Part 1

excerpted from the book

The Shadows of Power

The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline

by James Perloff

Western Islands Publishers, 1988, paperback

p3
Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.

p3
John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York City, in a speech, March 26, 1922

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.

p4
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a letter to an associate dated November 21, 1933

The real truth of the 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.

p4
Senator William Jenner in a speech, February 23, 1954

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 government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government, a bureaucratic 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 government, and its own propaganda apparatus.

p4
the Establishment

American Heritage Dictionary

An exclusive group of powerful people who rule a government or society by means of private agreements and decisions.

p5
Columnist Edith Kermit Roosevelt, granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, described the Establishment

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 of the existence of this "legitimate Mafia." Yet the power of the Establishment makes itself felt 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.

p5
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, Princeton, or Columbia, there entering exclusive fraternities, such as Yale's secretive Skull and Bones. Some of the 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 inclined have signed on with Establishment think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Rand Corporation. As they have matured, a few have found themselves on the boards of the vast foundations - 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.

p7
The Council [on Foreign Relations]. while remaining largely unknown to the public, has exercised decisive impact on U.S. policy, especially foreign policy, for several decades. It has achieved this primarily in two ways. The first is by directly supplying personnel for upper echelon government jobs.

Few Americans know how a President chooses his administrators. The majority probably trust that, aside from an occasional political payoff, the most qualified people are sought and found. But the CFR's contribution cannot be overlooked. Pulitzer Prize winner Theodore White said that the Councils "roster of members has for a generation, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, been the chief recruiting ground for cabinet-level officials in Washington." The Christian Science Monitor once observed that "there is a constant flow of its members from private life to public service. Almost half of the council's members have been invited to assume official government positions or to act as consultants at one time or another. "

Indeed, Joseph Kraft, writing in Harper's, called the Council a "school for statesmen." David Halberstam puts it more wryly: "They walk in one door as acquisitive businessmen and come out the other door as statesmen-figures."

The historical record speaks even more loudly than these quotes. Through early 1988, fourteen secretaries of state, fourteen treasury secretaries, eleven defense secretaries, and scores of other federal department heads have been CFR members.

p8
Anthony Lukas, New York Times, 1971

Everyone knows how fraternity brothers can help other brothers climb the ladder of life. If you want to make foreign policy, there's no better fraternity to belong to than the Council [on Foreign Relations].

p9
Richard Barnet, a CFR member, wrote in 1972

Failure to be asked to be a member of the Council [on Foreign Relations] has been regarded for a generation as a presumption of unsuitability for high office in the national security bureaucracy.

p10
The CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] advocates the creation of a world 'government. The ultimate implication of this is that all power would be centralized in a single global authority; national identities and boundaries (including our own) would be eliminated.

p10
Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy

[The CFR has as a goal] submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government... this lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of the membership... In the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as 'America First.

p11
Foreign Affairs, the journal of the CFR, December 1922

Obviously there is going to be no peace or prosperity for mankind so long as it remains divided into fifty or sixty independent states... Equally obviously there is going to be no steady progress in civilization or self-government among the more backward peoples until some kind of international system is created which will put an end to the diplomatic struggles incident to the attempt of every nation to make itself secure. The real problem today is that of world government.

p11
In 1959, the Council [CFR] issued a position paper entitled Study No. 7, Basic Aims of U.S. Foreign Policy. This document proposed that the U.S. seek to "build a new international order."

1. Search for an international order in which the freedom of nations is recognized as interdependent and in which many policies are jointly undertaken by free world states with differing political, economic and social systems, and including states labeling themselves as "socialist."

2. Safeguard U.S. security through preserving a system of bilateral agreements and regional arrangements.

3. Maintain and gradually increase the authority of the U.N.

4. Make more effective use of the International Court of Justice, jurisdiction of which should be increased by withdrawal of reservations by member nations on matters judged to be domestic.

p12
Foreign Affairs article, Fall 1984, by Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General of the UN, and former Nazi

As long as states insist that they are the supreme arbiters of their destinies - that as sovereign entities their decisions are subject to no higher authority - international organizations will never be able to guarantee the maintenance of peace.

p12
Naturally, everyone would like to see world harmony and peace. But if the United States traded its sovereignty for membership in a world government, what would become of our freedoms, as expressed in the Bill of Rights? How would the rulers of this world government be selected? And how could a single, central authority equitably govern a planet that is so diversified?

p14
Kermit Roosevelt, 1961

What is the Establishment's view-point? Through the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations its ideology is constant: That the best way to fight Communism is by a One World Socialist state governed by "experts" like themselves. The result has been policies which favor the growth of the superstate, gradual surrender of United States sovereignty to the United Nations and a steady retreat in the face of Communist aggression.

p14
Senator Jesse Helms, before the Senate in December 1987, after noting the Council on Foreign Relation's (CFR's) place within the Establishment

The viewpoint of the Establishment today is called globalism. Not so long ago, this viewpoint was called the "one-world" view by its critics. The phrase is no longer fashionable among sophisticates; yet, the phrase "one-world" is still apt because nothing has changed in the minds and actions of those promoting policies consistent with its fundamental tenets.

... In the globalist point of view, nation-states and national boundaries do not count for anything. Political philosophies and political principles seem to become simply relative. Indeed, even constitutions are irrelevant to the exercise of power ...

In this point of view, the activities of international financial and industrial forces should be oriented to bringing this one-world design - with a convergence of the Soviet and American systems as its centerpiece - into being.

p19
An "international" banker is one who, among other things, loans money to the governments of nations.

p19
Essential to controlling a government is the establishment of a central bank with a monopoly on the country's supply of money and credit.

p19
Meyer Rothschild is said to have remarked

Let me issue and control a nation's money, and I care not who writes its laws.

p20
Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966

The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.

p23
The Federal Reserve became law in December 1913. Ostensibly, the system was to act as guardian of reserves for banks; it was granted control over interest rates and the size of the national money supply. The public was induced to accept the Fed by claims that, given these powers, it would stabilize the economy, preventing further panics and bank runs. It did nothing of the kind. Not only has our nation suffered through the Great Depression and numerous recessions, but inflation and federal debt - negligible problems before the Fed came into existence - have plagued America ever since.

p23
Congressman Louis McFadden, who chaired the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920 to 1931

When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here.

A super-state controlled by international bankers and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure.

Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is - the Fed has usurped the government.

p24
The average American probably does not know - or even think - very much about our Federal Reserve System, but a few things should be noted about it.

* Although it is called "Federal," it is privately owned.

* It has never received a meaningful audit from an independent source.

* It makes its own policies and is not subject to the President or the Congress. Private banks within the system select two-thirds of the directors of the twelve Federal Reserve banks; the Federal Reserve Board chooses the rest.

* As to the Federal Reserve Board itself, its members are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate, but, once in office, they serve fourteen-year terms. Fed Chairmen have routinely come from the New York banking community, on its recommendations, and the great majority have been members of the CFR.

p24
[By] staffing the Federal Reserve's management with themselves or their associates, the international bankers gained effective control over the nation's money supply and interest rates - and thus over its economic life. Indeed, the Fed is authorized to create money - and thus inflate - at will. According to the Constitution, only Congress may issue money or regulate its value. The Federal Reserve Act, however, placed these functions in the hands private bankers - to their perpetual profit.

p25
The Fed-was empowered to buy and sell government Securities, and to loan to member banks so that they might themselves purchase such securities, thus greatly multiplying the potential for government indebtedness to the banking community.

However, if Washington was to incur debts, it had to have some means of paying them off. The solution was income tax. Prior to 1913, there was no income tax in America (except during the War Between the States and early Reconstruction period). The U.S. government survived on other revenue sources, such as tariffs and excise taxes. As a result, it could neither spend nor borrow heavily.

Because income tax had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1895, it had to be instituted by constitutional amendment. The man who brought forward the amendment in Congress was the same senator who proposed the plan for the Federal Reserve - Nelson Aldrich.

Why did the American people consent to income tax? Initially, it was nominal: a mere one percent of income under $20,000 - a figure few made in those days. Naturally, there were assurances that it would never increase!

Another pitch used to sell the tax was that, being graduated, it would "soak the rich." But Senator Aldrich's backing of the amendment implied that "the rich" desired it. America's billionaire elite, of course, are notorious for sidestepping the IRS. The Pecora hearings of 1933, for example, revealed that J. P. Morgan had not paid any income tax in 1931-32. When Nelson Rockefeller was being confirmed as Vice President under Gerald Ford, the fact arose that he had not paid any income tax in 1970.

One of the leading devices by which the wealthy dodge taxes is the channeling of their fortunes into tax-free foundations. The major foundations, though commonly regarded as charitable institutions, often use their grant-making powers to advance the interests of their founders. The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, has poured millions into the Council on Foreign Relations, which in turn serves as the Establishment's main bridge of influence to the U.S. government. By the time the income tax became law in 1913, the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations were already operating.

Income tax didn't soak the rich, it soaked the middle class. Because it was a graduated tax, it tended to prevent anyone from rising into affluence. Thus it acted to consolidate the wealth of the entrenched interests, and protect them from new competition.

The year 1913 was an ominous one - there now existed the means to loan the government colossal sums (the Federal Reserve), and the means to exact repayment (income tax). All that was needed now was a good reason for Washington to borrow.

In 1914, World War I erupted on the European continent. America eventually participated, and as a result her national debt soared from $1 billion to $25 billion.

p38
A dominator common to many of the early CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] members was support - material or moral - for the Bolsheviks in Russia.

A revolution, like any other substantive undertaking, cannot succeed without financing. The 1917 Russian Revolution was no exception. It is now well known that the Germans helped Lenin - who had been exiled by the Czar - into Russia in a sealed train, carrying some $5 million in gold. The Germans, of course, had an ulterior motive: Czarist Russia was fighting them on the side of the Allies, and a successful revolution would mean one less adversary for Germany to contend with.

p43
Probably no name symbolizes capitalism more than Rockefeller. Yet that family has for decades supplied trade and credit to Communist nations. After the Bolsheviks took power, the Rockefellers' Standard Oil of New Jersey bought up Russian oil fields, while Standard Oil of New York built the Soviets a refinery and made an arrangement to market their oil in Europe. During the 1920's the Rockefeller's Chase Bank helped found the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, and was involved in financing Soviet raw material exports and selling Soviet bonds in the U.S..

... while the J. P. Morgan interests dominated the CFR in its early days, the center of influence gradually shifted to the Rockefellers. Indeed, David Rockefeller was chairman of the CFR from 1970 to 1985.

p43
Communism, in practice, is a system where government has total power - not only political power, but power over the economy, education, communications, etc. Socialism is essentially a lesser form - a little brother - of Communism: the government controls the means of production and distribution, but is not as pervasive in its authority.

The American free enterprise system, as originally set up, was much the opposite of Communism. The Constitution forced the government to remain "laissez faire"; it could exert virtually no influence on business, education, religion, and most other features of national life. These were left in the private hands of the people.

It is natural enough to suppose that rich capitalists, who made their fortunes through the free market, would be proponents of that system. This, however, has not been the case historically. Free enterprise means competition: it means, in its purest form, that everyone has an equal opportunity to make it in the marketplace. But John D. Rockefeller J. P. Morgan, and other kingpins of the Money Trust were powerful monopolists. A monopolist seeks to eliminate competition. In fact, Rockefeller once said: "Competition is a sin." These men were not free enterprise advocates.

Their coziness with Marxism ... becomes more comprehensible when we realize that Communism and socialism are themselves forms of monopoly. The only difference is that in this case, the monopoly is operated by the government. But hat if an international banker, through loans to the state, manipulation of a central bank, campaign contributions, or bribes, is able to achieve dominion over a government? In that case, he would find socialism welcome, for it would serve him as an instrument to control society.

p44
Frederick C Howe, in his book Confessions of a Monopolist (1906)

... all monopoly is bottomed on legislation.

... These are the rules of big business. They have superseded the teachings of our parents and are reducible to a simple maxim: Get a monopoly; let society work for you; and remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation.

p45
[The] Export-Import Bank ... was established to "promote trade". Here is how it can work. An American manufacturer wants to sell his products to, say, Poland - but the Poles have no cash to put up. So the Export-Import Bank theoretically loans Poland money to buy the goods. We say "theoretically" because in practice this step is cut out as unnecessary - the money goes straight to the manufacturer. The Poles then pay off the Export-Import Bank in installments - but at a low rate subsidized by American taxpayers. And what if the Poles default? We taxpayers pick up the whole tab! The manufacturer makes the transaction at no risk to himself, through the medium of a federal agency.

p45
There is nothing on earth more powerful than government, a fact long ago recognized by international bankers. Regulation, socialism, and Communism are simply different gradations of monopoly. Who cares if the government is running things, if you run the government

... In the final analysis, there is little difference between the goals of Marxism and capitalist monopolism.

p46
The Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1930) were the international measures adopted to solve Germany's payment troubles.

... the Dawes Plan called for massive loans to Germany. Dr. Carroll Quigley said of the undertaking:

It is worthy of note that this system was set up by the international bankers and that the subsequent lending of other people's money to Germany was very profitable to these bankers.

David Lloyd George, who had been British Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, stated:

The international bankers dictated the Dawes reparation settlement... They swept statesmen, politicians and journalists to one side and issued their orders with the imperiousness of absolute monarchs who knew that there was no appeal from their ruthless decrees.

Profit and arrogance, however, were overshadowed by a far more sinister aspect to the new reparations program. Three German cartels in particular were beneficiaries of credit under the Dawes Plan. This trio became the industrial backbone of the Nazi war machine, and the financial backbone of Adolph Hitler's rise to power in Germany.

Of the three cartels, the chemical enterprise I. G. Farben stands out. The Farben company received significant assistance under the Dawes Plan, including a flotation of $30 million from the Rockefellers' National City Bank. I. G. Farben grew to be the largest chemical concern in the world.

After World War II, an investigation by the U.S. War Department noted:

Without I. G. [Farben's] immense productive facilities, its intense research, and vast international affiliations, Germany's prosecution of the war would have been unthinkable and impossible.

This is entirely supported by statistics. In 1943, for example, [I.G.] Farben produced one hundred percent of Germany's synthetic rubber, one hundred percent of its lubricating oil, and eighty-four percent of its explosives. It even manufactured the deadly Zyklon B gas, used to exterminate human beings in Hitler's concentration camps.

I. G. Farben also supplied forty-five percent of the election funds used to bring the Nazis to power in 1933.

What is particularly odious is that certain American companies did robust business with I. G. Farben ..

... The Rockefellers' Standard Oil of New Jersey sold $20 million in aviation fuel to the firm. I. G. Farben even had an American subsidiary called American I. G.. Among the directors of the latter were the ubiquitous Paul Warburg (CFR founder), Herman A. Metz (CFR founder), and Charles E. Mitchell, who joined the CFR in 1923 and was a director of both the New York Federal Reserve Bank and National City Bank. There were also several Germans on the board of American I. G.; after the war, three of them were found guilty of war crimes at the Nuremburg trials. But none of the Americans were ever prosecuted.

This story of American ties to German fascism has been avoided like the plague by the major U.S. media.

p53
[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt was himself a prototypic Wall Streeter. His family had been involved in New York banking since the eighteenth century. His uncle, Frederic Delano, was on the original Federal Reserve Board. FDR had a customary Establishment education, attending Groton and Harvard. During the 1920's he pursued a career on Wall Street, working as a bond writer and corporate promoter, and organizing speculation enterprises. He was on the board of directors eleven different corporations.

p55
FDR's bonds to the Council were affirmed by his son-in-law, Curtis Dall. Dali, a regular visitor at the Roosevelt home, eventually wrote a book entitled FDR: My Exploited Father-In-Law. He wrote therein:

For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the U.S.A. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political "ammunition," as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advance by the CFR-One World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared "ammunition" in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people - and thus paid off and retained his internationalist political support.

p55
Establishment historians present the '29 stock market crash as they do most events: an accident, evolved from erroneous policies, k not from deliberate planning. We have all heard how foolish speculation bid stock prices high, but that the bubble finally burst, plunging brokers out of windows and America into the Depression.

That version is correct enough, but has several missing parts. The free enterprise system has been the traditional scapegoat for the Crash. In reality, however, the Federal Reserve prompted the speculation by expanding the money supply a whopping sixty-two percent between 1923 and 1929. When the central bank became law in 1913, Congressman Charles Lindbergh had warned: "From now on depressions will be scientifically created. Like two con men working a mark, the Fed made credit easy while Establishment newspapers hyped what riches could be made in the stock market.

Louis McFadden, chairman of the House Banking Committee, declared of the Depression: "It was not accidental. It was carefully contrived occurrence .... The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.

p56
Curtis Dall, himself a syndicate manager for Lehman Brothers, was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on the day of the Crash. He said of the calamity:

[The 1929 stock market crash] was the calculated "shearing" of the public by the World-Money powers triggered by the planned sudden shortage of call money in the New York money market.

p57
It must be understood that an expedient existed on the New York exchange called a "24 hour broker call loan." In those days, one could purchase stock on extensive credit. He could lay down, say, $100, and borrow $900 from a bank through his broker, to purchase $1000 in securities. If the stock increased just ten percent in value, he could sell it, repay the loan, and walk away with his original investment doubled.

The only problem was that such a loan could be called at any time - and if it was, the investor had to pay it off within twenty-four hours. For most, the only way to do so was to sell the stock. One can imagine the impact on the market if a great multitude of these loans were called simultaneously.

In The United States' Unresolved Monetary and Political Problems, William Bryan explains what occurred during the '29 Panic:

When everything was ready, the New York financiers started calling 24 hour broker call loans. This meant that the stock brokers and the customers had to dump their stock on the market in order to pay the loans. This naturally collapsed the stock market and brought a banking collapse all over the country because the banks not owned by the oligarchy were heavily involved in broker call claims at this time, and bank runs soon exhausted their coin and currency and they had to close. The Federal Reserve System would not come to their aid, although they were instructed under the law to maintain an elastic currency.

Plummeting stock prices ruined small investors, but not the top "insiders" on Wall Street. Paul Warburg had issued a tip in March of 1929 that the Crash was coming. Before it did, John D. Rockefeller, Bernard Baruch, Joseph P. Kennedy, and other money barons got out of the market.\According to John Kenneth Galbraith in The Great Crash, 1929, Winston Churchill appeared in the visitors' gallery of the New York Stock Exchange during the frenzy of the panic. It has been said that Bernard Baruch brought him there, perhaps to show him the power of the international bankers.

Early withdrawal from the market not only preserved the fortunes of these men: it also enabled them to return later and buy up whole companies for a song. Shares that once sold for a dollar now cost a nickel. Joseph P. Kennedy's worth reportedly grew from $4 million in 1929 to $100 million in 1935. 'Not everyone was selling apples j during the Depression!

FDR now rode an open highway to the Presidency, fueled by such men as Bernard Baruch. The latter's assistant, Hugh Johnson, said of the campaign: "Every time a crisis came, B. M. [Baruch] either gave the necessary money, or went out and got it." In the meantime, the Republicans were issued a death sentence. Newspapers blamed President Herbert Hoover for the Crash and Depression. The Federal Reserve, instead of moving to stimulate growth and recovery, contracted the money supply by more than one third between 1929 and 1933, thus sustaining the Depression and giving no relief to the thousands of banks dying from runs.

President Hoover had a plan to bail out the banks, but he needed backing from the Democratic Congress. After losing the 1932 election, the lame duck President appealed to Roosevelt: Would he issue a statement encouraging Congressional support, and thus help end the crisis? FDR gave no reply, later claiming that he had written one, but that due to an oversight it was not sent. The banks were allowed to go on collapsing right until his inauguration, thus attaching maximum stigma to the Republican Party. Ironically, when the new President announced emergency banking measures, he used the very plan drawn up by Hoover's Treasury Secretary.

p58
The international bankers, having created the Depression, now loaned America the cash to recover from it. Naturally, the interest on these loans would be borne on the backs of taxpayers for years to come.

p60
Herbert Hoover in his memoirs

Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) ... The origins of this scheme are worth repeating. These ideas were first suggested by Gerard Swope... Following this, they were adopted by the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was pure fascism; that it was merely a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part, proved true.

p67
Over the years, a number of books have documented that Franklin D. Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Of these, the most recent and authoritative is Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (1982) by Pulitzer-Prize winner John Toland.

... American military intelligence had cracked the radio code Tokyo used to communicate with its embassies. As a result, Japanese diplomatic messages in 1941 were known to Washington, often on a same-day basis. The decoded intercepts revealed that spies in Hawaii were informing Tokyo of the precise locations of the U.S. warships docked in Pearl Harbor; collectively, the messages suggested an assault would come on or about December 7. These intercepts were routinely sent to the President and to Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall. In addition, separate warnings about the attack with varying specificity as to its time - were transmitted to these two men by or through various officials, including Joseph Grew, our ambassador to Japan; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; Senator Guy Gillette, who was acting on a tip from the Korean underground; Congressman Martin Dies; Brigadier General Elliot Thorpe, the U.S. military observer in Java; Colonel F. G. L. Weijerman, the Dutch military attaché in Washington; and other sources. Captain Johan Ranneft, the Dutch naval attaché in Washington, recorded that U.S. naval intelligence officers told him on December 6 that Japanese carriers were only 400 miles northwest of Honolulu .'

Despite all of this, no alert was passed on to our commanders in Hawaii, Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter C. Short. Kimmel's predecessor, Admiral Richardson, had been removed by FDR after protesting the President's order to base the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, where it was quite vulnerable to attack. Roosevelt and Marshall stripped the island of most of its air defenses shortly before the raid, and allotted it only one third of the surveillance planes needed to reliably detect approaching forces. Perhaps to preserve his station in history, Marshall sent a warning to Hawaii that arrived a few hours after the attack, which left over two thousand Americans dead, and eighteen naval vessels sunk or heavily damaged.

FDR appointed a commission to investigate what had happened. Heading it was Supreme Court justice Owen Roberts, an internationalist friendly with Roosevelt. Two of the other four members were in the CFR. The Roberts Commission absolved Washington of blame, declaring that Pearl Harbor had been caught off guard due to "dereliction of duty" by commanders Kimmel and Short. The two officers long sought court-martials so they might have a fair hearing. This was finally mandated by Congress in 1944. At the court-martials, attorneys for the defendants dug up some of Washington's secrets. The Roberts verdict was overturned: Kimmel was exonerated; Short received a small reprimand; and the onus of blame was fixed squarely on Washington. But the Roosevelt administration suppressed these results, saying public revelation would endanger national security in wartime. It then conducted "new" inquiries in which several witnesses were persuaded to change their testimony. Incriminating memoranda in the files of the Navy and War departments were destroyed. The court-martial findings were buried in a forty-volume government report on Pearl Harbor, and few Americans ever learned the truth.

p71
Most Americans believe the UN was formed after World War as a result of international revulsion at the horrors of the war. Actually, it originated in CFR intellects, and the term "United Nations" was in use as early as 1942.

In January 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull formed a steering committee composed of himself, Leo Pasvolsky, Isaiah Bowman, Sumner Welles, Norman Davis, and Myron Taylor. All of these men - with the exception of Hull - were in the CFR. Later known as the Informal Agenda Group, they drafted the original proposal for the United Nations. It was Bowman - a founder of the CFR and member of Colonel House's old "Inquiry" - who first put forward the concept. They called in three attorneys, all CFR men, who ruled that it was constitutional. They then discussed it with FDR on June 15, 1944. The President approved the plan, and announced it to the public that same day.

p72
If the key to controlling a nation is to run its central bank, one can imagine the potential of a global central bank, able to dictate the world's credit and money supply. The roots for such a system were planted when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank were formed at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944. These UN agencies were both CFR creations. The idea for them hatched with the Economic and Finance Group, one of the units of the Council's War and Peace Studies Project. This group proposed the IMF and World Bank in a series of increasingly sophisticated memos to the President and State Department during 1941-42. After Bretton Woods, the two institutions were touted in Foreign Affairs.

A. K Chesterton, the distinguished British author, declared: "The final act of Bretton Woods, which gave birth to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.., and many similar assemblies of hand-picked functionaries were not incubated by hard-pressed Governments engaged in waging war, but by a Supra-national Money Power which could afford to look ahead to the shaping of a post-war world that would serve its interest."

p73
Aid to the poor countries [from the World Bank] usually ends up as seed money or loans to the wealthy industrialists from the developed countries to further their overseas operations in competition with the people whose country they claim to represent .

p74
Barron's, 1978

There's a saying that the [World] Bank takes tax money from poor people in rich nations to give to rich people in poor nations."

p111
John Kenneth Galbraith

Those of us who had worked for the Kennedy election were tolerated in the government... but foreign policy was still with the Council on Foreign Relations people.

The Shadows of Power

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