Jim Marrs - Rule by Secrecy - The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freema

meetings where prominent thinkers and leaders from around The world address council members and council study groups that periodically present position papers on subjects of interest.

The Council also offers a Corporation Service, through which subscribing companies are provided twice-a-year dinner briefings by government officials such as the treasury secretary or CIA director. Noted author John Kenneth Galbraith, who resigned from the CFR in 1970 "out of boredom," called such off-the-record talks a "scandal." "Why should businessmen be briefed by Government officials on information not available to the public, especially since it can be financially advantageous?" he reasoned.

Author G. Edward Griffin agreed that initially the CFR, as a front for the British Round Table group, was dominated by the J. P. Morgan family. "The Morgan group gradually has been replaced by the Rockefeller consortium, and the roll call of participating businesses now reads like the Fortune 500," he wrote in 1994.

One example of Rockefeller domination of the CFR came in the early 1970s when David Rockefeller went over the heads of a nominating committee and offered the editorship of Foreign Affairs to William Bundy, a former CIA official instrumental in prosecuting the Vietnam War. Demonstrating how every U.S. government administration since the Council's inception has been packed with CFR members, conservative journalist and CFR researcher James Perloff noted, "The historical record speaks even more loudly.... Through 1988, 14 secretaries of state, 14 treasury secretaries, 11 defense secretaries and scores of other federal department heads have been CFR members."

Nearly every CIA director since Allen Dulles has been a CFR member, including Richard Helms, William Colby, George Bush, William Webster, James Woolsey, John Deutsch, and William Casey. "Many of the council's members have a personal financial interest in foreign relations," noted researcher Laurie Strand, "because it is their property and investments that are guarded hy the State Department and the military [and the CIA]."

Many researchers have alleged that the CIA, in fact, serves as a security force, not only for corporate America, but for friends, relatives, and fraternity brothers of the CFR. This may be a two-way street. According to a former executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA Victor Marchetti along with former State Department analyst John D. Marks, "The influen-