In 2008 Rubin continued his role as a senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidates, this time helping Barack H. Obama. Varied news reports place Rubin as one of Obama’s main behind-the-scenes economic advisers. Rubin also recommended a number of his protégés, such as Lawrence H. Summers and Timothy F. Geithner, both members of the CFR, as well as Jason Furman of the Brookings Institution, for high political offices in his administration. Politico writer Eamon Javers stated that “behind the scenes, Rubin still wields enormous influence in Barack Obama’s Washington, chatting regularly with a legion of former employees who dominate the ranks of the … administration’s policy team.”71 He has been a director of Ford, and is a member of the Harvard Corporation, the governing body of this leading university and the oldest corporation in the United States. His views on class issues were illustrated in a 2011 interview, when Rubin defined “class warfare” as existing only when one used “inflammatory language,” not when government policies are enacted that favor the rich, which he argued has nothing to do with “class warfare.”72
Carla A. Hills, Vice Chair, 2001–2007, Co-Chair, 2007–Present
Carla Anderson Hills, like Peterson and Rubin, is an “in and outer.” She was born in Los Angeles in 1934. Her mother was reported to be “socially prominent,” and though her father was not, he became a business executive worth millions, as well as the president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Carla grew up in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, attending the exclusive Marlborough School for girls, playing tennis and riding in horse shows with the high society set. She attended Stanford University, studying during one summer at Oxford in England. A bright student, she went on to Yale Law School, ranking high in her 1957 graduating class. Soon thereafter, she married Roderick M. Hills.
A Republican, Ms. Hills was able to land a job in the Justice Department in 1974 after a number of years in private law practice. Her work at Justice brought her to the attention of President Ford, who appointed her secretary of housing and urban development in 1975. She was only the third woman cabinet member in U.S. history. That same year, Ford appointed her husband head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
After being back in private practice for some years, Hills was tapped by President George H. W. Bush to be U.S. Trade Representative in 1989, serving until 1993. She was a primary U.S. negotiator of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as for the Uruguay Round of the GATT. Again out of public office, she co-founded Hills & Company International Consultants. Hills, a member of the Council at least since 1993, was elected a director of the CFR in 1994, and has been a director ever since, also serving as a vice chair from 2001 to 2007. She has also been a director of major corporations like American Insurance Group, AOL Time-Warner, and Chevron and has served on the international advisory board of JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola, Rolls-Royce, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is chair of both the National Commission for U.S.-China Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue, and a member of the executive committee of both the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Trilateral Commission. She has served on a number of CFR task forces, including the Future of North America and U.S.-India Economic Relations.
Her husband, who has been a member of the board of directors of twenty corporations, and was a co-chair of the Committee for Economic Development, partners with her in Hills and Company International Consultants. Their firm offers advice and other services to big corporate clients like Chevron, Boeing, Bechtel, AIG, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble in identifying both risks and profitable economic opportunities abroad, as well as negotiating with foreign governments to implement aspects of the neoliberal economic program, such as reducing taxes, tariffs, regulations, licenses, and investment restrictions, especially in “emerging market economies.”
Cyrus R. Vance, Vice Chair, 1973–1976, 1985–1987
Cyrus R. Vance was born in 1917 and died in 2002. He was from an upper-class family long active in the CFR. One of his relatives was John W. Davis, a Wall Street lawyer (Davis, Polk) who was one of J.P. Morgan’s attorneys. As mentioned above, Davis was a longtime CFR director (1921–55) who also served as the Council’s first president, from 1921 to 1933. Davis was considerably older then Vance, but their closeness is indicated by the fact that Vance was Davis’s adopted son. Both Davis and Vance were listed in the Social Register.
As was normal for an upper-class youth, Vance attended an elite prep school, Kent, then Yale, where he was in the secret society Scroll and Key. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1942, he served in the U.S. Navy until 1946. After the war, Vance joined the prestigious Wall Street law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Barlett, working there for the rest of his legal career, interrupted by several episodes of government service.
A mainstream Democrat like his adoptive father, he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to be Secretary of the Army. President Lyndon Johnson then promoted him to the position of Deputy Secretary of Defense. Vance, following the CFR consensus view, was at first a supporter of the U.S. war on Vietnam, but later changed his views and resigned, advising Johnson to end the war. Within a short time Vance was vindicated and was appointed a delegate to the peace talks in Paris.
Vance was elected to the CFR board in 1968, and vice chair in 1973. During the mid-1970s he was also active in the Trilateral Commission. He resigned these positions in 1976 to become President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, but of course he remained a member of the Council. In this office, Vance represented the “good cop” in the administration’s foreign policy, stressing negotiations in general, and specifically with the USSR, China, and Iran, as well as between Israel and Egypt. Carter’s more hawkish National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, also a longtime active member of the CFR and former director, represented the “bad cop.” Once Brzezinski’s influence became dominant, Vance decided to resign, and did so once Carter ordered the 1980 failed attack on Iran to rescue hostages. Vance was again elected to be a CFR director in 1981 and served until 1987. During the final two years of his tenure, Vance again became vice chair of the Council.
Douglas Dillon, Vice Chair, 1976–1978
Born in 1909, Douglas Dillon was also educated at an elite prep school, Pine Lodge, together with three Rockefeller brothers. He became a close friend of John D. Rockefeller III. He went on to Groton and then Harvard University. He and his family are, like Vance and the Rockefellers, listed in the Social Register. Upon graduation in 1938, he joined his father’s Wall Street investment banking firm of Dillon-Read, now part of United Bank of Switzerland (UBS). After service in the Second World War, he was elevated to the head of the firm and became active in Republican politics, serving as a major fundraiser for Eisenhower in 1952. The new president soon appointed Dillon to be ambassador to France, a reward for his fundraising. Reflecting the beginning of a transition to Democratic Party dependence on Wall Street funding, John F. Kennedy selected Dillon as his Secretary of the Treasury in 1961. Leaving government service in 1965, Dillon became a CFR director, serving until 1978. He was also chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation and Brookings Institution, as well as president of the Harvard University Board of Overseers during the 1970s.
Warren Christopher, Vice Chair, 1987–1991
The son of a bank manager, Warren Christopher graduated from the University of Southern California and Stanford Law School, going on to become a longtime partner in O’Melveny & Myers, a large and prestigious Los Angeles–based international law firm. Christopher became the chair of O’Melveny and Myers, whose clients included major monopoly corporations like Exxon Mobil, Bank of America, Enron, and Goldman Sachs. Late in his career he became Deputy Secretary of State in the Carter administration, then served as a CFR director from 1982 to 1991 and as vice chair during the later part of this period. He was Clinton’s Secretary of State from 1993 to 1997. Besides his role in the CFR, he was also a director of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the Bilderberg Group, president of the board of trustees of Stanford University, and chair of both the Carnegie Corporation’s