The C.F.R. was born in 1919, behind the scenes at the time of the Treaty of Versailles, after long discussions between Edward Mendell House, who was the eminence grise of President Woodrow Wilson, and a dozen diplomats and secretaries acquired on the principles of Fabian socialism. A socialism as we have seen, open to all kinds of interpretation, but which preferred a revolution “from the top” to a revolution in the street. One objective existed and remains, a century later, to successfully unite capitalism and socialism.

From 1921-1922 on, the C.F.R. was established at Pratt House in New York. Since 1922 the quarterly “Foreign Affairs” has been its main review.
If it only numbered a few hundred members before 1939 - about 650, all academics, high-ranking civil servants, bankers, journalists, economists - their working parties assisted Franklin D. Roosevelt, along with his close associates and members of the CFR: Bernard Baruch, John D. Rockefeller, one of the Morgans, Paul Warburg, shortly afterwards Averell Harriman and several directors of Kuhn & Loeb, General Motors etc. ...

In 1941 President Roosevelt considers the advice and work of the CFR to be of such importance that he decides to adopt their frameworks for the government ministries and institutions. Since then right up to this day, no secretary has been appointed to the State Department, Defence, the Treasury, International Commerce and later to be in charge of the CIA (born in 1947) without him having been or being a member of the CFR. Meanwhile the CFR has proliferated. In 1980, it numbered 2,700 initiated.

In 2003, it has reached about 4,000 members. That gives some idea of their influence, since all are present in Ministries, the boards of multinationals, the mass media, the Analytical and Research Institutes, and that certain ones, regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in power, cross the political divides, unaffected by the consequences of elections.

In other words, the CFR is a State within the State with, at its head, a dozen “officers”(sic) which head as many Study Commissions themselves or through about twenty of their seconds in command, called “directors”.