Legacy system at the Council on Foreign Relations?

Legacy system at the Council on Foreign Relations?
By Laurie Bennett
January 8, 2013 at 10:20am
Conspiracy theorists tend to regard the Council on Foreign Relations as an elite cabal on the order of the Yale secret society, Skull and Bones.

They might better consider CFR as an elite intellectual institution on the order of the Ivy League.


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The council, like many top colleges, has an application process that appears to consider not only brains, achievement and promise, but family connections.

Admitting relatives is a long tradition at the CFR, beginning and continuing with the Rockefellers.


John D. Rockefeller Jr.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. provided early funding for the organization, which launched in 1921, after the post-WWI peace negotiations. His son, David Rockefeller, chaired the board for 36 years. David Rockefeller and his son, David Jr., are current members.

The Rockefellers, with their ties to other organizations such as Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, no doubt fan the flames of New World Order conspiracies.

But they’re certainly not the only family with multiple CFR memberships.

Others include the Brzezinskis, the Kerrys, the Clintons, the Lauders and the Soroses.
Family connections are shown in the above Muckety map, which is more easily viewed in the large version.

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The council hasn’t yet responded to our query about whether it has a legacy system. We’ll update this post when it does.

The CFR application process, outlined on its web site, calls for nomination by a member, seconded by at least three others. Members cannot nominate or second their relatives, but the restriction doesn’t apply to family friends.

When we matched the CFR’s membership rolls of almost 4,700 people with our list of major U.S. influencers, we found 114 members with relatives who are also current members. (No doubt there are others, outside the Muckety database.)

Here they are:

C. Spencer Abbot
Laura W. Abbot
Steve Abbot
Elliot Ackerman
Peter Ackerman
Alice P. Albright
Madeleine K. Albright
Zoe Baird
Robert L. Bernstein
Tom A. Bernstein
Antony Blinken
Donald M. Blinken
Michael R. Bloomberg
Richard C. Blum
Avis T. Bohlen

Mika Brzezinski
Edgar Bronfman Jr.
Edgar M. Bronfman
Mark Brzezinski
Mika Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski
William D. Budinger
David Calleo
Angela Chao
Elaine L. Chao
Chelsea V. Clinton
William J. Clinton
Stephen F. Cohen
Joan Ganz Cooney
Council on Foreign Relations
Jack David
Barbara Knowles Debs
Richard A. Debs
John B. Emerson
Kimberly Marteau Emerson
Jason Epstein
Dianne Feinstein

Chelsea Clinton
James K. Galbraith
Peter W. Galbraith
Peter F. Geithner
Timothy F. Geithner
Elliot F. Gerson
Jane C. Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
David Greenberg
Alan Greenspan
David A. Hamburg
Margaret A. Hamburg
Kerry Healey
Sean M. Healey
Jessica Herzstein
John B. Hess
Marlene Hess
Amory Houghton Jr.
James R. Houghton
Robert E. Hunter
Shireen T. Hunter
Maxine Isaacs
James A. Johnson
Bernard Kalb
Marvin Kalb
Cameron F. Kerry
John F. Kerry
Teresa Heinz Kerry
Vanessa Kerry
Melanie M. Kirkpatrick
Henry R. Kravis
Marie-Josee Kravis
Leonard A. Lauder
Ronald S. Lauder
William P. Lauder
Bette Bao Lord
Winston Bao Lord
Douglas E. Lute
Jane H. Lute
Craig O. McCaw
Susan R. McCaw
Judith Miller
Andrea Mitchell
Alexandra Munroe
Eli M. Noam
Suzanne Nossel
Alan J. Patricof
Susan Patricof
Barbara Perlmutter
Louis Perlmutter
Holly Peterson
Michael A. Peterson
Peter G. Peterson
Charles O. Prince III
Charles O. Prince IV
Steven L. Rattner
David Rockefeller Jr.
David Rockefeller
Daniel Rose
Gideon Rose
Robert Rosenkranz
Evan Ryan
George Soros
Jonathan Soros
Paul Soros
Nadine Strossen
Andrew H. Tisch
James S. Tisch
Marjorie B. Tiven
Katrina vanden Heuvel
William J. vanden Heuvel
Susan Roosevelt Weld
William F. Weld
David Westin
Sherrie Rollins Westin
Maureen White
Carolyn S. Wiener
Malcolm H. Wiener
James D. Zirin