Suite 8F Group

[Linda Minor]

Linda,

With your unique background, perhaps you would know some details about the San Jacinto Foundation and the San Jacinto Fund?

Do you know when it was founded and its directors?

Thanks,

Bill Kelly

The San Jacinto fund was set up as a maintenance fund for the monument, which was built with the fund-raising efforts of Jesse Jones. Under the terms of the foundation, donations could be accepted for the construction and maintenance of the monument to the memory of the heroes of the Republic of Texas. Jesse had become director general of the Centennial of the Texas Republic in 1926 with the obligation of planning the centennial for 1936. By late 1932 Texas appropriated $3 million for the exposition, which was to be held in Dallas, and the city promised to spend $10 million and provide 50 buildings at the Texas State Fair. After gaining those concessions, Jones retired as director general. Later, with John Nance Garner as FDR's vice president, the federal government to authorize a United States Commission for the Texas Centennial. According to Jones' biographer, "Jones himself drew the plans for this monument--the [570-foot-tall] shaft surmounted by the star at the top indicating the Lone Star State, comparable in height to the Washington Monument, and resting on a two-story and basement base of 200 feet square comparable to the Lincoln Memorial."

At Dallas for the celebration, Jones induced FDR to unveil a statute of General Robert E. Lee, after making speeches at San Jacinto, at the Alamo in San Antonio, and in Dallas and Fort Worth. The following year on San Jacinto Day (April 21 commemorates the day of the battle of San Jacinto) Jesse laid the cornerstone of the monument that would make it 15 feet taller than Washington Monument.

Years later there was an official opinion from the Texas Attorney General stating that it was legal to have this separate private foundation maintain a building owned by the State of Texas, rather than pour the funds back into the State's treasury. In 1973 Turner and Hinckle exposes in Ramparts revealed the San Jacinto Fund had been used, along with foundations of Jesse Jones' other wealthy Texas friends like Bill Hobby, as a conduit for CIA funds in the National Student Association scandal.

[Linda Minor]

Linda,

With your unique background, perhaps you would know some details about the San Jacinto Foundation and the San Jacinto Fund?

Do you know when it was founded and its directors?

Thanks,

Bill Kelly

Anyone who has read Pete Brewton's book, The Mafia, the CIA and George Bush, would find it interesting to learn that one of the trustees of the monument -- George A. Hill, Jr. -- was the father of one of the "villains" in Brewton's book (Raymond Hill, who used Mainland Savings to help fund the Contras):

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a389b6a173e33.htm

JAMES A. BAKER, III, White House chief of Staff, former Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State; former partner at Andrews & Kurth, which investigated Raymond Hill and Mainland Savings and then did nothing; longtime good friend of Raymond Hill.

RAYMOND HILL, Houston attorney and scion of old, rich Houston family; owner of Mainland Savings, which lent money to Mafia associates and CIA operatives; did business with Walter Mischer, "his mentor"; close friend of James A. Baker III.

http://www.sanjacinto-museum.org/About_Us/...nts/Background/

Construction began in 1936 under the supervision of Albert C. Finn, a talented Houston architect who employed a Rice Institute instructor and sculptor, William McVey, to assist in the design of the building. The finished products were a memorial tower and a functional 125 feet square base consisting of two entrance foyers and two large galleries originally intended for Texana exhibitions. The exterior of the building and the terraces which surround it are made of Texas Cordova shell limestone quarried in Burnet County near Austin.

The Monument’s observation room is immediately under the giant 34-foot, 220-ton Texas Lone Star. The tower is just over 567 feet tall, over 12 feet taller than the Washington Monument. According to the Guiness Book, the San Jacinto Monument is still the tallest monument column in the world.

The memorial tower was nearing completion in 1939 when the San Jacinto State Park Commission, realizing that funds were almost depleted, appointed five distinguished Houstonians on September 22, 1938, to form a museum of history to occupy the building. The trustees included Louis W. Kemp, historian, author and leading authority on the Battle of San Jacinto; William B. Bates, who was instrumental in the founding of the University of Houston; Albert C. Finn; Mrs. Madge Hearne, granddaughter of Sam Houston; and George A. Hill, Jr.

Shortly thereafter, on November 7, 1938, these trustees chartered the San Jacinto Museum of History Association, a private, non-profit organization to own, operate, and support a “museum of the first rank,” which would:

“revisualize the history of Texas and the region; instill and encourage historical inquiry; collect and preserve the materials of history and spread historical information; illustrate the chronological story of the region as determined from authoritative history by means of exhibits worthy of a museum of first rank; extend and diffuse knowledge of our history, and promote and perpetuate peace, friendship, and sympathetic understanding between the people of Texas and the people of Mexico, Spain, France, and the Latin-American Republics.”

Today, the Monument is operated for the State of Texas by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which provides the Museum with rent-free space, building repairs, utilities, security, maintenance, and custodial services. This arrangement allows the privately owned Museum to dedicate its funds to the exhibitions and related educational activities. Free admission to the Monument and the Museum is made possible by modest charges to ride to the observation room and supplemented by corporate and individual memberships in the Museum Association.

George A. Hill, Jr. had a special feeling for the battlefield and the new museum. His grandfather, James Monroe Hill, captured a Mexican fifer boy during the Battle of San Jacinto. This boy was taken home, reared and educated by the Hill family, after being given the alternative of returning to Mexico. In a rare coincidence, James Monroe’s younger brother, John Christopher Columbus Hill, was captured by the Mexicans, at age 13, in the 1842 Mier expedition and brought to Mexico City where he was reared and educated by Santa Anna’s Secretary of War, General Tornel. He chose to remain in the Republic of Mexico.

In 1897, James Monroe Hill was appointed chairman of the San Jacinto Commission, which was to purchase the battleground after carefully determining the outlines of the historic site. His son, George A. Hill, Sr., was appointed Secretary of the San Jacinto Park Commission. The San Jacinto Park Commission fittingly requested George A. Hill, Jr., active in Texas historical societies and distinguished collector in the field of our Mexican heritage, to serve as chairman, and later as president of the first Museum board of trustees. His contributions, and the contributions of his family, formed the nucleus for the campaign to raise funds, and provided Texans with a proper depository for their forefather’s history.

The Hill family has contributed to the Museum’s success through generous gifts of vast and priceless collections of documents, books, and relics relating to the exploration and settlement of Mexico and the greater Texas region. Descendants of Mirabeau B. Lamar, Thomas Jefferson Chambers, Sidney Sherman, and many other prominent Texans have contributed generously to the Museum’s holdings. Mrs. Madge Hearne, granddaughter of Sam Houston, selected the San Jacinto Museum of History as an appropriate place for the preservation of her grandfather’s personal possessions.

The Museum’s collection spans more than four hundred years of regional history, from the Spanish conquest through Texas in the 19th century. Emphasis is on colonial Texas as a part of Mexico, and the Republic of Texas. The collection contains more than 100,000 objects, 250,000 documents, 10,000 visual images, and a 35,000-volume rare book library.

[William Kelly]

Linda,

With your unique background, perhaps you would know some details about the San Jacinto Foundation and the San Jacinto Fund?

Do you know when it was founded and its directors?

Thanks,

Bill Kelly

The San Jacinto fund was set up as a maintenance fund for the monument, which was built with the fund-raising efforts of Jesse Jones. Under the terms of the foundation, donations could be accepted for the construction and maintenance of the monument to the memory of the heroes of the Republic of Texas. Jesse had become director general of the Centennial of the Texas Republic in 1926 with the obligation of planning the centennial for 1936. By late 1932 Texas appropriated $3 million for the exposition, which was to be held in Dallas, and the city promised to spend $10 million and provide 50 buildings at the Texas State Fair. After gaining those concessions, Jones retired as director general. Later, with John Nance Garner as FDR's vice president, the federal government to authorize a United States Commission for the Texas Centennial. According to Jones' biographer, "Jones himself drew the plans for this monument--the [570-foot-tall] shaft surmounted by the star at the top indicating the Lone Star State, comparable in height to the Washington Monument, and resting on a two-story and basement base of 200 feet square comparable to the Lincoln Memorial."

At Dallas for the celebration, Jones induced FDR to unveil a statute of General Robert E. Lee, after making speeches at San Jacinto, at the Alamo in San Antonio, and in Dallas and Fort Worth. The following year on San Jacinto Day (April 21 commemorates the day of the battle of San Jacinto) Jesse laid the cornerstone of the monument that would make it 15 feet taller than Washington Monument.

Years later there was an official opinion from the Texas Attorney General stating that it was legal to have this separate private foundation maintain a building owned by the State of Texas, rather than pour the funds back into the State's treasury. In 1973 Turner and Hinckle exposes in Ramparts revealed the San Jacinto Fund had been used, along with foundations of Jesse Jones' other wealthy Texas friends like Bill Hobby, as a conduit for CIA funds in the National Student Association scandal.

Thanks Linda,

That last paragraph is what I wanted, but the historical origins of the fund is very interesting.

I'm interested in the names of those who served on the board of the Fund in the 50s and 60s.

I'd also like to know the names of the other foundations of Jesse Jones' wealthy Texas friends who had similar Foundations, like Bill Hobby.

Thanks,

BK

[Linda Minor]

I seem to remember a tie between Dillon and Prescott Bush as well. Did Dillon & Read have a close working relationship with Brown Brothers Harriman, the bank where Prescott worked? What about Neil Mallon of Dresser Industries? Was he connected to the Suite 8F group?

Neil Mallon does not get a mention as a member of the Suite 8F Group in “Builders: Herman and George R. Brown".

You are right about the links between C. Douglas Dillon, Prescott Bush and Neil Mallon. I am currently reading George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin (1992). It explains in great detail about the relationship between these men and Nazi Germany. Others involved include Allen Dulles, John Foster Dulles, Averell Harriman, George Walker, William Draper, Robert Lovett, and William S. Farish. They were all members of the Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Complex. One of the most interesting characters is Prescott Bush's father, Samuel P. Bush, who played a very important role in establishing the MICIC during the First World War. These people deserve their own thread and I will doing this over the next few days.

Clarence Dillon, too, was born in Texas as the son of Samuel Lapowski, a a Polish/Jewish store keeper, who seems to have gone from place to place in Texas. See Time Magazine 1933 letter at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...46285-2,00.html.

Sirs: Am just a bit curious to know by what authority you say in TIME Oct. 16, in speaking of Clarence Dillon (Read & Co.) "whose father ran a general store in San Angelo and changed his name from Lapowski to Dillon before Clarence was born"—because—and I speak in a great measure from personal knowledge— The American career of the Dillon-Lapowski family began in Victoria, Texas m the persons of Sam (Dillon's father) and Nathan—a Capt. & Col. in the Texas National Guard—serving in the World War with an enviable record. Sam moved to San Angelo & ran a general store in the name of and was always known as Lapowski: though Clarence had already "arrived" (his first) or did so during that residence. Sam's San Angelo venture eventually failed and he moved to El Paso, Texas—where, associated with his brother Nathan failure repeated itself—yet (but without Nathan) he tried once more; and one might say "died in the attempt," for the business was going when he passed on. Shortly thereafter his widow and daughter Evelyn (Clarence's sister) departed, still known as Lapowski. Nathan Lapowski's widow and sons still reside in El Paso as Lapowskis. However, and this is interesting: while the Sam Lapowski family resided in El Paso, Clarence Lapowski-Dillon spent a short time there one summer, vacationing from musical study in Europe —and was introduced by sister Evelyn as "my brother Clarence Dillon." To the many "how comes?" "social history" records no entirely satisfactory replies. Clarence Dillon's picture shows him to favor his father and your "smooth cheery" description, along with the smile, would indicate that he has also inherited the wit and humor for which his father "Sam Lapowski" was known, well illustrated by the following story, I often tell, to illustrate like situations: Sam Lapowski's El Paso neighbor was one Stevens, pioneer realtor, robust, energetic, a veritable fanatic on exercise which often found vent in "sunrise lawn-mowing." One day Lapowski burst into Stevens' office demanding that he (Stevens) desist from his sunrise activities or permit him to hire his mowing done at a more sane and reasonable hour. In explaining the outburst to the nonplussed Stevens, who was about "to go into action," Lapowski said his wife thought him lazy because he liked to lay abed and every time Stevens went to mowing at "so ungodly an hour" all he heard was "Sam, Stevens is up and at work don't be so lazy ad infinitum. . . ." J. KRAKAUER

[Linda Minor]

Thanks Linda,

That last paragraph is what I wanted, but the historical origins of the fund is very interesting.

I'm interested in the names of those who served on the board of the Fund in the 50s and 60s.

I'd also like to know the names of the other foundations of Jesse Jones' wealthy Texas friends who had similar Foundations, like Bill Hobby.

Thanks,

BK

I'm not sure how much you already know about all this, so I will try to be brief. In fact, all I know comes from the newspaper articles published in 1973 after the CIA's use of foundations was exposed, plus the followup research I have done on the people involved in those foundations.

As a starter, I will try to upload an article in pdf format, but I'm not sure whether this will work.

Thanks for your interest.

LM

Jones.San_Jac.1956.pdf

[William Kelly]

Thanks Linda,

That last paragraph is what I wanted, but the historical origins of the fund is very interesting.

I'm interested in the names of those who served on the board of the Fund in the 50s and 60s.

I'd also like to know the names of the other foundations of Jesse Jones' wealthy Texas friends who had similar Foundations, like Bill Hobby.

Thanks,

BK

I'm not sure how much you already know about all this, so I will try to be brief. In fact, all I know comes from the newspaper articles published in 1973 after the CIA's use of foundations was exposed, plus the followup research I have done on the people involved in those foundations.

As a starter, I will try to upload an article in pdf format, but I'm not sure whether this will work.

Thanks for your interest.

LM

Jones.San_Jac.1956.pdf

Hi,

Thanks for that article, but it only mentions $10,000 for the monument fund, a spit in the bucket compared to what the CIA laundered through the funds that we know of.

I don't know anything about the San Jucinto Foundation or Fund, other than what you've told me, and the rumors that John Mecom, former owner of the New Oreans Saints and Judge Hughes of the swearing in fame, were both on the board of directors.

The names of the board of directors of such non-profit foundations should be public information. And I suspect some of them were members of the Suite 8F Group.

I'd like to know who was on the board of directors of the San Jacinto Foundation in the 50s and 60s and confirm or refute the rumors I've heard about Mecom and Hughes.

Thanks for your interest in this,

Bill Kelly

[William Kelly]

Thanks Linda,

That last paragraph is what I wanted, but the historical origins of the fund is very interesting.

I'm interested in the names of those who served on the board of the Fund in the 50s and 60s.

I'd also like to know the names of the other foundations of Jesse Jones' wealthy Texas friends who had similar Foundations, like Bill Hobby.

Thanks,

BK

I'm not sure how much you already know about all this, so I will try to be brief. In fact, all I know comes from the newspaper articles published in 1973 after the CIA's use of foundations was exposed, plus the followup research I have done on the people involved in those foundations.

As a starter, I will try to upload an article in pdf format, but I'm not sure whether this will work.

Thanks for your interest.

LM

Jones.San_Jac.1956.pdf

Thanks Linda,

I wonder if John Mecom was part of the Suite 8F Group?

I'd also like to verify his position on New Orleans banks, his possible position with the ICA, and ambassadorship to Yougslavia, which would put him in DeMohrneschildts orbit.

BK

[John Simkin]

The Lamar Hotel was built by Texas real-estate tycoon Jesse H. Jones in downtown Houston as his home. He lived in the penthouse of the hotel, whereas Herman Brown merely leased Suite 8-F on the eighth floor below Jesse. The story was that "the boys" liked to gather socially in Herman's suite to play cards and shoot the breeze, maybe have a drink or two and a cigar. The suite was only used for that purpose and to give Herman a place to stay when he was in Houston; he made his home in Austin, Texas.

Jesse Jones had been one of the most quietly powerful men in Texas for many years. He had worked in Washington, D.C. with H.P. Davison of J.P. Morgan Co. in the International Red Cross in 1918 and was on close terms with Woodrow Wilson, his Cabinet and financial backers and advisers, including Colonel E.M. House, whose family was closely tied in business with Jesse Jones' uncle, whose estate he had first moved to Houston to administer in 1898.

Jones became head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in Herbert Hoover's administration and was held over by FDR. In that role he became the country's number-one lender to bankers and businessmen suffering from the depression. The men who frequented the Brown suite in the Lamar Hotel saw Jones as their ticket to federal power. As much as they came to hate the New Deal, they liked the fact that Jesse was a fellow Knight of San Jacinto--that secret brotherhood of descendants of men and women who had been near the battlefield at San Jacinto when Mexico was defeated in 1836 and the Republic of Texas was declared.

They took pride in the fact that Texas was the only "republic" that was annexed into statehood after having been an independent nation with its own president; that it had been admitted by treaty. Most of those men still felt more loyalty for the old Republic of Texas than they did for the USA.

The political views of people like Jesse H. Jones, Herman Brown and other members of the Suite 8F Group are interesting. They are in fact very similar to George Bush’s cronies today. For example, Herman Brown was a strong opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Edward A. Clark arranged for a meeting to take place between the Brown and Lyndon B. Johnson. During the meeting Brown complained about the cost of New Deal projects. According to Robert Caro, Johnson said to Brown: “What are you worried about? It’s not coming out of your pocket. Any money that’s spent down here on New Deal projects, the East is paying for.”

Although they officially opposed the New Deal they helped to fund its supporters like LBJ in return for government contracts. In the late 1930s Brown and Root now grew rapidly as a result of obtaining a large number of municipal and federal government projects. This included the Marshall Ford Dam on the Colorado River. This was worth $27,000,000. In a letter written to LBJ , George Brown, admitted the company was set to make a $2,000,000 profit out of just a small part of the deal. In 1940 the company won a $90 million contract to build the Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi.

In 1942 the Brown brothers established the Brown Shipbuilding Company on the Houston Ship Channel. Over the next three years the company built 359 ships and employed 25,000 people. This was worth $27,000,000. This contract was eventually worth $357,000,000. Yet until they got the contract, Brown & Root had never built a single ship of any type.

[John Simkin]

Linda, I wonder if you can shine any light on this question that has always puzzled me. The Suite 8F Group held extreme right-wing political views. They were initially suspicious of LBJ because at the time he was closely associated with FDR progressive agenda. LBJ was able to convince them that he could arrange for the New Deal to help them make large profits in their various business ventures.

The Suite 8F Group was also concerned that LBJ might be a liberal on the issue of race. LBJ was told that his maiden speech in Congress had to be an attack on the proposed Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching proposals. LBJ carried out this order.

LBJ was of course responsible for the most important Civil Rights Act in American history. Do you know of how members of the 8F Group reacted to what they would have considered to be an act of betrayal?

[Linda Minor]

Linda, I wonder if you can shine any light on this question that has always puzzled me. The Suite 8F Group held extreme right-wing political views. They were initially suspicious of LBJ because at the time he was closely associated with FDR progressive agenda. LBJ was able to convince them that he could arrange for the New Deal to help them make large profits in their various business ventures.

The Suite 8F Group was also concerned that LBJ might be a liberal on the issue of race. LBJ was told that his maiden speech in Congress had to be an attack on the proposed Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching proposals. LBJ carried out this order.

LBJ was of course responsible for the most important Civil Rights Act in American history. Do you know of how members of the 8F Group reacted to what they would have considered to be an act of betrayal?

Why do you say the group held extreme right-wing political views? My understanding of the men and Oveta Culp Hobby (who, to my knowledge, was the only woman considered part of the "crowd") was that they were simply visiting Herman Brown's suite unofficially. There was no "membership list" because there were no official members. I think they just jokingly referred to themselves in this way because they had heard references to Eastern financiers as members of various "crowds".

It would be more akin to a financial syndicate or even an unofficial lodge where men get together to talk about business opportunities--to share knowledge with "trusted" colleagues. Politics was viewed merely as another means of making their business dreams a reality. However, most of them grew up in Texas only a decade or two removed from the reconstruction era, an age which taught them to distrust "Yankees" who would use every political contrivance to despoil their land and take advantages of the resources located within Texas. They were committed to restoring what they saw as the glory of the Texas Empire. In that sense they would have been "right wing," as I understand the term. To me the term conservative means maintaining the economic status quo, while right-wing means going backward to a previous status.

The people who were hobnobbing in Herman's rooms had never had much status to speak of. Their only claim to fame was the fact that one or more of their ancestors had arrived in Texas somewhere around the initial days of the Republic in 1836, and they had either heard stories about that or had invented some significance from that fact. Like all groups favoring control by oligarchy, they wanted to set themselves apart from others into some sort of special elite, and they wanted to wrest political control out of the hands of those whom they felt were inclined to keep them down. I doubt they had any understanding of history, though it's important, I believe, for us who are looking back to understand what actually happened.

Texas was born in the days of Andrew Jackson, a man from Virginia who moved to Tennessee (then called the western frontier) and found himself strapped economically by the control of banking by the men who had acquired stock ownership of the Second Bank of the United States--by that time in its second or third generation of family inheritance. Jackson had fallen in with others who had been called anti-federalists during the post-revolutionary era. This philosophy fell within that espoused by Aaron Burr, who had been attempting to promote the building of a separate "empire" within lands to the south and west of Tennessee. After General Jackson had won the battle in New Orleans during the War of 1812, he went back to Tennessee and became the mentor of Sam Houston, who would become the famous Texas general who won the Battle of San Jacinto. Most of those who met in Herman's suite claimed some connection to "Texians" of that day.

But when the civil war approached, Sam Houston as governor of the State of Texas, opposed secession. As a result, he was forced out of office. So it is not clear whether the "Order of the Knights of San Jacinto" followed the principles of Sam Houston or of those who advocated the Southern Confederacy.

Lyndon Johnson claimed a relationship to the Texian heroes through his Bunton ancestors as well as through his grandfather, George Washington Baines, who had been a Baptist preacher and professor at one time in Independence, which had been the early capital of the Republic, though Baines didn't have any roots in Texas before 1848 when he helped to organize a congregation in Marshall, Texas while living in Louisiana. It was in Louisiana that LBJ's mother's father, Joseph W. Baines, was born in 1846. The family moved to Texas a few years after annexation, and George Baines eventually became a friend of the man who had been the first President of the Republic of Texas.

Rebekah's father studied law under a man (James Webb Throckmorton, whose father had been "a Whig of the Tennessee school") who had been one of Sam Houston's most loyal political supporters as secession loomed:

In the 1857 gubernatorial election he supported Sam Houston and unionist sentiment ... and became a political advisor to the governor and Houston's ally in attempting to restrain the forces within Texas who favored secession. Throckmorton's attempt to organize a state Union party attracted few supporters, and he watched helplessly as the events between 1859 and 1860 precipitated the crisis of 1861. He refused to concede, however, and was one of only seven delegates to the 1861 Secession Convention who voted against Texas withdrawal from the union.

Throckmorton also played an important role in Texas' Constitutional Convention of 1866, which wrote the document that allowed Texas back into the Union, and then became the first governor of Texas during reconstruction, defeating the radical candidate, E. M. Pease. Nevertheless, the Radical Republicans took over Congress and became intent on pushing through an agenda in the South that caused more antagonism, and Throckmorton was removed from office as governor in 1867 and prevented from holding office until after the passage of the General Amnesty Act of 1872. In 1874 he was elected to Congress and reelected in 1876. He advocated education and federal support of railroad expansion, reflecting the interests of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company, which retained Throckmorton as an attorney. He was in politics off and on after his defeat in 1878, and then died in 1894.

G.W. Baines, while living in Independence, had not only met Sam Houston but had convinced him to be baptized, although it was Rufus C. Burleson, who succeeded Baines as pastor of Baines' church, who performed the rite. While in Independence, Baines encouraged women students at the Baptist college located there, where he was a trustee of Baylor female institution (later called University of Mary Hardin-Baylor) which moved to Belton, located on lands that George and Herman Brown's grandfather, Rufus Young King, helped develop. Rufus King had been born in Alabama in 1828, eight years before the Texian revolution--while the territory was still part of Mexico--to North Carolina born parents who arrived by way of Alabama.

The 1880 census reflects that King (occupation merchant/drummer) was then living in Belton, Texas with his second wife and her parents, along with 22-year-old daughter Lucy, who would become the mother of George and Herman. In the same district of town was Annie Baines Rosebrough and her attorney husband William, who was the youngest child of G.W. Baines, and in whose home G.W. Baines was reportedly residing. In 1867, the same year his son Joseph went to McKinney to study law under Throckmorton, G.W. Baines had moved to the town of Salado, in the same county as Belton, from which he traveled as an agent for the Education Commission of the Baptist State Convention until 1881. He died of malaria in 1882.

LBJ's mother Rebekah was an infant when G.W. Baines died. Her father, while a student of Throckmorton in Collin County, Texas had married a local girl whose parents were wealthy farmers from Kentucky. Joseph taught school, studied law and then set up a newspaper while he lived there. He used his newspaper to support the election of John Ireland as governor in 1882 and 1884. Ireland served as governor until 1886, and in 1883 appointed Baines as his Secretary of State. Joseph moved his family to Austin at that time, one year after his father's death, and resided at 303 E. 14th Street, just east of where the State Capitol Building would be constructed. Governor Ireland, who had served in both the House and Senate of the Texas Legislature (where he opposed granting lands and subsidies to railroads, in particular to the International-Great Northern Railroad consolidated by the Gould network). During his terms the University of Texas was established, and construction of the Texas Capitol building began with pink Texas granite.

After Ireland left office, the Baines family moved further west to Blanco (about 100 miles west of where the granite for the Capitol had been cut). After financial setbacks in Blanco he settled in nearby Fredericksburg. He and his wife had two daughters (Josefa and Rebekah) and a son, Huffman, named for Mrs. Baines' father. Joseph died there in 1906, shortly after Rebekah had spent four years studying literature at various colleges, including Baylor Female College in Belton. She then taught elocution in Fredericksburg, before her marriage in 1907 to Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr., and then worked as a stringer for newspapers in San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin. Sam died in 1937, when Rebekah moved to Austin, where she died in 1958. It is not clear at this time where Rebekah lived while attending college in Belton, since her aunt Annie Roseborough apparently had died in 1897.

What is interesting, however, is that LBJ's ancestors and those of the Browns were running in the same circles at the same time and could very well have had contacts with each other long before Lyndon ran for Congress.

[William Kelly]

Linda, I wonder if you can shine any light on this question that has always puzzled me. The Suite 8F Group held extreme right-wing political views. They were initially suspicious of LBJ because at the time he was closely associated with FDR progressive agenda. LBJ was able to convince them that he could arrange for the New Deal to help them make large profits in their various business ventures.

The Suite 8F Group was also concerned that LBJ might be a liberal on the issue of race. LBJ was told that his maiden speech in Congress had to be an attack on the proposed Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching proposals. LBJ carried out this order.

LBJ was of course responsible for the most important Civil Rights Act in American history. Do you know of how members of the 8F Group reacted to what they would have considered to be an act of betrayal?

Why do you say the group held extreme right-wing political views? My understanding of the men and Oveta Culp Hobby (who, to my knowledge, was the only woman considered part of the "crowd") was that they were simply visiting Herman Brown's suite unofficially. There was no "membership list" because there were no official members. I think they just jokingly referred to themselves in this way because they had heard references to Eastern financiers as members of various "crowds".

It would be more akin to a financial syndicate or even an unofficial lodge where men get together to talk about business opportunities--to share knowledge with "trusted" colleagues. Politics was viewed merely as another means of making their business dreams a reality. However, most of them grew up in Texas only a decade or two removed from the reconstruction era, an age which taught them to distrust "Yankees" who would use every political contrivance to despoil their land and take advantages of the resources located within Texas. They were committed to restoring what they saw as the glory of the Texas Empire. In that sense they would have been "right wing," as I understand the term. To me the term conservative means maintaining the economic status quo, while right-wing means going backward to a previous status.

The people who were hobnobbing in Herman's rooms had never had much status to speak of. Their only claim to fame was the fact that one or more of their ancestors had arrived in Texas somewhere around the initial days of the Republic in 1836, and they had either heard stories about that or had invented some significance from that fact. Like all groups favoring control by oligarchy, they wanted to set themselves apart from others into some sort of special elite, and they wanted to wrest political control out of the hands of those whom they felt were inclined to keep them down. I doubt they had any understanding of history, though it's important, I believe, for us who are looking back to understand what actually happened.

Texas was born in the days of Andrew Jackson, a man from Virginia who moved to Tennessee (then called the western frontier) and found himself strapped economically by the control of banking by the men who had acquired stock ownership of the Second Bank of the United States--by that time in its second or third generation of family inheritance. Jackson had fallen in with others who had been called anti-federalists during the post-revolutionary era. This philosophy fell within that espoused by Aaron Burr, who had been attempting to promote the building of a separate "empire" within lands to the south and west of Tennessee. After General Jackson had won the battle in New Orleans during the War of 1812, he went back to Tennessee and became the mentor of Sam Houston, who would become the famous Texas general who won the Battle of San Jacinto. Most of those who met in Herman's suite claimed some connection to "Texians" of that day.

But when the civil war approached, Sam Houston as governor of the State of Texas, opposed secession. As a result, he was forced out of office. So it is not clear whether the "Order of the Knights of San Jacinto" followed the principles of Sam Houston or of those who advocated the Southern Confederacy.

Lyndon Johnson claimed a relationship to the Texian heroes through his Bunton ancestors as well as through his grandfather, George Washington Baines, who had been a Baptist preacher and professor at one time in Independence, which had been the early capital of the Republic, though Baines didn't have any roots in Texas before 1848 when he helped to organize a congregation in Marshall, Texas while living in Louisiana. It was in Louisiana that LBJ's mother's father, Joseph W. Baines, was born in 1846. The family moved to Texas a few years after annexation, and George Baines eventually became a friend of the man who had been the first President of the Republic of Texas.

Rebekah's father studied law under a man (James Webb Throckmorton, whose father had been "a Whig of the Tennessee school") who had been one of Sam Houston's most loyal political supporters as secession loomed:

In the 1857 gubernatorial election he supported Sam Houston and unionist sentiment ... and became a political advisor to the governor and Houston's ally in attempting to restrain the forces within Texas who favored secession. Throckmorton's attempt to organize a state Union party attracted few supporters, and he watched helplessly as the events between 1859 and 1860 precipitated the crisis of 1861. He refused to concede, however, and was one of only seven delegates to the 1861 Secession Convention who voted against Texas withdrawal from the union.

Throckmorton also played an important role in Texas' Constitutional Convention of 1866, which wrote the document that allowed Texas back into the Union, and then became the first governor of Texas during reconstruction, defeating the radical candidate, E. M. Pease. Nevertheless, the Radical Republicans took over Congress and became intent on pushing through an agenda in the South that caused more antagonism, and Throckmorton was removed from office as governor in 1867 and prevented from holding office until after the passage of the General Amnesty Act of 1872. In 1874 he was elected to Congress and reelected in 1876. He advocated education and federal support of railroad expansion, reflecting the interests of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company, which retained Throckmorton as an attorney. He was in politics off and on after his defeat in 1878, and then died in 1894.

G.W. Baines, while living in Independence, had not only met Sam Houston but had convinced him to be baptized, although it was Rufus C. Burleson, who succeeded Baines as pastor of Baines' church, who performed the rite. While in Independence, Baines encouraged women students at the Baptist college located there, where he was a trustee of Baylor female institution (later called University of Mary Hardin-Baylor) which moved to Belton, located on lands that George and Herman Brown's grandfather, Rufus Young King, helped develop. Rufus King had been born in Alabama in 1828, eight years before the Texian revolution--while the territory was still part of Mexico--to North Carolina born parents who arrived by way of Alabama.

The 1880 census reflects that King (occupation merchant/drummer) was then living in Belton, Texas with his second wife and her parents, along with 22-year-old daughter Lucy, who would become the mother of George and Herman. In the same district of town was Annie Baines Rosebrough and her attorney husband William, who was the youngest child of G.W. Baines, and in whose home G.W. Baines was reportedly residing. In 1867, the same year his son Joseph went to McKinney to study law under Throckmorton, G.W. Baines had moved to the town of Salado, in the same county as Belton, from which he traveled as an agent for the Education Commission of the Baptist State Convention until 1881. He died of malaria in 1882.

LBJ's mother Rebekah was an infant when G.W. Baines died. Her father, while a student of Throckmorton in Collin County, Texas had married a local girl whose parents were wealthy farmers from Kentucky. Joseph taught school, studied law and then set up a newspaper while he lived there. He used his newspaper to support the election of John Ireland as governor in 1882 and 1884. Ireland served as governor until 1886, and in 1883 appointed Baines as his Secretary of State. Joseph moved his family to Austin at that time, one year after his father's death, and resided at 303 E. 14th Street, just east of where the State Capitol Building would be constructed. Governor Ireland, who had served in both the House and Senate of the Texas Legislature (where he opposed granting lands and subsidies to railroads, in particular to the International-Great Northern Railroad consolidated by the Gould network). During his terms the University of Texas was established, and construction of the Texas Capitol building began with pink Texas granite.

After Ireland left office, the Baines family moved further west to Blanco (about 100 miles west of where the granite for the Capitol had been cut). After financial setbacks in Blanco he settled in nearby Fredericksburg. He and his wife had two daughters (Josefa and Rebekah) and a son, Huffman, named for Mrs. Baines' father. Joseph died there in 1906, shortly after Rebekah had spent four years studying literature at various colleges, including Baylor Female College in Belton. She then taught elocution in Fredericksburg, before her marriage in 1907 to Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr., and then worked as a stringer for newspapers in San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin. Sam died in 1937, when Rebekah moved to Austin, where she died in 1958. It is not clear at this time where Rebekah lived while attending college in Belton, since her aunt Annie Roseborough apparently had died in 1897.

What is interesting, however, is that LBJ's ancestors and those of the Browns were running in the same circles at the same time and could very well have had contacts with each other long before Lyndon ran for Congress.

While I know this was directed at John Simkin, and await his response, I'd like to hear more from Linda and hope she sticks around this forum for awhile.

Like Travis at the Alamo, I think the line in the sand is not drawn between right wingers and left wingers, liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans, Yankees and Cowboys, or Conspiracy Theorists and Lone Nuts, but by competing, and multiple intelligence networks.

It's easy to look at things in two dimensions, but the reality is more complex.

Just trying to keep Linda in the game, as I've learned a lot from her.

BK

[William Kelly]

Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk is Obama's Trade Representative

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...gY&refer=us

Ron Kirk and Vinson & Elkins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Kirk

James A. Elkins & Suite 8F Group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Elkins

....Elkins was a regular attendee of the so-called Suite 8F Group (named after the room in the Lamar Hotel where gathering were held). This behind-the-scenes socialization amongst leading Texas politicians and businessman included the likes of Jesse Jones, Gus Wortham, James Abercrombie, George R. Brown, Herman Brown, Lyndon Johnson, Will Clayton, William P. Hobby, Oscar Holcombe, Hugh Roy Cullen, and John Connally....

Edited December 19, 2008 by William Kelly

[Linda Minor]

While I know this was directed at John Simkin, and await his response, I'd like to hear more from Linda and hope she sticks around this forum for awhile.

Like Travis at the Alamo, I think the line in the sand is not drawn between right wingers and left wingers, liberals and conservatives, democrats and republicans, Yankees and Cowboys, or Conspiracy Theorists and Lone Nuts, but by competing, and multiple intelligence networks.

It's easy to look at things in two dimensions, but the reality is more complex.

Just trying to keep Linda in the game, as I've learned a lot from her.

BK

Bill,

I thought you might be interested in knowing that Lyndon Johnson's sister, Josefa, who died mysteriously after attending a family Christmas party with the Johnson family in 1961, was married in 1943 to a man named Col. Willard White, brother of a sociologist named Leslie A. White. Willard was the second in command to Boris Pash in the Alsos Mission in Germany.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/h/wha3/1269/history.html

(note: see photos at this url to see their involvement in looting Nazi gold and treasures)

http://www.geneseo.edu/~leary/1269thECB/history.html

Book:

Ports of Call By Cecil L. Milliner

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ge992z8fd...lt&resnum=3

http://sneakers.pair.com/roots/b164.htm

Another newspaper article about Josefa Johnson (Mrs. Willard) White appeared in 1943, shortly after she married and was living in Camp Shelby, Mississippi. There is insufficient space to upload it.

Edited July 20, 2009 by Linda Minor

[Linda Minor]

Another newspaper article about Josefa Johnson (Mrs. Willard) White appeared in 1943, shortly after she married and was living in Camp Shelby, Mississippi. There is insufficient space to upload it.

[Guest Tom Scully]

Tommy and Greg like 'em small, and I assume other readers do, too, so I'm sharing this research in small bytes. Hang in there because, in the course of two or three posts after this one, I'll attempt to tie this in to at least one 8F member, and the hosts of Dick Cheney's hunting trip when his $22k custom, Italian made, small gauge shotgun blasted an old man in the face, and if you are familiar with what I usuall do around here, you are aware I am a one trick pony; I post about details related to Crown and Byfield.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/31/sports/super-bowl-xxii-the-redskins-owner-relishes-his-role.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

SUPER BOWL XXII; The Redskins' Owner Relishes His Role

By GERALD ESKENAZI

Published: January 31, 1988

NOW hear this. Jack Kent Cooke is speaking, and no greater love has anyone else for the sound of his own voice.

He booms an introduction, displaying a friend to his cocktail-party guests at the penthouse suite he has taken over in the Redskins' hotel.

There is Super Bowl madness in the cluttered world below, Redskins jerseys and glassware being hawked in the lobby, a collection of fans milling about, or sloshing their drinks at the bar at poolside.

It is civilized up in the penthouse, though. Cooke, a 75-year-old looking like the jaded lead in a Noel Coward play, wears his pink shirt open at the neck, a checkered jacket covering a gray sweater.

Munching cheese, savoring Puligny-Montrachet, his guests include national figures, some of historical note: a lawyer who had a stadium named for him, a judge who presided over some of the Watergate cases, a man who ran for Vice President, the author of ''Urban Cowboy.''

What they have in common is their affection for the Redskins. And the person who oversees this standard, pre-Redskins-big-game-affair is Cooke, the owner of the team.

That is not all he possesses. He is the one-man owner of the Chrysler Building (and its smaller adjacent relative, immodestly called the Kent Building). Of course, there's Kent Farm in the most verdant part of Virginia, the toney old Kentucky thoroughbred-racing stable Elmendorf Farm, and The Daily News of Los Angeles, along with more than a billion-dollar investment in cable systems.

Thus, he also stars in Forbes Magazine as one of the wealthiest people in America. Current estimated worth: $900 million. He is not telling exactly how much.

He eschews the mundane, especially in selecting his words. Talk of money fascinates him only if it describes deals he has made.

In Super Bowls past and present he has flown in his friends: Judge John J. Sirica, former Senator Edmund Muskie and William A. Shea. Ted Koppel showed up in the halls of the Redskins' hotel at their last Super Bowl, and so did former Senator Eugene McCarthy. Another good friend was Larry King, the author of ''The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.''

They are regulars in Cooke's private boxes at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. A ticket to a Redskins game may be the most coveted invitation of all in status-conscious Washington, where the team has sold out every game (excluding this season's strike contests) since 1966.

With all these movers and shakers so near, isn't Cooke in the position to use the considerable influence of a Redskins ticket to try to get things done in other areas?

''I've never used my influence with anyone,'' he said with a nasal voice that managed to ring with indignation, virtually causing the wine goblets to begin to hum. ''Never with all the clubs I've owned - the Redskins, the Lakers, the Kings, the Wolverhampton Wanderers soccer team, the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team.

''Now, when that comes out in the newspapers it won't sound as good as someone hearing me say that.''

Probably not, for how can one capture the indignation that creeps into his voice when his beloved English language is being abused?

He proudly tells of how he pronounces ''pariah'' as PURR-ee-uh. Somebody corrected him and said it was puh-RYE-uh.

''Not in the original Indian,'' Cooke replied.

His insistence on a certain exactitude, in dress, speech and manner goes back to a time even before the Canadian Depression, which shaped his business life.

''At an early age I figured the difference between animals and man was the ability to speak,'' he explained.

He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, but raised in Toronto, where his father made picture frames.

''My father's business went bad,'' he said. ''Best thing that ever happened to me. Couldn't pay for milk delivery. No money to pay the bills. Of all the things to manufacture in a depression. Picture frames?''

So he never went to college. He played some saxophone, sold encyclopedias door to door, hawked soap. The way he describes it, it sounds almost pat. But Cooke likes short sentences, whether describing his rise from poverty, his record-setting divorce settlement, his membership in ASCAP, or how he paved the way to acquiring Doug Williams, the Redskins' starting quarterback for Super Bowl XXII, by approving his $475,000 salary.

Cooke didn't begin to make money until he was 25 years old, when he teamed up with Roy Thomson, who was to become an international news media figure better known as Lord Thomson of Fleet. Thomson was a radio hound and very acquisitive. He began to accumulate stations and then newspapers, with Cooke at his side.

They created an international empire, but Cooke took off on his own after 12 years. He tends to talk in glowing terms of people with whom he broke off associations. Thus, he said of the decision to leave as ''the worst of my life.''

But Cooke had also become one of the most prominent Canadians, although not especially well liked by his countrymen. Indeed, he was always trumpeting the United States. That long-range jingoism played a large role - along with Bill Shea's considerable knowledge of Congress and the ways of Washington - in having Cooke declared an American citizen in 1960 by an act of Congress.

He settled in California, retired at the age of 48, and, he said, was soon bored.

Within five years he leaped into the fledgling, volatile business of cable television, and also bought his first American team. Los Angeles was one of six cities awarded a franchise in the National Hockey League's dramatic expansion when it doubled in size to 12 clubs.

Cooke called his new team the Kings and planned to outfit them in regal purple and gold. He called a news conference - before he had drafted a single player - to announce the club would also finish first in the newly created West Division. (It fell out of first on the final day of the season.) As time went by, he realized he would never make money with the Kings, even though there was a sizable population of ex-Canadians in the area. That led him to reflect: ''There are half a million Canadians here and I know why they moved. They hate hockey.'' He also acquired the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team for $5.175 million and built his own, grandly named Forum, which was actually Greek-inspired. While he is diffident about discussing his role in acquiring football players - he probably has little to do with personnel - he enjoys recounting the deals that brought Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Forum.

But as his wealth grew, Cooke's marriage started to dissolve. Eventually, it ended after 42 years. But its impact didn't stop there.

For Cooke was involved in what was believed to be the largest divorce settlement in American legal history: $42 million, or $1 million for every year of marriage. It made the Guinness Book of World Records.

''I was embarrassed to look at the bloody thing,'' he said, favoring as usual a British locution.

The judge who rendered the settlement verdict was Joseph A. Wapner, known these days as the judge on television's ''The People's Court.''

In a soulful voice, Cooke said of the reason he left southern California: ''I think most guys know why I left here; a love affair that went sour after 42 years. I was afraid I'd be running into her wherever I went.''

He sold the Lakers, the Kings, the Forum and a magnificent ranch and eventually wound up in Washington, where he became owner of the Redskins.

But he also became separated from one of his two sons. Ralph Cooke remained on the Coast while the other son, John, moved East. Ralph's former wife, Carrie, is married to the N.F.L. commissioner, Pete Rozelle.

When Cooke was ready for a second marriage, Judge Sirica presided. That marriage didn't last long, but Cooke, undaunted, continued to become a key figure in American business. In 1985 he failed in a hostile takeover bid for Multimedia but still was able to generate a $24.5 million profit.

Last summer Cooke married a woman 44 years younger than he, but the couple quickly separated. Suzanne Cooke gave birth to a girl last week, but Cooke says little of the event.

He is more voluble on the subject of the Redskins, a club he says pays its coaches more handsomely than any other.

''I have absolute confidence in Joe and Bobby,'' he said of Gibbs and Beathard, the coach and the general manager. He said he doesn't meddle.

''The moment I tell Joe Gibbs who I want playing is when I'll get rid of Joe,'' he said. ''I want an independent thinker.''

He tends to order people around: assistants, elevator operators, doormen. But there is an almost tender way in which he addresses his 20-year-old grandson, John. Cooke calls him ''Johnnycake.'' That sobriquet seems out of keeping with Cooke's grandiose vocabulary.

''Why sure,'' said Cooke. ''My father called me 'Johnnycake' and that's what I called my son.''

''Johnnycake'' is no ''Rosebud,'' but perhaps it is a clue. With Cooke, clues are very important. Clues, and reading his smile when he ends a sentence and you realize he isn't going to say anything more.

Read all of the article in the first link, about William A. Shea. It paints a picture on how and why the one percent got to be the one percent, how the world worked and works across the US of A.

http://books.google.com/books?id=XePFnXzff4EC&pg=PA49&dq=bill+shea+%22joseph+l+ponce%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OvsQT6G8DoPbtwfc39XxAQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=bill%20shea%20%22joseph%20l%20ponce%22&f=false

New York Magazine - Nov 11, 1974 - Page 49

books.google.comVol. 7, No. 45 - 136 pages - Magazine - Full view

Chairman: William A. Shea President: Harry J. Noznesky Directors: Fred R. Davis Sidney P. Kriser Graham Walker Thomas J. Deegan Jr. Joseph L. Ponce Harold U. Zerbe Diamond International Corp. (Packaging, paper, and wood products and

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0E1FFB3558137B93CBA8178DD85F4D8585F9

New League to Spend $100,000,000; Mrs. Payson Among Syndicate Backing New York Team Shea Says Baseball Circuit Will Start Play in 1961

By HOWARD M. TUCKNER ();

June 19, 1959,

, Section , Page 17, Column , words

William A. Shea, chairman of Mayor Wagner's baseball committee, identified yesterday the members of a syndicate that had pledged $4,500,000 to assure New York's entry into the proposed third major league.

New League to Spend $100000000; Mrs. Payson Among Syndicate...

‎

New York Times - Jun 19, 1959

... LI. ,president of a travel agency,: land George Herbert Walker Jr., ... of the Davis Cup. symbolic of: international tennis Walker is a son of the donor ...

(Something for Linda, as well.):

https://www.google.com/search?q=charles+h+penneys&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=pRJ&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aunofficial&tbs=ar:1&tbm=nws&source=hp&q=%22charles+h+penneys%22+penn+central&psj=1&oq=%22charles+h+penneys%22+penn+central&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=55610l63617l2l64725l4l4l0l1l0l0l197l475l1.2l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=1e574b781106fa76&biw=1173&bih=736

Scotten, Dillon Names Berg To Replace Fox as Chairman

‎

Pay-Per-View -

Wall Street Journal - Jun 25, 1969

Continental Bank (Norristown, Pa.)-Philip L. Corson, chairman of G. & WH Corson Inc., Edward A. Kaier, general counsel for Penn Central; Charles H. Penneys,

https://www.google.com/search?q=charles+h+penneys&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aunofficial&tbs=ar:1&tbm=nws&source=hp&q=%22who+had+been+acting+president.+Mr.+xi+eitzen+who+was*%22&psj=1&oq=%22who+had+been+acting+president.+Mr.+xi+eitzen+who+was*%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=13402l13402l11l14373l1l1l0l0l0l0l136l136l0.1l1l0&fp=1&biw=1173&bih=734&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&cad=b

Weitzen Named President. A Director BT Babbitt

‎

Wall Street Journal - Jun 3, 1968

(AP)--BT Babbitt Inc., a diversified manufacturer, announced the election of Edward H. Weitzen as president, succeeding Charles H. Penneys, chairman, who had been acting president. Mr. xi eitzen who was also elected a director, has been president of Cardwell Manufacturing Co. \i ch ta, Kan, a held mater of mobile oil-well drilling equipment that B.~ last week for one million Babbitt shares. Pnbbttt manes molded plastic appliance industries and is alvo a wholesale distributor of electrical

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/American-Banknote-Corporation-Company-History.html

.....When the United States began printing its own money, American Bank Note had to find other customers. By the end of the century, the company was supplying bank notes for 48 countries, and was also printing stock certificates, bonds, and checks, including the new "traveler's checks" introduced by American Express Company in 1891. The second early predecessor, U.S. Banknote, was founded in New York in 1884, and was soon printing similar types of products.

American Bank Note is credited with introducing a now familiar term to the paper industry. It bought most of its paper for certificates and bonds from Crane & Co., Inc., and liking the texture of the latter, sent Crane an order for "more of that bond paper," to use for its letterhead.

International Banknote on the Scene: 1968-88

In 1968 another player entered the picture. That year, Edward Weitzen became president of B.T. Babbitt, Inc., a nearly bankrupt conglomerate with more than 15 different parts. Incorporated in 1925, B.T. Babbitt had begun as a seller of cleaning products. Weitzen changed the company's name to B.T.B. Corp. and decided to focus on specialty printing. A year later, he acquired American Bank Note Company.

In 1972 Weitzen changed the company's name again, to International Banknote Company Inc., with American Bank Note as its principal subsidiary. He undertook a $55 million capital spending program and by 1981 he had cut long-term debt nearly in half. Its 15 printing plants produced currency for some 70 countries, as well as food stamps for the U.S. government, traveler's checks, airline tickets, stock and bond certificates, driver's licenses, and birth certificates.

The company was also conducting research and development to deter counterfeiting, something it first got involved with in the 19th century when it pioneered using green ink in the printing of money to foil counterfeiters who began using black and white photography.

This time, the company was experimenting with holography, using a technique that created 3-D images by aiming separate laser beams at an object. In the mid-1980s International established American Bank Note Holographics Inc. as a subsidiary of American Bank Note. Its first customers included Visa and Mastercard, Hallmark, and National Geographic, with the company producing a 3-D eagle for the cover of the March 1984 issue. The picture, only 300 millionths of a centimeter thick, was the first holograph to appear in a national periodical. By 1988, ABN Holographics represented almost 30 percent of the company's revenues of $81 million, helping the company move into the black after a net loss of $6.7 million in 1987.

United States Banknote: 1970s-88 ...(WARNING! Looooooooongggggg....)-

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/01/obituaries/edward-weitzen-71-led-several-companies.html

Edward Weitzen, 71; Led Several Companies

Published: October 01, 1991

Edward H. Weitzen, former chairman of the American Bank Note Company, died yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He was 71 years old and lived in Lawrence, N.Y.

He died of emphysema, his family said.

In a long and varied business career, Mr. Weitzen was vice president of the Bulova Watch Company; president and chief executive officer of Gruen Industries, and vice president-marketing of American Machine and Foundry Corporation, all of New York, and chairman of the General Battery Company of Reading, Pa.

He retired from American Bank Note, a printer of paper currency, and International Banknote, a holding company, in 1990 when the two merged with United States Banknote Company. He remained as a director of the merged company.

Mr. Weitzen was born in New York and graduated from City College . He served in the Army in World War II, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.....

Fortunately, Mitt Romney has a much better understanding of how creatures such as the ones described above, stir the pot and snatch the meat and potatoes, leaving only the gruel, and Romney will.....will what?