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"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
~Woodrow Wilson,The New Freedom (1913)

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ROCKEFELLERS

John Davison Rockefeller continues to be the most recognized (and perhaps most despised) rich man in the world even though he's been dead since 1937. During the past century, no one family in America has assembled such power and influence as the Rockefellers, thanks to their wealth and close ties to England.

   Years ago the Rockefeller name continually cropped up in any discussion of secret societies, but today's mass media rarely speak of the Rockefeller role in world events. But at one time the name of John D. Rockefeller was on everyone's lips and his finances were known to all.

   An 1897 edition of a rural Texas newspaper reported, "John D. Rockefeller sleeps eight and one-half hours every night, retiring at 10:30 and rising at 7. Every morning when he gets up he is $17,705 richer than he was when he went to bed. He sits down to breakfast at 8 o'clock and leaves the table at 8:30, and in that short half hour his wealth has grown $1,041.50. On Sunday he goes to church, and in the two hours he is away from home his riches have grown $4,166. His nightly amusement is playing the violin. Every evening when he picks up the instrument he is $50,000 richer than he was when he laid it down the previous night. These little facts give some idea of the relentless growth of this man's fortune."

   One insight into the forging of John D.'s business philosophy might be gained by an anecdote told by Nelson Rockefeller. It seems when John D. was a small child his father, William "Big Kill" Rockefeller, who sold cancer "cures" from a medicine wagon, taught him to leap into his arms from a tall chair. One time his father held his arms out to catch him but pulled them away as little John jumped. The fallen son was told sternly, "Remember, never trust anyone completely, not even me."

   At the start of the American Civil War, Rockefeller was a young agricultural commodities broker in Cleveland, Ohio. He quickly recognized the potential of the fledgling petroleum industry there, and in 1863 he and some associates built a refinery. In 1870 he incorporated Standard Oil Company of Ohio.

   "The National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in congressional hearings as one of three Rothschild [the dominant European banking family] banks in the United States, provided John D. Rockefeller with the money to begin his monopolization of the oil refinery business, resulting in the formation of Standard Oil," noted a recent investigative video entitled, "The Money Masters."

   Rockefeller, who was quoted as saying "Competition is a sin," ruthlessly eliminated competitors by either mergering or buying them out. Failing that, he cut prices until his competitors were forced to sell. He also managed lucrative railroad rebate agreements, which ensured him a near monopoly on the transportation of oil. Standard Oil--the direct ancestor of Exxon--prospered enormously, and by 1880 Rockefeller owned or controlled 95 percent of all oil produced in the United States.

   Trouble for Rockefeller began in 1902 with the publication of a series of articles by Ida Tarbell, the daughter of a Pennsylvania oil producer run out of business by Rockefeller. Based on five years of research, Tarbell's series was published in McClure's Magazine and entitled "The History of Standard Oil Company." One reviewer proclaimed her work a "fearless unmasking of moral criminality masquerading under the robes of respectability and Christianity."

   Tarbell's expose resulted in government and court actions, which appeared to break up Standard's oil monopoly. However, as early as 1882 Rockefeller had moved to mask his business dealings by creating the first great American corporation: Standard Oil Trust. "The trust embraced a maze of legal structures, making its workings virtually impervious to public investigation and understanding," explained The New Encyclopedia Britannica.

   Such maneuvering continued in 1892 when the Ohio Supreme Court ordered (he trust dissolved. Instead, Rockefeller simply moved Standard's headquarters to New York City. In 1899 all assets and interests were transferred to a new creation, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

   In 1906 the U.S. government charged Standard Oil with violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Although apologists argued that Standard was simply caught in an emotional tidal wave of public discontent over the excesses of big business, the U.S. Supreme Court on May 15, 1911, couched its decision in these clear terms: "Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th."

   Eight of the companies formed after the dissolution retained "Standard Oil" in their names, but even these were soon altered to present the image of diversity. Standard Oil Company of New York first merged with the trust company Vacuum Oil to form Socony-Vacuum, which in 1966 became Mobil Oil Corporation. Standard Oil of Indiana joined with Standard Oil of Nebraska and Standard Oil of Kansas and by 1985 had become Amoco Corporation. In 1984 the combination of Standard Oil of California and Standard Oil of Kentucky had become Chevron Corporation, while the old Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1972 became Exxon Corporation. Other former Standard companies include Atlantic Richfield, Buck-eye Pipe Line, Pennzoil, and Union Tank Car Company.

   Ironically, the breakup of Standard only increased the wealth of Rockefeller, who now owned one fourth share of the thirty-three different oil companies created by the breakup of Standard. Shortly after the turn of the century, Rockefeller became America's first billionaire.

   Continued Rockefeller control was confirmed in the late 1930s by the only study of true ownership in America's largest corporations ever made by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The study, The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Nonfinancial Corporations, was published in 1940. It concluded that Rockefeller holdings, while seemingly small--most were under 20 percent of outstanding stocks-- nevertheless when compared to the remaining widely dispersed ownership were considered sufficient "to give the Rockefeller family control over the corporations."

   Once again, interlocking directorships allowed the Rockefellers and others to maintain control over the oil industry. "All of the eight largest oil companies were interlocked in 1972 through large commercial banks with at least one other member of the top group," wrote Dr. John M. Blair, former assistant chief economist for the Federal Trade Commission. "Exxon had four such interlocks--with Mobil, Standard of Ind., Texaco, and ARCO. Mobil had three--with Exxon, Shell, and Texaco--as did Standard of Indiana--with Exxon, Texaco, and ARCO--as well as Texaco--with Exxon, Mobil, and Standard of Ind.--and Shell with Mobil. Whenever all of the six [largest] commercial banks--exclusive of Bank of America and Western Bancorporation--hold their board meetings, directors of the top eight--excluding Gulf and SoCal--meet with directors of, on the average, 3.2 of their largest competitors."

   Ironically, by the turn of the new century, the old Standard monopoly was being reformed by the anticipated merging of two of the world's oil giants: Exxon and Mobil. This $75 billion "megadeal" was quickly called "Rockefeller's revenge." At this writing the consolidation of oil companies has continued with announced plans for British Petroleum PLC to acquire Amoco.

   By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller and his only son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., had not only built up an amazing oil empire but had established such institutions as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (established 1901), the General Education Board (1903), the University of Chicago (1889), the Rockefeller Foundation (1913), the Lincoln School (1917), where the Rockefeller children began their educations, and Rockefeller University in New York City.

   The Rockefellers also were greatly interested in the eugenics movement, a program of scientifically applied genetic selection to maintain and improve "ideal" human characteristics, including birth and population control. This idea grew from the writings of the Victorian scientist Sir Francis Galton, who after study reached the conclusion that prominent members of British society were such because they had "eminent" parents, thus combining Darwin's concepts of "survival of the fittest" with the class-conscious question "who's your daddy?"

   If this sounds like a Nazi experiment run wild, consider that in the late nineteenth century, the United States joined fourteen other nations in passing some type of eugenics legislation. Thirty states had laws providing for the sterilization of mental patients and imbeciles. At least sixty thousand such "defectives" were legally sterilized.

   Of course, to determine who was dirtying the gene pool requires extensive population statistics. So in 1910 the Eugenics Records Office was established as ë branch of the Galton National Laboratory in London, endowed by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, wife of railroad magnate Edward Har-riman and mother of diplomat Averell Harriman. Mrs. Harriman in 1912 sold her substantial shares of New York's Guaranty Trust bank to J. P. Morgan, thus assuring his control over that institution.

   After 1900, the Harrimans--the family that gave the Prescott Bush family its start--along with the Rockefellers funded more than $11 million to create a eugenics research laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, as well as eugenics studies at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell. The first International Congress of Eugenics was convened in London in 1912, with Winston Churchill as a director. Obviously, the concept of "bloodlines" was highly significant to these people.

   In 1932 when the Congress met in New York, it was the Hamburg-Amerika Shipping Line, controlled by Harriman associates George Walker and Prescott Bush, that brought prominent Germans to the meeting. One was Dr. Ernst Rudin of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography in Berlin. Rudin was unanimously elected president of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies for his work in founding the German Society for Race Hygiene, a forerunner of Hitler's racial institutes.

   Eugenics work, under more politically correct names, continues right up to today. General William H. Draper Jr. was a "Supporting Member" of the International Eugenics Congress in 1932 and, despite or because of his ties to the Harriman and Bush families, was named head of the Economic Division of the U.S. Control Commission in Germany at the end of hostilities. According to authors Tarpley and Chaikin, "General Draper (in later years) founded 'Population Crisis Committee' and the 'Draper Fund,' joining with the Rockefeller and Du Pont families to promote eugenics as 'population control.' The administration of President Lyndon Johnson, advised by General Draper on the subject, began financing birth control in the tropical countries through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

   "General Draper was George Bush's guru on the population question. . . . Draper's son and heir, William H. Draper III, was co-chairman for finance--chief of fundraising--of the Bush-for-President national campaign organization in 1980." The younger Draper went on to work with population control activities of the United Nations.

   Rudin's eugenics work was to a large part funded by Rockefeller money. "These wealthy American families, like their counterpart's in Britain, feel themselves to be racially superior and they wish to protect their racial superiority," commented author Icke.

   Nepotism proved a connecting link in these family chains. According to biographer Alvin Moscow, "Starting in the year 1917 and continuing over the next five years, the elder Rockefeller handed over his fortune to his only son and heir with no strings attached."

   John Jr., while dealing primarily with philanthropic activities, nevertheless followed his father's mode of business practices, particularly in his opposition to unions. This stance softened, at least publicly, following the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 in which Colorado militia members fired on strikers at the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, killing forty persons.

   Rockefeller Jr. helped create the United Service Organization (USO) for soldiers during World War II and supervised the building of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. After the war, it was Rockefeller who donated land in Manhattan for the headquarters of the United Nations.

   Rockefeller Jr. sired one daughter, Abby, who died of cancer in 1976 at age seventy-two, and five sons--John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David.

   The eldest, John III, became chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation and guided millions of dollars to international agencies such as the India International Centre and the International House of Japan. His personal money went to his fabulous Oriental art collection and the creation of the Population Council, a center concerned with overpopulation and family planning. He died in 1978, but his son, John "Jay" Davison Rockefeller, carried on the family's political interest by serving as governor of West Virginia.

   Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller also carved out a career in politics. Prior to World War II he journeyed to Venezuela, where he discovered the culture of South America, as well as the lucrative oil business. Because of his knowledge of the area, President and fellow New Yorker Franklin D. Roosevelt set Rockefeller on his government vocation by appointing him coordinator for inter-American affairs. Rockefeller also served as a four-term governor of New York state following various posts in the family oil and banking businesses.

   In 1953 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) was established, and Rockefeller was named undersecretary upon the recommendation of Secretary Oveta Culp 1 lobby. 1 lere Rockefeller was able to push through many social programs as detailed by author Alvin Moscow, who wrote, "Oveta Gulp Hobby was out front as the Secretary; Nelson worked behind the scenes, finding key personnel to head various programs, promulgating research and studies, putting together new programs and then trying to steer those new programs through the Eisenhower administration and through a sometimes skeptical Congress." Eisenhower even appointed Rockefeller special assistant for foreign affairs, the same office his close friend Henry Kissinger held under President Nixon.

   He continually sought the Republican presidential nomination, but his plans were thwarted by Nixon in both 1960 and 1968 and by Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. Rockefeller eventually was appointed vice president of the United States in 1974 by President Gerald R. Ford, himself an appointee of President Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign over the Watergate scandal. Rockefeller died at age seventy in 1979 under controversial circumstances involving a young female staff assistant.

   Laurance Spelman Rockefeller became the most business-oriented of the brothers and enjoyed a successful career as a venture capitalist. Developing an early interest in aviation, he invested in Eastern Airlines in 1938 along with famed aviator Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and turned the airline into one of the world's largest. Rockefeller also invested heavily in the dreams of a young Scotsman named James McDonnell Jr., who went on to launch what became McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft Corp. He entered the realm of environmentalism and became chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality, president of the American Conservation Association, and chairman of the New York Zoological Society.

   Winthrop Rockefeller was considered the maverick of the Rockefeller clan. Dropping out of Yale in 1934, he made his way to Texas where he worked as an oil field roustabout. During World War II, he served as a combat infantryman in the Pacific theater earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with two Oak Leaf Clusters. Returning home, he developed a taste for drinking, women, and New York cafe society. But in 1953, tiring of this lifestyle, he suddenly moved to Arkansas where he was voted "Arkansas Man of the Year" in 1956. His famous name allowed him to gain the office of governor in 1967. It was then that a young Arkansas Democrat, Rhodes scholar, and DeMoley member named Hill Clinton may have gained the attention of Rockefeller. Winthrop, too, died of cancer in 1973, just two months before his sixty-first birthday.

   David Rockefeller was the youngest of the five Rockefeller brothers and the one who became the most powerful, if not the most prominent. After earning a B.S. degree from Harvard, he entered the London School of Economics, a school largely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust Fund, and the widow of J. P. Morgan partner Williard Straight. Here he came into contact with the teachings of Ruskin and other socialists, including Harold Laski. Educated at Oxford, Laski early on advocated political pluralism but later turned to Marxism and became a luminary in Britain's Socialist Party. He once wrote that the state is "the fundamental instrument of society."

   Returning to the States, David Rockefeller exhibited his deep feelings for England in a letter to the New York Times in April 1941 in which he stated, "We should stand by the British Empire to the limit and at any cost. ..." Just before the outbreak of war, he obtained a doctorate degree from the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Unused Resources and Economic Waste." Perhaps articulating the driving ambition of the Rockefeller brothers, he wrote, "Of all forms of waste, however, that which is most abhorrent is idleness. There is a moral stigma attached to unnecessary and involuntary idleness which is deeply imbedded in our conscience."

   During the war, he entered the U.S. Army as a private but was soon working in North Africa and France with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner to the CIA. This experience, along with his schooling in England, strengthened a lifelong concern with foreign affairs. It was most probably during this time that Rockefeller developed high-level intelligence contacts which later brought him insider knowledge of many top-secret operations.

   By 1948 David Rockefeller was chairman of the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Institute. The president of the institute was Dr. Detlev Wulf Bronk, a biophysicist specializing in the human nervous system. According to the controversial MJ-12 documents, Bronk not only was ë member of MJ-12--reportedly a supersecret group in charge of the UFO issue--but leader of the team that autopsied "extraterrestrial biological entities" recovered from a crashed disk near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947.

   After the war, Rockefeller joined the staff of Chase National Bank of New York, where his uncle, Winthrop Aldrich, was chairman of the board and president. Chase traced its history back to central bank advocate Alexander Hamilton's Bank of the Manhattan Company begun in 1799, and by 1921 it had become the second largest national bank in the United States. In 1955 Rockefeller played a major role in the merger of Chase with the Bank of Manhattan Company, which resulted in Chase Manhattan Bank. In 1969 the bank became part of Chase Manhattan Corp. in line with the trend of establishing holding companies to avoid banking laws prohibiting certain activities, such as the acquisition of finance companies. That same year David Rockefeller became the company's board chairman and chief executive officer, thanks primarily to his preeminence in international banking.

   His connections to the world of international politics as well as intelligence were improved when his uncle Aldrich retired as chairman of the bank in 1953 to become U.S. Ambassador to the Court of Saint James (England). Aldrich was succeeded by John J. McCloy, a former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. McCloy, who has been called the "architect of the postwar American intelligence establishment," served as assistant secretary of war from April 1941 to November 1945, president of the World Bank from 1947 to 1949, and U.S. Governor and High Commissioner for Germany from 1949 to 1952. McCloy also served on the Warren Commission, helping mediate disagreements with members who were troubled by the controversial "single bullet" theory of JFK's assassination. According to author Alvin Moscow, David Rockefeller soon became "the undisputed protege of McCloy."

   David Rockefeller had already joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 1941 before war came, and by 1950 had been elected vice president.

   His interest in foreign affairs could not have been entirely altruistic, since it has been estimated that the multinational banks, with Chase leading the way, loaned more than $50 billion to developing nations between 1957 and 1977. Even sympathetic biographer Moscow admitted, "David's fascination with international relations, necessitating intricate knowledge of the governmental, social and economic policies of nations throughout the world, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, dovetailed uniquely with his interest and concern in expanding Chase Manhattan's business in the international banking market."

   To say that David Rockefeller may be one of the most important men in America would be an understatement. According to Gary Allen, in the year 1973 alone, "David Rockefeller met with 27 heads of state, including the rulers of Russia and Red China." In 1976 when Australian president Malcolm Fraser visited the United States, he conferred with David Rockefeller before meeting President Gerald Ford. "This is truly incredible," wrote author Ralph Epperson, "because David Rockefeller has neither been elected or appointed to any governmental position where he could officially represent the United States government."

   But the Rockefeller influence--if not control--extends far beyond their banking and oil interests. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, for example, in 1997 listed nearly $500 million in assets. It was incorporated in 1940 by the five brothers. Since that time, the Fund has dispersed more than $461 million in grants to a wide range of activities and institutions including various universities, numerous arts programs, the Smithsonian Institution, Buddhist Zen Center, Aspen Institute, Asian Cultural Council, Brookings Institution, National Audubon Society, National Park Foundation, Planned Parenthood of New York City, NAACP, German Marshall Fund of the U.S., Yale University, Center for Strategic and International Studies, National Academy of Sciences, and the Society for International Development.

   In 1977 the Fund contributed $1 million to the Council on Foreign Relations. Perhaps due to the adverse publicity of conspiracy writers, this amount had dropped to a mere $45,000 in 1997, $25,000 of which went to study the "economic and political implications of Korean unification." The Trilateral Commission, which received $120,000 from the Fund in 1977, was not mentioned in their 1997 annual report.

   In 1997 the Fund also spent more than $1.2 million in grants for various projects in New York City, an area of special and long-term interest by the Fund.

   The Fund is especially involved in environmental issues, as evidenced by its donations to National Environmental Trust, Greenpeace Environmental Trust, National Wildlife Federation, American Conservation Association, Environmental Defense Fund, among others. Conspiracy authors have noted that if someone owned an interest in companies which might be adversely affecting the environment, what better way to gain some measure of control over activists than by heavy contributions?

ËÛ²ó M. O'Neill, niecr of the five Rockefeller brothers, in 1998 ended her term as chairwoman of the Fund. The position was assumed by Nelson's son, Steven C. Rockefeller. The one-world outlook of the Rockefellers was still evident in the Fund's 1997 annual report. Mrs. O'Neill wrote that the Fund had "a refocused 'One World' strategy, with an explicitly global perspective and an emphasis on the convergence of national and international frameworks."

   Fund president and CFR member Colin G. Campbell wrote that Rockefeller money was being used to help create "a number of cross-sectoral partnerships . . . that involve such sometimes unlikely partners as nonprofit and for-profit entities, government agencies and nongovernment organizations, research universities and grassroots activist groups."

   "In fact much of the U.S. government's involvement in health, education and welfare in the latter half of the twentieth century seems to have been pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation in the first half of the century," commented author Moscow.

   Rockefeller activities always seem to involve or produce world leaders. Henry Kissinger already has been mentioned. Prior to World War II, a Rockefeller Foundation division on economic research was headed by Canadian W. L. Mackenzie King. A mentor to John D. Jr., Mackenzie later became prime minister of Canada.

   Contributing to the power of their name was the fact that Rockefeller projects were nearly always successful. According to biographer Alvin Moscow, the brothers "moved warily before lending the Rockefeller name or finances to any new endeavor or enterprise. But once committed, they stayed with their commitments for the long haul, giving generously of their money, their time and their efforts. It became known in various civic and social circles that if a Rockefeller was involved, the project most likely had merit and was expected to succeed."