The Invisible Government | Page 4

Among them were men still familiar to Americans in the 1960's: Walter
Lippmann (columnist); Norman Thomas (head of the American
socialist party); Allen Dulles (former head of C.I.A.); John Foster
Dulles (late Secretary of State); Christian A. Herter (former Secretary
of State).
These eager young intellectuals around Wilson, under the clear eyes of
crafty Colonel House, drew up their charter for world government
(League of Nations Covenant) and prepared for the brave new socialist
one-world to follow World War I. But things went sour at the Paris
Peace Conference. They soured even more when constitutionalists in
the United States Senate found out what was being planned and made it
quite plain that the Senate would not authorize United States
membership in such a world federation.
Bitter with disappointment but not willing to give up, Colonel House
called together in Paris, France, a group of his most dedicated young
intellectuals--among them, John Foster and Allen Dulles, Christian A.
Herter, and Tasker H. Bliss--and arranged a dinner meeting with a

group of like-minded Englishmen at the Majestic Hotel, Paris, on May
19, 1919. The group formally agreed to form an organization "for the
study of international affairs."
The American group came home from Paris and formed The Council
on Foreign Relations, which was incorporated in 1921.
The purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations was to create (and
condition the American people to accept) what House called a
"positive" foreign policy for America--to replace the traditional
"negative" foreign policy which had kept America out of the endless
turmoil of old-world politics and had permitted the American people to
develop their great nation in freedom and independence from the rest of
the world.
The Council did not amount to a great deal until 1927, when the
Rockefeller family (through the various Rockefeller Foundations and
Funds) began to pour money into it. Before long, the Carnegie
Foundations (and later the Ford Foundation) began to finance the
Council.
In 1929, the Council (largely with Rockefeller gifts) acquired its
present headquarters property: The Harold Pratt House, 58 East 68th
Street, New York City.
In 1939, the Council began taking over the U.S. State Department.
Shortly after the start of World War II, in September, 1939, Hamilton
Fish Armstrong and Walter H. Mallory, of the Council on Foreign
Relations, visited the State Department to offer the services of the
Council. It was agreed that the Council would do research and make
recommendations for the State Department, without formal assignment
or responsibility. The Council formed groups to work in four general
fields--Security and Armaments Problems, Economic and Financial
Problems, Political Problems, and Territorial Problems.
The Rockefeller Foundation agreed to finance, through grants, the
operation of this plan.

In February, 1941, the Council on Foreign Relations' relationship with
the State Department changed. The State Department created the
Division of Special Research, which was divided into Economic,
Security, Political, Territorial sections. Leo Pasvolsky, of the Council,
was appointed Director of this Division. Within a very short time,
members of the Council on Foreign Relations dominated this new
Division in the State Department.
During 1942, the State Department set up the Advisory Committee on
Postwar Foreign Policy. Secretary of State Cordell Hull was Chairman.
The following members of the Council on Foreign Relations were on
this Committee: Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles
(Vice-Chairman), Dr. Leo Pasvolsky (Executive Officer); Hamilton
Fish Armstrong, Isaiah Bowman, Benjamin V. Cohen, Norman H.
Davis, and James T. Shotwell.
Other members of the Council also found positions in the State
Department: Philip E. Mosely, Walter E. Sharp, and Grayson Kirk,
among others.
The crowning moment of achievement for the Council came at San
Francisco in 1945, when over 40 members of the United States
Delegation to the organizational meeting of the United Nations (where
the United Nations Charter was written) were members of the Council.
Among them: Alger Hiss, Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Leo
Pasvolsky, John Foster Dulles, John J. McCloy, Julius C. Holmes,
Nelson A. Rockefeller, Adlai Stevenson, Joseph E. Johnson, Ralph J.
Bunche, Clark M. Eichelberger, and Thomas K. Finletter.
By 1945, the Council on Foreign Relations, and various foundations
and other organizations interlocked with it, had virtually taken over the
U.S. State Department.
Some CFR members were later identified as Soviet espionage agents:
for example, Alger Hiss and Lauchlin Currie.
Other Council on Foreign Relations members--Owen Lattimore, for
example--with powerful influence in the Roosevelt and Truman

Administrations, were subsequently identified, not as actual
communists or Soviet espionage agents, but as "conscious, articulate
instruments of the Soviet international conspiracy."
I do not intend to imply by these citations that the Council on Foreign
Relations is, or ever was, a communist organization. Boasting among
its members Presidents of the United States (Hoover, Eisenhower, and
Kennedy), Secretaries of State, and many other high officials, both
civilian and