COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

BEHIND THE SCENES

Exterior of the main entrance of Harold Pratt House (Photo: Flickr)

The symbol above is the symbol of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Exterior of the main entrance to the Council on Foreign Relations looking east towards Park Avenue. The Harold Pratt House is located on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 68th Street in midtown Manhattan in New York City, one block west of the 68th Street and Hunter College subway station. (Flickr photo)

Council on Foreign Relations Harold Pratt House 58 East 68th Street New York, New York 10021 Incorporated on July 29, 1921
Thomas E. Dewey (Republican Party) Bill Clinton (Democratic Party)

President George W. Bush speaks to the Council on Foreign Relations about economic progress in Iraq during a speech in Washington, D.C. on December 7, 2005. (EPA/SHAWN THEW)

The Council has no affiliation with the U.S. government. Council on Foreign Relations 1995 Annual Report, page 4

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers a foreign policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. on July 15, 2009. (Getty Images)

Libyas dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi (left) appears with CFR President Richard N. Haass at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York City on Thursday, September 24, 2009. (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations 2010 Annual Report) http://www.cfr.org/content/about/annual_report/ar_2010/Presidents_Message2010.pdf

Richard Holbrooke (left) appears with Pakistans despot Pervez Musharraf at the Harold Pratt House. (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations 2005 Annual Report)

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres (left) chats with publisher Mortimer Zuckerman at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on July 31, 2006. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass (left), a Rhodes Scholar, smiles as former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela delivers a speech at the Harold Pratt House. (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report)

South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak (C) is interviewed by Council on Foreign Relations co-chairman Robert Rubin (R), a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs banking firm and former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on September 21, 2009. (Reuters)

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (L) answers a question from former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (R) at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on November 14, 2008. (Reuters)

Left: Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi speaks to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on November 11, 2005. A favorite of the Bush administration who fell from favor after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Chalabi achieved a kind of political rehabilitation on a high-profile Washington visit that included meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. (CHIP EAST/Reuters/Corbis) Right photo: Japans Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi speaks to members of the Council on Foreign Relations at the Harold Pratt House on September 10, 2002.

Left photo: Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, delivers a speech to members of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on September 25, 2007. Right: Council on Foreign Relations Chairman Peter G. Peterson listens as Mexicos President Vicente Fox delivers a speech at the Harold Pratt House on September 15, 2005. (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walks to the podium after being introduced by Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, to deliver a foreign policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. on July 15, 2009. Hillary Clinton is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations yet. (Getty Images)

Thank you very much, Richard [Haass], and its delightful to be here this morning and to have this opportunity to speak with all of you. I want to thank Richard and congratulate him for his transition from government to the council and especially for his role in the Northern Ireland peace process, which has been a vitally important one, on behalf of our country You know, it is a great opportunity for me here in New York, before this prestigious body, to speak about where we find ourselves with respect to foreign policy. And I think it's appropriate to put it into the context of a quote that I agree with, that was made by the former council president, Leslie Gelb, who said that the purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations, as an organization, is to promote American internationalism based on American interests. U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on December 15, 2003 Thank you very much, Richard [Haass], and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to I guess the mother ship in New York City, but its good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won't have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C. on July 15, 2009

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, Les, Pete, I want to thank you all for the warm welcome today. I see a lot of old friends in the room. And it's good to be back at the Council on Foreign Relations. As Pete mentioned, I've been a member for a long time, and was actually a director for some period of time. I never mentioned that when I was campaigning for reelection back home in Wyoming -- (laughter). Richard B. Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States, on February 15, 2002, in a speech to members of the Council on Foreign Relations at the Harold Pratt House. (Note: Les is Leslie Gelb, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Pete is Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses Council on Foreign Relations members at the Organization of American States (OAS) building in Washington, D.C. on October 9, 2007. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Gen. Michael Hayden speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on September 7, 2007. General Michael Hayden is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (AP Photo by Louis Lanzano)

Senator John Kerry (D-MA) gives a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on December 3, 2003. Senator John Kerry is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of Skull & Bones at Yale University. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) speaks at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City on December 15, 2003. Senator Hillary Clinton is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations yet. Senator Hillary Clintons husband Bill Clinton, former President of the United States, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani delivers a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on May 6, 2004. Giuliani is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations yet. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appears at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on February 17, 2006. (Seth Wenig/Reuters/Corbis)

U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on July 29, 2009. Janet Napolitano is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Getty Images)

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers a speech to members of the Council on Foreign Relations on April 12, 2007. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations yet. (Edouard H.R. Gluck/AP)

U.S. Army General John Abizaid (left), Commander of U.S. Central Command, and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (right) deliver a speech at the Harold Pratt House.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Jean-Claude Trichet speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on April 26, 2010. (Reuters) http://www.daylife.com/photo/07VnbrIbclct7?q=council+on+foreign+relations

Richard Haass (left), President of the Council on Foreign Relations, listens as Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), delivers his lecture to the organization's members in New York City on November 4, 2009. (AP Photo)

David J. O'Reilly, Chairman and CEO of Chevron Corp., speaks to members and guests at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on November 12, 2008. (AP Photo)

Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman and CEO of IBM Corp., speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on November 6, 2008. (AP Photo)

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan speaks during a luncheon meeting held by the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. on November 19, 2002. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Timothy Geithner, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on January 11, 2007. (Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke smiles before delivering remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. on March 10, 2009. (Reuters)

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz delivers his remarks on Iraqi disarmament before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on January 23, 2003.

Left: Paul Wolfowitz holds a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report. Right: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is seen laughing at the Harold Pratt House.

Michael Bloomberg (left), President of the World Bank James Wolfensohn (center), and Vernon E. Jordan hold an award given to Wolfensohn at the United Nations Ambassadors Dinner in New York City on October 26, 2000. Michael Bloomberg is currently the Mayor of New York City. All three men are members of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Newsmakers)

Council on Foreign Relations members Henry Kissinger (left), Zbigniew Brzezinski (center), and Madeleine Albright are seen laughing together.

(Source: Council on Foreign Relations 1992 Annual Report)

(Source: Council on Foreign Relations 1992 Annual Report)

Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (center), the Chairman and CEO of IBM, and Maurice Greenberg (right), the Chairman and CEO of AIG, invite Communist Chinas leader Jiang Zemin to speak to Council on Foreign Relations members at the Harold Pratt House on September 8, 2000. (Photo: Council on Foreign Relations 2001 Annual Report)

The Council turned in earnest to the problem of communist China early in the 1960s. Various Council publications had started developing the idea of a two-China policyrecognition of both the Nationalist government of Taiwan and the communist government on the mainland. This, Council authors suggested, might be the least bad policy direction. Professor A. Doak Barnett published a trail-blazing book for the Council in 1960, Communist China and Asia. A major Council study of relations between the United States and China commenced in 1964, the year China exploded its first nuclear bomb; the group met systematically for the next four years. Contentment with the present stalemate in relations with the Chinese is not statesmanship, declared Robert Blum of the Asia Society, the first director of the project. American impatience and the strong currents of political emotion often make it impossible to plan ahead to manage our policy in a persevering but flexible way. This seemed just the sort of political stalemate that the Council on Foreign Relations, free of electoral and partisan constraints, was endowed to repair. Midway through the project, the Council published an analysis of public opinion called The American People and China by A. T. Steele, who reached the unexpected conclusion that Americans were more willing than many of their elected officeholders to forge new relations with China. This study argued that it was only a steady diet of hostile public statements that had made Americans disposed to believe the worst of communist China and they [the Chinese] the worst of us. In 1969 the Council summed up the project under the title, The United States and China in World Affairs, publication came just as Richard Nixon, a longtime and outspoken foe of Chinese communism, became president of the United States. (Some months earlier, Nixon himself had chosen Foreign Affairs as his forum for exploring a fresh look at Asia in general, and China in particular.) Tilting at the long-prevailing freeze, the Councils project defined a two-China policy with careful analysis. It advocated acquiescence in mainland Chinese membership in the United Nations, and argued that America must abandon its effort to maintain the fiction that the Nationalist regime is the government of China. Kissinger, acting as Nixons national security adviser, embarked on a secret mission to Beijing in 1971, to make official, exploratory contact with the communist regime. Nixon himself followed in 1972. The delicate process of normalizing diplomatic relations between the United States and China was completed in 1978 by Kissingers successor as secretary of state, Cyrus R. Vance, a leading Council officer before and after his government service. Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996 by Peter Grose, page 42-44

Council on Foreign Relations members U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (left, Man of the Year, January 3, 1955) and CIA Director Allen W. Dulles (right, August 3, 1953) appear on the front cover of Time magazine. John Foster Dulles was Allen W. Dulles brother.

Council on Foreign Relations members Averell Harriman (left, August 2, 1963) and McGeorge Bundy (right, June 25, 1965) appear on the front cover of Time magazine.

Council on Foreign Relations businessmen: General Electric Co. chairman Owen D. Young (left, Man of the Year, January 6, 1930) and Hollywood mogul and financier Otto H. Kahn (right, November 2, 1925)

Council on Foreign Relations bankers: J.P. Morgan & Co. partner Thomas W. Lamont (left, November 11, 1929) and Federal Reserve Chairman Eugene Meyer (right, May 31, 1932)

Council on Foreign Relations businessmen: Charles Gates Dawes (left, December 14, 1925); Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (right, December 27, 1926)

Council on Foreign Relations businessmen: Herbert Bayard Swope (left, January 28, 1924); Myron C. Taylor (right, April 22, 1929)

CBS chief William S. Paley (left, September 19, 1938) and RCA (NBC) chief David Sarnoff (right, July 23, 1951) appear on the front cover of Time magazine. Paley and Sarnoff were members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

New York Times chief Arthur H. Sulzberger (right, May 8, 1950) and Fox News chief Rupert Murdoch (right, July 9, 2007) appear on the front cover of Time magazine. Sulzberger was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; Murdoch is a Council on Foreign Relations member.

Council on Foreign Relations members John J. McCloy (left, June 20, 1949) and David Rockefeller (right, September 7, 1962) appear on the front cover of Time magazine.

Council on Foreign Relations members George Soros (left, September 1, 1997), Robert E. Rubin, Alan Greenspan, and Lawrence Summers (right, February 15, 1999) appear on the front cover of Time magazine.

Left: Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, May 23, 1977 edition of Time magazine. Right: Secretary of State Cyrus Vance appears on the front cover of the April 24, 1978 edition of Time magazine.

Left: Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal appears on the front cover of the January 30, 1978 edition of Time magazine. Right: CIA Director Stansfield Turner appears on the front cover of the February 6, 1978 edition of Time magazine.

Left: Secretary of State Alexander Haig appears on the front cover of the March 16, 1981 edition of Time magazine. Right: Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger appears on the front cover of the July 27, 1981 edition of Time magazine.

Left: Secretary of State George P. Shultz appears on the front cover of the July 5, 1982 edition of Time magazine. Right: Federal Reserve Chairman-designate Alan Greenspan appears on the front cover of the June 15, 1987 edition of Time magazine.

Council on Foreign Relations members National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (left, April 5, 2004) and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney (right, March 19, 2007) appear on the front cover of Time magazine.

Council on Foreign Relations members U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (left, September 10, 2001) and U.S. Senator John McCain (right, February 4, 2008) appear on the front cover of Time magazine.

Council on Foreign Relations politicians: President-elect Bill Clinton (left, Democrat-Arkansas), Time magazines Man of the Year for 1992, appears on the front cover of the January 4, 1993 edition of Time magazine. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (right, Republican PartyGeorgia), Time magazines Man of the Year for 1995, appears on the front cover of the December 25, 1995 edition of Time magazine.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left), Time magazines Man of the Year for 1959, appears on the front cover of the January 4, 1960 edition of Time magazine. Nelson Rockefeller (right), candidate for the Governor of New York and later Governor of New York, appears on the front cover of the October 6, 1958 edition of Time magazine.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman William H. Donaldson testifies before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on October 15, 2003. William H. Donaldson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. ( WILLIAM PHILPOTT/Reuters/Corbis)

Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, speaks before the Senate Banking Committee at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. on July 16, 2002. Alan Greenspan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

Foreign Intrigue: The New Modern Diplomacy?

Peter L. Bergen sits beside Arab terrorist Osama bin Laden (left) in Afghanistan on March 22, 1997. Peter L. Bergen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Thomas J. Watson (sitting to Hitlers left), President of the International Business Machines (IBM), meets with Adolf Hitler in 1937. Thomas J. Watson was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1924 to 1955.

The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer. Henry Kissinger

Left to right: Reichsbank President and Nazi German Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht, former U.S. President Herbert Hoover, and American Ambassador to Nazi Germany Hugh R. Wilson dress for the occasion at a reception held in Berlin on March 8, 1938. Herbert Hoover and Hugh R. Wilson were members of the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS. Hugh R. Wilson was a member of SKULL & BONES at Yale University; Herbert Hoover was a member of the BOHEMIAN GROVE in California. (Austrian Archives/CORBIS)

Former President Herbert Hoover visits Nazi German serial killer Adolf Hitler in Berlin in 1938. Herbert Hoover was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Republican Party at the time this photo was taken. (CORBIS photo)

U.S. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles confers with Nazi German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Berlin. (Bettmann/CORBIS) Field Marshal Hermann Wilhelm Goering is shown exhibiting some of his treasured paintings in Berlin to Sumner Welles, the United States Undersecretary of State, on the occasion when the latter visited Berlin on his fact finding tour on March 19, 1940. Welles was Goering's guest at the Marshal's estate, Karinhall, outside Berlin. The Undersecretary is scheduled to sail from Italy tomorrow, bringing back to President Roosevelt, a complete report of his findings in war-torn Europe. Sumner Welles was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Bettmann/CORBIS)

This photo was published in David Rockefellers autobiography Memoirs.

U.S. Ambassador to Nazi Germany William E. Dodd (right) attends a meeting with Chief Nazi Propagandist Josef Goebbels in Berlin on March 14, 1934. William E. Dodd was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S. Army Major General Maxwell D. Taylor (right) appears with Nazi German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring (center) at Berchtesgaden, Germany in May 1945. Brigadier General Jerry Higgins is on the left. Maxwell D. Taylor was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps)

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson (left) visits Fascist Italys dictator Benito Mussolini in Rome in 1931.

Joseph C. Grew, the American Ambassador to Imperial Japan, praises Prime Minister of Japan Koki Hirota (third person on Grews right) at an America-Japan Society dinner. The fat naval officer at the extreme right is Admiral Mineo Osumi, Minister of the Navy. Joseph C. Grew was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Koki Hirota was convicted of war crimes at the Tokyo Trials in 1948.

Owen D. Young watches Emile Moreau (left),Governor of the Bank of France, shake hands with Hjalmar Schacht (right), President of the Reichsbank (Germanys central bank), in 1929 after they accepted the terms of the Young Plan. Hjalmar Schacht was tried in Nuremberg, Germany for war crimes and collaboration with the Nazis after World War II. Owen D. Young was the Chairman of the board of General Electric Company (1922-1939, 1942-1944), Deputy Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (19271937), Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1938-1940), Director of the Council on Foreign Relations (1927-1940), and Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation (1928-1939). (Photo: Owen D. Young: A New Type of Industrial Leader by Ida M. Tarbell)

Former Under Secretary of State George W. Ball (left) sits beside Nazi war criminal Albert Speer during an interview at Duke of Holsteins castle [Schloss Glucksberg] in Germany in March 1971. (Photo: The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs by George W. Ball, page 254)

Benito Mussolini (left), the Dictator of Fascist Italy, rides on a motorboat with Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson in Italy in January 1931. (Photo by New York Times Co./Getty Images)

Directors of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey John Kenneth Galbraith (left) and George W. Ball view a bust of Adolf Hitler at Bad Nauheim, Germany in May 1945. This photo appears in George W. Balls book The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs.

Left to right: U.S. President Herbert Hoover (left) appears with Fascist Italys Foreign Minister Dino Grandi (center), and U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson. (Source: Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson by Elting E. Morison)

U.S. Ambassador to West Germany David K.E. Bruce (standing second from left, next to Krupp) is seen hunting with convicted Nazi German war criminal and industrialist Alfried Krupp. Former High Commissioner to Germany John McCloy granted clemency to Alfried Krupp after Krupp was convicted at the Nuremberg trials. David K.E. Bruce and John McCloy were members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. Cicero, a Roman Senator, in 42 B.C.