Rockefellerocracy: Kennedy Assassinations, Watergate and Monopoly of the "Philanthropic" Foundations

By Richard James DeSocio

Rockefellerocracy: Kennedy Assassinations, Watergate, and Monopoly of the Philanthropic Foundations is a portal to a universe of political and economic supremacy, revealing links to the crimes of the century. Kennedy had a dream for the nation, but Nelson Rockefeller, a ruthless megalomaniac, had his own selfish scheme to become president. After a ten-year-long course of wrongdoing to steal American democracy, his nomination to the vice presidency by President Gerald Ford was not the hand of fate. Congressman Ford had served as an integral part of the Warren Commission whitewash. The two men formed the first administration not elected by the people

This release coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination, that infamous weekend in November of 1963 that author Richard James DeSocio remembers well. He even witnessed Jack Ruby execute Lee Harvey Oswald in front of a live TV audience. Originally searching for answers to satisfy his own curiosity, that led to twenty-five years of painstaking research, the author has unraveled the dark mystery that baffled a nation for half a century. The verdict is radically different from the official version.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481738224

Richard James DeSocio

Author Richard James DeSocio’s background can be described as diverse, with an educational background in economics and finance. As a concerned citizen, he began writing during the recession of 1984, when unemployment lines were long. Wondering about the state of the economy and more specifically the state of an eroding manufacturing sector, he dug into research that led to his first book release in 1992. The Elements of Economic Destruction: Why the American Living Standard Is Falling (aka Richard James). Manufacturing was once the economic backbone of the nation. In the last 50 years, thousands of factories have shuttered and countless jobs lost. Taxes, outsourcing, mismanagement, foreign competition and excessive union work-rules are discussed as possible causes. Greatness Achieved and Lost: The American Century followed next. It explores the explosive growth of America’s mighty industrial engine of the nineteenth century by discussing such notables as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller and their respective sectors: railroads, steel, autos and oil. In 2013, DeSocio released Rockefellerocracy: Kennedy Assassinations, Watergate, and Monopoly of the “Philanthropic” Foundations. It is a portal to a universe of political and economic supremacy. Clash of Dynasty: Why Gov. Nelson Rockefeller Killed JFK... (2017) is the latest update of his theory, containing compelling information to further indict the Rockefellers as the top culprits behind the crimes of the century. Visit richardjamesdesocio.com

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© 2013 Richard James DeSocio. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 4/1/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3820-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3821-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3822-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906110

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Roots Of Conspiracy

2. The Greater Picture

3. Hand Puppets

4. Rockefeller Agent Extraordinaire

5. Old Money Meets Rockefeller

6. New Roles For Old Blue Bloods

7. Cover Story Revelations

8. Whitney Connection

9. Rich And Deep In Espionage

10. Friend In Dallas

11. The War Years

12. George’s Testimony Continued

13. Like Father, Like Son

14. The Network Of Power

15. Chain of Events

16. Who Was Jack Ruby?

17. The Castro Problem

18. Hoffa: Enemy Within

19. The Crime Syndicate

20. Hoffa’s Hand in the Bay of Pigs

21. The Plot Thickens

22. Enter Jim Garrison

23. Prospective on Hoover

24. Hollywood and Gangsters

25. Watergate and the JFK Assassination

26. CIA-Mafia Plot to Kill Castro

27. Shadows of Eisenhower

Conclusion

References

Bibliography

About the Author

Dedicated to the memory of my mentor,

Emanuel M. Josephson—

the greatest political thinker and seeker of truth.

I never wanted to be vice president of anything.

I will make myself president of the United States without being elected.

— Nelson Rockefeller

It’s bigger than you can possibly believe.

Follow the money!

— Mark Felts (a.k.a Deep Throat)

If I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

— Jack Ruby

Bobby [Kennedy] wants his own dynasty.

— President Lyndon Johnson

For the safety of the republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15 [1911].

—Supreme Court decree to break up the

Standard Trust

Now the multibillion-dollar foundations have replaced the trusts which were broken up during the Theodore Roosevelt administration …

— Wright Patman, US Congressman

"In particular, he [JFK] was little acquainted with the New York financial and legal community—that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie Foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs."

—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

INTRODUCTION

The assassination of President Kennedy is the nation’s deepest mystery but not to me. After forty years of passionate and painstaking research, there is not one scintilla of doubt in my mind that it was a conspiracy; and I’m completely confident in my theory regarding the identities of the people who were the masterminds. As the title suggests, there is no mystery as to at whom I’m pointing a finger. I further believe, again as suggested by the title, that this same conspiratorial ring is also responsible for the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, Watergate, and only God knows how many other heinous acts in complete defiance of the laws of God and democracy. I can further state, with complete confidence, that this nefarious power has been willed to heirs who, like their forebears, are steadfastly engaged in brutal, plutocratic control of our nation and other governments as part of a quest for one world government under them. This power has not waned in the least. On the contrary, as this book goes to press, it is augmenting exponentially.

I sought the truth to satisfy my own desire to know and, in doing so, attained lucidity regarding how the United States political system really works and who wields the ultimate power, making this much more than a who-done-it project. I am also very much aware that the truth can be dangerous to my health and well-being. Anyone who can have a sitting president bumped off and conceal the truth for over half a century won’t give pause to stomping a pesky bug such as myself. Nonetheless, I continue undaunted for truth’s sake.

I must make clear that this is a theory formulated mainly by the tremendous, often self-sacrificial research of others. Proudly stated, I stand on the giant shoulders of those truth seekers who laid down their work before me. I have no first-hand evidential knowledge to add. The information put forth in this text has been part of the public domain for years, decades, generations, and centuries. I will state that if our government can come up with a novelish, white-washed, cockamamy pile of lone-assassination theory bunk called the Warren Commission, then I must be constitutionally entitled to the same freedom to postulation.

My work is an essential connecting of dots that, when isolated, would to most observers seem completely innocuous. If I were seated in the highest prosecutorial chair of this land, that of US attorney general, the power and resources would be at my fingertips to prove their significant implications, solve these crimes, and even at this late date indict several accomplices who are now old and near death; and theory would cross over into the realm of reality. Unfortunately, my appointment to this post undoubtedly will not occur. All factors considered, the top conspiratorial players eluded the long reach of justice and, in doing so, committed perfect crimes. They were, and still are, simply above the law.

There will be those who say my accusations are based on guilt by association or guilt by coincidence. But having coincidence after coincidence after coincidence, under the laws of probability, is not coincidence. The concept of guilt by association is paramount here because, after all, a conspiracy is an association. What I see are the footprints, fingerprints, outcroppings, smoking guns, and trace evidence of a giant invisible hand. I prefer to think of my research as a gathering up of preliminary clues. As in any murder case, investigators, examining immediate evidence, build a working theory for a deeper investigation. I have completed the first steps in formulating the most correct theory to date.

I humbly liken my work to that of Albert Einstein, who never performed one experiment. Einstein processed the data and information derived from the experiments performed by other scientists to formulate profound conclusions that others overlooked. He dwelled in the world of physics, where my work is in the realm of political intrigue. I also liken my work to that of Galileo. What he did in proving that Earth revolved around the sun was to first assume that Earth revolved around the sun; and from that perspective, he explained a multitude of natural occurrences that were previously unexplainable. If we assume my theories are correct, then the meaning of a lot of previous events, both major and minor, will be understood and history will be rewritten. What we have is an economic solar system that revolves around a Rockefeller sun.

The profound conclusions on these pages came about because I found myself in a unique position, affording me a very high vantage point. In general, it was a merger of two passions. I began my writing career on a subject that is of great importance, the obvious demise of American manufacturing. This nation was once by far the world leader in manufacturing usable goods. Since then, countless factories have been closed and jobs lost to foreign competition. This demise was recently underscored with the bankruptcy of General Motors, although the company reorganized and recovered. Nonetheless, a massive chunk of American industry has blown away with the wind.

When we walk into the stores of retail giants like K-Mart or Wal-mart and examine products for their marks of origin, we soon see that most of our goods, once made here of the finest quality, are now outsourced to distance lands. It is also arguable that my native state of New York was once the greatest industrial state in the world, and my own hometown of Auburn, New York, over half a century ago, was the site of a vibrant manufacturing sector. Many young people would find it hard to believe that New York was once the champion in shoes, garments, and textile manufacturing, now identified with distant countries such as South Korea, Mexico, China, and Twain.

In trying to better understand the cause of this demise, I figured it wise to understand the causes for the preceding rise. So I studied the histories of the captains of this former industrial glory, including such notable families as the Vanderbilts, Astors, Whitneys, Roosevelts, Fords, Carnegies, and, of course, the all-time greatest, richest, and most powerful family dynasty, America’s own Rockefellers. Great leaders made for great industry.

Of equal importance to the subject of industrial decline and outsourced jobs is my second passion. It began at the age of ten. I witnessed on live television Jack Ruby assassinate the accused Kennedy assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. In my youthful and immature mind, despite complete assurances from top authorities that it wasn’t so, I was completely convinced that a conspiracy of dark, powerful forces was behind it.

It wasn’t until 1984 that Robert Blakey, a former staffer for Attorney General Robert Kennedy, released his famous book, The Plot to Kill the President, which heightened suspicions, deepened the mystery, and left me more perplexed and puzzled. My piqued interest drove me to voraciously read every assassination book, both conspiratorial and nonconspiratorial, and background book on individuals whose names will be forever linked with the crime, such as Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. The more I learned, the further out and upward the suspicions expanded, intensifying my determination to reach the end of the trail or, better yet, the top of the ivory tower. I learned more about the Kennedy assassinations from books that, on the surface, were not crime mysteries but were written on topics such as industry, labor, and political history.

What I began to notice was that many of the names that appeared in books written about the Rockefellers as completely legitimate supercapitalists were also appearing in the thick volumes of assassination literature, driving me to focus increasingly on them. To put it succinctly, what I learned began speaking more loudly and clearly, saying that the means, motives, and opportunities rested in their hands.

With over twenty-eight years of research, my mind is no longer perplexed or puzzled. My vision has improved to a crystal-clear twenty-twenty. Now, wherever I look, I see the Rockefellers lurking in the shadows. A mystery is no longer a mystery when one becomes enlightened. There are so many undeniable links between these high crimes and the Rockefeller family, as this book will detail in ample supply, that any reasonable person with any degree of critical-thinking ability must assume it goes beyond coincidence. And since they are the first family of American power, then it goes without saying that these folks were not lowly order-takers but were the top order-givers. Keep in mind this axiom: like excrement, orders roll downhill.

I’m in a unique position. Most of the folks who read or write conspiracy theory books are politically on the left and have such an aversion to capitalism that they will not attempt an unbiased study of it or learn its complete history, focusing instead on its infamous failures to use as ammunition in refutation of it. On the other hand, those naive people who are completely comfortable with the official verdicts, believing that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and that Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald, are on the political right and don’t want to hear that the conservative politicians for whom they voted had a hand in killing their president and other leaders.

The truth, by extension, has serious implications. The line of reasoning laid down in this book is an indictment of the entire American political system and another reason that so many prefer not to ascertain the truth in the first place. If the truth is learned and accepted, then all of the history books written since 1872, the year Standard Oil was incorporated, will have to be rewritten, and the people will have to rise up and re-revolt for the original Constitution.

There was once a time, not too long ago, when I would have walked away from anyone making the same accusations I’m making now. The seed of wisdom in this story is in understanding the Rockefeller family history. It’s a background that few people know; otherwise, the citizens of New York and other states wouldn’t have repeatedly elected them to high office with wide margins of victory. It’s also very difficult to understand. The Rockefeller world is a vast one, shrouded in dark, deep secrecy and composed of a network of invisible tentacles that insidiously wrap around and intersect all significant persons and institutions—a fact that led me to coin the appropriate term: Rockefellerocracy.

It is also too big for any one mind to completely understand, mine included. Remember the words of Deep Throat: It’s bigger than you can possible believe. A century ago, the Rockefellers were at the forefront of the American political conscience, vilified as the quintessential robber barons. Theodore Roosevelt referred to them as malefactors of great wealth. Senator Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin called John D. Rockefeller the greatest criminal of the age. The political cartoonists of the era graphically and accurately portrayed their power as a gripping corporate octopus. The public outcry was so loud that it reverberated in the passage of several pieces of major milestone legislation, most notably the Sherman Antitrust Act and Interstate Commerce Act, which schoolchildren in America study today. In my mind, it was a failed attempt to rein in Rockefeller power, and I must underscore the word attempt. What I know, although it is impressive, is only the tip of the Rockefeller iceberg. What I don’t know must be a hundred times more than what I do, a thought that only further incriminates them.

ROOTS OF CONSPIRACY

It is my conclusion that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who died in 1979, led his family, intimates, and agents in a decade-long, worldwide, and bloody strategy to fulfill his single-minded purpose of becoming the president of the United States. Like father, like son—Nelson descended from a long line of mass murderers. His grandfather, John Davison Rockefeller, who ushered in the Oil Age with the formation of the Standard Oil monopoly, proved himself to be a ruthless killer by his role in the Ludlow massacre. So, too, was Nelson merciless and tyrannical in striving to fulfill his most desired ambition, as this story will reveal in spades. The willingness to commit murder is one of the keys to the Rockefeller climb to the pinnacle. I would like to mention that, as a young boy, I shook the figuratively blood-covered hand of Governor Nelson Rockefeller while he was on the campaign stump in Auburn, New York.

The number-one motive in killing a sitting president is to usurp power. However, Nelson Rockefeller, a megalomaniac, did not covet power in seeking the blood of the Kennedys simply because he and his family had for over a century held squarely in their palms the levers of ultimate control for the purpose of profit. When John Fitzgerald Jack Kennedy (JFK) rode victoriously into Washington, he arrived as a Rockefeller golden boy, with the full backing of the family and the old house of Standard Oil, as this story will show. In truth, the two greatest political dynasties in history fused together as occupiers of the White House. But commencing soon after Kennedy’s famous inauguration speech, the courtship soured, and murder was the result.

In essence, the Kennedy clan became a threat, and the Rockefeller response was partly defensive in nature. John and his brother Robert Francis Bobby Kennedy (RFK) were in the top seats, a position from which they could inflict serious harm and were in fact making threatening moves against the Rockefellers. Maybe the power went to their heads, so much so that they felt invincible. This I don’t know. History books document dynasties’ battling for supremacy since civilization began. For some reason I cannot fathom, the majority of Americans cannot believe dynastic warfare can break out in the good ol’ USA.

I don’t believe the Kennedys saw where the bullets that cut them down were coming from. Kennedy presidential advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. would agree. My entire half-century of research can be summed up best in his words:

In particular, he [JFK] was little acquainted [emphasis added] with the New York financial and legal community—that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs. (Safire 2008)

This book makes clear the meaning of these words.

Before getting to the specifics of the aforementioned crimes, we must first understand the vast power that the Rockefeller family wields to see how they can effectively execute the misdeeds and then go home free. To understand what makes up the Rockefeller muscle power, we have to start by studying history much earlier than November 22, 1963. What happened after the first fifty years of this young nation was something that George Washington and the original framers of the US Constitution did not envision, and that was the advent of the railroads.

At one time, manufacturing was done locally. Commerce was separated by mountains, long distances, winter snows, deserts, large lakes, and rivers. The railroads suddenly made all these once-formidable obstacles inconsequential, and the age of centralization began, making it possible for one plant manufacturing in one location to supply a whole nation and beyond. For example, Detroit rolled out cars, Akron made tires, Pittsburgh produced steel; little Seneca Falls, New York, fashioned pumps; Chicago slaughtered and packed beef; and Cleveland began its rise as an oil-refining center.

As a booming nation, burgeoning businesses connected by a steel ribbon of tracks were banging into one another’s territories and touching off price-slashing wars, resulting in widespread bankruptcies, shutdowns, and idled capacity. It was this challenged business environment that gave birth to John D. Rockefeller as an industrial emperor. He would later in life summarize his major accomplishment by saying that he created a business model that saved a bankrupt industry, referring to the petroleum industry, from being wiped out. Like Nelson Rockefeller, the family was blessed with, along with other characteristics, single-mindedness of purpose. Their aim was the amassing of wealth, a trait they keep and exemplify to this day.

The devices that John D. Rockefeller used to bring salvation were manifold. The first step was combining smaller companies into one large amalgamation, eliminating ruinous competition and allowing the accumulation of monstrous sums of investment capital to construct expansive modern plant capacity, which resulted in superefficiency through lower operating costs and increased output. In all fairness to the supercapitalists and the Rockefellers, who will be excoriated by this book, it was this hyperindustrial might that granted to Americans the high living standard we now enjoy. But for every positive, there must be a negative. It’s there. You only have to search for it. This book, in its ultimate analysis, is a study in dark power.

In 1872, as part of the first stage of the first grand plan, Rockefeller and a small band of investors combined twenty-five oil refiners in the city of Cleveland to form the original Standard Oil of Ohio. Expansion did not stop within that city’s boundaries but engulfed most other oil companies in America and beyond.

Standard Oil is living proof of the capitalist advantage of economies of scale. The process of combining companies is referred to as trust building. Nowadays we prefer to describe such amalgamations as parent or holding companies. Most of the Fortune 500 companies today, if you care to trace their history, were forged by mergers and acquisitions executed over generations: General Motors, United States Steel, International Harvester, General Electric, Western Union, and Freeport-McMoRan, are a few examples on a very long list of companies resulting from trust building. The major banks in the nation grew huge by ingesting local banks that, for all intents and purposes, went bankrupt. The Rockefellers became the master trust builders and strategists for industry and finance, regardless of whether the common Joe on the street or the president of the United States understands it or not.

Another technique that Rockefeller utilized in monopoly building was controlling railroad transportation. Several major railroad trunk lines networked the nation. In heated competition against one another for business and territory, they had one thing in common: Standard Oil was their chief customer. Originally, even crude oil was hauled from the oil-well heads on rail cars. Today, crude is moved by oil transmission pipelines and supertankers along with refined oil products such as gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel fuels. Rockefeller controlled over thirty thousand miles of pipelines stateside (National Transit Company) and a vast fleet of ships. One infamous ship was the Exxon Valdez, which ran aground in Alaska and blanketed the coastline in black. Refined oil products are still moved by rail today, along with petrochemicals that cannot flow through pipes. The Rockefellers own the biggest railroad car manufacturing company, the Union Tank Car Company, which manufactures railroad cars for carrying oil. This is what is called vertical integration in the business world. A company buys its vendors, suppliers, and subcontractors to avoid paying out profits to them.

Speaking of Union Tank Car, in the days of the first oil strikes, crude was moved from the wellheads to refineries on railroad cars equipped with large wooden vats, a function eventually replaced with steel pipelines run directly to the oil fields, boosting efficiency. Since it involved transportation, and Rockefeller had amassed his power through influence over railroads, he wasted no time in diving into the pipeline sector by forming the National Transit Company in 1881—not to the dismay of Union Tank, which in 2005 boasted more than eighty thousand cars in its worldwide fleet. A large portion of Union Tank is now owned by America’s richest citizen, Warren Buffett, who is in league with Bill Gates and the Rockefellers for joint control of their philanthropic foundations.

Now to the point—it involves a Union Tank lawyer named Paulino Sierra Martínez, a Cuban exile who was once a high-ranking civil servant in the Batista government and an aide to a Cuban senator. A tall, very bright, articulate guy who dressed the part, he moved from Miami, passed the Illinois bar exam, and landed a job in the legal department of Union Tank Car Company headquarters in Chicago. He emerged as a leader of the Cuban exile community there and founded the Cuban Bar Association. Martínez openly campaigned for an overthrow of Castro, to be replaced by a government-in-waiting with a very rich Cuban named Carlos Prio Soccarrás as president and himself as secretary general.

In May of 1963, Martínez traveled to Miami to pitch his plan, claiming to have $30 million in financial backing guaranteed by a host of American companies mentioned by name: United Fruit, Standard Oil, DuPont, and US Steel (Hinckle and Turner 1981). With the exception of DuPont, all of these are corporations that the Rockefellers control. Martínez’s mission was to unite the various anti-Castro factions into one coherent unit behind Prio and himself. Immediately after JFK’s assassination, a plethora of accusations arose that Martínez and men close to him participated in a conspiracy to kill the president (Scott 2012). Not surprising, the authorities’ findings were inconclusive.

Martínez immediately disappeared from the political landscape. In 1977, Prio allegedly committed suicide with a gunshot to the head, just one week following the apparent self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head of Oswald associate George de Mohrenschildt. Both victims were targeted for questioning by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

*****

In examining Rockefeller’s rise, historians always make mention of his cozy, sweetheart relationship with the railroads. It was Tom Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who formed the infamous South Improvement Company. It was more like an agreement than a brick-and-mortar firm. It granted to Standard Oil preferred shipping rates, and for the Pennsylvania Railroad, it secured a large and steady supply of freight business it could count on. Rockefeller made similar agreements with all other railroads, locking out the competitors that were too small to survive.

Andrew Carnegie began his stellar rise as steel master working as an assistant for Tom Scott. Carnegie was the personal telegraph operator for Scott and in this capacity became a confidant. In my opinion, Carnegie was acting as a stock proxy. In those days, rail executives were buying shares of stocks in companies doing business with the railroads and placing those shares in the names of trusted men. Carnegie bought his own stocks in companies supplying the railroads, including iron mills, which supplied tracks and bridge girders. Iron led to steel. With a small group of investors, Carnegie constructed the giant Edgar Thomson steel mill in Pittsburgh to supply steel track to the railroading world. Thompson was the owner of the Pennsylvania, the second largest line in the nation after the New York Central’s twenty-six thousand miles of track that the Vanderbilts owned. Thomson and Vanderbilt were at one time avowed enemies in open competitive warfare for business.

A large portion of steel production goes to the oil sector for pipelines, barrels, tanker ships, tanks, drilling rigs, refineries, gas pumps, tanker trucks, and so on, as well as the tall steel-framed skyscrapers that define the skylines of major cities, such as those of Rockefeller Center. So it behooved Rockefeller, the oil magnate, to invest in steel making. He did more than that—he turned the sector into a monopoly as well. Rockefeller, along with a small group of well-heeled investors that included Wall Street financial chieftain J. P. Morgan, bought out all of Carnegie’s steel-making facilities to form US Steel, at the time the largest corporation in the world and the first billion-dollar corporation, at that. US Steel most definitely expanded and modernized the nation’s steel-making capacity by assembling on the south shore of Lake Michigan plants that stretched for over twenty miles, in a town that would grow to become Gary, Indiana.

The iron ore was dug by steam shovels from the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota, hauled to the coast of Lake Superior by train, loaded on fleets of ore-carrying ships, and floated south—all on such a massive scale that it caused the metal to become affordable and, in turn, led to a second Steel Age.

The story of Rockefeller’s role in the development of the Mesabi is an important milestone in American industrial history. The Mesabi, for those who do not know, is home to the chief supply of iron for the United States. It is a mountain range composed of iron ore in powdered form. Before its utilization, iron ore was held in solid rock formations and had to be drilled and blasted to be cut free, a costly process. The Mesabi ore was discovered in 1866, and rumors circulated about its ease of extraction, but few people acted, not even the major steel- and iron-makers of the period. A man named Oliver, who was a school chum of steel master Carnegie, visited the Mesabi site and returned all excited, but when Carnegie heard what the man was pushing, he deemed him crazy and the idea too far-fetched to get involved.

The men who rightly deserve credit for the Mesabi’s rise are the seven Merritt brothers. They were rough-cut, hard-drinking, tobacco-chewing, backwoodsmen who had a sixth sense about just how vast the untold wealth underneath their feet was. They knew it would take a lot of capital to make the mining feasible, money they didn’t have. So they decided to take their plan to the richest man in America (circa 1890), a man who had demonstrated a sixth sense about oil. When Rockefeller heard what the Merritts came heralding, he didn’t have to think twice. He joined with them in establishing the Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines, founded the Bessemer Steamship Company to float the ore on whaleback ships, and modernized the Duluth, Mesabi and Northern Railway.

Rockefeller sold his first ton of ore to Carnegie, and the two richest men met face to face. Rockefeller offered to sell Carnegie a very large order of iron at half the going rate. Carnegie just about fell out of his seat with joy. He felt he had met Santa Claus. This time, he jumped at the opportunity. In 1901, Rockefeller’s Mesabi holdings were merged with the newly formed US Steel. In all, over a period of ten years, Rockefeller had invested $10 million. His Mesabi assets to US Steel were appraised at $50 million. It was another stellar success story for Rockefeller and one that changed the face of America. It was not a success story for the Merritt brothers, who, like Colonel Drake before them, ended up close to flat broke.

To this day, the Rockefeller family will deny their ownership in the US steel-making Goliath because Rockefeller put his shares in the name of a proxy stockholder, proving that he was as foxy as he was brilliant, but left in place the one telltale sign of Rockefeller ownership—his son was a company director. The steel consortium paid Carnegie a half-billion dollars in cash for his holdings, the largest sum ever compiled at the time, which Carnegie entrusted into philanthropic endowments to supposedly serve the public good. After Carnegie’s death, the Rockefellers usurped trusteeship of those endowments and converted them for their own diabolic purposes. Two generations later, Carnegie’s granddaughter married Rockefeller’s grandson. The moral of the story is that what they giveth with one hand, they taketh back with the other, another personal trait and policy for stellar success.

The South Investment Company was first exposed in a public investigation conducted by of the New York Legislature in 1885, headed by the Hepburn Committee. Horace Clark, president of Lake Shore Railway and husband to one of Commodore Vanderbilt’s eight daughters, gave some inside dope on the workings of the South Investment Company scheme. Actually, in his lifetime, Rockefeller was hauled before many high-profile congressional investigations, putting him at the forefront of the nation’s conscience as top villain, and in every appearance before a deliberative body, he walked away without so much as a slap on the wrist, a sign that government officials were snugged away in the deep pockets of the Standard Oil monopoly.

William Henry Vanderbilt, the third all-time richest American behind Rockefeller and Carnegie, also testified along with his brother-in-law and paid a high compliment to Rockefeller and his executives when he told the Legislature, These men are smarter than I’m a great deal. They are very enterprising and smart men. I never came in contact with any class of men so smart and able as they are in business (Yergin 1991, 47).

It’s not that the Rockefellers are so smart; it’s that they are not too proud, have the bucks to employ the finest minds money can buy, and listen intently, another trait for success. At first, the Rockefellers were the Vanderbilts’ best customers for freight business, but in time the Rockefellers would come to control the New York Central Railroad through shares they held in trust. As this book will make clear, all wealth will find its way to Rockefeller hands.

The public understood what in most cases the elected officials could not enter into formal indictments. The public read between the lines, and rightly so, that Rockefeller and the other trust builders, flushed with money, were corrupting government on a wholesale level. Actually, most of the groundbreaking exposés against the money bosses were the research of intellectual journalists we call muckrakers. Through their collective work, the public came to believe that the growing power of the trusts would overtake American democracy and came to loath John D, Rockefeller, who came to be identified as the top predator. The public’s fears were completely justified. The name South Investment Company to this day is synonymous with Rockefeller, robber baron, trusts building, and monopolist. It was like a second secret constitution, a constitution for the privileged 1 percent. In my opinion, the trusts did supplant or supersede the power of government and the original US Constitution—hence, the Rockefellerocracy.

By the time the Hepburn Committee began its work, the men of Standard Oil, with increasing fortunes, had moved away from the provincial port city of Cleveland to plant their roots in a new headquarters in the Standard Oil building at 26 Broadway in New York City, on the rocky isle of Manhattan. This address would become the heart of Wall Street, the financial capital of the world. It housed the cradle of the Standard Trust, not to be confused with Standard Oil, which was just one of many holdings out of a portfolio of perhaps hundreds of other major corporations that the Standard Trust controlled and still controls. No outsider knows the complete list.

Not all politicians were bought. A few good ones remained untouchable and stood up to the omnipotent power of money. Their efforts resulted in at least two pieces of milestone legislation, the Ohio Decree and the more famous landmark legislation known as the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), which, by its intent, put the crosshairs directly on Rockefeller. Senator John Sherman, the bill’s namesake and its author, was an Ohio Republican.

Despite the Sherman Act, years went by and the power of the trusts steamrolled and snowballed, getting fatter all the time and making the law seem impotent against them, a testament to the power of money. When Theodore Teddy Roosevelt became president, rising to the nation’s top office after William McKinley was assassinated and claiming to be a trustbuster, he selected John Sherman to be his vice president. In my opinion, the Roosevelt antitrust stance was all smoke and mirrors, superficial, a deception to rake in the popular vote, and it worked. In truth, by the time they wound up in the two top seats, both men had pretty much sold out to the Rockefeller corner. They cut a backroom deal with the Rockefellers and openly deceived the public. It is simply impossible to gain the presidency without becoming a prostitute.

During Roosevelt’s presidency, in 1911, the US Supreme Court declared, "For the safety of the republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15 [1911], voted to fine Standard Oil $29 million for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and ordered a breakup of the oil conglomerate into thirty-three smaller predecessor companies," pretty much along geographic boundaries.

John D. Rockefeller was playing golf on his private course in New Jersey when word of the high court’s decision reached him. He shouted out, The judge will be long dead before I pay one penny of the fine! The true character of Rockefeller was revealed. You don’t become the richest person in the world by giving away dimes and throwing up your hands in capitulation. On the contrary, you get there by taking, conquering, and vanquishing ruthlessly.

It took me years of research to learn the correct story. The public was told a lie and believed it. In truth, not one cent of the fine was ever paid, and the breakup was only a break in name. Standard Oil was America’s first great international corporation, the world’s premier company, and comparable in influence to the former British East India Company, which ruled the colonies of the New World. The Standard derived 75 percent of its income from foreign business, a figure holding true to this day for successor ExxonMobil. Since US law and court decisions have no jurisdiction beyond the nation’s borders, only a quarter of the Goliath was fractured, with the largest part remaining intact. On top of this, the total sum of shares was divided proportionally among all stockholders. Rockefeller held 14 percent of the shares before the fracture and, afterward, held 14 percent in each of the predecessors, meaning his control had not been diminished one iota. He had the power to control the domestic companies through conspiracy, and this he surely did.

There was another wrinkle that the tricky oil master threw into his large-scale plan for mass deception. Rockefeller supposedly gave away most of his money for philanthropic purposes, another complete falsehood. It took me years to comprehend the real trick he pulled. He transferred ownership of stock shares—oil, banking, steel, mining, and so on—into the famous tax-exempt Rockefeller Foundation. It was this foundation that won undue respect and prestige for the family, causing the public to doubt the claims of critics that they are capable of awesome crimes. In essences, it was the greatest public relations coup in history.

It was a great plan of deception, for the old codger appointed trustees to the foundation who were family members, close family friends, highly paid lawyers, and their agents; something the public never understood. Through such a network, the Rockefellers were and still are able to secretly control corporation boardrooms. In essence, once again, we have another case in which no control was conceded. It’s just like anyone with a bank account, however humble it may be—no one wants to touch the principal. In the case of the Rockefeller Foundation, the principal does not diminish but instead grows at a faster rate than the bank accounts of most lesser citizens, such as myself, because of the tax rate on capital gains.

The public has been led to believe that the foundation’s proceeds are donated to charitable causes and spent in such ways as to serve the public good. Yes, the Rockefellers do have their favorite charities and do give away a fraction of interest earned. It amounts only to a pittance and is done to buy the public’s undue respect. It is true, as family members have claimed for years, that they have distanced themselves from oil and other commercial business interests and spend most of their time managing foundation funds for philanthropic purposes. In truth—and this is something the public will have a hard time swallowing—the funds are spent in such ways as to fatten the bottom line of Rockefeller Inc. This in itself is illegal, a violation of the trust laws that the Rockefellers wrote themselves.

Most citizens of the world have heard of the Rockefeller Foundation. However this is only one of many endowments set up by dozens of Rockefeller family members, spanning generations. Most of the trusts don’t even bear the family