Mr. Cowles was modest. He gave only a hint of the total extent to which the mass-communication media have become a controlled propaganda network for the Council on Foreign Relations and its inter-connecting agencies.
I doubt that anyone really knows the full extent. My research reveals a few of the CFR members who have (or have had) controlling, or extremely influential, positions in the publishing and broadcasting industries. My list of CFR members in this field is far from complete; and I have not tried to compile a list of the thousands of people who are not members of the CFR, but who are members of CED, FPA, or of some other CFR affiliate–and who also control important channels of public communications.
Hence, the following list–of Council on Foreign Relations members whom I know to be influential in the communications industries–is intended to be indicative, rather than comprehensive and informative:
Herbert Agar (former Editor, Louisville Courier-Journal)
Hanson W. Baldwin (Military Affairs Editor, New York Times)
Joseph Barnes (Editor-in-Chief, Simon & Schuster, Publishers)
Elliott V. Bell (Chairman of Executive Committee, McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.; Publisher and Editor of Business Week)
John Mason Brown (Editor, Saturday Review of Literature, drama critic, author)
Cass Canfield (Chairman of the Editorial Board of Harper & Brothers, Publishers)
Marquis Childs (author, syndicated columnist)
Norman Cousins (Editor-in-Chief, Saturday Review of Literature)
Gardner Cowles, quoted above from the 1957 CED Annual Report, and John Cowles (They occupy controlling offices in Cowles Magazine Company, which owns such publications as Look, Minneapolis Star and Tribune, and Des Moines Register and Tribune, and which also owns a broadcasting company.)
Mark Ethridge (Publisher, Louisville Courier-Journal, Louisville Times)
George Gallup (public opinion analyst, Gallup Poll; President, National Municipal League)
Philip Graham (Publisher, Washington Post and Times Herald)
Allen Grover (Vice President of Time, Inc.)
Joseph C. Harsch (of The Christian Science Monitor)
August Heckscher (Editor, New York Herald Tribune)
Palmer Hoyt (Publisher, Denver Post)
David Lawrence (President and Editor-in-Chief, U. S. News and World Report)
Hal Lehrman (Editor, New York Post)
Irving Levine (NBC news official and commentator)
Walter Lippmann (author, syndicated columnist)
Henry R. Luce (Publisher, Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated)
Malcolm Muir (Chairman of the Board and Editor-in-Chief, Newsweek)
William S. Paley (Chairman of the Board, Columbia Broadcasting System)
Ogden Reid (former Chairman of the Board, New York Herald Tribune)
Whitelaw Reid (former Editor-in-Chief, New York Herald Tribune)
James B. Reston (Editorial writer, New York Times)
Elmo Roper (public opinion analyst, Roper Poll)
David Sarnoff (Chairman of the Board, Radio Corporation of America–NBC, RCA Victor, etc.)
Harry Scherman (founder and Chairman of the Board, Book-of-the-Month Club)
William L. Shirer (author, news commentator)
Paul C. Smith (President and Editor-in-Chief, Crowell-Collier Publishing Company)
Leland Stone (head of News Reporting for Radio Free Europe, Chicago Daily News foreign correspondent)
Robert Kenneth Straus (former research director for F. D. Roosevelt's Council of Economic Advisers; owner and publisher of the San Fernando, California, Sun; largest stockholder and member of Board of Orange Coast Publishing Company, which publishes the Daily Globe-Herald of Costa Mesa, the Pilot and other small newspapers in California; member of group which owns and publishes American Heritage and Horizon magazines; Treasurer and Director of Industrial Publishing Company of Cleveland, which publishes trade magazines)
Arthur Hayes Sulzberger (Chairman of the Board, New York Times)
C. L. Sulzberger (Editorial writer, New York Times)
I do not mean to imply that all of these people are controlled by the Council on Foreign Relations, or that they uniformly support the total program of international socialism which the Council wants. The Council does not own its members: it merely has varying degrees of influence on each.
For example, former President Herbert Hoover, a member of the Council, has fought eloquently against many basic policies which the Council supports. Spruille Braden is another.
Mr. Braden formerly held several important ambassadorial posts and at one time was Assistant Secretary of State in charge of American Republic Affairs. In recent years, Mr. Braden has given leadership to many patriotic organizations and efforts, such as For America and The John Birch Society; and, in testimony before various committees of Congress, he has given much valuable information about communist influences in the State Department.
Mr. Braden joined the Council on Foreign Relations in the late 1920's or early 30's, when membership in the Council was a fashionable badge of respectability, helpful to the careers of young men in the foreign service, in the same way that membership in expensive country clubs and similar organizations is considered helpful to the careers of young business executives.
Men who know Braden well say that he stayed in the Council after he came to realize its responsibility for the policies of disaster which our nation has followed in the postwar era–hoping to exert some pro-American influence inside the Council.
It apparently was a frustrated hope. There is a story in well-informed New York circles about the last time the Council on Foreign Relations ever called on Spruille Braden to participate in an important activity. Braden was asked to preside over a Council on Foreign Relations meeting when the featured speaker was Herbert Matthews (member of the New York Times editorial board) whose support of communist Castro in Cuba is notorious. It is said that the anti-communist viewpoint which Braden tried to inject into this meeting will rather well guarantee against his ever being asked to officiate at another CFR affair.