Summary
âž¡ The article discusses the influence of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on major American media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time magazine. It suggests that the CFR’s globalist and pro-socialist views are reflected in these outlets’ editorial policies and news coverage. The article also highlights studies showing a liberal bias in the media, with journalists’ personal views influencing their reporting, particularly on issues like national defense and foreign affairs.
âž¡ This text discusses how the American media has been accused of biased reporting, focusing more on certain countries and issues while ignoring others. It suggests that this selective coverage can distort the public’s worldview and influence political decisions. The text also criticizes the media for mixing opinion with news, and suggests that this bias confirms that the media establishment is not conservative. Lastly, it discusses the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), suggesting that while not all members may share the same views, the majority are pro-socialist and pro-globalist.
âž¡ This text discusses the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a group that some people believe has a lot of influence but is often misunderstood. The author expresses skepticism about certain members of the CFR, including Tulsi Gabbard. The text also mentions that the CFR has been accused of being elitist and has made efforts to diversify its membership. Despite these changes, the author suggests that the CFR may still be promoting a globalist agenda.
âž¡ The text discusses the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), criticizing its members for overrating their importance and downplaying their role to avoid public scrutiny. The author also mentions a shift in the CFR’s focus from New York to Washington, hinting at a possible new national role. The text ends with a suggestion for a council of wise men to advise on foreign policy, similar to the Supreme Court’s role in judicial matters, which would require significant changes to the government structure.
Transcript
Parting untold History Channel. It is Wednesday, July 31, last day of July before August. Crazy days are flying by. Today I’m going to do what I can here to get through the final four chapters of this book. I may not. I may just do twelve and 13 today, and then tomorrow we’ll come back and get 14 and 15. I actually thought there was only three chapters, but I checked and there’s four. So three chapters only takes me about 2 hours, and I’m not sure I would be able to complete that. So anyway, let’s see what we can get done.
And before I do that, though, let me get my chat thing up so that I can monitor the chat. I had it, then I turned it off for some odd reason. So, okay, there we are. Now I am there. No chats yet, but I will be monitoring the chat. So anyway, let’s jump right in and get this party started. Go. All right. So again, this is chapter twelve of James Perloff’s book, the shadows of power. Again, this was written in the late eighties, 87 88 timeframe. And so you gotta kind of keep some of these things in mind.
There were not, you know, there’s no. There’s no Mogadishu, none of the Clintons, none of George Hw Bush, no 911, nothing. So this is all stuff really, from right towards the tail end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. So chapter twelve, the media blackout, all of the american history we’ve just finished reviewing is factual, that it is far from the traditional version. So the question naturally arises, why do the media avoid the various circumstances shown in this account or at best, downplay them? Why don’t we investigate? Why don’t investigative news shows like 60 minutes, perceived as gusty and no holds barred, tackle the Pearl harbor cover up american financing of questionable projects behind the Iron Curtain or the trilateralist CFR hold on our government? Surely such material would have sufficient audience appeal.
The answer is almost self evident. The mass media are subject to the same power behind the throne as Washington. For the establishment to induce public cooperation with its program. It has always been expedient to manipulate the information industry that is so responsible for what we people think. Excuse me, for what people think about current events. A prime mover in this process was JP Morgan, the original force behind the CFR. In 1917, Congressman Oscar Calloway inserted the following statement in the congressional Record, March 1915. JP Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations got together twelve men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States.
These twelve men worked the problem out by settling. Excuse me. These men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers and then began to, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 were agreed upon. Emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international. Of these papers, an agreement was reached. The policy of the papers was bought and to be paid for by the month.
An editor was furnished for, um. An editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers. This policy also included the supervision of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served. The press thus controlled, was very successful in persuading Americans to support our entry into World War one. However, in subsequent years, a number of books appeared that challenged the justification of our involvement, the merits of the allied cause, the wisdom of Colonel House and his colleagues in devising the Versailles treaty.
These books included Harry Elmer Barnes, Genesis of the World War from 1926, Sidney Faye’s origins of the World War 1928, and many others. After World War Two, however, the establishment moved to preclude such investigation. The eminent historian Charles Beard, for former president of the American Historical association, stated in the Saturday Evening Post editorial in 1947, the Rockefeller foundation and Council on Foreign Relations intend to prevent, if they can, a reputation or, excuse me, a repetition of what they call the vernacular, the debunking journalistic campaign following World War one. Translated into precise English, this means that the foundation and the council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to our basic aims and activities during World War two.
In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in coming years the critical analysis, evaluation, and exposition. Exposition, rather, that befell the policies and measures of President Woodrow Wilson and the intent on the Entente allies. Intent is the Entente, I think is the proper word. Entente allies are basically England, France, Russia and United States. After World War one, initially it was called the triple Entente, which was France, England and Russia, and then the, um. In world War one, it wasn’t called the Axis. It was, I believe it was called the having a brain fart.
I can’t remember what that was. Um, I’m having a brain fart. I can’t remember what that is now. I’m gonna have to look that up. I don’t remember getting old. Um, I will find that, though. Um, let’s see here. You know what? No, hell with it. I’m gonna look it up right now. Um. This is driving me crazy. World War one powers. I think it was central Powers. Thank you. I cannot believe that I didn’t know that the central Powers. Okay. So doctor Beard noted that the Rockefeller foundation had granted $139,000 to the CFR, which in turn hired I.
Harvey, or Harvard professor William Langer to author a three volume chronicle of the war. Historians whose writings concurred with the authorized version of events such as Langer, Samuel Morris, Herbert Fais, Henry Steele Comminger, and Arthur Schlesinger Junior were generally guaranteed exclusive interviews, access to government documents and statesmen’s diaries. Sure. Publications. Sure. Publication, and glowing appraisals in the front of the New York Times Book Review. Most of these men had served in the administrations they wrote about. On the other hand, historians who dared question foreign policy under Roosevelt and Truman, such as Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes, Charles Tansell, John T.
Flynn and William Henry Chamberlain, suddenly found themselves blacklisted by the publishing world that had previously welcomed their works. Beard succeeded in issuing two volumes critical of the Roosevelt administration only because he had a devoted friend at Yale University Press. Before his death in 1948, he was smeared in the media as senile. In 1953, Barnes described how the censorship process worked. The methods followed by the various groups interested in blacking out the truth about world affairs since 1932 are numerous and ingenious. But aside from the subterranean persecution of individuals, they fall mainly into the following patterns or categories.
One, excluding scholars suspected of revisionist views from access to public documents which are freely open to court. Historians and other apologists for the foreign policy of President Roosevelt. Two, intimidating publishers of books and periodicals so that even those who might wish to publish books and articles setting forth the revisionist point of view do not dare do so. Three, ignoring or obscuring published material which embodies revisionist facts and arguments, and four, smearing revisionist authors and their books. As a matter of fact, only two small publishing houses in the United States, the Henry reginary company and the Devon Adair Company, have shown any consistent willingness to publish books which frankly aim to tell the truth with respect to the cause and issues of the Second World War.
Leading members of the two of the largest publishing houses in the country have told me that whatever their personal wishes in the circumstances, they would not feel it ethical to endanger their business and their property rights of their stockholders by publishing critical books relative to american foreign policy since 1933. And there is good reason for this hesitancy. The book clubs and the main sales outlets for the books are for books are controlled by powerful pressure groups which are opposed to truth on such matters. These outlets only refuse to market critical books in this field, but also threaten to boycott other books by those publishers who defy their blackout ultimatum.
The historical suppression described by Doctor Barnes 35 years ago still operates today. It could be pointed out, quite rightly, of course, that in more recent years american policy and policymakers have occasionally been savaged, as with Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran Contra. However, such episodes did not bruise the council on Foreign Relations or its allies. Instead, they stigmatized those people whom the establishment disliked and those very policies it had always opposed, nationalism and anti communism. What we have operating in America is an establishment media. As erstwhile New York Times editor John Swinton once said, there is no such thing as an independent press in America if we accept that of little, if we accept that of little country towns.
The Times itself was bought in 1896 by Alfred Oaks with backing from JP Morgan, Rothschild’s agent, August Belmont, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn Loeb. It was subsequently passed to Oak’s son in law, Arthur Hayes Sulzberger CFR, then to Orville E. Dreyfus CFR, and finally to the present publisher, Arthur Oakes Sulzberger Cfr. The Times had a has had a number of CFR members in its stable of reporters, including Herbert L. Matthews, Harrison Salisbury, and Lester Merkel. Currently executive editor Max Finkel, editor, editorial page editor Jack Rosenthal, deputy editorial page editor Leslie Gelb, and assistant managing editors James L.
Greenfield, Warren Hodge, and John M. Lee are all in the council. The Times friendly rival, the Washington Post, was bought by Eugene Meyer in 1933. Meyer, a partner of Bernard Baruch and Federal Reserve board governor, had joined the CFR in 1929. Meyer began his reign at the Post by firing its editor for refusing to support us recognition of the Soviet Union. Today the Post is run by Meyer’s daughter, Kathryn Graham, CFR managing editor Leonard Downey, junior editorial page editor Meg Greenfield and deputy editorial page editor Stephen S. Rosefield Rosenfield, which are all council foreign relations members.
The Washington Post company owns Newsweek, which is a descendant of the weekly magazine today. I think it’s supposed to be the weekly magazine, which is called today, founded by Avril Harriman, among others to support the new deal and business interests. Let me reread that paragraph or sentence rather. The Washington Post Company owns Newsweek, which is a descendant of the weekly magazine today founded by Avril Harriman, among others, to support the New Deal and business interests. Newsweek’s editor in chief, Richard M. Smith and editor Maynard Parker both belong to the CFR, as have a number of its contributors.
Both Newsweek and the Post have donated money to the council. I’m going to pause this for a second, guys. I just had something come in that I need to deal with very shortly here. Apologize for this intrusion. 1 second here. Sorry about that. Just give me 1 second, all right? Sorry about that. Okay? The Time magazine maintains the same kind of rivalry of the Newsweek as the New York Times does with the Post. They compete for readers not in viewpoint. Time was founded by Henry Luce, CFR IPR Atlantic Union, who rose as a publisher from loans from such individuals as Dwight Morrow and Thomas Lamonte, both Morgan partners and CFR members Harvey Firestone, CFR, and E.
Roland Harriman, also CFr. Time’s longtime editor in chief was Headley Donovan from the trilateral commission, member, CFR director, trustee of the Ford foundation and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and eventually special assistant to President Jimmy Carter. The current editor in chief, Henry Grnwald, is in the CFR, along with managing editor Henry Mueller. Time Incorporated, which also publishes people, life, fortune, money and Sports Illustrated, has several council members on its board of directors. The CFR also has intra has interlocks with major tv networks. William S. Palley or Paley, chairman of the board at CB’s for many years belonged to the Council on Foreign Relations, as does the chairman today, Thomas H.
Wyman, and eleven of the 14 board members listed for 1987. CB’s news anchor Dan rather is in the CFR. CB’s helped finance the trilateral commission and CB’s foundation has contributed funds to the council. NBC is a subsidiary of RCA, which was formerly headed by David Sarnoff of the CFR. Sarnoff had financial backing from Kuhn, Loew and other Rothschild linked banking firms. He was succeeded by his son Robert, who married Felicia Schiff Warburg, daughter of Paul Werburgh and great granddaughter of Jacob Schiff, RCA’s chairman of the board. Now Thornton Bradshaw is a CFR man, as are several other board members.
The council has a number of NBC newsmen on its roster over the years, including Marvin Cobb, John Chandler, Chancellor Garrick Utley and Irving R. Levine. Or Levine. I don’t know. Is it Levine or Levine? I think it’s Levine. Actually, there are CFR figures on ABC’s board and its news department, including Ted Koppel and David Brinkley. The council on Foreign Relations also has links to the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the AP or Associated Press wire service, PBS and other major news sources. The council’s annual report for 1987 notes that 262 of its members are journalists, correspondents and communications executives.
What does this mean? Membership in the CFR is not by itself an indictment, however, when large number of councilmen are clustered at the helm of a media outlet, then its editorial policy, news slants and personal selection are almost guaranteed to reflect the globalist, pro socialist thinking that typifies the council. Recently, a number of studies have revealed strong prejudice in the mass media. Beyond doubt, the leader of the movement to expose and combat this bias has been Reid Irvine’s Washington based organization. Accuracy in the media or aim? In 1981, professors Robert Lichter, George Washington University and Stanley Rothman Smith College published tabulated results of interviews they had conducted with the media elite, journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, ABC, CB’s, NBC and PBS.
The survey showed the media far to the left of the public at large. Of those casting ballots for major party candidates in the 1964 election, 94% had voted for Lyndon Johnson and only 6% for Barry Goldwater. Even in Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, 81% voted for George McGovern. The leftward stance of the media was also shown by their answers to questions on social and political issues. For example, 90% took the pro choice position on abortion and. What? Oh, pro choice, duh. Sorry, I didn’t have to reread that for a second. I’m sorry. For example, 90% took the pro choice position on abortion and 57% agreed with the marxist thesis that the United States causes poverty in the third world by exploiting it.
Well, I don’t know, but I kind of feel like this is actually accurate. The United States does cause poverty in the third world by exploiting it. That’s, that’s actually true. We’ve been doing it for a long time. It’s called the World bank and the IMF, so that’s actually kind of true. The lictor, it’s like this is a pretty good stopping or pausing point for a second. And that’s exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time. The left is not always wrong. The problem is, is that the, is typically the people on the left. They can’t see their, they’re so blinded by their hatred for anything on the right that they literally can’t see, you know, an inch in front of their face.
They just, it’s like they’re just, they’re just, it’s, everything is just black. And so they, they don’t see where things that they advocate for actually work against the position that they advocating for. So it’s like, you know, when they talk about, you know, how all these corporations are, you know, they’re too big and they’re, you know, they’re exploiting things. They’re, you know, they’re destroying the country. They’re doing all kinds of things that are bad. Well, I tend to agree with that. That’s there’s a big problem with the big corporations. The problem that they want is they literally want the government to come in and do everything and have a monopoly.
While they don’t realize that the government is working in lockstep with these major corporations. I mean, all the people that are in government at the extreme high positions, they are interchangeable pieces between the elite positions of business and banking in the world. Whether it be pharmaceutical, defense related, you know, weapons, stuff, news, money, whatever. You know, people come in and out of government positions and go either into academic positions or executive positions within these major corporations. They’re just, they’re interchangeable. They happen all the time. So, you know, there’s a lot of truth to that last, that last statement there.
So anyway, all right. The Litcher Rothman survey was corroborated in 1985 by a Los Angeles Times poll of 3000 editors and reporters from over 600 newspapers. After comparing the results to those readers or to those of readers the Times was forced to conclude that members of the press are predominantly liberal, considerably more liberal than the general public. But do journalists allow their attitudes to influence their reporting? Research shows that they do. One area where this shows up is national defense. News commentators are found, excuse me, news commentators are fond of reciting how many warheads the United States has.
But they almost never mention that most of our ICBM’s ballistic missile submarines and strategic bombers are some 20 years old and nearing obsolescence. A study of the Institute of American Strategy determined that on the subject of national defense, CB’s news gave over 60% of its coverage to advocates, excuse me, of coverage to proponents of reducing our defenses and only 3.5% to advocates of greater strength, a ratio higher than 17 to one. One can imagine the impact of such imbalance on public opinion. Equally pronounced is the media’s selectivity in covering foreign affairs. Although we often hear about human rights abuses by anti communist governments.
Marxist violations are commonly ignored. An illustration is the genocide in Cambodia, where at least a third of the population died under the Khmer Rouge. First, the american press contributed to the Holocaust by demanding withdrawal of United States support from the government of the Republic of Cambodia. Norm Suhanouk, I don’t know if I’m saying that correctly, helped set the pace in October 1970, foreign affairs writing that I can only hope for the total victory of the revolution, which he said, cannot but save my homeland and serve the deepest interests of the mass of the little khmer people.
Sihonouk also made the bizarre prediction that the us cambodian relations would once again become good as soon as Washington stopped helping the government combat the communists. The us media echoed Sihanouk’s viewpoint. On April 13, 1975, just four days before the fall of Num Penh, the New York Times ran the headline Indochinae without Americans for most of a better life. By the end of 1976, more than a million Cambodians had died under the communist reign of terror. It seems like there’s a reign of terror, and communists seems like it’s synonymous. They go together like hand in glove.
Yet during that year, the New York Times carried only four stories on human rights problems in Cambodia. By contrast, it published 66 on abuses in Chile. The Washington Post had just nine human rights stories on Cambodia, 58 about Chile, and on the network Evening News in 1976, NBC never referred to the problem in Cambodia. ABC mentioned it once and CB’s twice. A similar blackout has occurred more recently with Afghanistan, where the Soviets have slaughtered more than 1 million people and turned millions more into refugees. Reid Irvine notes that on a single evening in December 1986, network News devoted more time to the Iran gate controversy, 57 minutes, than it had to the war in Afghanistan during all of 1985, which was 52 minutes.
Human rights stories still get attention, but only if it only if in selected countries. Aim surveyed the New York Times and Washington Post from May to July 1986 and found that two papers, or the two papers ran a total of 415 stories on South Africa during that stretch. Abdul Shams, former economic advisor to Afghanistan’s late president Hazula Amin, had this to say about Us media coverage of his homeland in a 1985 interview with the review of the news. The major american news media have ignored what is happening in Afghanistan, and they have also ignored Afghans like me who try to tell what is happening.
But the smaller newspapers and radio tv stations have been very cooperative. Every day hundreds of thousands of my people are killed, and the networks and major news media say nothing. But if one person is killed in South Africa. Immediately the media starts screaming. I have talked to many, many people here in the United States, many of them refugees from communist countries themselves, and they cannot believe the thing they see in the major news media. They say that the american news media are on the other side. Much of the time, I am forced to believe that they are correct.
Disproportionate news reporting gives Americans a distorted worldview. And because it may affect what they tell their representatives in Congress, it also affects world events. President Anastasio Somoza made relevant revelations about our media’s methods and impact in his book Nicaragua Betrayal. On Sunday afternoon. 60 Minutes is the most watched network show in the United States. I have watched the show, and I am familiar with the format. Generally speaking, the show is not complete unless someone is nailed to the cross. Also, the program will invariably sneak in a touch of propaganda. You can be sure this propaganda is slanted to the left.
When I was advised that 60 minutes wanted to interview me, I certainly had misgivings. However, I wanted so much for the american people to understand the realities of our situation in Nicaragua and to know what the administration in Washington was doing to us, that I agreed to do the program. All arrangements were made, and Dan rather was sent down to do the program. That interview, I shall always remember, rather tried every conceivable journalist trick to trip me up on questions. He knew in advance the answers he wanted, and come hell or high water, he was going to find the question to fit his preconceived answer.
Well, he never succeeded. From watching the show, one would never know that Dan rather spent two and one half hours grilling me. It’s difficult to believe, but rather condensed that entire time to seven minutes. I didn’t realize what the power of film editing really meant. With that power, rather cast me in any role he chose. Everything good I said about Nicaragua was deleted. Any reference to Carter’s effort to destroy the government of Nicaragua was deleted. Every reference to the communist activity and Cuba’s participation was deleted. His insistence that there was torture in my government probably disturbed me the most.
He would go over the subject, and then we would come back to sit it. We would come back to it again. He just wasn’t getting the answers he wanted. Finally he said, may we visit the security offices of the nicaraguan government? He had heard that this was a torture chamber, and he believed it. I replied, yes, mister rather, you may visit those offices and you may take your camera. Then I added, you go right now. Take that car and go immediately so that you can’t say I rigged it. Well, he did go and he saw where the people worked and talked to many of them.
He. When he, when the show came on the air, he made no mention of the fact that he had personally visited our security offices and was free to film, talk to people, or do anything he wanted to do. He knew in advance how he wanted to portray me, and his, and his predetermined plan was followed. When rather left my office, I was convinced he would take me apart. And I was right. The show was a disaster. Rather depicted a situation that didn’t exist in Nicaragua. That show did irreparable harm to the government of Nicaragua and to me.
Such massive disinformation also does harm to the american people. President Samoza’s comments are a good example of the other side of the story that the american viewer is not allowed to see. Doubtless other recipients of 60 minutes interviews could give similar accounts. Media personnel with sound ethics will report news factually and reserve their opinions for editorials. In reality, however, opinion usually mingles with the news. It is ironic that many journalists, while insisting there be no press censorship, themselves censor stories. They demand, as during the Iran Contra hearings, that all the facts be told, yet they do not themselves tell all the facts.
The leftist biased of the media strongly confirms that the establishment is not conservative. If the establishment, with its colossal wealth and links to press management, wanted news reporting with a conservative orientation, or simply with balance, we would get it. We do not. And that is the end of chapter twelve. And then it’s just going all showing pictures of all these people. Let me check the chat here. Hello there, Ram charger. And I’m just curious, Ram Charger, does that mean you’re in Los Angeles and 1988? Is that means you’re a dodger fan? I’m just asking. And how you doing, Safara? Good to see you.
Okay, the CFR today, chapter 13. This book’s detractors will say it has exaggerated the power and influence of the CFR. Admiral Chester Ward, a former council member who referred to in chapter, who referred to in chapter one, made a point of clarification to of clarification germane to this CFR as such, does not write the platforms of both political parties or select their reprospective presidential candidates, or control us defense and foreign policies. But CFR members, as individuals acting in concert with another individual CFR member do. It is true, of course, that the council is not an oath bound brotherhood that that dictates its members words and deeds.
A number of individuals are apparently invited into the CFR simply because they have a distinguished name or other enhancing qualities, and they may join without endorsing or even knowing the council’s habitual viewpoint. For this reason, no one should be censured merely for belonging to the CFR. However, the membership’s great majority, and by all means its core of leaders, have been chronically pro socialist and pro globalist. Pause it for a second. And, you know, there’s a, there’s a video out there done by George Griffin. When he talks about, he talks about. What was his name? Rhodes. Cecil Rhodes.
Like the power. Like rings within rings within rings. So, like, you have a core group that’s like, in a, they’re the core group of people and they make decisions, and then they bring other people in, and then all these other people are come in and they think that they’re in the inner circle when they don’t realize that there’s an even inner circle that they aren’t part of. And then there’s another group that comes in, and then they used to be in, or then they come in and they are, they’re in another ring, but it’s, it’s an outer ring, but yet they think they’re in the inner ring.
So it just continues to go where all these people, they think they’re in the inner circle, but there’s really not, there’s like, there’s, there’s a, there’s a core group and then there’s, and then there’s a lesser core group and then a lesser core group. And then as you get out, it starts to kind of, like, dilute a little bit. But the, the same mentality of, you know, pro socialist type stuff is, is, you know, it’s, it’s out there in plain view, which is one reason why, if I may say, that I was very, very skeptical of what was the gap.
Tulsi Gabbard was very, very skeptical about Tulsi Gabbard because, because of her membership in the CFR. Now, again, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s bad, because a lot of times, if people are on the extreme low levels or outer rings, if you will, they don’t necessarily know that they’re part of something that’s, that’s malevolent. So, but it still gives me pause. Anytime I see anybody’s name associated with the CFR or the trilateral commission, it gives me a huge amount of pause. And I’m like, I’d rather err on the side of caution rather than vote for you. So let’s see here.
I used to drive a Dodge ran charger, but that was a good guess. I do like the charger. Yeah, chargers quarterback is solid. I don’t really follow football anymore, but I’ve heard some really interesting things about that kid. It was. It’s easy to see why they, they moved on from Phillip Rivers. Anyway, back to the book. It is also true that while the council maintains an extraordinarily low profile, it is not a secret society. Doctor Carol Quigley called it a front group. Arthur Schlesinger Junior. A front organization, and it is helpful to understand in these terms it is not the establishment, but a surface component of it, nor is it a theater of illegitimate activities.
It publishes an annual report in which it makes a good account of its finances, and generally it maintains the trappings of a public spirited institution. Behind all of this, however, is a movement to affect a new world order. Because this movement has persisted for seven unrelenting decades, it has been lavishly funded and has been forwarded by the. By the conscious, conscious, deliberate actions of CFR members in government. Many have called it a conspiracy. History speaks loudly enough to vindicate the use of this term. Some speculate that there is within the council a cadre which is the heartbeat of its globalism.
So if indeed we have committed the sin of overestimating the role of the council on Foreign Relations, let us then certainly acknowledge that other sources have grossly underestimated it. I think that is a very accurate paragraph I’m going to read. I’m going to reread it just because I think it’s, it’s so apropos. So if indeed we have committed the sin of overestimating the role of the council on Foreign Relations, let us then certainly acknowledge that other sources have grossly underestimated it. What about the council today? What does the future hold for it? And vice versa? A number of changes are in evidence.
We noticed earlier that the council’s eventual switch from a bilateral, objective atlantic union to a trilateral one, another path to world government that more or less fell into disuse and was direct a wiping of UN authority. Richard Gardner’s April 1974 foreign affairs article, the hard road to world order, charted a new course. Gardner explained that the house of World order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than the top down. In other words, since the greater un power had been successfully resisted by the public, another approach was needed. Strengthening the various ingredients of world government, bit and peace.
Gardner laid out ten commandments as a guide to action, and in succeeding years, the phrase new world order and its variations, which had long been inscribed on the pages of foreign affairs, began to dwindle in appearance. There was an emphasis shift toward Gardner’s plan. Articles commit commending the law of the Sea treaty, international currency reform, international trade measures, and so forth. Recently, however. Recently, however, this trend has faded. Today, foreign affairs shows few traces of globalism and for the first time has begun looking like its professed identity, a more or less balanced journal of world affairs rather than a handmaiden for the international bankers.
I would be tempted to ascribe this transition to arrival of the new editor, William G. Hyland, in 1984. However, foreign affairs improved look and improved looked appears to be part of an overall process of image reconstruction by the CFR. I would, I would absolutely agree with that. I don’t think it’s them softening their stance. The council has long been accused of being elitist. In 1961, Edith Kermit Roosevelt remarked that it had a membership of at least 90% establishment figures. This is no longer the case. The CFR has been making an overt drive to recruit members from outside the banking and law stereotype and from beyond the northeastern seaboard.
Its membership’s general, its membership’s natural habitat. In keeping with this, the leadership has passed from old line establishment figures to men with unfamiliar plebeian sounding names. When David Rockefeller retired as chairman in 1985, he was succeeded by Peter Peterson, the son of a greek immigrant. Winston Lord, who vacated the presidency that same year, was a Pillsbury heir whose forebears had been regularly injected into skull and bones since the mid 19th century. Lord’s replacement was Peter Tarnoff, grandson of russian immigrants. Despite the cosmetology, Moscow’s 1987 town and country article quotes one CFR officer as saying, we are still an elitist organization and a council veteran who admits the great irony is that it is now operating more as a club than years ago.
It is the biggest exclusive club in America. It is almost jamesian form of corruption. Not really sure what a jamesian form of corruption is, but you know what? I’m going to look that up real quick because I’m curious what Jamesian Ford of corruption is. I have never heard that. Terminal. Okay, let’s see. What are the four forms of corruption? No, I guess I could bring this over here and show you guys what I’m looking at. I don’t see jamesian form of corruption anywhere. James Ian Iring and american sense of mission, maybe. Okay, well, this is going to have to just be a mystery.
People of culture get to meet people from Wall street and become consultants. Additionally, John Reese, publisher of Information Digest, noted in 1984 that the american right has been so successful at exposing the power and leftward bias of the CFR that a conscious effort has been made to add token conservatives and moderates to the membership list for protective coloring. A few individuals broadly recognized as anti communists, such as Arnaud de Bourgesgrave and Norman Potter, are now on the council’s roster. While these various modifications could be regarded as genuine reforms, they may constitute an effort to refute retroactively the blistering charges traditionally made against the council.
That is in that is an elite and elitist front for the international banking community, globalist and pro communist in outlook. Even the council’s annual report has been spruced up. Once a dry, recited recitation of names, bylaws, and activities, it now appears in in a handsome, enlarged edition filled with photos of council members chatting with world dignitaries over cocktails. More image renovation had taken place at the bookstore. The trendsetter here may have been David Halberstam’s the best and brightest, which, while giving only passing attention to the CFR as an organization, was an episode. It was an episodic profile of establishment notables during the Kennedy Johnson era.
Alberstam scratched out the required minimum of criticisms of these Mendez that McGeorge Bundy was arrogant, that Robert McNamara was too statistics minded, etcetera. But this was overshadowed by his reverence for their intellects and as his title suggests, for example, he referred to Bundy as the brightest light in that glittering constellation around the president, with a cool, lucid mind and honed down intelligence of the mathematician. The insight of the political science scholar at Harvard, Hobberson told us, or quote quoted others who told us, that with McNamara the mind was first rate, the intellectual discipline awesome, that for William Bundy brains were not his problem, that Kennedy was exceptionally cerebral and so, excuse me, and so forth, which is not to deny their intelligence, but not only to note the book’s preoccupation with it.
Amberston did nothing make some uncompromising denunciations, but only of those people associated with anti communism or the conservative tradition. He called Vietnam Commander General Paul Harkins a man of compelling mediocrity who was ignorant of the past and ignorant of the special kind of war he was fighting, referred to the wild irrationality of the deviousness, the maliciousness and venality of the South Vietnamese, and revealed his disdain for what he called God fearing, russian fearing citizens and christian missionaries who went to China because it was by and large more exciting than Peoria. Halberston is duly observed, is duly observed, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The year 1984 saw publication of Robert Stolzenberger’s the Wise Men of foreign affairs, the history of the Council on Foreign Relations. Here again, the title exalts the professed intellectual powers of the establishment, although the text grants that this has been much overrated. I blew that one up. Although the text grants that this has been overrated, schulzing burgers preface carefully points out that his book is a balanced account, neither tribute nor diatribe. Like Hammerstein, however, he rarely faults council members for anything more substantive than than pomposity. One of his biggest criticisms is that the council officials and friends have often exaggerated the body’s importance.
This is just the sort of criticism council members must savor for the interest. For in the interest of minimizing public scrutiny, they have always downplayed their importance, which is the net effect of Scholzenberger’s book. Again, like Habersdam, he shoots more than blanks, but his real bullets are reserved for the establishment’s enemies. He can wait only until the second sentence of his book to bring up the John Birch Society, the CFR’s most persistent and erratic critic. The first sentence quotes a condemnation of the CFR. Sulzer says he saw scrawled on a bathroom wall, and he apparently hopes readers will then associate such tactics, such tactics, with the John Birch Society.
Perhaps instead they find it a they find it a comment on where he does his research. Schlzberger was an international affairs fellow under the council sponsorship in 1982. Then there’s Isaacson and Thomas’s monumental the wise man from 1986, where again the title congratulates intellect. As we’ve noted, all six of the wise men were in the CFR, as are the authors themselves. Of the five endorsements of the book’s jacket, four were written by council members. The book is a prime example of the establishment scratching on the establishment’s back. Although biographer, biographical evidence or biographical in focus, it intermittently mentions the CFR.
And while it does yield significant revelations about american policy making, it is manifestly written by a glorification of its six subjects. It tells us of John McCloy’s discrete counsel, his rock like wisdom, his reassuring steadiness, and of how Robert Lovett seemed devoid of personal ambition or ulterior motives. His discreet and selfless style of operating came to be idealized by others as the benchmark for a certain breed of public servante. The wise men portrays its biographies as rather conservative lot who, after World War Two aroused Americans from coke guzzling complacency to the dangers of the Soviet Union.
But in reality, we have seen. As we’ve seen, CFR conservatism is usually quite selective, turning on only turning on only when it serves the interests of Wall street or globalism. As with Halberstam and Schuling Burger, the book betrays an unmistakable antipathy toward the establishment’s main enemy. Those people identified as a devoutly anti communist, a word Isaacson and Thomas seem to think comes with the suffix hysteria. McCloy, Acheson, Lovett, and the rest are portrayed as demigods steering America through the treacherous rapids of foreign policy, as they deathly humorous, egocentric generals and backwoods congressmen whose folly would land us on the shoals.
Why all of the CFR establishment image building? If we follow a human analogy, people give the most attention to their look, to their looks right before a date, a job interview, a speech, or a photographic session that is right before undergoing scrutiny. Some answers may lie. In the CFRS 1986 annual report, chairman Peter G. Peterson noted that an endowment drive called the campaign for the council had raised over $15 million, which he said greatly strengthens the base from which we may contemplate future steps. Peterson continued to prepare the way for the possibility of such steps. David Rockefeller, with the approval of the board of directors, last spring established a special committee on the council’s national role.
It seemed an opportune time to reassess how, if at all, our functions, programs, and policies might be altered to reflect the possibility of a new national role. What this new role might be, the report didn’t specify, but it did note, a major goal has been the development of a Washington program of activities similar to those that take place at the Harold Pratt House. In 1987, council president Peter Tarnoff stated, because of the importance of Washington at the center of American Foreign policy making and the presence there of 27% of our stated membership, we have decided to increase the size of our operations and the nation’s capital over the next three years.
We also intend to allow the stated membership in Washington to rise from the present level of 464 to 600. Will a switch of focus from New York to Washington be part of the council’s new national role? And if so, why now? I don’t know if they actually moved something down there then, but I do remember a video clip of Hillary Clinton saying something like, oh, well, yeah, now I want to say it was after 2008 when she was secretary of state, and before 2012, obviously, when she was out of the Obama administration. But she talked about how there was.
Now that there’s an outpost of the CFR here in Washington, I won’t have to go to New York to get my marching orders. So something along those lines. I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but if they had a place in DC between 1987 and like the mid two thousands, I’m not aware of it, but I don’t know. They could have. Aging CFR member George Keenan, the originator of containment, may have supplied a clue. In an interview with Walder Cronkite televised by CB’s on March 31, 1987, Cronkite introduced Keenan as one of our genuine wise Mendenna. These were their final, final remarks, perhaps intended to stick the most in, to stick the most in viewers consciousness.
Cronkite narrating to help the United States establish a sound foreign policy and stay within its principles, Kenan believes we should have a council of wise men drawn from all areas of national life. Kenan I think it ought to be a permanent body. It ought to be an advisory both to the president and to the Congress. And they should have, for the government, for the executive branch, and for the legislative branch, some of the prestige and authority of opinions of the Supreme Court. In our legal system, we deal on the basis of precedent. If a court has said something, we take it into account.
I would like to see that prestige given to such a body. Such ambitions are nothing new to the council. Back in 1924, Count Hugo Lurchenfeldev wrote in foreign affairs, could not a body of highly deserving and competent men, such as are found in every nation as representatives of its highest moral fences or forces, a kind of arrow arrow Pegasus, if I’m saying that right meet to give decisions on a highly important contested matters, could not a council be formed whose high judgment and impartiality would be taken for granted and which would guide public opinion all over the world? What Kenan is suggesting today is that foreign policy, like judicial matters, be settled by an unelected elite? But not.
But. But to found such a body would require a restructuring of our government so radical that it could probably not be achieved except by a constitutional convention. Lo and behold, a convention is now being called for. Hmm. Wow. See? Is that. Did I jump ahead too far? Looks like I did. Yep. I did. I jumped ahead too far. Okay, so that’s the end. That’s. That takes us to chapter 14, where I’m gonna. I’m gonna go ahead and kill it. That’s right. It takes us to right about the hour timeframe. And guys, I will be back here in about an hour.
I’ve got a ghost is going to be coming on, and we’re going to be talking about the hidden hand, which kind of ties into what I’m talking about here in this book. So that’ll be here at 05:00 p.m. pacific. 08:00 p.m. eastern. So I will be back for a live show at that time. So I’ll see you guys here in about an hour and we’ll finish this book up tomorrow. So look forward to seeing you guys here in a little bit. Until then.
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