The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline

270 Pages·1988·19.83 MB·English

by  James Perloff

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The Council on Foreign Relations
And The American Decline
by
James Perloff
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PUBLISHERS
APPLETON, WISCONSIN
First printing, October 1988 10,000copies
Second printing, March 1989 5,000 copies
Third printing, June 1989 5,000 copies
Fourth printing, November 1989 25,000copies
Fifth printing, June 1990 15,000copies
Copyright © 1988 by James Perl off
All rights reserved
Published by
Western Islands
Post Office Box 8040
Appleton, Wisconsin 54913
414-749-3783
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
ISBN: 0-88279-134-6
Contents
Foreword vii
Chapter 1 A Primer On The CFR .3
Chapter 2 Background To The Beginning. 19
Chapter 3 The Council's Birth And Early
Links To Totalitarianism 36
Chapter 4 The CFR And FDR . 53
Chapter 5 A Global War With Global Ends . 64
Chapter 6 The Truman Era . 81
Chapter 7 Between Limited Wars .101
Chapter 8 The Establishment's War In Vietnam .120
Chapter 9 The Unknown Nixon . . 141
Chapter 10 Carter And Trilateralism .154
.167
Chapter 11 A Second Look At Ronald Reagan
Chapter 12 The Media Blackout .178
. 191
Chapter 13 The CFR Today ...
Chapter 14 On The Threshold Of A New
World Order? . . 199
.210
Chapter 15 Solutions And Hope.
Footnotes .223
Index .239
Acknowledgements . . 253
Foreword
There is goodnews and there is bad news. The goodnews is, this
bookhas been written. The bad news is, it's true.
Certain peo~lein high places are going to dispute the validity of
this book, they will probably try to discredit it, because they have
a vested interest in concealing their activities and agenda.
But I encourage anyone whoreads The Shadows of Power tonote
its painstaking documentation. This is no opinion piece; it is an
assembly ofhard facts that state their own conclusions.
Youcan check information in this bookagainst its sources, which
are noted. Onething Ifindinteresting is that its revelations are not
new. They have always been available - but available like a news
story that istucked under a small headline onpage 183ofa Sunday
newspaper. Anyone who goes to a fair-sized library can probably
find copies - however dusty - ofAdmiral Theobald's The Final
Secret of Pearl Harbor, or Colin Simpson's The Lusitania, orFrom
Major Jordan's Diaries. John Toland's epic Infamy is on bookstore
shelves today. And though it may mean microfilm, you can obtain
access to the old Congressional Record. Lots ofpowerful stories are
buried there, and I mean buried, because the mass media ignored
them.
The bookis especially unique because it not only describes scores
ofunderreported events, but elucidates them by showingtheir com
mon thread: the influence ofthe internationalist Establishment of
the United States. If the Establishment is elusive in its identity, it
certainly has a perceptible faceinthe Council onForeign Relations,
and that is what the author has centered on.
VII
THE SHADOWS OFPOWER
This is not just a book about an organization. It is a book about
history. You might call it "the other side ofAmerican history from
Wilsonon"because it tells the "other side"ofmany stories that even
the self-proclaimed inside information specialists, such as Jack An
derson and BobWoodward, didn't or wouldn't report.
Ithas been saidthat those who do not know thepast arecondemned
to repeat it. But how can we truly understand an incident in our
American past if we are confined to the headline version, designed
forpublic consumption inthe interest ofprotecting the powerful and
the few? The Shadows of Power has resurrected eight decades of
censored material. Don't let anyone censor it for younow.Read the
book and decide for yourself its merit. Your outlook, and perhaps
your future itself, will never be the same.
James E. Jeffries
United States Congressman (Ret.)
Vlll
THE SHADOWS OF POWER
Chapter 1
A Primer On The CFR
Speaking beforeBritain's House ofLords in 1770,Sir William Pitt
declared: "There is something behind the throne greater than the
king himself," thus giving birth to the phrase "power behind the
throne."
In 1844, Benjamin Disraeli, England's famed statesman, pub
lished a novel entitled Coningsby, or the New Generation. It was
well known as a thinly disguised portrayal ofhis political contem-\
poraries. In it, he wrote: "[T]heworld is governed by very different
personages from what is imagined bythose who are not behind the
scenes."
FelixFrankfurter, justice ofthe U.S.Supreme Court, restated this
inanAmerican context when he said:"Thereal rulers inWashington
are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."l
Frankfurter was not alone in that assessment. During this cen
tury, the existence ofa secret U.s. power clique has been acknowl
edged, however rarely, by prominent Americans.
OnMarch 26,1922, John F. Hylan, Mayor ofNewYorkCity, said
in a speech:
The real menace ofourrepublic isthe invisiblegovernment which,
like agiant octopus, sprawls its slimy length overour city, state and
nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses generally
referred to as "international bankers." This little coterie ofpowerful
international bankers virtually run our government for their own
selfish ends."
3