J.M.:
The John Birch Society has looked into the subject and they have a theory of their own. The first source I've found on this is a pamphlet "CFR: Conspiracy to Rule the World" by Gary Alien, associate editor of the Birchers' magazine, American Opinion. Alien's thesis is that Cecil Rhodes created a secret society to establish English domination of the world in 1888. This society acts through Oxford University, the Rhodes Scholarships and-hold your breath-the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit foundation for the study of International Affairs headquartered right here on Sixty-eighth Street in New York. Seven out of nine of our last Secretaries of State were recruited from the CFR, Alien points out, and dozens of other leading politicians as well-including Richard Nixon. It is also implied, but not directly stated, that William Buckley, Jr. (an old enemy of the Birchers) is another tool of the CFR; and the Morgan and Rothschild banking interests are supposed to be financing the whole thing.
How does this tie in with the Illuminati? Mr. Alien merely drops hints, linking Rhodes to John Ruskin, and Ruskin to earlier internationalists, and finally stating that "the originator on the profane level of this type of secret society" was Adam Weishaupt, whom he calls "the monster who founded the Order of the Illuminati on May 1, 1776."
Pat