The Council on Foreign Relations

5-15-25

Excerpted from my book Big Oil & Their Bankers: Chapter 3: The House of Saud & JP Morgan.

In 1919 Rothschild’s Business Roundtable launched the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in London. The RIIA soon spawned sister organizations around the globe, including the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Asian Institute of Pacific Relations, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Brussels-based Institute des Relations Internationales, the Danish Foreign Policy Society, the Indian Council of World Affairs and the Australian Institute of International Affairs. [1] Other affiliates popped up in France, Turkey, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece.

The RIIA is a registered charity of the Queen and, according to its annual reports, is funded largely by the oil oligopoly which I have dubbed the Four Horsemen - Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco Phillips, BP Amoco ARCO and Royal Dutch/Shell Pennzoil.

Former British Foreign Secretary and Kissinger Associates co-founder Lord Carrington is President of both the RIIA and the Bilderbergers. [2]

The inner circle at RIIA is dominated by Knights of St. John Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, Knights Templar and 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemasons.

The Knights of St. John were founded in 1070 and answer directly to the British House of Windsor. The Catholic Knights of Malta, who answer to the Vatican, retreated to Malta after their bruising Crusades defeat and turned that Mediterranean island into a nexus for drugs/guns/oil smuggling.

The Knights Templar invented insurance, the bond market and the concept of credit cards as they shuttled pilgrims to and fro’ the Middle East during the Crusades. They founded Temple Bar in the center of the City of London, which serves as global administer of British Maritime Law - very quietly the law of the land in many nations, including the US, where if you take an oath in a courtroom adorned with gold fringed American flag, you are bound not by the US Constitution, but by British Maritime Law.

Freemasons are largely unaware underling agents of the British Empire, who sponsor children’s hospitals, put on circuses and appear in all parades. They serve as a ruse for the City of London’s global domination of the “colonies”.

On this side of the pond, the City’s domination over US foreign policy and the State Department is exerted via the Council on Foreign Relations.

Bechtel/Chevron board member and former Reagan Defense Secretary George Pratt Schultz was a long-time current director at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The CFR was created in 1922 and is headquartered in Harold Pratt House in New York City. The building was donated by Pratt’s widow, whose husband made his fortune as a partner in John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company.

Schulz is a relative of Mrs. Harold Pratt and replaced CFR member Alexander Haig to become Reagan’s Secretary of State. The CFR is the US affiliate of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in London. Both foreign policy think tanks are loaded with powerful leaders of industry, academia and government.

They hold an enormous amount of sway over US and British foreign policies, providing the glue for the so-called “special relationship” between the US and Britain, whereby the Hessianized US mercenary colony pays for and fights the wars which the City of London both desires and profits from.

CFR publishes Foreign Affairs, a bi-monthly journal on the global political landscape, which is considered by many in the State Department as a kind of “how-to” guide for conducting foreign policy.

Founding members of CFR included brothers John Foster and Allen Dulles, columnist Walter Lippman, former Secretary of State Elihu Root and Colonel Edward Mandell House, who as adviser to President Woodrow Wilson pushed through the Federal Reserve Act, creating a private US central bank owned by a few wealthy banking families.

In 1912, one year before the Federal Reserve was created, House wrote Philip Dru: Administrator. The book describes a conspiracy within the United States bent on establishing a central bank, a graduated income tax and control of both political parties.

Past funding for CFR has come from international financiers David Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Bernard Baruch, Jacob Schiff, Otto Kahn and Paul Warburg. International banks Kuhn Loeb, Lazard Freres, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs - whose directorates interlock and whose families have interbred - heavily influence CFR proceedings. [3]

CFR members are sworn to secrecy regarding goals and operations. But Admiral Chester Ward, a longtime CFR member, let slip that the goal of the group is, “to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States...Primarily, they want a world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government.”

CFR members have dominated every Administration since FDR and most Presidential candidates come from its ranks. Adlai Stevenson, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr. and Al Gore are all CFR alumni.

David Rockefeller served as CFR Chairman for some time, giving way to fellow Chase Manhattan chairman/ARAMCO attorney John McCloy.

Nearly every CIA Director since Allen Dulles has been a CFR member. These include Richard Helms, William Colby, George Bush Sr., Bill Casey, William Webster, James Woolsey, John Deutsch and Robert Gates. Interestingly, current Obama Administration CIA Director Leon Panetta is not a CFR member.

CFR’s Foreign Affairs consistently advocates US military intervention and is the most widely read periodical at the US State Department. According to both former Deputy Director of the CIA Victor Marchetti and former State Department analyst John Marks, the CFR is the principal constituency of the CIA, since the elite who run the CFR are the ones who own the overseas assets which the CIA and the US military work to guard. [4]

It is through the CFR that the international bankers and the global intelligence community mingle. The bankers and the spooks share a common goal of keeping the world safe for global monopoly capitalism and often intelligence operatives are recruited from the banking houses where their loyalties to the banking elite have been thoroughly tested. OSS founding father William “Wild Bill” Donovan had been an agent for JP Morgan.

The revolving door between banking and intelligence swings the other way as well. The very best CIA, Mossad and MI6 agents are recruited to become better paid private spooks for multinational corporate and banking empires as documented in Jim Hougan’s Spooks: The Haunting of America - Private Use of Secret Agents. As author Donald Gibson wrote, “By the early 1960’s the CFR, Morgan and Rockefeller interests, and the intelligence community were so extensively inbred as to be virtually one entity.”[5]

The CFR is also the primary incubator for Presidential cabinet positions. The Nixon Administration had 115 CFR members, while the Clinton Administration included over 100 CFR alumni. They included CFR President Peter Tarnoff, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, Vice-President Al Gore, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and his successor William Cohen, Secretary of Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, CIA Director James Woolsey, Colin Powell, Tim Wirth, Winston Lord, Laura Tyson, George Stephanopoulos and Samuel Lewis.

In the fall of 1998 as impeachment loomed over Clinton, the President rushed to New York to try and muster support from his CFR “handlers”. As publisher John F. McManus stated, “Bill Clinton knows well that he serves as President because the members of the ‘secret society’ to which he belongs chose him and expect him to carry out its plans.”

Current co-chairs at CFR are Carla Hills - Bush Sr. trade representative who was the chief negotiator of NAFTA and other key WTO machinations - and Robert Rubin - former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Citigroup chairman.

Other current board members include Madeleine Albright, Tom Brokaw, General John Abizaid, Fareed Zakaria, Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker, Blackstone Group insider J. Tomlinson Hill, Caterpillar chair James W. Owens and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein. [6]

[1] Fourth Reich of the Rich. Des Griffin. Emissary Publications. Pasadena, CA. 1978. p.77

[2] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. 1994. p.195

[3] The Rockefeller File. Gary Allen. ’76 Press. Seal Beach, CA. 1977. p.75

[4] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. Harper-Collins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.36

[5] Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency. Donald Gibson. Sheridan Square Press. New York. 1994. p.133

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations#Board_of_directors

Dean Henderson is the author of seven books, including, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, Illuminati Agenda 21, Nephilim Crown 5G Apocalypse and Royal Bloodline Wetiko & The Great Remembering. Subscribe free to his Left Hook column at deanhenderson.substack.com