Thomas J. Watson, Jr. (CFR)
Of these 120 BAC members, 41 are members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Most of those who are not CFR members have affiliations with foundations or other organizations that are interlocked with the CFR.
Sidney Weinberg, for example (father of the BAC), is not listed (in any Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report in my files) as a member of the CFR; but he is a member of the board of many corporations which support the CFR; and has many close connections with CFR leaders through foundations and other CFR subsidiary agencies.
All Secretaries of Commerce since 1933 have served as ex-officio General Chairman of the BAC.
On July 10, 1961, Roger M. Blough announced that the Business Advisory Council had changed its name to Business Council; had severed its connection with the Commerce Department; and would in the future give its consultative services to any governmental agency that asked for them. The BAC had been under intense criticism for the expensive entertainment it had been giving to governmental officials it advised.
Chapter 6
ADVERTISING COUNCIL
The Advertising Council, 25 West 45th Street, New York 36, N. Y. (with offices at 203 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago; 1200 18th Street, N. W., Washington; 425 Bush Street, San Francisco) serves as a public relations operation to promote selected projects supported by the Council on Foreign Relations and its interlocking affiliates.
The Advertising Council was created in 1942 (then called War Advertising Council) as a tax-exempt, non-governmental agency to promote wartime programs of government: rationing, salvage, the selling of war bonds, and so on.
The Advertising Council"s specific job was to effect close cooperation between governmental agencies and business firms using the media of ma.s.s communication. A governmental agency would bring a particular project (rationing, for example) to the Advertising Council, for help in "selling" the project to the public. The Council would enlist the aid of some advertising agency. The agency (giving its services for nothing, as a contribution to the war effort) would prepare signs, newspaper mats, advertising layouts, broadcasting kits and what not. The Advertising Council might then enlist the free services of a public relations firm to get this material into newspapers and magazines; get it inserted in the regular ads of business firms; get it broadcast, free, as public-service spot announcements by radio networks; get it inserted into regular commercials on radio broadcasts; get slogans and art work stamped on the envelopes and business forms of corporations.
The Advertising Council rendered a valuable service to advertisers, broadcasting organizations, and publishers. Everyone wanted to support projects that would help the war effort. The Advertising Council did the important job of screening--of presenting projects which were legitimate and urgent.
Even the advertising agencies and public relations firms, which contributed free services, profited from the arrangement. They earned experience and prestige as agencies which had prepared nationally successful campaigns.
The Advertising Council continued after the war to perform this same service--selecting, for free promotion, projects that are "importantly in the public interest." Indeed, the service is more valued in peace time than in war by many advertisers and broadcasting officials who are badgered to support countless causes and campaigns, most of which sound good but some of which may be objectionable. Investigating to screen the good from the bad is a major job. The Advertising Council does this job.
The Council is respected by industry, by the public, and by government.
It is safe to promote a project which the Advertising Council claims to be "importantly in the public interest."
Thus, officials of the Advertising Council have become czars in a most important field. They arbitrarily decide what is, and what is not, in the public interest. When the Advertising Council "accepts" a project, the most proficient experts in the world--leading Madison Avenue people--go to work, without charge, to create (and saturate the media of ma.s.s communication with) the skillful propaganda that "sells" the project to the public.
Officials of the Advertising Council are aware of their power as moulders of public opinion. Theodore S. Repplier, head of the Advertising Council, was quoted in a June, 1961, issue of _Sat.u.r.day Review_, as saying:
"There are Washington officials hired to collect figures on about every known occupation, to worry about the oil and miners under the ground, the rain in the sky, the wildlife in the woods, and the fish in the streams--but it is n.o.body"s job to worry about America"s state of mind, or whether Americans misread a situation in a way that could be tragic.
"This is a dangerous vacuum. But it is also a vacuum which explains to a considerable degree the important position the Advertising Council holds in American life today."
Note, particularly, that the Advertising Council is responsible to no one. If a business firm should decide on its own to include some "public service" project in its advertising, and the project evoked public indignation, the business firm would lose customers. The Advertising Council has no customers to please. Yet, the Advertising Council is a private agency, beyond the reach of voter and taxpayer indignation which, theoretically, can exercise some control over public agencies.
Who are these autocrats who have become so powerful that they can condition, if not control, public opinion? They are the members of the Public Policy Committee of the Advertising Council. Here were the 19 members of the Advertising Council"s Committee, on June 23, 1958:
_Sarah Gibson Blanding_, President of Va.s.sar College; _Ralph J.
Bunche_, United Nations Under Secretary; _Benjamin J.
b.u.t.tenwieser_, partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; _Olive Clapper,_ publicist; _Evans Clark_, member of the _New York Times_ editorial board; _Helen Hall_, Director of Henry Street Settlement; _Paul G.
Hoffman_, Chairman of this Public Policy Committee; _Charles S.
Jones_, President of Richfield Oil Corporation; _Lawrence A.
Kimpton_, Chancellor of University of Chicago; _A. E. Lyon_, Executive Secretary of the Railway Labor Executives a.s.sociation; _John J. McCloy_, Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank; _Eugene Meyer_, Chairman of the _Washington Post & Times-Herald_; _William I. Myers_, Dean of Agriculture at Cornell University; _Elmo Roper_, public opinion a.n.a.lyst; _Howard A. Rusk_, New York University Bellevue Medical Center; _Boris Shishkin_, a.s.sistant to the President of AFL-CIO; _George N. Shuster_, President of Hunter College; _Thomas J. Watson, Jr._, President of International Business Machines Corporation; _Henry M. Wriston_, Executive Director of the American a.s.sembly.
Of these 19, 8 are members of the Council on Foreign Relations--Bunche, b.u.t.tenwieser, Hoffman, McCloy, Roper, Shishkin, Shuster, Wriston. The remaining 11 are mostly "second level" affiliates of the CFR, or under the thumb of CFR members in the business world.
Some Advertising Council projects really are "in the public interest."
The "Stop Accidents" campaign and the "Smokey Bear" campaign to prevent forest fires are among several which probably have done much good.
There has never been an Advertising Council project which insinuated anything to remind anyone of the basic American political idea written into our organic doc.u.ments of government--the idea that men are endowed by G.o.d with inalienable rights; that the greatest threat to those rights is the government under which men live; and that government, while necessary to secure the G.o.d-given blessings of liberty, must be carefully limited in power by an inviolable Const.i.tution. But there have been many Advertising Council projects which were vehicles for the propaganda of international socialism.
The Advertising Council has promoted Law Day, which is an annual occasion for inundating America with "World Peace Through World Law"
propaganda, designed to prepare the people for giving the World Court jurisdiction over American affairs, as a major step toward world government (see _The Dan Smoot Report_, September 14, 1959, "The World Court").
The Advertising Council has promoted the "mental health" project, which, superficially, appears to be an admirable effort to make the public aware of the truth that we have more mentally ill people than we have facilities for--but whose underlying, and dubious, purpose is to promote the pa.s.sage, in all states, of "mental health" laws fabricated by international socialists in the World Health Organization and in the U.
S. Public Health Service. These laws, to "facilitate access to hospital care" for mentally ill people, provide no new facilities, prescribe no better treatment, nor do anything else to relieve the suffering of sick people.
The new "mental health" laws, which the Advertising Council is helping to persuade people in all states to accept, eliminate the const.i.tutional safeguards of a person accused of being mentally ill, thus making it easier for bureaucrats, political enemies and selfish relatives to commit him and get him out of the way.
The Advertising Council has touted ACTION--American Council to Improve Our Neighborhoods, Box 462, Radio City Station, New York 20, N. Y.--an organization for urban renewal. Of the 66 persons on the ACTION Board of Directors, a controlling majority are:
known members of the Council on Foreign Relations--such as Philip L. Graham and Stanley Marcus;
known members of important CFR affiliates--such as, Sidney Weinberg of the Business Advisory Council;
union bosses like Harry C. Bates, Ben Fischer, Joseph D. Keenan, Jacob S. Potofsky, Walter Reuther;
bureaucrats in charge of various "Housing Authorities," including Dr. Robert Weaver, Kennedy"s present Housing Administrator whose appointment was challenged in the Senate because of Dr. Weaver"s alleged communist front record;
"liberal" politicians dedicated to the total socialist revolution--such as, Joseph S. Clark, Jr., U. S. Senator from Pennsylvania;
officials of construction and real estate firms which can make mammoth profits on urban renewal projects and who are also "liberal" in their support of all governmental controls and subsidies, the tools for converting capitalism into socialism--such as, William Zeckendorf;
representatives of organizations also "liberal" in the sense indicated above--such as, Philip M. Klutznick of B"nai B"rith, and Mrs. Kathryn H. Stone of the League of Women Voters.
The Advertising Council supports United Nations propaganda.
The 1959 annual report of the United States Committee for the United Nations pays special tribute to the "radio-TV campaign, conducted through the cooperation of the Advertising Council and the National a.s.sociation of Broadcasters." Here are some pa.s.sages, from this tribute, which show how the Advertising Council gets one-world socialist propaganda into millions of American homes:
"Perry Como read the UN spot personally to his audience of 33,000,000."
"Jack Paar ... [showed] a filmed visit to the UN by his daughter, Randy ... following a splendid statement [by Paar]. This 7-minute segment of the show reached a minimum of 30,000,000 viewers."
"The campaign received tremendous recognition also on Meet the Press, the Today Show, I Love Lucy, the Desilu Playhouse, and the Jack Benny Show, among many others."