'IHf ~IH)DDW~ Df 'IHE ~}H)DDW~Dr The Council on Foreign Relations And The American Decline by James Perloff WEITE~M ~!LAMDI ::"-7~:~~2',-" - /-- --, "--, --;~- L•••••~ .•••••_'- PUBLISHERS APPLETON, WISCONSIN First printing, October 1988 10,000 copies Second printing, March 1989 5,000 copies Third printing, June 1989 5,000 copies Fourth printing, November 1989 25,000 copies Fifth printing, June 1990 15,000 copies Copyright © 1988 by James Perl off All rights reserved Published by Western Islands Post Office Box 8040 Appleton, Wisconsin 54913 414-749-3783 Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 0-88279-134-6 Contents Foreword vii Chapter 1 A Primer On The CFR .3 Chapter 2 Background To The Beginning. 19 Chapter 3 The Council's Birth And Early Links To Totalitarianism 36 Chapter 4 The CFR And FDR . 53 Chapter 5 A Global War With Global Ends . 64 Chapter 6 The Truman Era . 81 Chapter 7 Between Limited Wars .101 Chapter 8 The Establishment's War In Vietnam .120 Chapter 9 The Unknown Nixon . 141 Chapter 10 Carter And Trilateralism .154 Chapter 11 A Second Look At Ronald Reagan .167 Chapter 12 The Media Blackout .178 Chapter 13 The CFR Today ... 191 Chapter 14 On The Threshold Of A New World Order? . 199 Chapter 15 Solutions And Hope. .210 Footnotes .223 Index .239 Acknowledgements . 253 Foreword There is good news and there is bad news. The good news is, this book has been written. The bad news is, it's true. Certain peo~le in high places are going to dispute the validity of this book, they will probably try to discredit it, because they have a vested interest in concealing their activities and agenda. But I encourage anyone who reads The Shadows of Power to note its painstaking documentation. This is no opinion piece; it is an assembly of hard facts that state their own conclusions. You can check information in this book against its sources, which are noted. One thing I find interesting is that its revelations are not new. They have always been available - but available like a news story that is tucked under a small headline on page 183 of a Sunday newspaper. Anyone who goes to a fair-sized library can probably find copies - however dusty - of Admiral Theobald's The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor, or Colin Simpson's The Lusitania, or From Major Jordan's Diaries. John Toland's epic Infamy is on bookstore shelves today. And though it may mean microfilm, you can obtain access to the old Congressional Record. Lots of powerful stories are buried there, and I mean buried, because the mass media ignored them. The book is especially unique because it not only describes scores of underreported events, but elucidates them by showing their com• mon thread: the influence of the internationalist Establishment of the United States. If the Establishment is elusive in its identity, it certainly has a perceptible face in the Council on Foreign Relations, and that is what the author has centered on. VII THE SHADOWS OF POWER This is not just a book about an organization. It is a book about history. You might call it "the other side of American history from Wilson on" because it tells the "other side" ofmany stories that even the self-proclaimed inside information specialists, such as Jack An• derson and Bob Woodward, didn't or wouldn't report. It has been said that those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it. But how can we truly understand an incident in our American past if we are confined to the headline version, designed for public consumption in the interest ofprotecting the powerful and the few? The Shadows of Power has resurrected eight decades of censored material. Don't let anyone censor it for you now. Read the book and decide for yourself its merit. Your outlook, and perhaps your future itself, will never be the same. James E. Jeffries United States Congressman (Ret.) Vlll THE SHADOWS OF POWER Chapter 1 A Primer On The CFR Speaking before Britain's House ofLords in 1770, Sir William Pitt declared: "There is something behind the throne greater than the king himself," thus giving birth to the phrase "power behind the throne." In 1844, Benjamin Disraeli, England's famed statesman, pub• lished a novel entitled Coningsby, or the New Generation. It was well known as a thinly disguised portrayal of his political contem-\ poraries. In it, he wrote: "[T]he world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." Felix Frankfurter, justice ofthe U.S. Supreme Court, restated this in an American context when he said: "The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."l Frankfurter was not alone in that assessment. During this cen• tury, the existence of a secret U.s. power clique has been acknowl• edged, however rarely, by prominent Americans. On March 26,1922, John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York City, said in a speech: The real menace of our republic is the invisible government which, like a giant octopus, sprawls its slimy length over our city, state and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses generally referred to as "international bankers." This little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run our government for their own selfish ends." 3 THE SHADOWS OF POWER In a letter to an associate dated November 21, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote: The real truth ofthe matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson ... 3 On February 23, 1954, Senator William Jenner warned III a speech: Today the path to total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people.... Outwardly we have a Constitutional gov• emment. We have operating within our govemment and political sys• tem, another body representing another form of govemment, a bu• reaucratic elite which believes our Constitution is outmoded and is sure that it is the winning side ... All the strange developments in foreign policy agreements may be traced to this group who are going to make us over to suit their pleasure .... This political action group has its own local political support organizations, its own pressure groups, its own vested interests, its foothold within our govemment, and its own propaganda apparatus.' The Establishment There is, of course, in America, what we have come to call "the Establishment." This expression was popularized by English writer Henry Fairlie in an article about Britain's ruling circle. It was used in the U.S. during the Vietnam War as a term of scorn. Today it is a legitimate word in its own right, defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "an exclusive group of powerful people who rule a government or society by means of private agreements and deci• sions." The idea of such an arrangement naturally rankles most Americans, who believe that government should be of the people at large, and not a private few. Who or what is the American Establishment? A few books have depicted it, but these have rarely attained much circulation or pub- 4 A PRIMER ON THE CFR licity - perhaps for no other reason than the Establishment prefers to remain "behind the scenes." Columnist Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, described it as follows: The word "Establishment" is a general term for the power elite in international finance, business, the professions· and government, largely from the northeast, who wield most of the power regardless of who is in the White House. Most people are unaware ofthe existence of this "legitimate Mafia." Yet the power ofthe Establishment makes itselffelt from the professor who seeks a foundation grant, to the candidate for a cabinet post or State Department job. It affects the nation's policies in almost every area." In the public mind, the American Establishment is probably most associated with big business and with wealthy, old-line families. The sons of these families have long followed a traditional career path that begins with private schools, the most famous being Groton. From these they have typically proceeded to Harvard, Yale, Prin• ceton, or Columbia, there entering exclusive fraternities, such as Yale's secretive Skull and Bones. Some ofthe brightest have traveled to Oxford for graduate work as Rhodes Scholars. From academia they have customarily progressed to Wall Street, perhaps joining an international investment bank, such as Chase Manhattan, or a prominent law firm or brokerage house. Some of the politically in• clined have signed on with Establishment think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Rand Corporation. As they have ma• tured, a few have found themselves on the boards of the vast foun• dations - Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie. And ultimately, some have advanced into "public service" - high positions in the federal government. For the latter, there has long been a requisite: membership in a New York-based group called the Council on Foreign Relations • CFR for short. Since its founding in 1921, the Council has been the Establishment's chief link to the U.S. government. It is the focus of this book. 5 THE SHADOWS OF POWER What is the CFR? Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has called the Council on For• eign Relations a "front organization" for "the heart of the Amer• ican Establishment."6 David Halberstam, in his acclaimed book The Best and the Brightest, dubbed it "the Establishment's un• official club."7 Newsweek has referred to theCFR's leaders as "the foreign-policy establishment ofthe U.S."8Richard Rovere, writing in Esquire mag• azine, saw them as "a sort of Presidium for that part of the Estab• lishment that guides our destiny as a nation."9 The Council describes itself as a "nonprofit and nonpartisan mem• bership organization dedicated to improved understanding ofAmer• ican foreign policy and international affairs." It is headquartered in the elegant Harold Pratt House at 58 East 68th Street in New York City.