Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations is a New York membership organization that publishes Foreign Affairs and runs study groups, a meetings program for members, affiliated Committees on Foreign Relations in other cities and a corporate subscription program.

Origins

The Institute of International Affairs was founded in Paris in 1919 by twenty-one Americans and their British counterparts, a group that included Edward M. House, Herbert Hoover, Tasker H. Bliss, Christian Herter, Charles Seymour, Archibald Cary Coolidge and James T. Shotwell. In 1921 its American branch merged with a larger existing group of New York business and professional men to form the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., under the honorary presidency of Elihu Root, as a privately funded, nonprofit and nonpartisan body.¹ The Internal Revenue Service records a ruling date of January 1927.² Hamilton Fish Armstrong edited volumes 1 through 50 of Foreign Affairs (1922 to 1972), William P. Bundy volumes 51 through 62 (1973 to 1984) and William G. Hyland the volumes from 1984.¹

The charter limited membership in 1939 to 400 resident and 250 nonresident members.³ The first Committees on Foreign Relations, the affiliated groups in other cities, were established in 1938, and 25 cities had them by 1952.⁴

War and Peace Studies

The Rockefeller Foundation granted 44,500 dollars in 1939 toward the support of Council groups studying the problems of the war and the peace settlement to follow.³ The War and Peace Studies Project was organized shortly after the outbreak of hostilities to furnish scholarly contributions to the work of the government; by 1943 it had sent 541 memoranda to Washington on subjects selected by both the Council and the government, and the foundation appropriated 60,860 dollars for 1944.⁵ Three groups (economic, political and security) were functioning in 1945, and the foundation appropriated 60,000 dollars for that year.⁶

The foundation's report for 1946 describes the program as a confidential one that the Council undertook from 1939 to 1945 "with the approval and participation of the State, War and Navy Departments," carried out "without formal assignment of responsibility and without restriction of independent action." The same report records a 1946 appropriation of 60,000 dollars for the general research program and 139,000 dollars over four years for a history of the Second World War, to be written by William L. Langer of Harvard University, who had directed the Research and Analysis Section of the Office of Strategic Services "where he had exceptional access to materials bearing on foreign relations." The Council's Committee on Studies gave as its reason a concern that "the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I should not be repeated."⁷

Philip E. Mosely, who had served during the war as research secretary of one of the Council's war and peace studies groups "organized to assist the Department of State," joined the Department of State as chief of its Division of Territorial Studies, then served as alternate to John Gilbert Winant on the European Advisory Commission and as adviser to the American delegations at Moscow, Potsdam and the Council of Foreign Ministers. In December 1954 the Council informed Allen Dulles that Mosely had agreed to accept the post of Director of Studies from July 1, 1955, subject to ratification by the Board.⁸

Funding, 1946 to 1955

A Council table of November 1951, held in the files of the Central Intelligence Agency and released in 2003, sets out the research budget receipts for 1946 to 1951. The regular budget totals were 93,336 dollars (1946 to 1947), 97,197 (1947 to 1948), 87,410 (1948 to 1949), 87,390 (1949 to 1950) and 117,005 (1950 to 1951), with 117,100 projected for 1951 to 1952, 110,000 of it marked "to be secured." The Carnegie Corporation of New York contributed 25,000 dollars a year to the regular budget from 1946 to 1950 and 35,000 in 1950 to 1951; the Rockefeller Foundation contributed 30,000, 30,000, 20,000, 10,000 and 45,000 (the last a "special terminal grant") over the same years. A 25th Anniversary Fund supplied 30,000 dollars a year for the first three years, 40,000 in 1949 to 1950 and 23,698 in 1950 to 1951.⁹

The special-studies grants in the same table include 25,000 to 30,000 dollars a year from Carnegie for the Committees on Foreign Relations, newspaper fellowships of 20,000 (1948 to 1950) and 15,000 (1950 to 1951) and 22,500 a year for democracy studies from 1950. The Rockefeller Foundation paid 34,750 dollars a year from 1946 to 1950 for the Langer History Project, 25,000 and 30,000 dollars for studies of aid to Europe in 1948 to 1950, and 16,000 for British-American studies in 1950 to 1951; the Ford Foundation gave 30,000 dollars for aid to Europe in 1949 to 1950, the Sloan Foundation 10,000 for the Langer history and the Viking Fund 1,500 for a fellowship. Total research receipts were 159,086 dollars (1946 to 1947), 167,941, 207,160, 244,640 and 200,505, with 194,600 projected for 1951 to 1952.⁹

Corporate contributions to the House Fund of 1945 totaled 34,000 dollars and to the 25th Anniversary Fund for 1946 to 1951 totaled 24,100, for 58,100 in all. The contributors were Chase National Bank (10,000), IBM (12,500), National City Bank (10,000), Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) (7,500), Westinghouse Electric (7,500), General Electric (2,500), Socony Vacuum Oil Company (2,000), General Motors Overseas Operations (1,500), the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (1,000), the National Cash Register Company (1,000), the Underwood Corporation (900), the Macmillan Company (500), National Dairy Products (500), the Texas Company (500), the International Nickel Company (400) and the American Hawaiian Steamship Company (100). A separate page lists forty-five individual contributions to the 25th Anniversary Fund for 1946 to 1950 totaling 95,479 dollars, among them Frank Altschul (5,000), E. Roland Harriman (4,500), Allen W. Dulles (3,500, "over 5 years"), John Foster Dulles (1,250, "over 5 years"), W. Averell Harriman (1,100), Henry R. Luce (1,000), Herbert H. Lehman (5,000), Caryl P. Haskins (8,500), Arthur H. Dean (10,000) and Stephen Clark (10,000); a continuation page lists further names including Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Myron C. Taylor and Alfred P. Sloan. The totals on the continuation page are 114,175 dollars from individuals, 24,100 from corporations and 7,960 in contributions under 500, or 146,235 in all.⁹

The annual report of the executive director for 1951 to 1952 records that the Rockefeller Foundation, "in line with its policy of discontinuing support for the general budgets of organizations which it has helped for some years," did not renew a 45,000-dollar grant to the general research program, while continuing 18,500 dollars for a study of the Political Implications of Economic Development (directed by Eugene Staley of the Stanford Research Institute), 3,500 for a study of German unity and 4,000 for a bibliography. Carnegie gave 35,000 dollars to the general research program, 3,000 to the Committee on Policy and 30,000 to the Committees on Foreign Relations, and had granted 23,000 for three research fellowships in 1952 to 1953. Members and corporations gave 32,787 dollars to the general research program, and a gift of 17,030.86 dollars in memory of Edwin F. Gay, a director from 1921 to 1945, was added. The Board had voted a 10 percent cost-of-living salary increase on December 17, 1951. The combined deficit in the general and research accounts was "the only substantial deficit the Council has ever had."⁴

On November 16, 1954 the Carnegie Corporation granted 500,000 dollars to be spent over five years from the following August; a Ford Foundation grant had been reported earlier, and Frank Altschul had offered to pay for a new annex, estimated at about 200,000 dollars.⁸ George S. Franklin, who served as acting executive director in 1952 and 1953, is described in the finding aid of the records of the Trilateral Commission as executive director of the Council from 1953 to 1971.¹⁰

Corporations with officers who are members, 1951

The fourth page of the November 1951 table lists corporations with officers who are members of the Council, with an asterisk for those that had contributed in the past. The list includes the Chase National Bank (Winthrop Aldrich as chairman and David Rockefeller), Dillon, Read and Company (Clarence Dillon), Brown Brothers Harriman (E. Roland Harriman, Ray Morris, Knight Woolley and Thomas McCance), Kuhn Loeb and Company (Frederick M. Warburg and John M. Schiff), Lehman Brothers (Robert Lehman), the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation (Gerald F. Beal), Schroder Rockefeller and Company (Mord M. Bogie), J. P. Morgan and Company (Arthur M. Anderson), the Arabian American Oil Company (James Terry Duce), Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, the United Fruit Company (T. Jefferson Coolidge), Pan American Airways (Juan Trippe), Time Inc. (Henry R. Luce), the Columbia Broadcasting System (William S. Paley), Newsweek (Malcolm Muir), Reader's Digest (Harry H. Harper), Look (Gardner Cowles), the RAND Corporation (W. Phillips Davison), Avco (Albert C. Wedemeyer), the Continental Can Company (Lucius D. Clay as chairman) and American International Underwriters (C. V. Starr).⁹

Officers and committees in 1952

For 1952 to 1953 the Council's officers were R. C. Leffingwell as chairman of the board, Allen W. Dulles as vice-chairman (on leave), Henry M. Wriston as president, David Rockefeller as vice-president, Frank Altschul as vice-president and secretary, Devereux C. Josephs as vice-president and treasurer, Walter H. Mallory as executive director (on leave) and George S. Franklin Jr. as acting executive director. The directors included W. Averell Harriman, William A. M. Burden, John W. Davis, Grayson Kirk, Lewis W. Douglas, Thomas K. Finletter, Whitney H. Shepardson and Taylor. Rockefeller chaired the Membership Committee; Dulles sat on the Committee on Studies with Wriston, Armstrong, Dean, Mosely and others; Armstrong edited Foreign Affairs, whose Editorial Advisory Board comprised George H. Blakeslee, Davis, Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Kennan, Langer, Charles H. McIlwain, Seymour and Wriston.⁴

Membership stood at 927 on August 1, 1951 and 933 on August 1, 1952, in the classes resident (420 and 420), resident academic (164 and 167), junior (13 and 9), nonresident (160 and 160) and nonresident academic (170 and 177). The Committees on Foreign Relations held 191 meetings that year, and a grant from the Fund for Adult Education financed the reprinting of an article from Foreign Affairs nine times a year, with a discussion guide, for about 1,000 adult discussion groups.⁴

Correspondence with Allen Dulles, 1950 to 1960

Several letters between the Council and Dulles are in Central Intelligence Agency files released between 2002 and 2012. On December 12, 1950, Armstrong sent Harriman, then at the White House, a statement signed by members of a Council group that had studied military, economic and political problems of aid to Europe for about two years. His covering letter says the statement does not represent the views of the Council, which is precluded from taking a position on public matters, and is not for publication, and that Dulles had spoken to Harriman about it that morning.¹¹ On January 2, 1951, Alan G. Kirk, writing on Department of State letterhead to "Mr. Allen W. Dulles, President, Council on Foreign Relations," declined an invitation to address the Council on January 15 and proposed instead an hour with "four or five besides myself" at the Council's house on January 17 or 18, in a group whose conversations would be "kept within strictly classified lines." A note on the letter records that Dulles told Kirk's wife on January 11 that he would be away for a week.¹²

On February 13, 1952 Dulles wrote to Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission: "the Council is one of my closest interests and I was President of it until I came down here, but as Director and Vice-Chairman of the Board, on leave, I still spend a good deal of time on its work." The letter also refers to "the matter we discussed when you and Gordon Gray and I were together." The distribution line shows the letter was filed with the papers of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.¹³ Letters from Franklin of November 24, 1952, January 27, 1953 and June 19, 1953 sent Dulles Council memoranda, a report on Council activities and the agenda for a Committee on Studies luncheon on February 16, 1953, and the Finance Committee's budget and pension plan, with an announcement that a balanced budget for 1952 to 1953 was assured.¹⁴

On a letter to the Council's Membership Committee carrying a distribution notation of April 20, 1955, Dulles, as Director of Central Intelligence, endorsed a proposal by William H. Jackson to admit a person whose name is redacted in the release, writing that he had known the candidate "for a number of years, particularly during his tenure in this Agency."¹⁵ On February 16, 1956 Armstrong thanked Dulles for attending the Editorial Advisory Board meeting of the previous night and asked about his expenses so that Foreign Affairs could reimburse him. Dulles replied on March 4 to Mallory: "Don't worry about the expenses of my trip as I was able to combine this visit to New York with plenty of official business, so that it is a proper charge against my own official travel account," and added that he was suggesting the Agency "buy several copies" of the Council's ten-year Foreign Affairs Bibliography "for use here in the Agency."¹⁶

On April 25, 1958 Armstrong asked Dulles to second a candidate (name redacted) for membership, "particularly" for the study groups on Far Eastern problems.¹⁷ On May 2, 1958 Franklin, by then executive director, wrote that Secretary Neil McElroy had accepted an invitation to the June 6 dinner of the Committees on Foreign Relations: "Thank you a great deal for all you did. You obviously produced the bacon."¹⁸ On August 20, 1959 Dulles told a correspondent that "Foster consulted me at the time he delivered his original speech on this subject before the Council on Foreign Relations," a reference to the speech on massive retaliation by John Foster Dulles.¹⁹

On May 6, 1960 Franklin invited Dulles to a Council dinner for Adlai Stevenson on Friday, June 3 at 7:30, at which Stevenson would describe his recent trip through Latin America, with John J. McCloy presiding and representatives of the affiliated Committees on Foreign Relations in twenty-nine cities present. Dulles declined, writing that he could not reach New York on "2 June." A memorandum to Dulles of May 16, 1960, filed with the reply (author redacted), states that the Agency had been in touch with William Benton, who accompanied Stevenson on the trip, that Benton "promised to furnish us with a complete set of the notes maintained during their trip," and that in view of this "no attempt was made to get in touch with Governor Stevenson."²⁰

Discussion group on intelligence, 1968

The third meeting of the Council's Discussion Group on Intelligence and Foreign Policy was held at the Harold Pratt House at 5:00 p.m. on January 8, 1968. The minutes list Richard Bissell as discussion leader, C. Douglas Dillon as chairman, William J. Barnds as secretary and William R. Harris as rapporteur, with these others present: George Agree, Frank Altschul, Robert Amory Jr., Meyer Bernstein, Col. Sidney B. Berry Jr., Allen W. Dulles, George S. Franklin Jr., Eugene Fubini, Julius C. Holmes, Thomas L. Hughes, Joseph Kraft, David W. MacEachron, Philip W. Quigg, Harry Howe Ransom, Theodore C. Sorensen and David B. Truman. Dillon stated that the series was off the record, that the subject of the evening was "especially sensitive," and that problems involving the Agency's relationships with private institutions would be examined at a later meeting.²¹

Bissell listed eight forms of covert action (political advice and counsel; subsidies to an individual; support of political parties; support of private organizations "including labor unions, business firms, cooperatives, etc."; covert propaganda; private training and exchange of persons; economic operations; and paramilitary or political action to overthrow or support a regime). On disclosures of private-institution support he said, "it is very clear that we should have had greater compartmenting of operations," that "if the Agency is to be effective, it will have to make use of private institutions on an expanding scale, though those relations which have 'blown' cannot be resurrected," and that "we need to operate under deeper cover, with increased attention to the use of 'cut-outs.'"²¹

Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks wrote that the minutes became public in 1971 when students occupying the Harvard Center for International Affairs found them in faculty files, that Harris later admitted privately that the text had been partially edited to remove particularly sensitive material, and that the African Research Group reprinted it. They wrote that Barnds had been with the Agency's Office of National Estimates until he joined the Council's staff in the mid-1960s, and quoted a January 1969 article by Barnds in Foreign Affairs: "The disclosure of intelligence activities in the press in recent years is a clear national liability." They also quoted Amory, in a television interview of February 26, 1967, calling press disclosures of Agency funding of the National Student Association and other private groups "a commentary on the immaturity of our society."²²

Of the participants named in the minutes, Altschul, Dulles and Franklin appear in the 1952 officer and committee lists above, and Hughes and Kraft appear in the 1981 membership list of the Trilateral Commission.⁴²³

Central Intelligence Agency contacts, 1976 to 1979

A memorandum of July 26, 1976 from the National Intelligence Officer for China, routed via the Assistant to the Director, the Director of Security and the Chief of the Central Cover Staff, reported an invitation from the Council's program director, Rolland Bushner, to speak to the Nashville Committee on Foreign Relations and possibly to committees in Louisville, Indianapolis and St. Louis. It stated that "as is the custom with the Council my remarks will be on a not-for-attribution basis and there will not be publicity," and that the officer would "use some classified data through Confidential but will blend it in to my talk." A note on the memorandum states that the Director of Security "does not concur in the use of classified material." A memorandum of September 7, 1976 moved the second talk from Louisville to Tampa Bay on September 28.²⁴ On September 12, 1979, Stansfield Turner, as Director of Central Intelligence, nominated three associates of the National Foreign Assessment Center for the Council's International Affairs Fellowship for 1980 to 1981.²⁵

The Corporate Program, the Campaign and the membership roster, 1984 to 1985

The annual report for July 1, 1984 to June 30, 1985 records 2,376 members, of whom 38 percent lived in the New York area, 24 percent in the Washington area and 6 percent in the Boston area. By profession 27 percent were business executives, 21 percent scholars or academic administrators, 15 percent administrators of nonprofit institutions, 11 percent government officials, 11 percent journalists and communications executives and 10 percent lawyers; women, admitted from 1970, numbered 250. Members are elected by the Board of Directors on nomination of the Membership Committee, and by tradition participants do not attribute statements made at meetings to speakers in public media.¹

The report's membership roster, which includes people invited at the Board's June 1985 meeting who had accepted by press time, lists among the names Richard M. Bissell Jr., William J. Casey, William Colby, Richard Helms, Stansfield Turner, Robert M. Gates, R. James Woolsey, John Deutch, Ray S. Cline, Cord Meyer, Frank G. Wisner II, William J. Barnds and Rolland Bushner, together with Katharine Graham, Hedley Donovan, Dan Rather, Jim Lehrer, Flora Lewis, James Reston, William S. Paley and Roone Arledge.¹

Corporate Program subscriptions exceeded one million dollars for the fourth consecutive year, at 1,060,800 dollars net, and Foreign Affairs income was 2,095,300. Subscribers were offered a black-tie dinner for chairmen and presidents with an address by a prominent statesman, seminars, executive luncheons, a library of about 40,000 volumes with a clipping service, and the chance to nominate young executives for the International Affairs Fellowship.¹ The Board approved a 14.5 million dollar Campaign for the Council in February 1983, with David Rockefeller and C. Douglas Dillon as co-chairmen and C. Peter McColough of Xerox as campaign chairman; in early August 1985, 14.1 million dollars in gifts and pledges had been received. The report's partial list of donors of 10,000 dollars or more to the Campaign names these corporations: Agip Petroleum, American Can, American Express, the Arabian American Oil Company, AT&T, Atlantic Richfield, Bankers Trust, Barclays Bank, the Bechtel Group, Bristol-Myers, CBS, Chase Manhattan Bank, Chemical Bank, Citibank, Dillon Read, Dow Chemical, Dow Jones, Du Pont, Exxon, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Lazard Freres, Manufacturers Hanover, Mobil, Morgan Guaranty Trust, Morgan Stanley, Northrop, PaineWebber, Peat Marwick Mitchell, PepsiCo, Price Waterhouse, Procter and Gamble, RCA, the Rockefeller Group, Salomon Brothers, United Technologies and Xerox, among others. Foundation donors included the Ford Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Starr Foundation and the Schlumberger Foundation.¹

The individual donors of 10,000 dollars or more included Giovanni Agnelli, George W. Ball, Michel David-Weill, Katharine Graham, John Gutfreund, Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, Averell Harriman, Suliman S. Olayan, Harry Oppenheimer, Peter G. Peterson, David Rockefeller, David Rockefeller Jr., Laurance Rockefeller, Anton Rupert, Maurice Tempelsman, Cyrus Vance, James D. Wolfensohn and Ezra K. Zilkha. Annual Giving patrons of 5,000 dollars or more were Arthur G. Altschul, Dillon, Franklin, H. J. Heinz II, McColough, the estate of Leo Model, Peterson and David Rockefeller.¹

General fund expenditures were 6,778,300 dollars against total funding of 6,718,900. Nonrecurring grants made up 49.8 percent of funding in the fiscal year to June 1972 and 13.8 percent in 1984 to 1985; the International Affairs Fellowship Program, at 346,200 dollars, was paid for by the Ford, MacArthur and Mellon foundations and the National Endowment for the Humanities.¹

The report lists as directors, at press time, Harold Brown, Stanley Hoffmann, Nicholas Katzenbach, Lane Kirkland, Juanita Kreps, Robert Scalapino, Brent Scowcroft, Stephen Stamas, Philip Geyelin, McColough, Donald McHenry, Peterson, William D. Rogers, Vance, Marina Whitman, Walter Wriston, Graham Allison, Warren Christopher, Richard Gelb, Alan Greenspan, Bobby Ray Inman, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Lewis Preston and Clifton Wharton. Of these twenty-four, Brown, Allison, Christopher, Kirkland, Greenspan, Kreps and Whitman appear in the Trilateral Commission's North American roster of July 1981.¹²³ A letter from McCloy dated June 27, 1985, printed in the report, refers to David Rockefeller's "44 years of close and active association with the Council" and to his "relinquishment of his leadership on the Board."¹

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs published "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" in July 1947 over the signature "X," credited by the journal to George F. Kennan; the article called for "a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies."²⁶

Recent filings

The Council's Form 990 for the year ended June 30, 2023 reports revenue of 106,930,600 dollars, expenses of 83,166,400 dollars and year-end assets of 719,707,600 dollars; the same series of returns on the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer shows revenue of 59,633,100 dollars and assets of 438,237,900 dollars for the year to June 2011.² The 2023 return lists contributions of 63,113,857 dollars, Foreign Affairs revenue of 11,709,500, individual membership revenue of 9,036,200 and corporate membership revenue of 1,103,843, with 711 employees and 34 voting members of the governing body. It describes the membership as "over 5,000," states that the members elect all voting directors, and gives the year of founding as 1921.²⁷

Richard Haass is shown as president through June 30, 2023 with reportable compensation of 1,868,393 dollars and 59,851 dollars of other compensation; Michael Froman is named as principal officer. Other reported compensation includes 524,534 dollars to the chief investment officer, Giovanna Ban, 519,740 to the executive vice president and chief financial officer, Keith Olson, 459,793 to the director of studies, James M. Lindsay, 330,419 to the editor of Foreign Affairs, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, and 280,205 to the distinguished fellow Martin Indyk. David Rubenstein is chairman, Blair Effron and Jami Miscik vice-chairmen, and the directors include Thad Allen, Ashton B. Carter (through October 2022), Kenneth I. Chenault, Laurence D. Fink (through June 30, 2023), Timothy F. Geithner (through June 30, 2023), James P. Gorman, Stephen J. Hadley, Jeh Johnson, William H. McRaven, Janet Napolitano, Meghan O'Sullivan, Ruth Porat, Laurene Powell Jobs, Frances F. Townsend, Daniel H. Yergin and Fareed Zakaria. Schedule O reports business relationships between Haass and directors Effron, Stephen C. Freidheim and Nicholas Beim; between Rubenstein and Carter and Yergin; between Miscik and Gorman; and between directors James Manyika and Porat. Schedule I lists fellowship payments including 596,458 dollars for nine International Affairs Fellows, 288,750 dollars for four fellows in national security, 119,350 dollars for six in Japan, 100,000 dollars for one Edward R. Murrow press fellow and 80,000 dollars for one Stanton nuclear security fellow. The donor schedule is redacted in the public copy.²⁷

Five of the directors named in the 2023 return (Rubenstein, Manyika, O'Sullivan, Townsend and Yergin) are members of the North American group in the Trilateral Commission's list of September 6, 2024, on which five Council fellows also appear.²⁸

Jeffrey Epstein

Two biographical statements in the Department of Justice's Epstein Library, one headed "Biographical Information of Jeffrey E. Epstein" and one "About Jeffrey E. Epstein," neither dated on its face, describe Jeffrey Epstein as "a former member of the Trilateral Commission and a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations." No Council membership roll appears in the documents examined.²⁹ An exchange of November 8 and 15, 2010 between Epstein and the Council's director of events concerns travel and a weekend event.³⁰