Of the 26, 15 are CFR members.
CARNEGIE INSt.i.tUTE OF WASHINGTON, 1530 "P" Street, N.W., Washington 5, D. C., had a.s.sets totaling $80,838,528.00 on June 30, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Caryl P. Haskins (CFR); Walter S. Gifford (CFR); Barklie McKee Henry; Robert Woods Bliss (CFR); James F. Bell; General Omar N. Bradley; Vannevar Bush; Crawford H. Greenewalt; Alfred L. Loomis (CFR); Robert A.
Lovett (CFR); Keith S. McHugh; Margaret Carnegie Miller; Henry S. Morgan (CFR); Seeley G. Mudd; William I. Myers; Henning W. Prentis, Jr.; Elihu Root, Jr. (CFR); Henry R. Shepley; Charles P. Taft; Juan Terry Trippe (CFR); James N. White; Robert E. Wilson.
Of the 22, 8 are CFR members.
ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, New York, had a.s.sets totaling $175,533,110.00 on December 31, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Albert Bradley (CFR); Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (CFR); Raymond P.
Sloan; Arnold J. Zurcher (CFR); Frank W. Abrams; Henry C. Alexander (CFR); Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. (CFR); General Lucius D. Clay (CFR); John L. Collyer (CFR); Lewis W. Douglas (CFR); Frank A. Howard; Devereux C. Josephs (CFR); Mervin J. Kelly (CFR); James R. Killian, Jr.
(CFR); Laurence S. Rockefeller; George Whitney (CFR).
Of the 16, 12 are CFR members.
THE COMMONWEALTH FUND OF NEW YORK, 5500 Maspeth Avenue, New York 78, New York, had a.s.sets totaling $119,904,614.00 on June 30, 1959. Officers and Trustees: Malcolm P. Aldrich; John A. Gifford; Leo D. Welch (CFR); George P. Berry; Roger M. Blough (CFR); Harry P. Davison (CFR); Harold B. Hoskins; J. Quigg Newton (CFR); William E. Stevenson (CFR); Henry C.
Taylor.
Of the 10, 6 are CFR members.
TWENTIETH CENTURY FUND, INC., 41 East 70th Street, New York 3, New York, had a.s.sets totaling $17,522,441.00 on December 31, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Adolf A. Berle, Jr. (CFR); Francis Biddle (CFR); August Heckscher (CFR); Hans Christian Sonne (CFR); Morris B. Abram; Arthur F.
Burns (CFR); Erwin D. Canham (CFR); Evans Clark (CFR); Benjamin V. Cohen (CFR); Wallace K. Harrison (CFR); David E. Lilienthal (CFR); Robert S.
Lynd; James G. McDonald (CFR); J. Robert Oppenheimer (CFR); Edmund Orgill; James H. Rowe, Jr.; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (CFR); Herman W.
Steinkraus; Charles P. Taft; W. W. Waymack.
Of the 20, 13 are CFR members.
Chapter 12
WHY? WHAT CAN WE DO?
Claiming to believe in the high destiny of America as a world-leader, our invisible government urges timid policies of appeas.e.m.e.nt and surrender which make America a world whipping-boy rather than a world leader. Claiming to believe in the dignity and worth of the human individual, the modern liberals who run our invisible government urge an ever-growing welfare-state which is destroying individualism--which has already so weakened the American sense of personal responsibility that crime rates have increased 98 percent in our land during the past ten years.
Why? Why do prominent Americans support programs which are so harmful?
It is a difficult question to answer.
Somewhere at the top of the pyramid in the invisible government are a few sinister people who know exactly what they are doing: they want America to become part of a worldwide socialist dictatorship, under the control of the Kremlin.
Some may actually dislike communists, but feel that one-world socialism is desirable and inevitable. They are working with a sense of urgency for a "benign" world socialist dictatorship to forestall the Kremlin from imposing its brand of world dictatorship by force.
Some leaders in the invisible government are brilliant and power-hungry men who feel that the ma.s.ses are unable to govern themselves and who want to set up a great dictatorship which will give them power to arrange things for the ma.s.ses.
The leadership of the invisible government doubtless rests in the hands of a sinister or power-hungry few; but its real strength is in the thousands of Americans who have been drawn into the web for other reasons. Many, if not most, of these are status-seekers.
When you are a rising junior executive, or a man of any age looking for good business and social connections, it seems good to go to a luncheon where you can sit at the head table and call leaders of the community by their first names. Most of the propaganda agencies affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations provide such opportunities for members.
A businessman enjoys coming home from a black-tie affair in New York or Washington where he and a few other "chosen" men have been given a "confidential, off-the-record briefing" by some high governmental official. The Council on Foreign Relations provides such experiences for officials of companies which contribute money to the CFR.
This status-seeking is a way of life for thousands of American businessmen. Some of them would not give it up even if they knew their activities were supporting the socialist revolution, although at heart they are opposed to socialism. Most of them, however, would withdraw from the Foreign Policy a.s.sociation, and the World Affairs Councils, and the Committee for Economic Development, and the American a.s.sociation for the UN, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the Advertising Council, and similar organizations, if they were educated to an understanding of what their membership in such organizations really means.
The job of every American who knows and cares is to make sure that all of the people in the invisible government network know exactly what they are doing.
But beyond that, what can we do? What can we Americans do about the Council on Foreign Relations and its countless tentacles of power and money and influence and propaganda which are wrapped around all the levers of political power in Washington; which reach into the schools and churches and respected civic organizations of America; which control major media of communications; which are insinuated into controlling positions in the big unions; and which even have a grip on the prestige and money of major American corporations?
It is often suggested that investigation by the FBI might be the answer.
For example, after the March-April Term (1960) Grand Jury in Fulton County, Georgia, condemned Foreign Policy a.s.sociation literature as "insidious and subversive" and the American Legion Post published _The Truth About The Foreign Policy a.s.sociation_ to doc.u.ment the Grand Jury"s findings (see Chapter V), supporters of the Foreign Policy a.s.sociation denounced the legionnaires, saying, in effect, that if there were a need to investigate the FPA, the investigation should be done in proper, legal manner by trained FBI professionals and not by "vigilantes" and "amateurs" and "bigoted ignoramuses" on some committee of an American Legion Post.
This is an effective propaganda technique. It gives many the idea that the organization under criticism has nothing to hide and is willing to have all its activities thoroughly investigated, if the investigation is conducted properly and decently.
But the fact is that the FBI has no jurisdiction to investigate the kind of activities engaged in by the Foreign Policy a.s.sociation and its related and affiliated organizations. The Foreign Policy a.s.sociation is not a _communist_ organization. If it were, it could be handled easily.
The Attorney General and the committees of Congress could simply post it as a communist organization. Then, it would receive support only from people who are conscious instruments of the communist conspiracy; and there are not, relatively, very many of those in the United States.
The FPA"s Councils on World Affairs are supported by patriotic community leaders. Yet, these Councils have done more than all _communists_ have ever managed to do, in brainwashing the American people with propaganda _for_ governmental intervention in the economic affairs of the people, and _for_ endless permanent entanglement in the affairs of foreign nations--thus preparing this nation _for_ submergence in a one-world socialist system, which is the objective of communism.
Inasmuch as the invisible government is composed of organizations which enjoy the special privilege of federal tax-exemption (a privilege seldom given to organizations advocating return to traditional American policies) it is often suggested that public pressures might persuade the Treasury Department to withdraw the tax-exempt privilege from these organizations.
How could the Treasury Department ever be persuaded to take action against the Council on Foreign Relations, when the Council controls the Department? Douglas Dillon, Secretary of the Treasury, is a member of the CFR.
It is impractical to think of getting Treasury Department action against the CFR. Moreover, such a solution to the problem could be dangerous.
A governmental agency which has limitless power to withdraw special tax-privileges must also have limitless power to grant special privileges. The Treasury Department could destroy all of the organizations composing the invisible government interlock by the simple action of withdrawing the tax-exempt privilege, thus drying up major sources of revenue. But the Treasury Department could then create another Frankenstein monster by giving tax-exemption to other organizations.
It is often suggested that some congressional committee investigate the Council on Foreign Relations and the network of organizations interlocked with it.
Yet, as we have seen, two different committees of Congress--one Democrat-controlled and one Republican-controlled--_have tried_ to investigate the big tax-exempt foundations which are interlocked with, and controlled by, and provide the primary source of revenue for, the Council on Foreign Relations and its affiliates.
Both committees were gutted with ridicule and vicious denunciation, not just by the official communist party press, but by internationalists in the Congress, by spokesmen for the executive branch of government, and by big respected publishing and broadcasting firms which are a part of the controlled propaganda network of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The invisible government is not, however, beyond the reach of the whole Congress, _if_ the Congress has the spur and support of an informed public.