Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization founded in 1921 and based at 58 East 68th Street (at Park Avenue) in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. Some international journalists and American paleoconservatives believe it to be the most powerful private organization to influence United States foreign policy. It publishes the bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs. It has an extensive website, featuring links to its think tank, The David Rockefeller Studies Program, other programs and projects, publications, history, biographies of notable directors and other board members, corporate members, and press releases.

The Council has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, as shown in the 2007 documentary Zeitgeist, the Movie. This is partly due to the number of high-ranking government officials in its membership, among with world business leaders, its secrecy clauses, and the large number of aspects of American foreign policy that its members have been involved with, beginning with Wilson's Fourteen Points. The John Birch Society believes that the CFR plans a one-world government.[39] Wilson's Fourteen Points speech was the first in which he suggested a worldwide security organization to prevent future world wars.

For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

—David Rockefeller, "Memoirs" autobiography (2002, Random House publishers), page 405
Historian Carroll Quigley included the CFR in his discussion of the Anglo-American Establishment's efforts to shape international developments during the 20th century. His book "Tragedy and Hope" was cited by conspiracy theorists as showing that the CFR was engaged in a conspiracy against American interests, though Quigley himself denied this.

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