Chapter 11 INTERLOCKING UNTOUCHABLES

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Members of Congress are not unaware of the far-reaching power of the tax-exempt private organization–the CFR; but the power of the Council is somewhat indicated by the fact that no committee of Congress has yet been powerful enough to investigate it or the foundations with which it has interlocking connections and from which it receives its support.

On August 1, 1951, Congressman E. E. Cox (Democrat, Georgia) introduced a resolution in the House asking for a Committee to conduct a thorough investigation of tax-exempt foundations. Congressman Cox said that some of the great foundations,

"had operated in the field of social reform and international relations (and) many have brought down on themselves harsh and just condemnation."

He named the Rockefeller Foundation,

"whose funds have been used to finance individuals and organizations whose business it has been to get communism into the private and public schools of the country, to talk down America and to play up Russia."

He cited the Guggenheim Foundation, whose money,

"was used to spread radicalism throughout the country to an extent not excelled by any other foundation."

He listed the Carnegie Corporation, The Rosenwald Fund, and other foundations, saying:

"There are disquieting evidences that at least a few of the foundations have permitted themselves to be infiltrated by men and women who are disloyal to our American way of life. They should be investigated and exposed to the pitiless light of publicity, and appropriate legislation should be framed to correct the present situation."

Congressman Cox's resolution, proposing an investigation of foundations, died in Committee.


On March 10, 1952, Cox introduced the same resolution again. Because he had mentioned foundation support for Langston Hughes, a Negro communist, Congressman Cox was accused of racial prejudice. Because he had criticized the Rosenwald Fund for making grants to known communists, he was called anti-semitic. But the Cox resolution was adopted in 1952; and the Cox committee to investigate tax-exempt foundations was set up.

Congressman Cox died before the end of the year; and the final report of his committee (filed January 1, 1953) was a pathetic whitewash of the whole subject.

A Republican-controlled Congress (the 83rd) came into existence in January, 1953.


On April 23, 1953, the late Congressman Carroll Reece, (Republican, Tennessee) introduced a resolution proposing a committee to carry on the "unfinished business" of the defunct Cox Committee. The new committee to investigate tax-exempt foundations (popularly known as the Reece Committee) was approved by Congress on July 27, 1953. It went out of existence on January 3, 1955, having proven, mainly, that the mammoth tax-exempt foundations have such power in the White House, in Congress, and in the press that they are quite beyond the reach of a mere committee of the Congress of the United States.

If you want to read this whole incredible (and rather terrifying) story, I suggest Foundations, a book written by Rene A. Wormser who was general counsel to the Reece Committee. His book was published in 1958 by The Devin-Adair Company.

In the final report on Tax-Exempt Foundations, which the late Congressman Reece made for his ill-fated Special Committee (Report published December 16, 1954, by the Government Printing Office), Mr. Reece said:

"Miss Casey's report (Hearings pp. 877, et seq.) shows clearly the interlock between The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and some of its associated organizations, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and other foundations, with the State Department. Indeed, these foundations and organizations would not dream of denying this interlock. They proudly note it in reports. They have undertaken vital research projects for the Department; virtually created minor departments or groups within the Department for it; supplied advisors and executives from their ranks; fed a constant stream of personnel into the State Department trained by themselves or under programs which they have financed; and have had much to do with the formulation of foreign policy both in principle and detail.

"They have, to a marked degree, acted as direct agents of the State Department. And they have engaged actively, and with the expenditure of enormous sums, in propagandizing ('educating'?) public opinion in support of the policies which they have helped to formulate....

"What we see here is a number of large foundations, primarily The Rockefeller Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, using their enormous public funds to finance a one-sided approach to foreign policy and to promote it actively, among the public by propaganda, and in the Government through infiltration. The power to do this comes out of the power of the vast funds employed."

Mr. Reece listed The Council on Foreign Relations, The Institute of International Education, The Foreign Policy Association, and The Institute of Pacific Relations, as among the interlocking organizations which are "agencies of these foundations," and pointed out that research and propaganda which does not support the "globalism" (or internationalism) to which all of these agencies are dedicated, receive little support from the tax-exempt foundations.

I disagree with Mr. Reece here, only in the placing of emphasis. As I see it, the foundations (which do finance the vast, complex, and powerful interlock of organizations devoted to a socialist one-world system) have, nonetheless, become the "agencies" of the principal organization which they finance–the Council on Foreign Relations.


The Reece Committee investigation threw some revealing light on the historical blackout which the Council on Foreign Relations has ordered and conducted.

Men who run the Council do not want the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt to undergo the critical analysis and objective study which exposed the policies of Woodrow Wilson after World War I. The Council has decided that the official propaganda of World War II must be perpetuated as history and the public protected from learning the truth. Hence, the Council sponsors historical works which give the socialist-internationalist version of historical events prior to and during World War II, while ignoring, or debunking, revisionist studies which attempt to tell the truth.

Here is how all of this is put in the 1946 Annual Report of the Rockefeller Foundation:

"The Committee on Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations is concerned that the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I should not be repeated and believes that the American public deserves a clear competent statement of our basic aims and activities during the second World War."

In 1946, the Rockefeller Foundation allotted $139,000 to the cost of a two-volume history of World War II, written by William L. Langer, a member of the CFR, and S. Everett Gleason. The generous grant was supplemented by a gift of $10,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Langer-Gleason work was published by Harper and Brothers for the Council on Foreign Relations: Volume I in 1952 under the title, The Challenge To Isolationism, 1937-1940; Volume II in 1953, under the title, The Undeclared War.

The CFR's stated purpose in bringing out this work was to head off the revisionist historians like Charles Callan Tansill, Harry Elmer Barnes, Frederic R. Sanborn, George Morgenstern, Frances Neilson. The truth, however, is not easy to suppress. Though written by and for the CFR, to perpetuate that organization's version of history, the Langer-Gleason volumes contain a wealth of information which helps to prove the basic thesis of this present volume.


One thing that the ill-fated Reece Committee found out in 1953-55, when trying to investigate the foundations, is that the tax-exempt organizations are set up, not for the purpose of doing some good in our society, but for the purpose of avoiding the income tax.

Rene A. Wormser, in Foundation says:

"The chief motivation in the creation of foundations has long ceased to be pure philanthropy–it is now predominantly tax avoidance.... The increasing tax burden on income and estates has greatly accelerated a trend toward creation of foundations as instruments for the retention of control over capital assets that would otherwise be lost....

"The creation of a new foundation very often serves the purpose of contributing to a favorable public opinion for the person or corporation that endows it...."

The tax-exempt organizations have a vested interest in the oppressive, inequitable, and wasteful federal-income-tax system. Tax experts have devised, for example, a complicated scheme by which a wealthy man can actually save money by giving to tax-exempt organizations.

In short, many of the great philanthropies which buy fame and respectability for wealthy individuals, or corporations, are tax-avoidance schemes which, every year, add billions to the billions of private capital which is thus sterilized. These accumulations of tax-exempt billions place a heavier burden on taxpayers. Removing billions from taxation, the tax-exempt organizations thus obviously make taxpayers pay more in order to produce all that government demands.


The big tax-exempt organizations use their tax-exempt billions to buy prestige and power for themselves, and to bludgeon some critics into silence. For example, the Ford Foundation established the Fund for the Republic with a 15 million dollar grant in 1952–at a time when public awareness of the communist danger was seeping into the thinking of enough Americans to create a powerful anti-communist movement in this country.

By late 1955, the Fund's activities (publicly granting awards to fifth-amendment communists and so on) had become so blatant that public indignation was rising significantly. Just at the right time, the Ford Foundation announced a gift of 500 million dollars to the colleges of America.

Newspapers–also beholden in many ways to the big foundations–which will not publish news about the foundations' anti-American activities, give banner headlines to the lavish benefactions for purposes universally believed to be good.

Where will you find a college administration that will not defend the Ford Foundation against all critics–if the college has just received, or is in line to receive, a million-dollar gift from the Foundation?

How far must you search to find college professors or school teachers who will not defend the Foundation which gives 25 million dollars at one time, to raise the salaries of professors or school teachers?

Where will you find a plain John Doe citizen who is not favorably impressed that the hospitals and colleges in his community have received a multi-million dollar gift from a big foundation?

Every significant movement to destroy the American way of life has been directed and financed, in whole or in part, by tax-exempt organizations, which are entrenched in public opinion as benefactors of our society.

Worst of all: this tremendous power and prestige are in the hands of what Rene Wormser calls a special elite–a group of eggheads like Robert Hutchins (or worse) who neither understand nor respect the profit-motivated economic principles and the great political ideal of individual-freedom-under-limited-government which made our nation great.

Overlapping of personnel clearly shows a tight interlock between the Council on Foreign Relations and the big foundations.

The following information, concerning assets and officers of foundations, all comes from The Foundation Directory, prepared by The Foundation Library Center and published by the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City, 1960.

FORD FOUNDATION: Assets totaling $3,316,000,000.00 (3 billion, 316 million) on September 30, 1959. The Trustees of the Ford Foundation are: Eugene R. Black (CFR); James B. Black; James F. Brownlee; John Cowles (CFR); Donald K. David (CFR); Mark F. Ethridge (CFR); Benson Ford; Henry Ford II; H. Rowan Gaither, Jr. (CFR); Laurence M. Gould (CFR); Henry T. Heald (CFR); Roy E. Larsen; John J. McCloy (CFR); Julius A. Stratton (CFR); Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr. (CFR).

Note that of the 15 members of the Board of Trustees, 10 are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

FUND FOR THE REPUBLIC, Santa Barbara, California, a subsidiary of Ford, had assets totaling $6,667,022.00 on September 30, 1957. Officers and directors: Robert Hutchins; Paul G. Hoffman (CFR); Elmo Roper (CFR); George N. Shuster (CFR); Harry S. Ashmore; Bruce Catton; Charles W. Cole (CFR); Arthur J. Goldberg; William H. Joyce, Jr.; Meyer Kestnbaum (CFR); Msgr. Francis Lally; Herbert H. Lehman (CFR); M. Albert Linton; J. Howard Marshall; Jubal R. Parten; Alicia Patterson; Mrs. Eleanor B. Stevenson; Henry P. Van Dusen (CFR).

Note that 7 of the 18 are CFR members.

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, 111 West 50th Street, New York 20, New York, had assets totaling $647,694,858.00 on December 31, 1958. Officers and Trustees: John D. Rockefeller 3rd (CFR); Dean Rusk (CFR); Barry Bingham; Chester Bowles (CFR); Lloyd D. Brace; Richard Bradfield (CFR); Detlev W. Bronk (CFR); Ralph J. Bunche (CFR); John S. Dickey (CFR); Lewis W. Douglas (CFR); Lee A. DuBridge; Wallace K. Harrison; Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. (CFR); John R. Kimberly (CFR); Robert F. Loeb; Robert A. Lovett (CFR); Benjamin M. McKelway; Henry Allen Moe; Henry P. Van Dusen (CFR); W. Barry Wood, Jr.

Of the 20, 12 are CFR members.

ROCKEFELLER BROTHERS FUND, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 20, New York, had assets totaling $53,174,210.00 on December 31, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Laurence S. Rockefeller; David Rockefeller (CFR); Detlev W. Bronk (CFR); Wallace K. Harrison; Abby Rockefeller Mauze; Abby M. O'Neill; John D. Rockefeller 3rd (CFR); Nelson A. Rockefeller (CFR); Winthrop Rockefeller.

Of the 9, 4 are CFR members.

CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK, 589 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, New York, had assets totaling $261,244,471.00 on September 30, 1959. Officers and Trustees: John W. Gardner (CFR); Morris Hadley; James A. Perkins (CFR); Robert F. Bacher; Caryl P. Haskins (CFR); C. D. Jackson (CFR); Devereux C. Josephs (CFR); Nicholas Kelley (CFR); Malcolm A. MacIntyre (CFR); Margaret Carnegie Miller; Frederick Osborn (CFR); Gwilym A. Price; Elihu Root, Jr. (CFR); Frederick Sheffield; Charles Spofford (CFR); Charles Allen Thomas.

Of the 16, 10 are CFR members.

CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE, United Nations Plaza & 46th Street, New York 17, New York, had a net worth of $22,577,134.00 on June 30, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Joseph E. Johnson (CFR); Whitney North Seymour (CFR); O. Frederick Nolde; Lawrence S. Finkelstein (CFR); Arthur K. Watson (CFR); James M. Nicely (CFR); Dillon Anderson (CFR); Charles E. Beard; Robert Blum (CFR); Harvey H. Bundy (CFR); David L. Cole; Frederick S. Dunn (CFR); Arthur J. Goldberg; Ernest A. Gross (CFR); Philip C. Jessup (CFR); Milton Katz (CFR); Grayson L. Kirk (CFR); Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce; Charles A. Meyer (CFR); Otto L. Nelson, Jr.; Ellmore C. Patterson (CFR); Howard C. Petersen (CFR); Howard P. Robertson; David Rockefeller (CFR); W. J. Schieffelin, Jr.; George N. Shuster (CFR).

Of the 26, 18 are CFR members.

CARNEGIE FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING, had assets totaling $20,043,859.00 on June 30, 1959. Officers and Trustees: Carter Davidson (CFR); John W. Gardner (CFR); James A. Perkins (CFR); William F. Houston; Harvie Branscomb; Arthur H. Dean (CFR); Robert F. Goheen (CFR); Laurence M. Gould (CFR); A. Whitney Griswold (CFR); Rufus C. Harris; Frederick L. Hovde (CFR); Clark Kerr; Lawrence A. Kimpton; Grayson L. Kirk (CFR); Thomas S. Lamont (CFR); Robert A. Lovett (CFR); Howard F. Lowry; N. A. M. MacKenzie; Katharine E. McBride; Millicent C. McIntosh; John S. Millis (CFR); Franklin D. Murphy (CFR); Nathan M. Pusey (CFR); Herman B. Wells (CFR); Logan Wilson; O. Meredith Wilson.

Of the 26, 15 are CFR members.

CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OF WASHINGTON, 1530 "P" Street, N.W., Washington 5, D. C., had assets totaling $80,838,528.00 on June 30, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Caryl P. Haskins (CFR); Walter S. Gifford (CFR); Barklie McKee Henry; Robert Woods Bliss (CFR); James F. Bell; General Omar N. Bradley; Vannevar Bush; Crawford H. Greenewalt; Alfred L. Loomis (CFR); Robert A. Lovett (CFR); Keith S. McHugh; Margaret Carnegie Miller; Henry S. Morgan (CFR); Seeley G. Mudd; William I. Myers; Henning W. Prentis, Jr.; Elihu Root, Jr. (CFR); Henry R. Shepley; Charles P. Taft; Juan Terry Trippe (CFR); James N. White; Robert E. Wilson.

Of the 22, 8 are CFR members.

ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York 20, New York, had assets totaling $175,533,110.00 on December 31, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Albert Bradley (CFR); Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (CFR); Raymond P. Sloan; Arnold J. Zurcher (CFR); Frank W. Abrams; Henry C. Alexander (CFR); Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. (CFR); General Lucius D. Clay (CFR); John L. Collyer (CFR); Lewis W. Douglas (CFR); Frank A. Howard; Devereux C. Josephs (CFR); Mervin J. Kelly (CFR); James R. Killian, Jr. (CFR); Laurence S. Rockefeller; George Whitney (CFR).

Of the 16, 12 are CFR members.

THE COMMONWEALTH FUND OF NEW YORK, 5500 Maspeth Avenue, New York 78, New York, had assets totaling $119,904,614.00 on June 30, 1959. Officers and Trustees: Malcolm P. Aldrich; John A. Gifford; Leo D. Welch (CFR); George P. Berry; Roger M. Blough (CFR); Harry P. Davison (CFR); Harold B. Hoskins; J. Quigg Newton (CFR); William E. Stevenson (CFR); Henry C. Taylor.

Of the 10, 6 are CFR members.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FUND, INC., 41 East 70th Street, New York 3, New York, had assets totaling $17,522,441.00 on December 31, 1958. Officers and Trustees: Adolf A. Berle, Jr. (CFR); Francis Biddle (CFR); August Heckscher (CFR); Hans Christian Sonne (CFR); Morris B. Abram; Arthur F. Burns (CFR); Erwin D. Canham (CFR); Evans Clark (CFR); Benjamin V. Cohen (CFR); Wallace K. Harrison (CFR); David E. Lilienthal (CFR); Robert S. Lynd; James G. McDonald (CFR); J. Robert Oppenheimer (CFR); Edmund Orgill; James H. Rowe, Jr.; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (CFR); Herman W. Steinkraus; Charles P. Taft; W. W. Waymack.

Of the 20, 13 are CFR members.[Pg 181]

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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