The 19th meeting of the Arden House Group, which ended May 7, 1961, was typical of all others, in that it was planned and conducted by members of the Council on Foreign Relations–and concluded with recommendations concerning American policy, which, if followed, would best serve the ends of the Kremlin.
This 1961 Arden House meeting dealt with the problem of disarmament. Henry M. Wriston (President of American Assembly and Director of the Council on Foreign Relations) presided over the three major discussion groups–each group, in turn, was under the chairmanship of a member of the Council: Raymond J. Sontag of the University of California; Milton Katz, Director of International Legal Studies at Harvard; and Dr. Philip E. Mosely, Director of Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations.
John J. McCloy (a member of the CFR) as President Kennedy's Director of Disarmament, sent three subordinates to participate. Two of the three (Edmund A. Gullion, Deputy Director of the Disarmament Administration; and Shepard Stone, a Ford Foundation official) are members of the CFR.
Here are two major recommendations which the May, 1961, American Assembly meeting made:
(1) that the United States avoid weapons and measures which might give "undue provocation" to the Soviets, and which might reduce the likelihood of disarmament agreements;
(2) that the United States strengthen its conventional military forces for participation in "limited wars" but avoid building up an ordnance of nuclear weapons.
We cannot match the communist nations in manpower or "conventional military forces" and should not try. Our only hope is to keep our military manpower in reserve, and uncommitted, in the United States, while building an overwhelming superiority in nuclear weapons. When we "strengthen our conventional forces for participation in limited wars," we are leaving the Soviets with the initiative to say when and where those wars will be fought; and we are committing ourselves to fight with the kind of forces in which the Soviets will inevitably have superiority. More than that, we are consuming so much of our economic resources that we do not have enough left for weaponry of the kind that would defend our homeland.
AMERICANS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION
The ADA was founded in April, 1947, at a meeting in the old Willard Hotel, Washington, D. C. Members of the Council on Foreign Relations dominated this meeting–and have dominated the ADA ever since.
Here are members of the Council on Foreign Relations who are, or were, top officials in Americans For Democratic Action: Francis Biddle, Chester Bowles, Marquis Childs, Elmer Davis, William H. Davis, David Dubinsky, Thomas K. Finletter, John Kenneth Galbraith, Palmer Hoyt, Hubert H. Humphrey, Jacob K. Javits, Herbert H. Lehman, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Here are some of the policies which the ADA openly and vigorously advocated in 1961: