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home > about cfr > history > history of cfr > authors note
WILLIAM DIEBOLD, JR., a mainstay of the Council on Foreign Relations for nearly four decades, defined the output of the Studies Program in succinct fashion: “Policy conclusions reached by an individual after hearing discussion and having his [or her] ideas criticized by a group—but not negotiated for agreement or consensus.” This was the working methodology devised in the Council’s early years and it continues to the present day. It is on this formula that the present seventy-fifth anniversary history was prepared.
When the officers and directors of the Council invited me to take on the project, we all agreed that the work would be the responsibility of a single author, not a committee. Informed, it is not necessarily authoritative. This is an “authorized” history only in the sense that the Council is publishing it; the history of these 75 years is so rich and varied that another author, bringing a different set of idiosyncrasies to the project, might have written about the Council quite differently. As the designated author, I was given no ground rules, no instructions on what to include or omit, and no one of the board, staff, or membership asserted any claim to “approve” what I would write.
In keeping with the time-tested practice, however, I shared working drafts with a few individuals who could react with special knowledge; many of them I had come to know as friends and colleagues during my two decades in the Council. An encouraging number of them came back with many pages of comments, general and specific, to inform and enrich the final writing—just the process that guides any Council publication by a single author. I deeply value the interest they showed and their generosity in sharing their various insights. Responsibility for judgments of fact, emphasis, and context, nonetheless, is mine alone.
To the following colleagues who gave me their comments on the manuscript’s early versions I express sincere gratitude: Bill Bundy, John Campbell, Bill Diebold, Patricia Dorff, Alton Frye, Les Gelb, Judith Gustafson, David Kellogg, Daniel Kohns, Elise Lewis, Bayless Manning, Jan Murray, Pete Peterson, David Rockefeller, Ted Sorensen, John Swing, Peter Tarnoff, Dick Ullman, and Alice Victor.
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