The Oil Brotherhood Plans A Lube Job On The Spirit Of '76

Part One 

HOW JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER PLAYED MONOPOLY AND WON 20% OF ALL U.S. INDUSTRY AND HOW HIS GRANDSON NELSON POLE-VAULTED TO POLITICAL STARDOM FROM THE SHOULDERS OF THE GOLIATH OF BUSINESS AND FINANCE

November 15, 1974, "People should quit talking about Rockefeller and start thinking about the economy," sputtered a businessman drinking at a local tavern. "Those members of the House Judiciary Committee should be glad to have Rocky as Vice President. Who's going to inspire the trust and confidence of the business community with inflation running rampant, a recession all but here and the commies running the U.N.? Jerry Ford from Grand Rapids? We need someone with international connections to stabilize the world situation."

The Rockefellers have made billions by creating stability amid the anarchy wrought by capitalist competition. Each week the Rockefeller brothers, David, John II, Nelson and Laurance meet in New York's Rockefeller Center to discuss the management of the largest complex of wealth and power the world has ever known. They control 20% of all US industry, 20% of US banking and dictate the lives of four million employees. While the headlines scream about Rocky's gifts to Kissinger (one of his oldest friends and associates) and critics foam at the mouth because he backed a book critical of Goldberg during a gubernatorial campaign, there is silence when Rocky denies he is one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

*(A major Corporation usually has many stockholders each owning a small number of shares. Therefore any interest group holding 5% or more of the stock can effectively control its Board of Directors.)

While the family fortune was made in oil and is still highly concentrated in that industry (the world's most profitable) the Rockefellers have expanded into almost all areas of industry and finance. Through a network of 13 foundations and 74 family trusts they maintain a dominant interest in Standard Oil of New Jersey, Indiana, California and in Mobil Oil. They control Chase Manhattan, the second largest commercial bank (the most powerful in the world through its international loans), the second and third largest insurance companies, Metropolitan and Equitable, Eastern Airlines and Pan Am, Consolidated Natural Gas and the world's largest real estate development, Rockefeller Center, not to mention the Radio City Music Hall regulars, the Rocketttes!

Stock in these companies is held by the Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., by each of them personally, by the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Rockefeller Brother's Fund, and by that miracle of modern corporate law, the Rockefeller Foundation, a tax free "philanthropic" organization. The Foundation emerged in the early 20th century when the court ordered the dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust and when the corporate income tax became a reality. It enables the Rockefellers to maintain a liberal image as philanthropists, avoid income taxes and still maintain control over all the corporations originally under the Standard banner. Through its donations the Rockefeller Foundation influences major American universities, American foreign policy and the internal situations of emerging industrial nations around the planet. In 1972 Standard Oil of California paid only 5% of its income in taxes and Standard of Ohio not only paid no taxes, but received a 10.4% tax credit on future earnings.

We cannot escape Rockefeller influence. Like Big Brother they are everywhere. From our precious Skippy Peanut Butter to the gas that takes us to work to the Kleenex we dried our eyes with after watching a documentary on their TV station to the food we feed our dog -- we are surrounded. Of course all this is tremendously confidential. The Rockefellers don't report to anyone, except the IRS during tax season.

The Rockefellers count on the profits and loyalty of Amoco, Esso, Chevron, Citgo, Humble, Marathon, Pan Am, Anaconda Copper, Kimberly Clark, IBM, Borden Foods, Domino Sugar, AT&T (yes even Bell Telephone), MIT and on and on.

So where do you go to escape their influence? On to a higher education? No. They financed the building of the University of Chicago and major contributors to Cornell, Notre Dame, Brown, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, John Hopkins, Columbia, NYU and Dartmouth. What's more they or their friends are influential on the Boards of Trustees of these institutions.

Out to see David Bowie at Radio City Music Hall? Not a chance. They helped build the Music Hall in addition to other cultural strongholds like the NY Public Library, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera. And they control Bowie's record company, RCA.

Church? They help finance every denomination from the prestigious Riverside Church in New York City to St. John's Cathedral to the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Watch TV or go to the movies? Nope. They have a say at CBS, NBC, and Columbia Pictures, not to mention their interest in the New York Times.

OK, it's true the Rockefellers don't own everything. But what they don't own is owned by the DuPonts, Mellons, Fords, Hearsts, Reynolds, Olins, Astors, Hannas, Kaisers, and a few other families. And all these people work together, play together, go to school together, belong to the same clubs and marry each other. That's what you cali the ruling class. You will not meet them at the supermarket.

So let's be a Rockefeller for a day and see what the brotherhood is up to. First we have to fly to New York City, center of the Rockefeller empire and of course center of world trade. A quick tour of Manhattan brings us to Rockefeller Center, a collection of 23 skyscrapers in midtown. Then there's the Rocky owned Chase Manhattan Building, the largest bank building in the world. And the World Trade Center, technically not Rocky owned, but conceived and built by them. Add another 30 or so skyscrapers, assorted brownstones and other commercial property and you have the Rockefellers controlling directly or indirectly through banks, Con Edison, NY Telephone and others, ONE QUARTER of all the island of Manhattan! We haven't even gotten to their outstate holdings or those in other cities or even their international real estate like resorts in Hawaii or the Virgin Islands of Puerto Rico or their ranches in South America or Pocantico Hills, N.Y. Surrounded by wire fencing, patrolled by armed guards and served by hundreds of servants, Pocantico Hills is the most valuable estáte in the world, complete with several mansions, golf course, tea garden and athletic facilities.

Except for Nelson, the Rockefeller brothers work behind the scenes preferring to place the heads of their corporations or research organizations in public office. David Rockefeller, head of the Rockefeller Foundation, is probably the most powerful man in the world. From his office on the 32nd floor of Chase Manhattan, David rules the most powerful bank in the world. When he goes abroad on business he is the only bank president who pays courtesy calls on reigning heads of state. He is President of the Board of Overseers of Harvard, Director of Population Control, Chairman of Rockefeller U, Chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, Past Chairman of the Peace Corps, and Director of the Kennedy Library, Rockefeller Center. L'Enfant Plaza, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. As Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (Kissinger's alma mater) he and other corporate leaders are in a position to influence much of US foreign policy.

John D. Rockefeller III is the head of the Rockefeller Foundation and a "venture capitalist" backing small innovative industries that turn into big money-makers, in the fields of aviation, electronics, and rocket research. He is also responsible for the development of Rock-Resorts, those abominations of modern architecture perched on the beaches of Hawaii, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Until his death in 1973, Winthrop Rockefeller had settled in Little Rock, Arkansas on a 45,000 acre ranch called "Winrock Farms," one of the principal buil breeding grounds on the planet. Although not a native son, he managed to get himself elected governor of Arkansas for two terms.

Since 1962 the Rockefeller family has spent over 27 million dollars to elect Nelson governor of New York. In 1970 alone his campaign cost 7 million, ten times the amount of money spent by his opponent. Since birth he has been groomed to be the family's politician. Voted "Most Likely To Succeed" at Dartmouth despite poor grades, Nelson graduated into a series of executive positions in government agencies specializing in Latin American affairs, some of which he personally asked the President to create. He advanced from First Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to Undersecretary of State to Special Advisor to the President to member at large in the National Security Council and the President's Cabinet.

In 1958 he was elected to his first term as governor of New York and held the position as reigning monarch for four terms. In 1974 he declined another term to seek a higher calling, President of the United States.

Posing as a liberal and a champion of New York as the nation's industrial leader, Nelson's terms were pockmarked with some of-ihe most insidious legislation passed in the U.S. in the 20th century.

His tax program offered loopholes to the large corporations and a biting sales tax feit most accutely by the poor. Bragging that he had cut New York's corporate tax share in half he voted against a raise in the minimum wage. In the mode of an Egyptian Pharoah he ordered the decimation of the homes of 9,000 poor people in Albany, New York for the sake of the billion dollar Albany Mali, a nightmare of marble and modern architecture. His " bitious building program has created the most extensive highway system in the US, the New York State Thruway, and his most controversial road cost 250 million ending at the doormat to his private mansion.

And then there is Nelson's personal vendetta against the drug traffic in New York. A first offender can be sent to prison for life for possession of as little as 25 milligrams of LSD, five grams of speed or any any trace of heroin. Possession of an ounce of marijuana or ten ounces of "dangerous depressants" can draw up to 15 years. Radio and TV advertising heralded in the new law- "If you use drugs, don't get caught holding the bag." A special toll free number was created for informers who have only to call in a tip leading to a conviction to make $1000. Plea bargaining was eliminated. No more copping to lower charges. The law was created to stop the heroin trade, but Nelson is the only one in New York who thinks it's working.

Until the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional, Nelson had New Yorkers goosestepping to a remarkable set of law and order statutes. There was "stop and frisk" giving the police complete freedom to search anyone walking down the street, "no-knock" giving them the right to break down your door and "no sock" making it a felony to resist arrest.

But perhaps Nelson's greatest contribution to the law and order crusade was the massacre at Attica Prison. Located in upstate rural New York, Attica contains a predominantly black urban-bred prison population. The guards are white smalltown hicks. In response to the typically brutal, racist dehumanizing prison conditions the prisoners took over a wing of the prison after getting no satisfaction for their greivances. Even though a committee of outside observers insistedthat the prisoners had not harmed their guard hostages and were willing to negotiate, Nelson refused an invitation to meet with them calling in the troops instead. When the smoke cleared, forty-three lay dead at the hands of Rocky's army, some of them guard hostages. Prisoners who lived were tortured and abused. Nelson's commissioner of prisons announced that hostages had been castrated, but a later coroners report insisted they died of gunshot wounds from the invaders. When grand jury indictments were announced, only prisoners were charged. Some are now facing multiple sentences equaling 500 years. Asked by the Senate Rules Committee if he regretted Attica, Nelson answered, "No, I'd make the same decision again if I had to."

Wreaking violence on other humans is nothing new to the Rockefeller family. Nelson 's father, John D. Rockefeller II also carved himself a special place in the hearts of his fellow Americans. The owner of several coal and iron mines in the Colorado rockies, he paid his miners less than $700.00 per year, forced them to live in company houses and buy at company stores. The camps were patrolled by armed guards and infiltrated by company spies. When 9,000 miners went on strike in 1915, John D. II called in the Colorado State Militia, the National Guard and the Cavalry. Raking the miners with gun fire, they gutted and burned a path through the camps. Men, women and and children were mowed down.

John D. II was only carrying on in the great tradition established by his father (Nelson's grandfather) John D. Rockefeller I, founder of the family fortune, creator of the Standard Oil Trust and one of the most hated and feared men of his day. And of course his father was the frontier barterer of "The Renowned Dr. William Rockefeller's Cancer Cure." When the first oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, John D. I was a mere foodstuff wholesaler. Crude oil was easily refined and tremendous profits made from the demand for this new heat and light giving substance. He and hundreds of others in Cleveland went into the oil refinery business, but with one difference. Within five years his refinery was to become the largest in Cleveland and in another few years Standard Oil would become the largest refinery in the world.

John D. I was the developer and master of both types of monopoly-vertical and horizontal. He eventually controlled not only most of oil refining, but its production, transportation and retailing in addition to its related industries of coal and iron mining. Because of the rebates he received form the railroads and the special relationship he developed with them as their largest oil shipper he was able to undercut and deny transportation to his competitors. Eventually he bought them out, one by one, usually at a fraction of their real worth.

Historically members of the ruling class have kept a low profile in American politics. The media has helped to perpetuate the myth of the autonomy of the private versus public sectors of life. Splashed across the pages of every major newspaper the Watergate revelations illustrated for the first time the extent the ruling families and the corporations they control effect the policy of the U.S. government. Now the favorite son of corporate interests has stepped into the limelight, in a time when the U.S. economy is faltering and the hungry nations of the world will soon be clamoring at her doorstep. The question is: as the economy grows worse and Rocky & Co. ask the American people to draw their belts a notch tighter will they respond? And what will he do if they don't? Rocky for Prez in '76.

COMING NEXT WEEK! PART II

Further tales of the fabulous Rockefeller world wide insurance plan. Read how they hand pick the Secretaries of State, determine U.S. foreign policy and guarantee the safety of their investments abroad!

This article was compiled from the following sources: North American Congress on Latin America Newsletter, "The Incredible Rocky versus The Power of the People" an NACLA comic by Joel Andreas, "John D. Rockefeller" by Aian Nevins, October 1973 Rolling Stone and Liberation Magazine, SeptemberOctober 1974.