force included former Massachusetts governor William Weld and immigration chief for President Clinton, Doris Meissner.
   Pastor wrote in Foreign Affairs: » "The U.S., Mexican, and Canadian governments remain zealous defenders of an outdated conception of sovereignty even though their citizens are ready for a new approach. Each nation's leadership has stressed differences rather than common interests. North America needs leaders who can articulate and pursue a broader vision... Countries are benefited when they changed these [nationalsovereignty] policies, and evidence suggests that North Americans are ready for a new relationship that renders this old definition of sovereignty obsolete." Pastor appeared at a CFR-sponsored symposium at Arizona State University on issues that would face the next president.

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Everything about The Council On Foreign Relations totally explained

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization founded in 1921 and based at 58 East 68th Street (corner Park Avenue) in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. It publishes the bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs. It has an extensive website, featuring links to its think tank, The David Rockefeller Studies Program, other programs and projects, publications, history, biographies of notable directors and other board members, corporate members, and press releases.

Mission

The Council's mission is promoting understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world. Meetings are convened at which government officials, global leaders and prominent members debate major foreign-policy issues. It has a think tank that employs prominent scholars in international affairs and it commissions subsequent books and reports. A central aim of the Council, it states, is to "find and nurture the next generation of foreign policy leaders." It established "Independent Task Forces" in 1995, which encourage policy debate. Comprising experts with diverse backgrounds and expertise, these task forces seek consensus in making policy recommendations on critical issues; to date, the Council has convened more than fifty times.
   At the outset of the organization, founding member Elihu Root said the group's mission, epitomized in its journal Foreign Affairs, should be to "guide" American public opinion. In the early 1970s, the CFR changed the mission, saying that it wished instead to "inform" public opinion.

Early history

The earliest origin of the Council stemmed from a working fellowship of about 150 scholars, called "The Inquiry," tasked to brief President Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world when Germany was defeated. Through 1917–1918, this academic band, including Wilson's closest adviser and long-time friend Col. Edward M. House, as well as Walter Lippmann, gathered at 155th Street and Broadway in New York City, to assemble the strategy for the postwar world. The team produced more than 2,000 documents detailing and analyzing the political, economic, and social facts globally that would be helpful for Wilson in the peace talks. Their reports formed the basis for the Fourteen Points, which outlined Wilson's strategy for peace after war's end.
   These scholars then traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 that would end the war; it was at one of the meetings of a small group of British and American diplomats and scholars, on May 30, 1919, at the Hotel Majestic, that both the Council and its British counterpart, the Chatham House in London, were born.(External Link) Although the original intent was for the two organizations to be affiliated, they became independent bodies, yet retained close informal ties.
   Some of the participants at that meeting, apart from Edward House, were Paul Warburg, Herbert Hoover, Harold Temperley, J.P. Morgan, Lionel Curtis, Lord Eustace Percy, Christian Herter, and American academic historians James Thomson Shotwell of Columbia University, Archibald Cary Coolidge of Harvard, and Charles Seymour of Yale.

About the organization

From its inception the Council was non-partisan, welcoming members of both Democratic and Republican parties. It also welcomed Jews and African Americans, although women were initially barred from membership. Its proceedings were almost universally private and confidential. It has exerted influence on U.S. foreign policy from the beginning, due to its roster of State Department and other government officials as members; as such, it has been the focus of many controversies (Perloff 37, et passim). A study by two critics of the organization, Laurence Shoup and William Minter, found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972, more than half were members of the Council.
   Today it has about 4,300 members (including five-year term members), which over its history have included senior serving politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, former national security officers, bankers, lawyers, professors, former CIA members and senior media figures. As a private institution however, the CFR maintains through its official website that it isn't a formal organization engaged in U.S. foreign policy-making.
   In 1962, the group began a program of bringing select Air Force officers to the Harold Pratt House to study alongside its scholars. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps requested they start similar programs for their own officers.
   Journalist Joseph Kraft, a former member of both the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, said the Council "comes close to being an organ of what C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite – a group of men, similar in interest and outlook, shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes." The Council says that it has never sought to serve as a receptacle for government policy papers that can't be shared with the public, and they don't encourage government officials who are members to do so. The Council says that discussions at its headquarters remain confidential, not because they share or discuss secret information, but because the system allows members to test new ideas with other members. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in his book on the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days, wrote that Kennedy wasn't part of what he called the "New York establishment:"
"In particular, he was little acquainted with the New York financial and legal community-- that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizatons, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs."

Morgan and Rockefeller involvement

The Americans who subsequently returned from the conference became drawn to a discreet club of New York financiers and international lawyers who had organized previously in June 1918 and was headed by Elihu Root, J. P. Morgan's lawyer; this select group called itself the Council on Foreign Relations. They joined this group and the Council was formally established in New York on July 29, 1921, with 108 founding members, including Elihu Root as a leading member and John W. Davis, the chief counsel for J. P. Morgan & Co. and former Solicitor General for President Wilson, as its founding president. Davis was to become Democratic presidential candidate in 1924.
   Other members included John Foster Dulles, Herbert H. Lehman, Henry L. Stimson, Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family's public relations expert, Ivy Lee, and Paul M. Warburg and Otto H. Kahn of the law firm Kuhn, Loeb.
   The Council initially had strong connections to the Morgan interests, such as the lawyer, Paul Cravath, whose pre-eminent New York law firm (later named Cravath, Swaine & Moore) represented Morgan businesses; a Morgan partner, Russell Cornell Leffingwell, later became its first chairman. The head of the group's finance committee was Alexander Hemphill, chairman of Morgan's Guaranty Trust Company. Economist Edwin F. Gay, editor of the New York Evening Post, owned by Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont, served as Secretary-Treasurer of the organization. Other members related to Morgan included Frank L. Polk, former Under-Secretary of State and attorney for J.P. Morgan & Co. Former Wilson Under-Secretary of State Norman H. Davis was a banking associate of the Morgans. Over time, however, the locus of power shifted inexorably to the Rockefeller family. Paul Cravath's law firm also represented the Rockefeller family.
   Edwin Gay suggested the creation of a quarterly journal, Foreign Affairs. He recommended Archibald Cary Coolidge be installed as the first editor, along with his New York Evening Post reporter, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, as assistant editor and executive director of the Council.
   Even from its inception, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was a regular benefactor, making annual contributions, as well as a large gift of money towards its first headquarters on East 65th Street, along with corporate donors (Perloff 156). In 1944, the widow of the Standard Oil executive Harold I. Pratt donated the family's four-story mansion on the corner of 68th Street and Park Avenue for council use and this became the CFR's new headquarters, known as The Harold Pratt House, where it remains today.
   Several of Rockefeller's sons joined the council when they came of age; David Rockefeller joined the council as its youngest-ever director in 1949 and subsequently became chairman of the board from 1970 to 1985; today he serves as honorary chairman. The major philanthropic organization he founded with his brothers in 1940, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has also provided funding to the Council, from 1953 to at least 1980.
   Another major support base from the outset was the corporate sector; around 26 corporations provided financial assistance in the 1920s, seizing the opportunity to inject their business concerns into the weighty deliberations of the academics and scholars in the Council's ruling elite. In addition, the Carnegie Corporation contributed funds in 1937 to expand the Council's reach by replicating its structure in a diminished form in eight American cities. John J. McCloy became an influential figure in the organization after the Second World War, and he held connections to both the Morgans and Rockefellers. As assistant to Secretary of War (and J. P. Morgan attorney) Henry Stimson during World War II, he'd presided over important American war policies; his brother-in-law John Zinsser was on the board of directors of JP Morgan & Co. during that time, and after the war McCloy joined New York law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hope, Hadley & McCloy as a partner. The company had long served as legal counsel to the Rockefeller family and the Chase Manhattan bank. McCloy became Chairman of the Board of Chase Manhattan, a director of the Rockefeller Foundation and Chairman of the Board of the CFR from 1953 to 1970. President Harry S. Truman appointed him President of the World Bank Group and U.S. High Commissioner to Germany. He served as a special adviser on disarmament to President John F. Kennedy and chaired a special committee on the Cuban crisis. He was said to have had the largest influence on American foreign policy of anyone after World War II. McCloy's brother-in-law, Lewis W. Douglas, also served on the board of the CFR and as a trustee for the Rockefeller Foundation; Truman appointed him as American ambassador to Great Britain.

Influence on foreign policy

Beginning in 1939 and lasting for five years, the Council achieved much greater prominence with government and the State Department when it established the strictly confidential War and Peace, funded entirely by the Rockefeller Foundation. The secrecy surrounding this group was such that the Council members (total at the time: 663) who were not involved in its deliberations were completely unaware of the study group's existence. Dwight D. Eisenhower chaired a CFR study group while he served as President of Columbia University. One member later said, "whatever General Eisenhower knows about economics, he's learned at the study group meetings." Dulles gave a public address at the Harold Pratt House in which he announced a new direction for Eisenhower's foreign policy: "There is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power." After this speech, the council convened a session on "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" and chose Henry Kissinger to head it. Kissinger spent the following academic year working on the project at Council headquarters. The book of the same name that he published from his research in 1957 gave him national recognition, topping the national bestseller lists.

Membership

There are two types of membership: life, and term membership, which lasts for 5 years and is available to those between 30 and 36. Only U.S. citizens (native born or naturalised) and permanent residents who have applied for U.S. citizenship are eligible. A candidate for life membership must be nominated in writing by one Council member and seconded by a minimum of three others.
   Corporate membership (250 in total) is divided into "Basic", "Premium" ($25,000+) and "President's Circle" ($50,000+). All corporate executive members have opportunities to hear distinguished speakers, such as overseas presidents and prime ministers, chairmen and CEOs of multinational corporations, and U.S. officials and Congressmen. President and premium members are also entitled to other benefits, including attendance at small, private dinners or receptions with senior American officials and world leaders.

Council on Foreign Relation in conspiracy theories

The CFR is seen in conspiracy theorist circles to be helping implement the idea of a one world government, and lends its ideals to the idea of a New World Order. Many of its powerful members have gone on record stating that they wish to implement a one world government.

Members

Board of directors

OFFICE NAME
Co-Chairman of the Board Carla Anderson Hills
Co-Chairman of the Board Robert Rubin
Vice Chairman Richard E. Salomon
President Richard N. Haass
Board of Directors
Director Peter Ackerman
Director Fouad Ajami
Director Madeleine Albright
Director Charlene Barshefsky
Director Henry Bienen
Director Stephen W. Bosworth
Director Tom Brokaw
Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell
Director Frank J. Caufield
Director Kenneth Duberstein
Director Martin Feldstein
Director Richard N. Foster
Director Stephen Friedman
Director Ann M. Fudge
Director Helene D. Gayle
Director Maurice R. Greenberg
Director Richard Holbrooke
Director Karen Elliott House
Director Alberto Ibargüen
Director Henry Kravis
Director Jami Miscik
Director Michael H. Moskow
Director Joseph Nye
Director Ronald L. Olson
Director James W. Owen
Director Colin Powell
Director David Rubenstein
Director Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director Joan E. Spero
Director Vin Weber
Director Sherwin Noorian
Director Christine Todd Whitman
Director Fareed Zakaria
The Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations is composed in total of thirty-six officers. Peter G. Peterson and David Rockefeller are Directors Emeriti (Chairman Emeritus and Honorary Chairman, respectively). It also has an International Advisory Board consisting of thirty-five distinguished individuals from across the world.

Corporate Members

  • Google
  • Goldman Sachs
  • Halliburton
  • Heinz
  • Hess
  • IBM
  • JPMorgan Chase
  • Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
  • Lehman Brothers
  • Lockheed Martin
  • MasterCard
  • McGraw-Hill
  • McKinsey
  • Merck
  • Merrill Lynch
  • Motorola
  • NASDAQ
  • News Corp
  • Nike
  • PepsiCo
  • Pfizer
  • Shell Oil
  • Sony Corporation of America
  • Tata Group
  • Time Warner
  • Total S.A.
  • Toyota Motor North America
  • UBS
  • United Technologies
  • United States Chamber of Commerce
  • U.S. Trust Corporation
  • Verizon
  • Visa

    • Notable current council members

  • Angelina Jolie (UN Goodwill Ambassador)

    Notable historical members

  • Graham Allison
  • Robert O. Anderson
  • Les Aspin
  • J. Bowyer Bell
  • W. Michael Blumenthal
  • Harold Brown
  • Zbigniew Brzezinski
  • William P. Bundy
  • George H. W. Bush
  • Dick Cheney
  • William S. Cohen
  • Warren Christopher
  • E. Gerald Corrigan
  • William J. Crowe
  • Kenneth W. Dam
  • John W. Davis
  • Norman Davis
  • C. Douglas Dillon
  • Thomas R. Donahue
  • Lewis W. Douglas
  • Elizabeth Drew
  • Peggy Dulany
  • Allen Welsh Dulles
  • Tom Foley
  • Leslie H. Gelb
  • Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
  • Maurice R. Greenberg
  • Alan Greenspan
  • Najeeb E. Halaby
  • W. Averell Harriman
  • Theodore M. Hesburgh
  • Carla A. Hills
  • Stanley Hoffmann
  • Richard Holbrooke
  • Charlayne Hunter-Gault
  • Bobby Ray Inman
  • Otto H. Kahn
  • Nicholas Katzenbach
  • Lane Kirkland
  • Jeane Kirkpatrick
  • Henry Kissinger
  • Walter Lippmann
  • Winston Lord
  • Charles Mathias, Jr.
  • John J. McCloy
  • William J. McDonough
  • Donald F. McHenry
  • George J. Mitchell
  • Bill Moyers
  • Peter George Peterson
  • Frank Polk
  • John S. Reed
  • Elliot L. Richardson
  • Alice M. Rivlin
  • Robert Roosa
  • Elihu Root
  • William D. Ruckelshaus
  • Brent Scowcroft
  • Donna E. Shalala
  • George P. Shultz
  • Theodore Sorensen
  • George Soros
  • Adlai E. Stevenson
  • Strobe Talbott
  • Peter Tarnoff
  • Garrick Utley
  • Cyrus Vance
  • Paul Volcker
  • Paul M. Warburg
  • Paul Warnke
  • Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
  • Owen D. Young
  • Robert Zoellick Source: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996:Historical Roster of Directors and Officers

    List of chairmen and chairwomen

  • Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1946-1953
  • John J. McCloy 1953-1970
  • David Rockefeller 1970-1985
  • Peter George Peterson 1985-2007
  • Carla A. Hills (co-chairman) 2007-
  • Robert E. Rubin (co-chairman) 2007-
  • John W. Davis 1921-1933
  • George W. Wickersham 1933-1936
  • Norman Davis 1936-1944
  • Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1944-1946
  • Allen Welsh Dulles 1946-1950
  • Henry Merritt Wriston 1951-1964
  • Grayson L. Kirk 1964-1971
  • Bayless Manning 1971-1977
  • Winston Lord 1977-1985
  • John Temple Swing 1985-1986 (Pro tempore)
  • Peter Tarnoff 1986-1993
  • Alton Frye 1993
  • Leslie Gelb 1993-2003
  • Richard N. Haass 2003-
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