"Membership in the Council gives a select few the chance to bring their views to bear on key government people, in a most pleasant, convivial, and private atmosphere....
"The BAC, powerful in its composition and with an inside track, is thus a special force. An intimation of its influence can be gleaned from its role in the McCarthy case.... BAC helped push Senator Joe McCarthy over the brink in 1954, by supplying a bit of backbone to the Eisenhower Administration at the right time. McCarthy's chief target in the Army-McCarthy hearings was the aforementioned Robert T. Stevens--a big wheel in the BAC who had become Secretary of the Army. The BAC didn't pay much--if any--attention to Joe McCarthy as a social menace until he started to pick on Bob Stevens. Then, they burned up.
"During the May 1954 meeting at the Homestead [expensive resort hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, where the BAC often holds its 'work and play' sessions with high government officials and their wives], Stevens flew down from Washington for a weekend reprieve from his televised torture. A special delegation of BAC officials made it a point to journey from the hotel to the mountaintop airport to greet Stevens. He was escorted into the lobby like a conquering hero. Then, publicly, one member of the BAC after another roasted the Eisenhower Administration for its McCarthy-appeasement policy. The BAC's attitude gave the Administration some courage, and shortly thereafter former Senator Ralph Flanders (a Republican and BAC member) introduced a Senate resolution calling for censure."
Active membership in the Business Advisory Council is limited to about 70. After a few years as an "active," a member can become a "graduate," still retaining his full voting and membership privileges.
I have obtained the names of 120 "active" and "graduate" members of the BAC, listed below. Those who are members of the Council on Foreign Relations are identified by "CFR" after their names.
William M. Allen (President of Boeing Airplane Company; member Board of Directors of Pacific National Bank of Seattle)
Clarence Avildsen (Chairman, Avildsen Tools & Machines, Inc.)
William M. Batten (President, J. C. Penney Company)
S. Clark Beise (President, Bank of America; member Board of Directors, National Trust and Savings Association, San Francisco)