The Invisible Government Part 12

Chapter 5

BUSINESS ADVISORY COUNCIL

Whereas the Foreign Policy a.s.sociation-World Affairs Center is primarily interested in fostering the _foreign_ policy desired by the CFR, and the Committee for Economic Development is primarily interested in formulating economic and other policies which, through governmental controls, will lead us into total socialism--another, smaller (but, in some ways, more powerful) organization has (or, until mid-1961, had) the primary responsibility of infiltrating government: of selecting men whom the CFR wants in particular jobs, and of formulating, inside the agencies of government, policies which the CFR wants. This small but mighty organization was the Business Advisory Council.

Daniel C. Roper, F. D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Commerce, formed the Business Advisory Council on June 26, 1933. Roper set it up as a panel of big businessmen to act as unofficial advisers to President Roosevelt.

He was disappointed in it, however. The biggest businessmen in America did, indeed, join; but they did not support the total New Deal as Roper had expected they would when he made them "advisers."

Roper, however, was a figurehead. The brains behind the formation of the Business Advisory Council were in the head of Sidney J. Weinberg, Senior Partner of the New York investment house of Goldman, Sachs & Co.--and also on the boards of directors of about thirty of the biggest corporations in America. Weinberg helped organize the BAC. He recruited most of its key members. He was content to let America's big businessmen ripen for a while in the suns.h.i.+ne of the New Deal's "new" philosophy of government, before expecting them to give that philosophy full support.

Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper pouted and ignored the Business Advisory Council when he discovered that the big businessmen, enrolled as governmental "advisors," tried to advise things that governmental leaders did not like. But Sidney Weinberg was shrewd, and had a definite, long-range plan for the Business Advisory Council. He held the BAC together as a kind of social club, keeping the big business men under constant exposure to the "new" economic philosophies of the New Deal, waiting for the propitious moment to enlist America's leading capitalists on the side of the socialist revolutionaries, determined to destroy capitalism and create a one-world socialist society.

The right time came in 1939, when World War II started in Europe and Roosevelt developed his incurable ambition to get in that war and become President of the World. Plans for America's frenzied spending on national defense began in 1939. With mammoth government contracts in the offing, Weinberg had no trouble converting the Business Advisory Council of leading businessmen into an agency for helping governmental leaders plan the policies for war and for the post-war period.

In September, 1960, _Harper's Magazine_ published an article by Hobart Rowen, ent.i.tled "America's Most Powerful Private Club," with a sub-t.i.tle, "How a semi-social organization of the very biggest businessmen--discreetly s.h.i.+elded from public scrutiny--is 'advising' the government on its top policy decisions." Here are pa.s.sages from the article:

"The Business Advisory Council meets regularly with government officials six times a year.... On two of these six occasions ...

the BAC convenes its sessions at plush resorts, and with a half-dozen or more important Was.h.i.+ngton officials and their wives as its guests, it indulges in a three-day 'work and play'

meeting....

"The guest list is always impressive: on occasion, there have been more Cabinet officers at a ... BAC meeting than were left in the Capital....

"These meetings cost the BAC anywhere from $6,000 to $12,000 or more, paid out of the dues of members ... which have been judged tax-deductible by the Internal Revenue Service....

"After the 1952 election, the BAC was having its fall 'work and play' meeting at the Cloister, just off the Georgia coast and a short distance from Augusta, where Ike was alternating golf with planning his first-term Cabinet. [Sidney] Weinberg and [General Lucius D.] Clay [members of the BAC executive committee] ...

hustled ... to Augusta, conferred with Ike [a 'close, intimate, personal friend' of both men]....

"The result was historic: Ike tapped three of the BAC leaders ...

for his Cabinet. They were Charles E. Wilson of General Motors as Defense Secretary; [George M.] Humphrey, then boss of the M. A.

Hanna Co., as Treasury Secretary; and Robert T. Stevens of the J.

P. Stevens & Co., as Army Secretary....

"Afterwards, [Secretary] Humphrey himself dipped into the BAC pool for Marion Folsom of Eastman Kodak as Under Secretary of the Treasury [later Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare]....

"Members.h.i.+p in the Council gives a select few the chance to bring their views to bear on key government people, in a most pleasant, convivial, and private atmosphere....

"The BAC, powerful in its composition and with an inside track, is thus a special force. An intimation of its influence can be gleaned from its role in the McCarthy case.... BAC helped push Senator Joe McCarthy over the brink in 1954, by supplying a bit of backbone to the Eisenhower Administration at the right time. McCarthy's chief target in the Army-McCarthy hearings was the aforementioned Robert T. Stevens--a big wheel in the BAC who had become Secretary of the Army. The BAC didn't pay much--if any--attention to Joe McCarthy as a social menace until he started to pick on Bob Stevens. Then, they burned up.

"During the May 1954 meeting at the Homestead [expensive resort hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, where the BAC often holds its 'work and play' sessions with high government officials and their wives], Stevens flew down from Was.h.i.+ngton for a weekend reprieve from his televised torture. A special delegation of BAC officials made it a point to journey from the hotel to the mountaintop airport to greet Stevens. He was escorted into the lobby like a conquering hero.

Then, publicly, one member of the BAC after another roasted the Eisenhower Administration for its McCarthy-appeas.e.m.e.nt policy. The BAC's att.i.tude gave the Administration some courage, and shortly thereafter former Senator Ralph Flanders (a Republican and BAC member) introduced a Senate resolution calling for censure."

Active members.h.i.+p in the Business Advisory Council is limited to about 70. After a few years as an "active," a member can become a "graduate,"

still retaining his full voting and members.h.i.+p privileges.

I have obtained the names of 120 "active" and "graduate" members of the BAC, listed below. Those who are members of the Council on Foreign Relations are identified by "CFR" after their names.

Winthrop W. Aldrich (CFR)

William M. Allen (President of Boeing Airplane Company; member Board of Directors of Pacific National Bank of Seattle)

S. C. Allyn (CFR)

Robert B. Anderson

Clarence Avildsen (Chairman, Avildsen Tools & Machines, Inc.)

William M. Batten (President, J. C. Penney Company)

S. D. Bechtel (CFR)

S. Clark Beise (President, Bank of America; member Board of Directors, National Trust and Savings a.s.sociation, San Francisco)

Roger M. Blough (CFR)

Harold Boeschenstein (President, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation; Chairman of the Board, Fiberglas Canada, Ltd.; member of the Board of Directors of National Distillers Products Corporation, International Paper Company, Toledo Trust Company, Dow, Jones & Co.)

Fred Bohen (President of Meredith Publis.h.i.+ng Company--_Better Homes and Gardens, Better Farming_; member of Board of Directors of Meredith Radio & Television Stations, Iowa, Northwest Bancorporation, Central Life a.s.surance Society, Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co., Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., Iowa-Des Moines National Bank)

Ernest R. Breech (Executive Vice President, Ford Motor, Company; member of Board of Directors of Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., Pan-American Airways; President of Western Air Express)

George R. Brown (Chairman of the Board, Texas Eastern Transmission Corp.; Executive Vice President, Brown & Root, Inc. of Houston; President of Board of Trustees, Rice University)

Carter L. Burgess (CFR)

Paul C. Cabot (President of State Street Investment Corp.; partner in State Street Research & Management Co.; member of the Board of Directors of J. P. Morgan & Co., Continental Can Co., Inc., National Dairy Products Corp., Tampa Electric Co., The B. F.

Goodrich Co.; Treasurer of Harvard University)

James V. Carmichael (President, Scripto, Inc.; member of Board of Directors of Lockheed Aircraft Corp., Trust Company of Georgia, Atlanta Transit Co., The Southern Co.)

Walker L. Cisler (CFR)

General Lucius D. Clay (CFR)

Will L. Clayton (CFR)

John L. Collyer (CFR)

Ralph J. Cordiner (Chairman of the Board and President of General Electric Co.)

John E. Corette (President of Montana Power Co.)