Rockefeller Brothers Fund

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) was established in 1940 by the five sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. as a vehicle for coordinating the brothers' charitable giving, and became in the 1950s the primary instrument through which Nelson Rockefeller channeled Cold War policy development. Its Special Studies Project (1956-1961), convened by Nelson and staffed by figures from the national security establishment, produced six classified panel reports shaping Eisenhower and Kennedy administration defense and foreign policy. Panel IV on national security, chaired by Henry Kissinger, launched Kissinger's career as a foreign policy adviser and cemented his relationship with Nelson Rockefeller.

Structure and Mission

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund was established in 1940 by the five sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr.: Nelson Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller III, Winthrop Rockefeller, and David Rockefeller. Unlike the older Rockefeller Foundation, which had its own professional staff and programs, the RBF initially served as a vehicle for coordinating the brothers' charitable giving.

In the 1950s, the RBF became a vehicle for policy development. A trustee of the fund, Detlev Bronk, was on the 1969 Rockefeller Mission to the Americas advisory staff. The fund's broader networks overlapped substantially with the Council on Foreign Relations and the think-tank infrastructure of the Cold War national security establishment.¹

Special Studies Project (1956-1961)

The RBF's most consequential initiative was the Special Studies Project, launched in 1956 under Nelson Rockefeller's direction. The project convened six separate panels of experts from government, business, academia, and the military to study major challenges facing the United States.

The panels produced a series of influential reports between 1958 and 1961, collectively known as the "Prospect for America" reports and published in a compiled volume as Prospect for America: The Rockefeller Panel Reports (Doubleday, 1961). Individual panel papers were circulated to government officials before the consolidated publication. Their recommendations on nuclear weapons, military strategy, economic growth, and foreign policy substantially shaped the policy frameworks of both the final Eisenhower years and the early Kennedy administration. Veterans of the Special Studies Project who moved into the Kennedy White House included McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, Roswell Gilpatric, and Edward Lansdale.²

Panel IV: National Security (Kissinger)

Panel IV on national security was chaired by Henry Kissinger, then a Harvard faculty member who had worked on earlier Rockefeller-sponsored studies. The panel's work on nuclear strategy and limited war doctrine reflected the Rockefeller family's long-standing interest in "flexible response" military capabilities as an alternative to massive nuclear retaliation.

Kissinger's panel work through the RBF gave him the intellectual platform and Rockefeller family connections that launched his career as a foreign policy adviser. After the Special Studies Project, Kissinger continued to serve as Nelson Rockefeller's foreign policy consultant through the 1960s.³

Other Notable Panelists

The Special Studies Project brought together a cross-section of the Cold War establishment. Dean Rusk, then president of the Rockefeller Foundation, chaired one panel before becoming Kennedy's secretary of state. William Kintner moved from Rockefeller's White House staff to the Joint Chiefs as chief of long-range planning and subsequently to a CIA-associated Philadelphia think tank. Other panelists included executives from Rockefeller-affiliated corporations and financial institutions across the defense and foreign policy establishment.

Bomb Shelters and Civil Defense

Nelson Rockefeller used the RBF's national security framework to promote bomb shelter programs aggressively in New York State. His commitment to civil defense infrastructure, which John F. Kennedy found politically inconvenient, was an expression of the RBF's panel work on the survivability of nuclear conflict. This policy position created a public profile that Kennedy's advisers viewed as a challenge to Kennedy's own national security credibility.⁴