Chapter Seventeen
THE ROCKEFELLER GROUP

A biographical sketch of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and his crusade against free-enterprise; the beginning of Standard Oil; the entry of the Rockefellers into investment banking; their influence in the pharmaceutical industry and international politics.

It would be a serious mistake to categorize the international cartel that has been the subject of these chapters as strictly German. The leaders of its component parts, regardless of their nationality, consider themselves as internationalists - or more accurately, supranationalists - with little or no loyalty to the country of their birth.

Their patriotism is directed toward the giant multi-national industrial and financial organizations that protect and sustain them.

Robert Stevenson, former vice-president of the Ford Motor Company, was an excellent specimen of these new citizens of the world. Business Week on December 19,1970, quoted Stevenson as saying: "We don't consider ourselves basically an American company. We are a multi-national company. And when we approach a government that doesn't like the U.S., we always say, "Who do you like? Britain? Germany? We carry a lot of flags."

During a television interview in the fall of 1973, a top executive of Mobil Oil was even more explicit when he said: I've never been faced with the situation where I'd say to myself I'm only going to be a good citizen of one country, because if I do that I'm no longer a multi-national oil company.⁽¹⁾

1. "Snake Oil From the Oil Companies," Consumer Reports, Feb. 1974, p. 126.

We must keep in mind that a cartel is a grouping of interests. While they may act in unison in those areas that serve their mutual goals, and while there usually is investment interlocking, and while the trend is toward the creation of a single industrial and financial complex that will dominate the entire planet, nevertheless, its component parts represent groupings within the structure, and often there is competition between them for a more favorable position.

The largest and most powerful of these today is centered in New York City and is known as the Rockefeller group.

The Rockefeller interest in the profit potential of drugs can be traced all the way back to John D. Rockefeller's father, William Avery Rockefeller. "Big Bill," as he was known to his friends and neighbors in upstate New York, had been a wandering vendor of quack medicines made mostly from crude oil and alcohol. He had never received medical training, yet he advertised himself as "Doctor William A. Rockefeller, the Celebrated Cancer Specialist" and had himself listed as a physician in the local directory.

His advertising posters read:

"All cases of cancer cured, unless too far gone, and they can be greatly benefited."(1)

"Doc" Rockefeller was a con artist. He cheated anyone and everyone any time he could - and boasted of it. In 1844 he was accused of horse theft. He had been suspected of bigamy. And in 1849, he was accused of raping the hired girl in the Rockefeller household. To avoid prosecution, Big Bill moved to Oswego, outside the court's jurisdiction.⁽²⁾

John D. Rockefeller, in later years, recalled with pride the practical training he had received from his father.

He said:

He himself trained me in practical ways. He was engaged in different enterprises; he used to tell me about these things... and he taught me the principles and methods of business.(3)

1. John T. Flynn, God's Gold; The Story of Rockefeller and His Times, (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1932), p. 53.
2. Hoffman, David; A Report on a Rockefeller, op. cit., p. 24.
3. Mathew Josephson, The Robber Barons, (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1934), pp. 45, 46.

What were these principles and methods of business that John D. learned from his father?

Biographer, John T. Flynn, in his book God's Gold; The Story of Rockefeller and His Times, provides the answer:

Big Bill was fond of boasting of his own smartness and how he bested people... The man had practically no moral code. He would descant on his own cunning performances for anyone's entertainment... He was what was later called a "slicker," and he was fond of doing what he could to be sure his sons would be "slickers" like himself.

"I cheat my boys every chance I get," he told Uncle Joe Webster. "I want to make 'em sharp. I trade with the boys and skin 'em, and I just beat 'em every time I can. I want to make 'em sharp."⁽¹⁾

And make 'em sharp, he did - especially John D. who went on to become one of the most ruthless and most successful monopolists of all time.

Once again, we must remind ourselves that, in spite of all the rhetoric to the contrary, monopoly is not the product of free-enterprise capitalism, but the escape from it. John D. Rockefeller himself had confirmed this many times in his career. One of his favorite expressions was "Competition is a sin."⁽²⁾

But there was more to it than that. John T. Flynn explains:

His entry into business and his career after that would be, in a large measure, the story of American economic development and the war on Laissezfaire...

Rockefeller was definitely convinced that the competitive system under which the world had operated was a mistake. It was a crime against order, efficiency, economy. It could be eliminated only by abolishing all rivals. His plan, therefore, took a solid form. He would bring all his rivals in with him. The strong ones he would bring in as partners. The others would come in as stockholders... Those who would not come in would be crushed.⁽³⁾

1. Flynn, op. cit., p. 58.
2. Hoffman, op. cit., p. 29.
3. Flynn, op. cit., pp. 23, 221.

The ascendancy of the Rockefeller empire is proof of the success of that plan. John D., Sr., had a number of close business associates.

Some originally were partners. Most were defeated rivals who had been brought into the structure. These men became multi-millionaires, and most of their descendants have remained closely linked with the Rockefeller family. Whether intermarriages were arranged as "unions of convenience," as were common among the ruling classes of Europe, or were the result of romance, the result has been the same.

The Rockefeller biological (and stockholder) strain has intermingled in an almost unbroken line through half of the nation's wealthiest sixty families and back again. Throughout it all, the aggregate is controlled, economically at least, by the one family that is the descendant of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

It is nearly impossible for an outsider to estimate the true wealth and power of the Rockefeller family today. But even a casual survey of the visible portion of its empire is enough to stagger the imagination.

The Rockefellers established an oil monopoly in the United States in the 1870's. In 1899, this oil trust was reorganized as the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. In 1911, as a result of a decision of the Supreme Court, Standard was forced to separate into six companies - supposedly to break up the monopoly. This act did not accomplish its objective.

The many "independent" companies that resulted continued to be owned - and in many cases even run - by the same men. None of them ever engaged in serious competition between themselves, and certainly not against Standard Oil of New Jersey, which continued to be Rockefeller's main holding company.

In the years following 1911, the Rockefellers returned to their original policy of acquiring other oil companies that, in the public eye, were "independent." Consequently, the Rockefeller family obtained either control over or substantial financial interest in such vast enterprises as Humble Oil (now called Exxon), Creole Petroleum, Texaco, Pure Oil, and others.

These companies control a staggering maze of subsidiaries that operate in almost every nation of the world. All together, Standard Oil of New Jersey admits to outright control over 322 companies.⁽¹⁾

1. Hoffman, op. cit., pp. 151, 152.

In addition, Rockefeller established cartel links through investments in many foreign "competitors." These included Royal Dutch (Shell Oil) and a half interest in the Soviet Nobel Oil Works.

What influence the Rockefellers exert through their oil cartel, as impressive as it is, is peanuts compared to what they have accomplished in later years through the magic of international finance and investment banking.

That part of the story begins in 1891 when the First National City Bank of New York, under the presidency of James Stillman, became the main bank of the Rockefeller family. With the addition of the Rockefeller deposits, the bank became the largest in the country.

The Rockefellers soon became interested in banking and banking monopolies as a means of making money with even greater potential than oil monopolies. Two sons of William Rockefeller, John's brother, married daughters of James Stillman, and the Rockefeller-Stillman interlock was forged.

Later, the family of John D. Rockefeller moved most of its financial interests to a bank of their own, but the descendants of William Rockefeller became, and continue to be, the majority shareholders in the First National City Bank, which eventually became one of the largest financial institutions in the world.

When the family of John D. Rockefeller left the First National City Bank, it was not because of dissatisfaction or an internal struggle for control. It was merely to absorb the competition - the hallmark of all monopoly business moves. First they established their own bank known as the Equitable Trust. Then they bought up the Chase National Bank.

Meanwhile, the International Acceptance Corporation, a bank owned by Kuhn, Loeb and Company, had merged into the Bank of the Manhattan Company. And it was this that was absorbed in 1955 by the Rockefeller's Chase National Bank resulting in the largest banking firm in the world: The Chase Manhattan.

How big is the Chase Manhattan Bank? No one on the outside really knows.

We do know, however, that it is more like a sovereign state than a business firm. It has far more money than most nations. It has over fifty-thousand banking officers serving as ambassadors all around the world. It even employs a full-time envoy to the United Nations, for whom it serves as banker.⁽¹⁾

1. The U.N. always has been a pet project of the Rockefeller family. They donated the land on which the U.N. building now stands. It's likely that they view the U.N. as the ultimate mechanism for the enforcement of monopoly power throughout the entire world, a role for which it is admirably structured.

The words "investment bank" or "investment house" have been used several times within this discourse, and it is advisable to clarify their meaning.

Before 1933, banks in the United States operated in two areas of activity. They handled the commercial checking accounts and deposits of individuals and corporations, an area of activity known as commercial banking. They also represented clients who were buying or selling stocks and bonds in various corporate enterprises, an area of activity known as investment banking.

In 1933, however, in response to public alarm over the growing concentration of economic power into the hands of fewer and fewer banking dynasties, a law was passed which required commercial banks to divest themselves of all investment banking operations. (This law has been reversed in recent years, and once again we see banks handling both kinds of transactions.)

The banks complied, but the result was not what the voters had in mind. Separate investment banking firms were established, but they were owned by exactly the same people who also owned the commercial banks. As a result of the mergers that took place in the wake of this legislation, there were fewer firms, and thus, greater concentration of power than ever before.

For the Chase Manhattan group there was now an investment firm called the First Boston Corporation. And for the National City Group there was Harriman, Ripley & Company and Blyth & Company. Others - such as Dominick & Dominick and Dillon, Read, & Company - soon were added to the interlock as the power of the Rockefeller empire expanded.

With the formation of the First Boston Corporation, the powerful Mellon family threw in its lot with the Rockefeller family, and the only substantial block that was not yet united into the monolithic banking structure was the family of J.P. Morgan, although they cooperated in many joint projects, including formation of the Federal Reserve System.⁽¹⁾

1. Contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve System - the entity that controls the creation of money in the United States - is neither owned nor run by the government. It is a cartel comprised of the banking interests that are the subject of these passages. For the complete story, see The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin, (Westlake Village, CA: American Media, 1995).

With the growth of these investment-banking institutions in the United States, New York became the new focal point of world finance.

Switzerland, in spite of the unique role it plays because of its bank secrecy and numbered accounts, cannot compare with the money volume and power centered in the United States. Even London, which was the wellspring of financial power through the Rothschild and Morgan empires, has since fallen to second place.

The American assets of any one of the multinational corporations built around Standard Oil, ITT, Ford, or General Motors, exceed the total assets of many nations. ITT has more employees overseas than does the State Department. Standard Oil has a larger tanker fleet than the Soviet Union. IBM's research and development budget is larger than the total tax revenue of all but a handful of countries.

While it is true that a great deal of foreign money does find its way into Swiss banks, there still is more money and real wealth inside the United States than in most of the rest of the world combined. Furthermore, a substantial portion of this wealth is concentrated into the hands of the financial and industrial cartelists in New York.

One percent of the population owns more than seventy percent of the nation's industry, and ten percent own all of it.⁽¹⁾

1. Lundberg, The Rich and the Super Rich, op. cit., p. 461.

About half of this, in turn, is held in trust by the ten leading Wall Street banks, which, in turn, are heavily influenced, if not controlled outright, by a group so small that they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. This, stated in plain English, represents the greatest and most intense concentration of wealth and power that the world has ever seen.

How did this come about? Was it the product of free-enterprise? Was it the result of providing needed goods or services at competitive prices, thus capturing a larger share of the free market? Was it the consequence of mass production and distribution methods that drove down the selling price of goods to the point where they became attractive to more and more consumers?

Each of these factors may have played a small part in the process, but to whatever extent they did, it was infinitesimal compared to the larger role played by the guaranteed super profits that resulted from simply eliminating the competition.

Apologists for cartelized industry and finance usually attempt to refute this fact by citing the profit figures for these enterprises each year. The picture they draw is modest, indeed, showing an average profit of from three to seven percent. This isn't enough even to keep up with inflation, so obviously, the finpols, somehow are doing a lot better than that.

But how?

The answer is in something known as profits of control - the profits that fall, not to those who own an enterprise, but to those who control it. These are not the same as the modest return-on-investment typically paid to stockholders.

The profits of control are derived from such things as inside information that makes it possible to anticipate movements in the stock market, attractive stock options, handsome fees for consultation, commissions and royalties from crossbreeding contracts with affiliated companies, rnultimillion dollar loans at artificially high or low interest rates (depending on the direction of the advantage), and similar devices.

Many people are of the opinion that it takes fifty-one percent ownership to control a corporation. While this may be true of small companies whose stock is held by a handful of people, the multi-billion dollar companies can be - and are - controlled by as little as five to ten percent of the total stockholders.⁽¹⁾

1. This is the unanimous opinion of experts in the field of high finance. See the New York Times, Nov. 7,1955; also Lundberg, op. cit., p. 270; also Hoffman, op. tit., pp. 6, 7; and others.

The mechanics by which it is possible for an extreme minority to hold control - and thus the profits of control - of the supergiant industries are fascinating.

They include all the usual tricks of business - such as proxy battles and social pressure on members of the board - plus most of the tactics of all-out war as well. They also include use of hidden allies from other countries who may own small but substantial blocks through numbered accounts in Swiss banks.

But the greatest weapon of all is the powerful leverage they can obtain through their control of large blocks of stock that are held indirectly by them as part of the investment portfolios of the financial institutions they also control.

A large insurance company, for example, is the repository of billions of dollars that come from policyholders. The money that is held in reserve for potential claims is invested in a broad spectrum of securities, but most of it is put into the stocks and bonds of large corporations. The stocks carry voting rights. They do not belong to the owners or managers of the insurance company.

They belong to the policyholders. Nevertheless, the minority who control the company exercise the right to vote that stock just the same as if they owned it. In this way, a few people in control of a financial institution can multiply their influence by a factor hundreds of times greater than their own capital investment would suggest. They also can influence the price of the stocks they hold merely by buying or selling huge blocks of them. The profit potential of controlling and anticipating such transactions is enormous.

This is the "magic" of investment banking, and it explains why the leaders of Wall Street's great financial cartels are, historically, at the summit of the industrial empires of the United States.

The Rockefeller group has become the nation's leading practitioner of this kind of magic.

In addition to the billions of dollars worth of other people's industrial stocks which it controls through the trust departments and trust companies affiliated with its commercial banking operations; in addition to the billions controlled in the same way through its investment banking firms; and in addition to the megalithic blocks of stock held in trust by the various Rockefeller foundations; it also has control over the vast stock holdings of both the Metropolitan and Equitable life-insurance companies, the first and third largest in the United States.

The Traveler's and Hartford insurance companies, likewise, came under Rockefeller control largely through its chief executives, such as J. Doyle DeWitt and Eugene Black, both directors of the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Reaching downward through this pyramid of power, the Rockefeller group has managed to place its representatives into controlling positions on the boards of a wide cross-section of industry. These include the following better known firms:

Allied Chemical, American Tobacco, Anaconda, Armour and Company, AT&T, Bethlehem Steel, Bulova Watch, Burlington Industries, Commercial Solvents Corporation, Continental Can, Cowles Publications, Data Control, Florida East Coast Railroad, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Foods, General Motors, Getty Oil, B.F. Goodrich, Hearst Publications, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, International Harvester, ITT, Kennecott Copper, Litton Industries, Minute Maid, National Lead, New York Central Railroad, Pan American Airways, Perm Central, Polaroid, RCA, Sears, Shell Oil, Singer, Southern Pacific Railroad, Time-Life Publications, U.S. Rubber, U.S. Steel, Virginian Railroad, Western Union, and Westinghouse - to name just a few!

In the field of drugs and pharmaceuticals, the Rockefeller influence is substantial, if not dominant. When David Rockefeller spoke before the Investment Forum in Paris, he said that it was wise to invest in,

"life and risk insurance companies, business equipment companies, and companies benefiting from research into drugs."⁽¹⁾

1. Hoffman, op. cit., p. 185.

That he has followed his own advice is a matter of record.

The Rockefeller entry into the pharmaceutical field is more concealed, however, than in most other categories of industry. The reason for this appears to be two-fold.

One is the fact that, for many years before World War II, Standard Oil had a continuing cartel agreement not to enter into the broad field of chemicals except as a partner with I.G. Farben which, in turn, agreed not to compete in oil. The other is that, because of the unpopularity of Farben in this country and its need to camouflage its American holdings, Standard had concealed even its partnership interests in chemical firms behind a maze of false fronts and dummy accounts.

The Chase Manhattan Bank, however, has been the principal stock registrar for Farben-Rockefeller enterprises such as Sterling Drug, Olin Corporation, American Home Products, and General Analine and Film.

When Farben's vast holdings were finally sold in 1962, the Rockefeller group was the dominant force in carrying out the transaction.

One may assume, therefore, that, if there was any way to benefit from inside information or to place a minority into a position to reap the profits of control, the Rockefeller group did so. Consequently, it is difficult for an outsider to separate the pure Rockefeller control from that which is shared by I.G. Farben or its descendants. That it constitutes a major power center within the pharmaceutical industry, however, cannot be denied.

The profit potential in drugs is enormous. The very nature of the product lends itself to monopoly and cartel manipulation. When a person is ill or dying, he does not question the price of a drug offered to him for relief. This is especially true if the drug is available only through a prescription. The mystique of that procedure eliminates competition between brands.

Profits can be extremely high - not for the physician or the druggist - but for the firms that manufacture the drugs.

This is the primary reason for the FDA's on-going drive to require all but the weakest-potency vitamins to be available only through prescription. Price and brand competition simply has to be stopped. Pharmaceutical firms support this measure because they know that their control over drug-store distribution would give them a monopoly. They also know that, if prescriptions are required, vitamins will be covered by insurance.

Consequently, prices can be raised without consumer complaint. (Never mind that the cost eventually must be paid by the consumer, either in higher insurance premiums or higher taxes.) And so this is merely another example of using the power of government to eliminate competition and increase costs to the consumer.

Here again is one of those road signs along the way reassuring us we have not become lost in a maze of meaningless information with no bearing on cancer therapy.

Although many otherwise well informed persons are totally unaware of it, cartels do exist. They have completely dominated the chemical industry for decades. The pharmaceutical industry, far from being exempt from this influence, has been at the center of it from the beginning. We are traveling this long path of historical inquiry for the reason that one simply cannot evaluate the broad opposition to vitamin therapy without an awareness of this cartel.

It has been observed that almost every head of state that visits the United States pays a personal visit to the head of the Rockefeller empire. This has included visits to David Rockefeller by such personages as the Emperor of Japan and the Premier of the Soviet Union. And when Rockefeller travels to foreign lands, he always is accorded a royal welcome of the caliber usually reserved for heads of state.

Yet, the American people generally do not consider the Rockefellers to be that important.

As Ferdinand Lundberg observed:

There apparently is a difference of opinion between foreign leaders... and the American public about the precise status of the Rockefellers. Can it be that the foreign political sharks, as they muster out the palace guard and the diplomats to greet them, are mistaken? My own view of them accords with that of the foreigners.

 

The finpols (financial politicians) are ultra bigwigs, super-megaton bigshots, Brobdingnagian commissars of affairs. In relation to them the average one-vote citizen is a muted cipher, a noiseless nullity, an impalpable phantom, a shadow in a vacuum, a subpeasant.(1)

1. Lundberg, op. cit., p. 21.

Perhaps the reason Americans do not regard the Rockefellers as the "Brobdingnagian commissars" that they really are is because, like their Farben counterparts in Nazi Germany, they have wisely chosen to stay in the background.

They are seldom in the news and are overshadowed by the public appearances and pronouncements of the nation's politicians.

The men who sit at the pinnacle of this world power prefer to leave the publicity-seeking to their political subordinates who, by temperament, are more suited to the task. The amount of power held by a John or a David Rockefeller may not be as great as that held for a single moment by a president of the United States. By comparison, however, the president is but a passing comet streaking toward oblivion.

Political figures come and go. Some are revered in the history books of their nation. Some are tried as war criminals. Others are assassinated. Most merely are cast aside and forgotten when they have outlived their usefulness.

But the power of the Rockefellers is handed down from generation to generation as a title of nobility and has become a living, growing, nearly immortal reality of its own.

(above) I.G. Farben, the world's largest chemical and drug cartel, was headquartered in this building in Frankfurt, Germany. It became the backbone of the Nazi war machine.

Yet, during the massive bombing raids on Frankfurt, American bombardiers were instructed to spare this building. It survived without a scratch.

(below) During the Nuremberg trials it was learned that the business leaders of I.G. Farben had controlled the Nazi state. Oswald Pohl, an SS Lieutenant General who was sentenced to hang, is shown here explaining how Farben operated such concentration camps as Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

U.S. Army photo

Adolph Hitler (above) at a 1932 meeting in Berlin.

Hitler's rise to power would have been impossible without the secret financial support of I.G. Farben. The Nazi state became the means by which cartel agreements were enforced.

Below are key Farben defendants at the Nuremberg War-Crimes trials. Hermann Schmitz, the mastermind of the cartel, was an integral part of the international banking structure. Carl Krauch was chairman of Farben's board of directors.

Max llgner, Farben's "Director of Finance," in reality was in charge of espionage and propaganda.

Otto Ambros (bottom right) was production chief of Farben's poison-gas facilities, (U.S. Army photos)

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (above), often gave away shiny dimes to small children at public gatherings in an attempt to improve his image in the press.

This device was suggested by Ivy Lee (below), one of the world's foremost public-relations experts. Mr. Lee also had been retained by I.G. Farben to appraise the public-image Potential of Adolph Hitler.

Salter Teagle (above, left), while president of Standard Oil, Secretly held stock in Farben enterprises on behalf of the Rockefeller family.

Through such ploys, the Rockefellers have obscured their financial interest in the field of drugs.

Abraham Flexner (above left), author of the famous Flexner Report of 1910, led the crusade for upgrading the medical schools of America.

All the while, he was in the employ of Andrew Carnegie (above right) and John D. Rockefeller who had set up tax-exempt foundations for that purpose.

The result was that America's medical schools became oriented toward drugs and drug research, for it was through the increased sale of these drugs that the donors realized a Profit on their "philanthropy."

John D. Rockefeller, Sr., shown here at age 93, had created fantastic wealth.

When he interlocked his own empire with that of I.G. Farben in 1928, there was created the largest and most powerful cartel the world has ever known. Not only has that cartel survived through the years, it has grown an prospered.

Today it plays a major role in both the science and politics of cancer therapy.
 

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