The Washington meetings program of 2005–2006 focused on bringing CFR members and leaders together with representatives from the Bush administration, including President George W. Bush, who spoke to the Council on the progress of the war in Iraq; Congress (eleven sitting members of Congress addressed the CFR, including Senator Barack Obama), business leaders, and discussions with ambassadors from a number of nations.252
The National meetings program held 110 sessions across the country, events that included manuscript review seminars, roundtables, the National Book Club Series, a film series, and general meetings. In contrast to the New York program, only a few foreign leaders attended the National program events, which were mainly focused on presentations and discussions led by CFR leaders and experts, evidently aimed at educating and influencing CFR members and attentive publics in various cities.253
CFR CORPORATE PROGRAM AND ITS FOREIGN TRIPS
The CFR described the 2005–2006 Corporate Program as follows:
Executives of member companies and individual members in the private sector took part in over seventy events in New York and Washington, DC, including the C. Peter McColough Roundtable Series on International Economics, the McKinsey Executive Roundtable Series on International Economics, the Corporate Program Energy Roundtable, the China Roundtable, and the World Economic Update Series. Featured speakers included four past chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, and Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal.
A highlight of this past year was the Council’s second annual Corporate Conference held March 9–10 in New York City. The conference explored the economic and political vulnerabilities in the global system through sessions on global energy supply, corporate governance and social responsibility, the economic threat of a flu pandemic, China, India, and Europe. The CEOs of Caterpillar, Electronic Data Systems, and Estée Lauder opened the conference with a lively panel discussion, and U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman served as the event’s keynote speaker…. The Corporate Program also offered over thirty interactive conference calls with business and foreign policy specialists, including fellows from the Council’s Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and other experts. Corporate members exchanged ideas with Council scholars in other settings as well, such as roundtable discussions, exclusive dinners and receptions, and private meetings.254
During the 1987–90 period, the CFR’s Annual Report offered specifics on three corporate program trips taken by Council leaders. Over the years there were many such trips, but most were merely referred to, not covered in detail, such as the CFR trip to Cuba mentioned in the 2001 Annual Report, when CFR chair Peterson only mentioned that the CFR group met with President Fidel Castro and other “top Cuban officials.”255
The 1987 Annual Report stated that the CFR’s corporate program sponsored a “Middle East Trip” from April 21 to April 29, 1987. Council participants were not listed, but these top leaders of the three nations visited held meetings with the CFR group:
• Jordan: King Hussein, prime minister Zeid Al-Rifai, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Taher Al-Masri
• Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak, Prime Minister Atef Sedki, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Abdel Meguid
• Israel: Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.256
The 1989 Annual Report offered even more details about a trip to Poland and Hungary from February 28 to March 8. This time the Council participants were also listed. David Rockefeller and Peter G. Peterson led the CFR delegation. Others on the trip included Washington Post owner Katharine Graham and John C. Whitehead, a close associate of the Rockefeller family, former Reagan State Department official and retired chair of Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; CFR president Peter Tarnoff; William and Linda Dietel, he a former president of Rockefeller Brothers Fund; Richard and Isabel Furlaud, he a president of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Rockefeller University. Several experts on Eastern Europe were also included, among them Columbia University political science professor Seweryn Bialer and CFR Senior Fellow Michael Mandelbaum.257 In sum, the group was a mix of CFR leaders, business executives closely connected to the Rockefeller family economic and cultural empire, and experts who could provide insights about the political, economic, and cultural situation in Poland and Hungary as these countries stood on the verge of big changes as the Soviet Union began to disintegrate.
On the Polish side, the CFR group met with fifteen of the nation’s leaders, including the president of the Council of State, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, as well as the prime minister; Foreign Minister; Minister for Foreign Economic Cooperation; Finance Minister; Minister for Industry; and the Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party who was also a member of the Politburo. Besides government officials, the CFR group also met with opposition figures, including Lech Walesa, chairman of Solidarity; Professor Andrzej Stelmachowski, the chief Solidarity negotiator with the Polish government; and Cardinal Glemp.258 Hungary’s representatives who met with the CFR trip participants included the prime minister; the Minister of State; the Minister of Trade; the head of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, and the Secretary of the Central Committee of that party.259
The 1990 Annual Report provides specifics about a February 2 to 10 trip to the Persian Gulf, listing the CFR participants as well as those they met with in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman. David Rockefeller and Peter G. Peterson again led the Council excursion, which was dominated by CEOs of leading firms. The business leaders who were part of the CFR group included James Burke of Johnson & Johnson; Albert Gordon of Kidder Peabody; Peter Haas of Levi Strauss; William A. Hewitt of Deere & Co.; William D. Mulholland of Bank of Montreal, Harris Bank, Upjohn and BMO Financial Group; John G. Smale of Procter & Gamble and General Motors; and billionaire Mortimer B. Zuckerman, real property and magazine owner and editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report. Also on the trip were four wives of the business leaders as well as Pamela Harriman, wife of W. Averill Harriman and a leading Democratic Party fundraiser whose career was soon to include appointment to the post of U.S. ambassador to France by President Clinton.
Besides Rockefeller and Peterson, CFR leaders on the trip included Richard W. Murphy, who after a thirty-four-year career as a Foreign Service officer, State Department official, and ambassador had become the CFR’s Senior Fellow on the Middle East. As well as being an expert on that region, Murphy spoke Arabic. Two other Council leaders, President Peter Tarnoff, and Executive Vice President John Temple Swing rounded out the group.
The 1990 Annual Report stated that “participants met with top political, economic and cultural leaders.”260 They included the top leaders of Oman as well as the following:
SAUDI ARABIA
• King Fahd bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud
• HRH Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, Defense Minister and acting Minister of Foreign Affairs
• HRH Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki Al Saud
• HRH Prince Salman bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, governor of Riyadh Province
• Ali Naimi, CEO of Saudi ARAMCO
• The Ministers of Finance, Commerce, Petroleum and Natural Resources, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Secretary General of both the Saudi Chamber of Commerce and the Gulf Cooperation Council
KUWAIT
• Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, Emir
• Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, Crown Prince/Prime Minister
• Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister