The Invisible Government Part 2

"I believe that one of the most telling witnesses with whom I have ever talked regarding Mr. Holmes is Mr. Henry Wriston, formerly president of Brown University, now chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, in New York, and chairman of the American a.s.sembly. Mr. Wriston not only holds these distinguished offices, but he has also made a special study of the State Department and the career service in the State Department.

"He is credited with having 'Wristonized' the Foreign Service of the United States. He told me a few years ago ... [that] 'Julius Holmes is the ablest man in the Foreign Service Corps of the United States.'"

Dr. Wriston was (in 1961) President (not Chairman, as Senator Bush called him) of the Council on Foreign Relations. But Senator Bush was not exaggerating or erring when he said that the State Department has been _Wristonized_--if we acknowledge that the State Department has been converted into an agency of Dr. Wriston's Council on Foreign Relations.

Indeed, the Senator could have said that the United States government has been _Wristonized_.

Here, for example, are _some_ of the members of the Council on Foreign Relations who, in 1961, held positions in the United States Government: John F. Kennedy, President; Dean Rusk, Secretary of State; Douglas Dillon, Secretary of the Treasury; Adlai Stevenson, United Nations Amba.s.sador; Allen W. Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Chester Bowles, Under Secretary of State; W. Averell Harriman, Amba.s.sador-at-large; John J. McCloy, Disarmament Administrator; General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; John Kenneth Galbraith, Amba.s.sador to India; Edward R. Murrow, Head of United States Information Agency; G. Frederick Reinhardt, Amba.s.sador to Italy; David K. E. Bruce, Amba.s.sador to United Kingdom; Livingston T. Merchant, Amba.s.sador to Canada; Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin, Amba.s.sador to France; George F. Kennan, Amba.s.sador to Yugoslavia; Julius C. Holmes, Amba.s.sador to Iran; Arthur H. Dean, head of the United States Delegation to Geneva Disarmament Conference; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Special White House a.s.sistant; Edwin O. Reischauer, Amba.s.sador to j.a.pan; Thomas K.

Finletter, Amba.s.sador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development; George C. McGhee, a.s.sistant Secretary of State for Policy Planning; Henry R. Labouisse, Director of International Cooperation Administration; George W. Ball, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs; McGeorge Bundy, Special a.s.sistant for National Security; Paul H. Nitze, a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense; Adolf A. Berle, Chairman, Inter-Departmental Committee on Latin America; Charles E. Bohlen, a.s.sistant Secretary of State.

The names listed do not, by any means, const.i.tute a complete roster of all Council members who are in the Congress or hold important positions in the Administration.

In the 1960-61 Annual Report of the Council on Foreign Relations, there is an item of information which reveals a great deal about the close relations.h.i.+p between the Council and the executive branch of the federal government.

On Page 37, The Report explains why there had been an unusually large recent increase in the number of non-resident members (CFR members who do not reside within 50 miles of New York City Hall):

"The rather large increase in the non-resident academic category is largely explained by the fact that many academic members have left New York to join the new administration."

Concerning President Kennedy's members.h.i.+p in the CFR, there is an interesting story. On June 7, 1960, Mr. Kennedy, then a United States Senator, wrote a letter answering a question about his members.h.i.+p in the Council. Mr. Kennedy said:

"I am a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. As a long-time subscriber to the quarterly, Foreign Affairs, and as a member of the Senate, I was invited to become a member."

On August 23, 1961, Mr. George S. Franklin, Jr., Executive Director of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a letter answering a question about President Kennedy's members.h.i.+p. Mr. Franklin said:

"I am enclosing the latest Annual Report of the Council with a list of members in the back. You will note that President Eisenhower is a member, but this is not true of either President Kennedy or President Truman."

President Kennedy is not listed as a member in the 1960-61 Annual Report of the CFR.

The complete roster of CFR members, as set out in the 1960-61 Annual Report, is in Appendix I of this volume. Several persons, besides President Kennedy, whom I have called CFR members are not on this roster. I have called them CFR members, if their names have ever appeared on _any_ official CFR members.h.i.+p list.

The Council is actually a small organization. Its members.h.i.+p is restricted to 700 resident members (American citizens whose residences or places of business are within 50 miles of City Hall in New York City), and 700 non-resident members (American citizens who reside or do business outside that 50-mile radius); but most of the members occupy important positions in government, in education, in the press, in the broadcasting industry, in business, in finance, or in some multi-million-dollar tax-exempt foundation.

An indication of overall accomplishments of the Council can be found in its Annual Report of 1958-59, which reprints a speech by Walter H.

Mallory on the occasion of his retiring after 32 years as Executive Director of the Council. Speaking to the Board of Directors of the Council at a small dinner in his honor on May 21, 1959, Mr. Mallory said:

"When I cast my mind back to 1927, the year that I first joined the Council, it seems little short of a miracle that the organization could have taken root in those days. You will remember that the United States had decided not to join the League of Nations.... On the domestic front, the budget was extremely small, taxes were light ... and we didn't even recognize the Russians. What could there possibly be for a Council on Foreign Relations to do?

"Well, there were a few men who did not feel content with that comfortable isolationist climate. They thought the United States had an important role to play in the world and they resolved to try to find out what that role ought to be. Some of those men are present this evening."

The Council's princ.i.p.al publication is a quarterly magazine, _Foreign Affairs_. Indeed, publis.h.i.+ng this quarterly is the Council's major activity; and income from the publication is a princ.i.p.al source of revenue for the Council.

On June 30, 1961, _Foreign Affairs_ had a circulation of only 43,500; but it is probably the most influential publication in the world. Key figures in government--from the Secretary of State downward--write articles for, and announce new policies in, _Foreign Affairs_.

Other publications of the Council include three volumes which it publishes annually (_Political Handbook of the World_, _The United States in World Affairs_ and _Doc.u.ments on American Foreign Relations_), and numerous special studies and books.

The Council's financial statement for the 1960-61 fiscal year listed the following income:

Members.h.i.+p Dues $123,200 Council Development Fund $ 87,000 Committees Development Fund $ 2,500 Corporation Service $112,200 Foundation Grants $231,700 Net Income from Investments $106,700 Net Receipt from Sale of Books $ 26,700 _Foreign Affairs_ Subscriptions and Sales $210,300 _Foreign Affairs_ Advertising $ 21,800 Miscellaneous $ 2,900 --------- Total $925,000

"Corporation Service" on this list means money contributed to the Council by business firms.

Here are firms listed as contributors to the Council during the 1960-61 fiscal year:

Aluminum Limited, Inc.

American Can Company American Metal Climax, Inc.

American Telephone and Telegraph Company Arabian American Oil Company Armco International Corporation Asiatic Petroleum Corporation Bankers Trust Company Belgian Securities Corporation Bethlehem Steel Company, Inc.

Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co.

Cabot Corporation California Texas Oil Corp.

Cameron Iron Works, Inc.

Campbell Soup Company The Chase Manhattan Bank Chesebrough-Pond's Inc.

Chicago Bridge and Iron Co.

Cities Service Company, Inc.

Connecticut General Life Insurance Company Continental Can Company Continental Oil Company Corn Products Company Corning Gla.s.s Works Dresser Industries, Inc.

Ethyl Corporation I. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc.

Farrell Lines, Inc.

The First National City Bank of New York Ford Motor Company, International Division Foster Wheeler Corporation Freeport Sulphur Company General Dynamics Corporation General Motors Overseas Operations The Gillette Company W. R. Grace and Co.

Gulf Oil Corporation Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company Haskins and Sells H. J. Heinz Company Hughes Tool Company IBM World Trade Corporation International General Electric Company The International Nickel Company, Inc.

International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation Irving Trust Company The M. W. Kellogg Company Kidder, Peabody and Co.

Carl M. Loeb, Rhoades and Co.

The Lummus Company Merck and Company, Inc.

Mobil International Oil Co.

Model, Roland and Stone The National Cash Register Co.

National Lead Company, Inc.

The New York Times The Ohio Oil Co., Inc.

Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation Otis Elevator Company Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation Pan American Airways System Pfizer International, Inc.

Radio Corporation of America The RAND Corporation San Jacinto Petroleum Corporation J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation Sinclair Oil Corporation The Singer Manufacturing Company Sprague Electric Company Standard Oil Company of California Standard Oil Company (N. J.) Standard-Vacuum Oil Company Stauffer Chemical Company Symington Wayne Corporation Texaco, Inc.

Texas Gulf Sulphur Company Texas Instruments, Inc.

Tidewater Oil Company Time, Inc.

Union Tank Car Company United States Lines Company United States Steel Corporation White, Weld and Co.

Wyandotte Chemicals Corporation

What do these corporations get for the money contributed to the Council on Foreign Relations?

From the 1960-61 Annual Report of the Council:

"Subscribers to the Council's Corporation Service (who pay a minimum fee of $1,000) are ent.i.tled to several privileges. Among them are (a) free consultation with members of the Council's staff on problems of foreign policy, (b) access to the Council's specialized library on international affairs, including its unique collection of magazine and press clippings, (c) copies of all Council publications and six subscriptions to _Foreign Affairs_ for officers of the company or its library, (d) an off-the-record dinner, held annually for chairmen and presidents of subscribing companies at which a prominent speaker discusses some outstanding issue of United States foreign policy, and (e) two annual series of Seminars for business executives appointed by their companies.

These Seminars are led by widely experienced Americans who discuss various problems of American political or economic foreign policy."

_All_ speakers at the Council's dinner meetings and seminars for business executives are leading advocates of internationalism and the total state. Many of them, in fact, are important officials in government. The ego-appeal is enormous to businessmen, who get special off-the-record briefings from Cabinet officers and other officials close to the President of the United States.

The briefings and the seminar lectures are consistently designed to elicit the support of businessmen for major features of Administration policy.

For example, during 1960 and 1961, the three issues of major importance to both Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were Disarmament, the declining value of the American dollar, and the tariff-and-trade problem. The Eisenhower and Kennedy positions on these three issues were virtually identical; and the solutions they urged meshed with the internationalist program of pus.h.i.+ng America into a one-world socialist system.

The business executives who attended CFR briefings and seminars in the 1960-61 fiscal year received expert indoctrination in the internationalist position on the three major issues of that year. From "Seminars For Business Executives," Pages 43-44 of the 1960-61 Annual Report of the Council on Foreign Relations:

"The Fall 1960 Seminar ... was brought to a close with an appraisal of disarmament negotiations, past and present, by Edmund A.

Gullion, then Acting Deputy Director, United States Disarmament Administration....