In his speech inaugurating the Center for Inter-American Relations, Inc. (CIR), 18 September 1967, Hubert H. Humphrey admonished his blue-ribbon audience: “…you will face the temptation to deal chiefly with established institutions….you must bear in mind that what appears to be an establishment may only be the temporary pinnacle of an established disorder.” The temptation must be quite strong for the CIR members and directors, themselves of the established U.S. institutions which have an interest in foreign policy in general and Latin American policy in particular.
Formed as a tax-exempt membership corporation, the CIR was “designed to meet two critical needs: more effective communication among those concerned with the process of political, economic and social development in the Hemisphere; and greater awareness in the United States of the artistic traditions and cultural accomplishments of Latin America, the Caribbean area and Canada.” Although the membership list is not public at this time, this writer was told that the core of the approximately 110 members are from the Council on Foreign Relations, located across the street on the corner of 68th Street and Park Avenue. Membership is by invitation only, with dues of $200 for businessmen and professionals in the New York area and $50 for academicians.
The cultural activities, art shows, music recitals, and films and lectures are to be public, while the policy discussions are restricted to members and their guests. One of the first of such policy seminars is to be a discussion of guerrilla activity in Latin America, featuring an opening presentation by Venezuela’s U.S. ambassador and former director of Caracas’ Industrial Bank, Enrique Tejera Paris. Among the first monographs published by the CIR will be a study of Latin American political thought compiled by former Dartmouth Latin Americanist and current staff member of the Ford Foundation in New York, Nalman Silvert.
Besides David Rockefeller, President and Executive Committee Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and Chairman of Chase International Investment Corp., who is CIR’s Board chairman, the officers include:
William D. Rogers (President), partner of the prestigious Washington law firm Arnold and Porter, former Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID and Deputy U.S. Coordinator of the Alliance for Progress (’63-’65);
William H. MacLeish (Executive Director), Director of Cornell’s Latin America Year (’65-’66) and senior editor of VISION magazine;
Francis E. Grimes (Treasurer), special agent for the FBI (’39-’46) and Vice resident of Chase Manhattan Bank since 1946;
Forest D. Murden, Jr. (Secretary), former public relations director for Ford Motor Co., Ford International (57-‘9), government relations counselor to Standard Oil Co., N.J. (’59-161) and partner of the international public relations firm of Allen and Iiurden, NYC.
CIR’s Board of Directors reads like a Who’s Who in the U.S. international banking, industrial, labor, cultural and Council of Foreign Relations elite and includes among its 20
members:
Charles W. Cole, President of Amherst (49-’60), Vice President Rockefeller Foundation (’60-’61), U.S. Ambassador to Chile (’61-’64), lecturer at the Army and Navy Schools of Military Government and Administration (43-144);
Rene d’Harnoncourt, Director, Museum of modern Art;
Leonard H. Goldenson, President and Director of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters, Inc., since 1953;
Lincoln Gordon, Rhodes Scholar, Harvard professor (’36-’41), government economic advisor, U.S. Ambassador to Brazil (’61-’66), Ass’t Sec’y of State for Inter-American Affairs (’66-’67), and currently President of Johns Hopkins University;
Andrew Heiskell, Chairman of Time, Inc. since 1960;
Edgar F. Kaiser, Chairman and Director of the Kaiser Steel, Aluminum, Cement and Gypsum Corp’ns, Chairman of the Board of Willys-Overland do Brasil, S.A., a Director of the Bank of America and Industrias Kaiser, Argentina, S.A., and a member of the President’s Missile Sites Labor Commission;
Archibald MacLeish, Pulitzer Prize poet and Ass t t Sec’y of State (44-’45);
Thomas C. Mann, Texas lawyer, former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador (55-’57) and Mexico (’61-’63), Ass’t Sec’y of State for Inter-Amer. Affairs (60-’61 ’64), currently President of the Automobile Manufacturers Association;
George Meany, former apprentice plumber, President of the AFL-CIO since 1955 and member of the National War Labor Board since 1942;
George S. Moore, President of the First National City Bank of New York, a director of United Aircraft, Northern Pacific Railway, Borg Warner Corp., Union Pacific Railroad Co., and member of the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Council of the International Chamber of Commerce;
James A. Perkins, President of Cornell since 1963, trustee of the RAND Corp. since 1961, member of the President’s panel of consultants on foreign policy, Secretary of the Carnegie Foundation, Trustee of the Institute for Defense Analysis (58-t61);
David S. Smith, Asstt Sec’y of the Air Force (54-t59), Coordinator of Internat’l Studies at Columbia Univ. since 1960, and a drctr. of the Fedn. of Protestant Welfare Agencies, Inc
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger,’President and Publisher of the New York Times since 1951;
Rawleiih Warner, Jr., President Socony Mobil Oil Company; and
John R. Ihite, employed by Standard Cil of Venezuela and its successor firm Creole Petroleum Corp., Venezuela, S.A. (’38-t44) and Vice-Pres. Standard Oil Co. of N.J. since 1962.
Sharing the CIR’s six story town house (formerly seat of the USSR Mission to the UN, saved from demolition and donated to the CIR by David Rockefeller’s cousin, the Chilean Marquesa de Cuevas) is the Council on Latin America, Inc. (CLA), which occupies the top floor. According to their brochure, the CLA, “a non-profit organization serving 180 U.S. companies, is the chief spokesman for U.S. business operating in Latin unerica …. CLA was formed in early 1965 by the merger of the Business Group for Latin America, the U.S. Inter-American Council and the Latin American Information Committee…” (a list of the member companies appears below).
Though both CLR and CLA have the same chairman, David Rockefeller, and share the same building, this writer was assured by a C staff member that “there is no link between the purposes and operations of the two organizations.”
