Business Advisory Council

Whatever the importance of the CED as an educational and research organization, the Business Advisory Council is “the� organization of the internationally minded wing of the American business aristocracy. Accord¬ing to Smoot, 41 of 120 past and present BAG members are also members of the CFR. From its formation in 1933 by financier Sidney Weinberg until its withdrawal in 1961, the BAG functioned in a semi-official advisory capacity to the Department of Commerce. The phrase “semi-official� must be used because very little is known about its status or its functions. There is available no administrative order or ruling formally establishing it or delineating its functions. In 1955-1956, a House committee was denied access to its files. No minutes are taken at its meetings and reporters are barred. The group holds six meetings a year, four one-day meetings in Washington and two longer meetings at such resorts as White Sulphur Springs, Virginia, and Sea Island, Georgia. After a tiff with the Kennedy Administration, which Kennedy later did everything possible to patch up, the BAG changed its name to Business Council (BC) and offered its con¬sultative services to any governmental agency that wished them.* Its influence was at its height during the Eisenhower Administration when several of its members were tapped for government service. According to Rowen, the BC may have triggered the squelch of McCarthy that had been smoldering in many upper-class minds. The incident which triggered Mc¬Carthy’s censure, according to this version, was his high-handed treatment of yet another member of the power elite, corporate leader Robert T. Stevens of Andover, Yale, J. P. Stevens & Company, General Electric, and Morgan Guaranty Trust. He was serving as Secretary of the Army when embarrassed by McCarthy on nationwide television:

During the May 1954 meeting at Homestead, Stevens flew down from Washing¬ton for a weekend reprieve from his televised torture. A special delegation of BAG officials made it a point to journey from the hotel to the mountaintop air¬port to greet Stevens. He was escorted into the lobby like a conquering hero.

Then, publicly, one member of the BAG after another roasted the Eisenhower Administration for its McCarthy-appeasement policy. The BAG’s attitude gave the Administration some courage and shortly thereafter former Senator Ralph Flanders (a Republican and BAG member) introduced a Senate resolution call¬ing for censure.7