Influential and well-connected New York think tank founded around 1920. Little known in the US until the publication in 1971 of The Naked Capitalist and None Dare Call It Conspiracy, of which up to 5 million copies were distributed. Still not very well known, but some well-attested connections are now known to include:

• the CFR was an offshoot of a British Secret Society that became known (among other things, presumably) as the Round Table Groups, started in the late 1890s as a result of the global vision and the seven wills of Cecil Rhodes, ably assisted by Lords Alfred Milner, Rothschild and Rosebery. (The third section below has a brief justification; the book The Cliveden Set has a fuller, more scholarly version of the story which carefully eschews any even partly successful global conspiracy explanation.)
• founded around the time of the Versailles Treaty by many of those involved in negotiations on the Anglo-American side, including Milner and "Colonel" House, the main adviser to President Wilson, with active support from Rockefeller and JP Morgan banking interests. (David Rockefeller is called Chairman or President or something very similar to this day.)
• sister organization of the Royal Institute Of International Affairs (Chatham House) and thus linked in the 30s into the upper-crust English Round Tablers of The Cliveden Set who, due to the daring of a single maverick journalist, became notorious for their appeasement, perhaps active encouragement of Adolf Hitler, much against their sensitive, publicity-shy natures
• learning quickly from their (putative or at least theoretically possible) mistakes in the area of relationship building and perhaps military-industrial complex building with Hitler, members of the CFR were instrumental in the US State Department committees during WWII that led to the formation of the United Nations
• all US presidential candidates of the two main parties between 1948 and 1972 apart from Barry Goldwater were members
• possibly more importantly, all US members of the Bilderberg Group steering committee from 1955 to 1971 were members

The connections of the surprisingly versatile global players of the CFR with oppressive Communist uprisings and regimes in Russia, China and elsewhere were a major feature of the None Dare Call It Conspiracy thesis. Events have happily overtaken some of those theories, to the great relief of many people in the Eastern block. Many in the Muslim world meantime were developing their Nazi-compatible conspiracy theories, with Zionist Jews controlling organisations like Bilderberg and the CFR, which in turn control the West. The irony being, if that word is strong enough, that the CFR and their associates in England were if anything key to the success of the Nazis in the 1930s, leading to mass extermination of the very same Jews, justified by Germans on the basis of a previous version of the very same theory.

In the West though, ignoring, exploring and exploding the connections are the three options worth considering.

The de facto standard for "respectable" journalists and academics from the 1920s to this day, if not for instant conspiracy pundits on the Internet. A notable recent exception in this regard is Professor Norman Rose's 2001 book The Cliveden Set, which nonetheless completely ignores any outgrowth of the Round Table in the US, suggesting perhaps through silence that its influence peaked with a failed and ultimately disgraced social circle in the thirties in England. Top flight professors who previously tried to write in a measured way about the wider influence of the CFR historically include

• Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton's favorite professor of history at the University Of Georgetown, whose massive 1966 tome Tragedy And Hope told the extraordinary, mainly approving story of his (claimed) insider view of the Round Table planning towards one world government but was, much to his disgust, picked up only by the radical right in America, who were extreme enough to disagree with the stated goal and even thought it important to say so
• AntonySutton, whose research career at the Hoover Institute was cut short in the eyes of the same radical right wingers because of his brilliantly detailed exposure of the links between CFR activists and their associates from 1917-45 with Lenin, Stalin, Roosevelt and Hitler. FDR has never been in such dubious company, since he had those drinking sessions with old Putsi, friend of both his and Adolf Hitler. Sutton's picture differs in significant ways from both Quigley's and the writers of None Dare Call It Conspiracy. When it does, it's worth going with Sutton's scholarship, in my own view.

At least on first sight the connections going back eighty years suggest that the full story of the CFR is worth attention not just from journalists but competent historians, able to bring a range of political opinions to the table (er, sorry). We should have a go at this in a measured way on Why, I am continuing to suggest. After all, one or two connections do not necessarily a conspiracy make.

The key thing to overcome here is the Painful Reality Gradient of being thought a crazy right wing conspiratorialist simply because one starts to take the role of the CFR and its counterparts just a tiny bit more seriously than one did before, at least more seriously than the next man, who has probably never even heard of them. Reasonably soothing words at this point from the astute and generally sceptical left wing Conspiracy Theory watcher Robin Ramsay may help to steel our resolve:

For noticing the significance of Quigley's book [the 1966 Tragedy And Hope], we owe thanks to the radical right. For Quigley is the starting point for the examination of the influence of elite groups oin Anglo-American-European history. The sequence of events is this. In the beginning (1908-1920) Cecil Rhodes's money created the Round Table Groups in the British Commonwealth, the Royal Institute Of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) in the US, and the various branches of the Institute of Pacific Affairs. Quigley does not actually provide the evidence for these claims but even a casual skim through the conventional literature on the period shows that these claims are basically correct. -- p46-7, Conspiracy Theories (emphasis added)

Professor Quigley gets only a very brief and very dismissive reference from Rose in The Cliveden Set. It is worth noting that Quigley did as Ramsay says get some important, basic facts right about the formation of the CFR and its various counterparts right in 1966, facts that thirty five years later a University Of Jerusalem scholar (one of a very small handful of historians of note who have dared to go near the subject since) saw fit to confirm, though staying carefully on the English mainland and only painting his portrait up to 1939.

We also need to do this in a controlled way on Why. Some of the bogus connections being made (for example that the CFR is today controlled completely by Jews or by freemasons) do need to be exploded. And fast, given what happened from believers of such theories on September 11th. The best way to do this though is not by ignoring the real connections, whether in history or today, but by thoroughly investigating and carefully reporting on them.