One day in the spring of 1961, a New York lawyer received a long distance telephone call. Concerning this call, the New York Times reported:

"'This is President Kennedy,' the telephone voice said.

"'The hell you say,' retorted the lawyer. 'I guess that makes me the Prime Minister of England, but what can I do for you?'

"'Nobody's pulling your leg,' the telephone voice said. 'This is President Kennedy all right. I want to talk to you about coming down here to Washington to help me with this long-term foreign aid legislation.'"

One week later, the New York lawyer took an apartment in Washington and, as a member of President Kennedy's "Task Force" on foreign aid, started writing the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The lawyer is Theodore Tannenwald, Jr., a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who wrote many of the foreign aid bills which President Harry Truman presented to Congress and who, during the first Eisenhower term, was assistant director of the Mutual Security Program.

After Mr. Tannenwald and his task force had finished writing the 1961 foreign aid bill, President Kennedy appointed Tannenwald coordinator in charge of "presenting" the bill to committees of the House and Senate. Three cabinet officers and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff took their orders from Mr. Tannenwald, who was, according to the New York Times, "the Administration's composer, orchestrator and conductor of the most important legislative symphony of the Congressional session."

With admiration, the Times said:

"Mr. Tannenwald has been a kind of special White House ambassador to Capitol Hill. While the legislative committees struggled with the controversial proposal to by-pass the appropriating process and give the President authority to borrow $8,800,000,000 (8 billion, 800 million) for development lending in the next five years, he was the man in the ante-room empowered to answer questions in the name of the President."

In July, 1961, President Kennedy completed Mr. Tannenwald's foreign aid "orchestra." On July 10, in ceremonies at the White House, the President formally announced creation of the newest foreign-aid propaganda organization, the Citizens Committee for International Development, with Warren Lee Pierson as chairman. Here is the membership of the Citizens Committee for International Development:

Eugenie Anderson (member of the Atlantic Union Committee); William Benton (Chairman of the Board of Encyclopaedia Britannica; member of the Atlantic Union Committee); Everett N. Case (President of Colgate University); O. Roy Chalk (President of the District of Columbia Transit Company); Malcolm S. Forbes (Editor and Publisher of Forbes Magazine); Eleanor Clark French; Albert M. Greenfield (Honorary Chairman of the Board of Bankers Security Corporation, Philadelphia); General Alfred M. Gruenther (President of the American National Red Cross; member of the Atlantic Union Committee); Murray D. Lincoln (Chairman of Nationwide Insurance Company); Sol M. Linowitz (Chairman of Zerox Corporation); George Meany (President of AFL-CIO); William S. Paley (Chairman of the Board, Columbia Broadcasting System); Warren Lee Pierson (Chairman of the Board, Trans-World Airways); Ross Pritchard (Professor of Political Science, Southwestern University, Memphis); Thomas S. Nichols (Chairman of the Board of Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation; member of the Atlantic Union Committee); Mrs. Mary G. Roebling (President Of Trenton Trust Company); David Sarnoff (Chairman of Radio Corporation of America); Walter Sterling Surrey (legal consultant, Economic Cooperation Administration); Thomas J. Watson, Jr., (President of International Business Machines Corporation); Walter H. Wheeler, Jr., (President of Pitney-Bowes); James D. Zellerbach (President and Director of Crown-Zellerbach Corporation; Chairman of Fibreboard Products, Inc.; member of the Atlantic Union Committee and United World Federalists); Ezra Zilkha (head of Zilkha & Sons).

Of these 22 people, 12 (including the Chairman) are members of the Council on Foreign Relations: Benton, Case, Gruenther, Paley, Pierson, Pritchard, Nichols, Sarnoff, Surrey, Watson, Wheeler, and Zellerbach.

Heads of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations attended the White House luncheon when the Committee was formed. Vice President Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy were also present. The President urged each and all to get foundations, business firms, civic organizations, and the people generally, to put pressure on Congress in support of the 1961 foreign aid bill.

Within a week after the July 10, White House luncheon meeting (which launched the CFR's foreign aid committee), the President and his high-level aides were talking about a grave crisis in Berlin and about foreign aid as the essential means of "meeting" that crisis.

On July 25, when congressional debates over the foreign aid bill were in a critical stage, President Kennedy spoke to the nation on radio and television, solemnly warning the people that the Berlin situation was dangerous.

Immediate, additional support for the foreign aid bill came from the country's liberal and leftwing forces, who united in a passionate plea–urging the American people to support the President "in this grave hour."

On August 27, an Associated Press release announced that House Leader John W. McCormack (Democrat, Massachusetts), was attempting to enlist the cooperation of 2,400 city mayors in support of a long-range foreign aid bill to meet the President's demands.

McCormack sent the city officials a statement of his views with a cover letter suggesting that the matter be brought to "the attention of citizens of your community through publication in your local newspaper," and, further, urging their "personal endorsement of this bipartisan program through the medium of your local press...."

State Department officials scheduled speaking tours throughout the land, and CFR affiliated organizations (like the Councils on World Affairs) started the build-up to provide audiences–all in the interest of "briefing" the American people on the necessity and beauties of foreign aid.

Anyone with sense had to wonder how the giving of American tax money to communist governments in Europe and to socialist governments all over the earth could help us resist communism in Berlin. But with the top leaders in our society (from the President downward to officials in the National Council of Churches) telling us that the survival of our nation depended on the President's getting all the foreign aid "authorization" he wanted–most Americans remained silent, feeling that such consequential and complicated matters should be left in the hands of our chosen leaders.

By the end of August, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 had been passed by both houses of Congress; and the Berlin crisis moved from front page lead articles in the nation's newspapers to less important columns.

Thus, in 1961, as always, the foreign aid bill was a special project of our invisible government, the Council on Foreign Relations. And, in 1961, as always, the great, tax-supported propaganda machine used a fear psychology to bludgeon the people into silence and the Congress into obedience.

President Kennedy signed the Act as Public Law 87-195 on September 4, 1961.

Public Law 87-195 authorized $10,253,500,000 (10 billion, 253 million, 500 thousand) in foreign aid: $3,066,500,000 appropriated for the 1962 fiscal year, and $7,187,000,000 Treasury borrowing authorized for the next five years. The law does require the President to obtain annual appropriations for the Treasury borrowing, but permits him to make commitments to lend the money to foreign countries, before he obtains appropriations from Congress.

It was widely reported in the press that Congress had denied the President the long-term borrowing authority he had requested; but the President himself was satisfied. He knew that by promising loans to foreign governments (that is, "committing" the funds in advance of congressional appropriation) he would thus force Congress (in the interest of showing "national unity" and of not "repudiating" our President) to appropriate whatever he promised.

On August 29, the President said:

"The compromise ... is wholly satisfactory. It gives the United States Government authority to make commitments for long-term development programs with reasonable assurance that these commitments will be met."

Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon (a member of the CFR) was happy about the 1961 foreign aid bill. On August 29, Nixon, on the ABC radio network, said that he favored such "long-range foreign aid planning, financed through multi-year authorizations and annual appropriations."

Nelson A. Rockefeller, Republican Governor of New York, announced that he too favored "long-range foreign aid planning, financed through multi-year authorizations and annual appropriations"–exactly like Nixon.

Former President Eisenhower was also happy. He, too, said he favored this sort of thing.

Senator J. William Fulbright (Democrat, Arkansas) was almost jubilant: he said Congress for the next five years would be under "strong obligation" to put up the money for whatever the President promises to foreign governments.

All in all, it is improbable that Congress ever passed another bill more destructive of American constitutional principles; more harmful to our nation politically, economically, morally, and militarily; and more helpful to communism-socialism all over the earth–than the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which was, from beginning to end, a product of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Our foreign aid does grievous harm to the American people by burdening them with excessive taxation, thus making it difficult for them to expand their own economy. This gives government pretext for intervening with more taxation and controls for domestic subsidies.

Furthermore, the money that government takes away from us for foreign aid is used to subsidize our political enemies and economic competitors abroad. Note, for example, the large quantities of agricultural goods which we give every year to communist satellite nations, thus enabling communist governments to control the hungry people of those nations. Note that while we are giving away our agricultural surpluses to communist and socialist nations, we, under the 1961 foreign aid bill (as under previous ones), are subsidizing agricultural production in the underdeveloped countries.

The 1961 foreign aid bill prohibited direct aid to Cuba, but authorized contributions to United Nations agencies, which were giving aid to Cuba.

At a time when the American economy was suffering from the flight of American industry to foreign lands, the 1961 foreign aid bill offered subsidies and investment guarantees to American firms moving abroad.

Our foreign aid enriches and strengthens political leaders and ruling oligarchies (which are often corrupt) in underdeveloped lands; and it does infinite harm to the people of those lands, when it inflates their economy and foists upon them an artificially-produced industrialism which they are not prepared to sustain or even understand.

The basic argument for foreign aid is that by helping the underdeveloped nations develop, we will keep them from falling under the dictatorship of communism. The argument is false and unsound, historically, politically, economically, and morally.

The communists have never subjugated a nation by winning the loyalties of the oppressed and downtrodden. The communists first win the support of liberal-intellectuals, and then use them to subvert and pervert all established mores and ideals and social and political arrangements.

Our foreign aid does not finance freedom in foreign lands; it finances socialism; and a world socialist system is what communists are trying to establish. As early as 1921, Joseph Stalin said that the advanced western nations must give economic aid to other nations in order to socialize their economies and prepare them for integration in the communist's world socialist system.

Socializing the economies of all nations so that all can be merged into a one-world system was the objective of Colonel Edward M. House, who founded the Council on Foreign Relations, and has been the objective of the Council, and of all its associated organizations, from the beginning.