Dwight Eisenhower and the Oil Industry

[Pat Speer]

Myra, my statements about Dulles and McCloy were based on the executive session transcripts of the WC. The two of them are fairly forthcoming about items they would not be IF they were knowing participants in a conspiracy. Dulles, for example, talks openly about Hoover's vanity and dishonesty. As my specialty is the medical evidence, I consider it EXTREMELY revealing that Rankin, Dulles and McCloy pressed for an examination of the autopsy materials by, at the very least, the autopsy doctors, but that the supposedly good-guy Warren blocked this inspection.

While Dulles was guilty of protecting the CIA during the WC investigation, there is no evidence that he KNEW Oswald was anything more than he was led to believe. McCloy, on the other hand, perhaps out of ego, perhaps out of some misguided notion of duty, used his influence in 1967 to get CBS news to come to the WC's defense. In his televised interview, he told America that the one regret he had about the WC was that they didn't look at the autopsy evidence. He said that Warren was supposed to look at it, but did not. Of course, Warren did look at it, but supposedly found it too horrifying for even the doctors who performed the autopsy to look at (give me a break!). This is a reversible error. In other words, IF Warren had come to this conclusion in a court of law, an appeals court would rightly have reversed Oswald's conviction. Anyhow, I find it hard to believe that, after agreeing to look at the photos, Warren would have looked at them, came to the conclusion they were too terrible to be looked at, and disallowed Kennedy's autopsists from looking at them, and NOT told Rankin, McCloy and Dulles of his decision. As a result, I am forced to conclude that McCloy told a BIG FAT LIE on CBS, when he told them Warren never looked at the photos. His conduct re the CBS 67 special is questionable in other ways as well. For one, his daughter was the personal assistant to CBS News president Richard Salant, and he had been a behind the scenes adviser to CBS' supposedly independent investigation, and yet this was not revealed to the viewing audience. Even worse, the producer of the program, Les Midgely, wrote a memo to McCloy informing him of the program's need for an on-screen interview with Dr. Humes, and the need for Dr. Humes to assert that the autopsy photos supported the drawings created for the Warren Commission. By amazing coincidence, McCloy flew to Washington that day, and met with the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury. By an even more amazing coincidence, the autopsy doctors were ordered to re-inspect the photos the next week, the Justice department prepared for them a report stating that the photos confirm the drawings they'd created for the Warren Commission, they signed the report, and 5 months later Dr. Humes was interviewed by Dan Rather on National television, after being given "talking points" by the "justice department." And what a surprise, he said the autopsy photos confirmed the wound locations as shown on the drawings created for the Warren Commission!!!! (Of course, subsequent examinations determined that the entrance wound on the skull was four inches higher and on a different bone than on the drawings, and the entrance wound on the back was two inches lower!) So...McCloy was both a xxxx and an agent of the cover-up...

But...did he KNOW Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy??? I suspect not. He knew that it would be bad for U.S. economic interests to have people think there was a conspiracy, and think of the U.S. as an overgrown "banana republic." He also knew how pointless it would be to go up against Hoover, Johnson, and Warren, to try to get at the truth. So... I believe he took the businessman's way out--when in doubt, do what's good for business...and that's just what he did. If history has shown us anything, besides that anyone can be killed, it's that what's good for business is NOT always what's good for the country.

P.S. Have you looked into the "Black Tom" case? I keep meaning to look into it but haven't quite made it. While it's awfully convenient to consider McCloy a closet fascist, I'm not sure he was as simple as that. He was a Capitalist, with a capital C. After WW1, he led an investigation into some terrorist activities. (This is what is called the Black Tom case.) . My understanding is he concluded that the German government was behind these activities. As a result, I don't think one can assume he was a friend to Germany. His decision to help German industrialists avoid punishment for their war crimes after WW2 was quite possibly based upon his desire to get Germany back on its feet, along with a gut feeling that, in Hitler's Germany, most Americans would have behaved in the same way. It's easy, in retrospect, to think of Krupps and Thiessens as evil people, but, in the context of their times, what American CEO or Wall Street banker wouldn't have behaved as they did?

The bankers and industrialists of that time were a breed apart from the rest of us. McCloy was a champion purebred.

[Myra Bronstein]

Ok, so back to Eisenhower, I feel that he may not have been above taking a few favors, like those John described (and needless to say Johnson was a lying thug), and letting the spooks go way too far. But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too late.

Anyone agree, disagree?

**********************************************************

"But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too late."

But, he apparently did in his final State Of The Union Address, where he warned America and the in-coming Kennedy administration of the Military Industrial Complex. His presidential veto had largely been ignored and overruled by the Chiefs of Staff, and after turning the keys of the White House over to Kennedy, in so many words, advised him to watch his back with regard to the Bay of Pigs operation. This is from the book of William Manchester's, "One Brief Shining Moment."

Eisenhower was a West Point career military man, like MacArthur, and the American people trusted him and needed him to be their leader in the decade following WW II. The 50's have often been touted as the most prosperous for the U.S. industrially, with that proverbial "chicken in every pot" everyone longed for during the Great Depression years of the 1930's. Well, that almost became a reality for everyone. FDR's New Deal no doubt helped pave the path for the stability and certainly for the burgeoning middle-class that blossomed during the halcyon days of the 50's and early 60's.

Thanks Terry. Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs.

I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative.

[Terry Mauro]

Ok, so back to Eisenhower, I feel that he may not have been above taking a few favors, like those John described (and needless to say Johnson was a lying thug), and letting the spooks go way too far. But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too late.

Anyone agree, disagree?

**********************************************************

"But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too

late."

But, he apparently did in his final State Of The Union Address, where he warned America and the in-coming Kennedy administration of the Military Industrial Complex. His presidential veto had largely been ignored and overruled by the Chiefs of Staff, and after turning the keys of the White House over to Kennedy, in so many words, advised him to watch his back with regard to the Bay of Pigs operation. This is from the book of William Manchester's, "One Brief Shining Moment."

Eisenhower was a West Point career military man, like MacArthur, and the American people trusted him and needed him to be their leader in the decade following WW II. The 50's have often been touted as the most prosperous for the U.S. industrially, with that proverbial "chicken in every pot" everyone longed for during the Great Depression years of the 1930's. Well, that almost became a reality for everyone. FDR's New Deal no doubt helped pave the path for the stability and certainly for the burgeoning middle-class that blossomed during the halcyon days of the 50's and early 60's.

Thanks Terry. Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs.

I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative.

*************************************************************

"Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs."

I think he was made to bend to the pressures being put on him by a basically W.A.S.P.-ish constituency, which is what the majority rule was back in those days. Remember, if you could have someone like William Randolf Hearst create the Spanish-American War, with banner headlines claiming "REMEMBER THE MAINE," just to sell newspapers, or influence half of the East Coast into believing they were being invaded from outer space by Martians with the "War Of The Worlds" broadcast, look at what you could convince the entire citizenry of the U.S. into doing, especially after what happened at Pearl Harbor.

"I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative."

Spot on, as they say in the U.K.

"THE END OF THE INNOCENCE" words and music by Don Henley

Remember when the days were long

And rolled beneath a deep blue sky

Didn't have a care in the world

With mommy and daddy standing by

When happily ever after fails

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers dwell on small details

Since daddy had to fly

But I know a place where we can go

That's still untouched by man

We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by

And the tall grass wave in the wind

[chorus]

You can lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair fall all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies

But now those skies are threatening

They're beating plowshares into swords

For this tired old man that we elected king

Armchair warriors often fail

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers clean up all details

Since daddy had to lie

But I know a place where we can go

And wash away this sin

We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by

And the tall grass waves in the wind

[chorus]

Just lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair spill all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last

Now we've come so far, so fast

But, somewhere back there in the dust

That same small town in each of us

I need to remember this

So baby give me just one kiss

And let me take a long last look

Before we say good bye

[chorus]

So, just lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair fall all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

[John Simkin]

Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, 1984 (pages 177 and 178)

In 1961 John Foster Dulles was dead. Allen Dulles had been reappointed to head the CIA as the very first decision announced by President-elect Kennedy. And President Eisenhower retired to a 576-acre farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The farm, smaller then, had been bought by General and Mrs. Eisenhower in 1950 for $24,000, but by 1960 it was worth about $1 million. Most of the difference represented the gifts of Texas oil executives connected to Rockefeller oil interests. The oilmen acquired surrounding land for Eisenhower under dummy names, filled it with livestock and big, modern barns, paid for extensive renovations to the Eisenhower house, and even wrote out checks to pay the hired help.

These oil executives were associates of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, billionaire Texas oilmen who were working with Rockefeller interests on some Texas and Louisiana properties and on efforts to hold up the price

of oil. From 1955 to 1963, the Richardson, Murchison, and Rockefeller interests (including Standard Oil Company of Indiana, which was 11-36 percent Rockefeller-held at the time of the Senate figures referred to earlier, and International Basic Economy Corporation, which was 100 percent Rockefeller-owned and of which Nelson Rockefeller was president) managed to give away a $900,000 slice of their Texas-Louisiana oil property to Robert B. Anderson, Eisenhower's secretary of the treasury.

In the Eisenhower cabinet, Anderson led the team that devised a system under which quotas were mandated by law on how much oil each company could bring into the U.S. from cheap foreign sources. This bonanza for entrenched power was enacted in 1958 and lasted fourteen years. Officially, it was done because of the "national interest" in preventing a reliance on foreign oil.

In effect, the import limits held U.S. oil prices artificially high, depleted domestic reserves, and reduced demand for oil overseas, thereby lowering foreign oil prices so that European and Japanese manufacturers could compete better with their U.S. rivals. It is difficult, of course, for a layman to understand how any of these things is in the national interest.

Meanwhile, President Kennedy turned the State Department over to Dean Rusk, who had held various high positions in the department under President Truman. For nine years - the entire Eisenhower interregnum for the Democrats and then some - Rusk had been occupied as president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Has anybody stopped to think that from 1953 until 1977, the man in charge of U.S. foreign policy had been on the Rockefeller family payroll? And that from 1961 until 1977, he (meaning Rusk and Kissinger) was beholden to the Rockefellers for his very solvency?

[Pat Speer]

Thanks Terry. Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs.

I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative.

FDR was far from being the ringleader of the "lock up the Japs committee." Two little birds named Warren and McCloy were far more responsible. Incidentally, I met a Japanese-American historian last year whose dissertation was on McCloy and his decisions regarding the internment camps. She studied his personal papers and correspondences and concluded, much to the dismay of some of her fellow Asian studies students, that McCloy and Warren were honest men who thought long and hard about their decisions. She noted that, in opposition to most people's impressions, not all Japanese were locked up, just Japanese within West Coast communities where spies would be tempted to hide. She determined that much of McCloy's concerns were justified, and that he thought of locking up Germans as well, but found they were too integrated into American society, and too hard to identify by appearance. She was impressed that McCloy even considered such things. The American attitude towards Asians in California prior to WW2 was cruel and racist, to say the least, and she considered it surprising that men like McCloy and Warren paid any mind at all to the problems and rights of Japanese-Americans...

Edited November 20, 2006 by Pat Speer

[Terry Mauro]

Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, 1984 (pages 177 and 178)

In 1961 John Foster Dulles was dead. Allen Dulles had been reappointed to head the CIA as the very first decision announced by President-elect Kennedy. And President Eisenhower retired to a 576-acre farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The farm, smaller then, had been bought by General and Mrs. Eisenhower in 1950 for $24,000, but by 1960 it was worth about $1 million. Most of the difference represented the gifts of Texas oil executives connected to Rockefeller oil interests. The oilmen acquired surrounding land for Eisenhower under dummy names, filled it with livestock and big, modern barns, paid for extensive renovations to the Eisenhower house, and even wrote out checks to pay the hired help.

These oil executives were associates of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, billionaire Texas oilmen who were working with Rockefeller interests on some Texas and Louisiana properties and on efforts to hold up the price

of oil. From 1955 to 1963, the Richardson, Murchison, and Rockefeller interests (including Standard Oil Company of Indiana, which was 11-36 percent Rockefeller-held at the time of the Senate figures referred to earlier, and International Basic Economy Corporation, which was 100 percent Rockefeller-owned and of which Nelson Rockefeller was president) managed to give away a $900,000 slice of their Texas-Louisiana oil property to Robert B. Anderson, Eisenhower's secretary of the treasury.

In the Eisenhower cabinet, Anderson led the team that devised a system under which quotas were mandated by law on how much oil each company could bring into the U.S. from cheap foreign sources. This bonanza for entrenched power was enacted in 1958 and lasted fourteen years. Officially, it was done because of the "national interest" in preventing a reliance on foreign oil.

In effect, the import limits held U.S. oil prices artificially high, depleted domestic reserves, and reduced demand for oil overseas, thereby lowering foreign oil prices so that European and Japanese manufacturers could compete better with their U.S. rivals. It is difficult, of course, for a layman to understand how any of these things is in the national interest.

Meanwhile, President Kennedy turned the State Department over to Dean Rusk, who had held various high positions in the department under President Truman. For nine years - the entire Eisenhower interregnum for the Democrats and then some - Rusk had been occupied as president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Has anybody stopped to think that from 1953 until 1977, the man in charge of U.S. foreign policy had been on the Rockefeller family payroll? And that from 1961 until 1977, he (meaning Rusk and Kissinger) was beholden to the Rockefellers for his very solvency?

***********************************************************

"Has anybody stopped to think that from 1953 until 1977, the man in charge of U.S. foreign policy had been on the Rockefeller family payroll? And that from 1961 until 1977, he (meaning Rusk and Kissinger) was beholden to the Rockefellers for his very solvency?"

Well, hell's bells, John! You're a guy after my own heart! I'm so glad there's someone else besides me pointing the finger in the direction that it truly belongs. You know, folks can analyze a film, snapshot, bullet trajectory, head wounds, etc. til the cows come home. But, when you come right down to it, it goes above and beyond the mundane details of the physical aspects of the kill. You want oil men? Well, who's the grand- daddy of them all? You need a huge amount of collateral to cover your bases, your losses, your asses, as well as your trail? You got it! And, where might that financial house, that's going to be able to handle the job in the most expedient way, be located? It's the connecting of the dots, in the right direction, and IMHO, the yellow brick cobblestone road that always leads back to Nassau Street, NYC.

[Pat Speer]

Well, hell's bells, John! You're a guy after my own heart! I'm so glad there's someone else besides me pointing the finger in the direction that it truly belongs. You know, folks can analyze a film, snapshot, bullet trajectory, head wounds, etc. til the cows come home. But, when you come right down to it, it goes above and beyond the mundane details of the physical aspects of the kill. You want oil men? Well, who's the grand- daddy of them all? You need a huge amount of collateral to cover your bases, your losses, your asses, as well as your trail? You got it! And, where might that financial house, that's going to be able to handle the job in the most expedient way, be located? It's the connecting of the dots, in the right direction, and IMHO, the yellow brick cobblestone road that always leads back to Nassau Street, NYC.

If one were to look for possible suspects in the killing, one would have to consider the possibility that Kennedy was killed for political reasons, that is, killed by someone with an eye on the Presidency. In such case, LBJ is suspect number 1. Not far behind, however, were Republican candidates believing they stood a shot as long as Kennedy was out of the way. This is a fairly short list, with Goldwater, Rockefeller and Lodge leading the way. While Goldwater was an outsider with little clout in high places like the Treasury Department and the CIA. Rockefeller and Lodge were plenty connected and plenty wealthy. After Johnson, they should have been considered suspects. Of course, neither of them was investigated by the FBI or Warren Commission.

[John Simkin]

"Has anybody stopped to think that from 1953 until 1977, the man in charge of U.S. foreign policy had been on the Rockefeller family payroll? And that from 1961 until 1977, he (meaning Rusk and Kissinger) was beholden to the Rockefellers for his very solvency?"

Well, hell's bells, John! You're a guy after my own heart! I'm so glad there's someone else besides me pointing the finger in the direction that it truly belongs. You know, folks can analyze a film, snapshot, bullet trajectory, head wounds, etc. til the cows come home. But, when you come right down to it, it goes above and beyond the mundane details of the physical aspects of the kill. You want oil men? Well, who's the grand- daddy of them all? You need a huge amount of collateral to cover your bases, your losses, your asses, as well as your trail? You got it! And, where might that financial house, that's going to be able to handle the job in the most expedient way, be located? It's the connecting of the dots, in the right direction, and IMHO, the yellow brick cobblestone road that always leads back to Nassau Street, NYC.

I should make it clear that I am quoting Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, 1984 (page 178). However, that is not to say I disagree with Kwitny. His early death denied us a brave investigative reporter. I highly recommend all of his books.

[Ashton Gray]

I'm so glad there's someone else besides me pointing the finger in the direction that it truly belongs. You know, folks can analyze a film, snapshot, bullet trajectory, head wounds, etc. til the cows come home. But, when you come right down to it, it goes above and beyond the mundane details of the physical aspects of the kill.

One of the most astutely encapsulated observations I've seen expressed. The so-called "medical evidence" was so contaminated and compromised even by the time it got filtered through the Warren Commission that it is and forevermore will be exactly the tar pit it was crafted to be. And the more "researchers" that can be shoved or lured into it, the better. They check in, but they don't check out.

No amount of doctored and phony "evidence" and "anecdotes," though, can stand as a barrier to methodical and orderly research and investigation and track-back into the fundamentals of means, motive, and opportunity. The connections are in the record. The tracks exist.

Oswald didn't make his "opportunity": it was supplied to him. It was handed to him. It was gifted to him under extraordinary circumstances. And who had the means and motive to provide such opportunity?

The trails, however faint, however well-covered, all lead back in one direction and one direction only.

The "usual suspects," some of which were trotted out only hours after the cold-blooded murder, the rest within days, are downright laughable.

I've seen hardly anybody even bother to wonder how Bringuier and his band of CIA-funded thugs were able to get a broadsheet out before the body was cold screaming "Castro did it!" and throwing an information grenade of confusion into the face of the world with their dog-and-pony-show account of their staged "conflict" with Lee Harvey Oswald and his "now he's anti-Castro, now he's pro-Castro" psy-op. And anybody dense enough to think it ever was anything but a psy-op really ought to be thinking about a career in raising petunias as an alternative to "research."

Then there's the "Texas oil men" truckload of horse manure. Like Texas is some island universe where its "oil men" are somehow completely cut off from the international oil interests and their Siamese twin, the international bankers. Just how naive can it get? Pull-up Huggies, maybe?

You want oil men?

No thanks; I'm trying to quit.

Well, who's the grand- daddy of them all? You need a huge amount of collateral to cover your bases, your losses, your asses, as well as your trail? You got it!

As long as you have your own private international intelligence agency, pretending to be working for the United States, and they have their own little private armies of criminal goons and psychiatrists who will quietly take care of anyone who gets in your way. Or even annoys you. Then can hide anything and everything they want to behind an impenetrable lie of "national security." Very sweet deal indeed.

And, where might that financial house, that's going to be able to handle the job in the most expedient way, be located? It's the connecting of the dots, in the right direction, and IMHO, the yellow brick cobblestone road that always leads back to Nassau Street, NYC.

Only the very best addresses for the very best people.

Ashton

Edited November 21, 2006 by Ashton Gray

[John Simkin]

Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson first began writing articles about Eisenhower and the oil industry in 1961. Eisenhower never took legal action against the journalists. In fact, the stories were just ignored. Pearson wrote about this story in their excellent, The Case Against Congress (1968):

Fletcher Knebel in the Des Moines Register carefully listed the numerous gifts presented to the Eisenhower farm, including a John Deere tractor with a radio in it, a completely equipped electric kitchen, landscaping improvements and ponies and Black Angus steers-worth, all together, more than half a million dollars. Compare this outpouring to the $1,200 deep freeze-and the resulting uproar over it - given to President Truman by a Milwaukee friend of General Harry Vaughn. But no newspaper dug into the highly compromising fact that the upkeep of the Eisenhower farm was paid for by three oilmen - W. Alton Jones, chairman of the executive committee of Cities Service; B. B. (Billy) Byars of Tyler, Texas, and George E. Allen, director of some 20 corporations and a heavy investor in oil with Major Louey Kung, nephew of Chiang Kai-shek. They signed a strictly private lease agreement, under which they were supposed to pay the farm costs and collect the profits. Internal Revenue, after checking into the deal, could find no evidence that the oilmen had attempted to operate the farm as a profitable venture. Internal Revenue concluded that the money the oilmen poured into the farm could not be deducted as a business expense but had to be reported as an outright gift. Thus, by official ruling of the Internal Revenue Service, three oilmen gave Ike more than $500,000 at the same time he was making decisions favorable to the oil industry. The money went for such capital improvements as: construction of a show barn, $30,000; three smaller barns, about $22,000; remodeling of a schoolhouse as a home for John Eisenhower, $10,000; remodeling of the main house, $110,000; landscaping of 10 acres around the Eisenhower home, $6,000; plus substantial outlays for the staff including a $10,000-ayear farm manager.

How the money was paid is revealed in a letter dated January 28, 1958, and written from Gettysburg by General Arthur S. Nevins, Ike's farm manager. Addressed to George E. Allen in Washington and B. B. Byars in Tyler, Texas, it began, "Dear George and Billy" and discussed the operation of the farm in some detail. It said, in part:

"New subject - The funds for the farm operation are getting low. So would each of you also let me have your check in the usual amount of $2,500. A similar amount will be transferred to the partnership account from W. Alton Jones's funds."

In the left-hand corner of the letter is the notation that a carbon copy was being sent to W. Alton Jones.

During his eight years in the White House, Dwight Eisenhower did more for the nation's private oil and gas interests than any other President. He encouraged and signed legislation overruling a Supreme Court decision giving offshore oil to the Federal Government. He gave office space inside the White House to a committee of oil and gas men who wrote a report recommending legislation that would have removed natural-gas pipelines from control by the Federal Power Commission. In his appointments to the FPC, every commissioner Ike named except one, William Connole, was a pro-industry man. When Connole objected to gas price increases, Eisenhower eased him out of the commission at the expiration of his term.

On January 19, 1961, one day before he left the White House, Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil that required all importers to move over and sacrifice 15 percent of their quotas to newcomers who wanted a share of the action. One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order happened to be Cities Service, which had had no residual quota till that time but which under Ike's new order was allotted about 3,000 barrels a day. The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the three faithful contributors to the upkeep of the Eisenhower farm.

Three months later, Jones was flying to Palm Springs to visit the retired President of the United States when his plane crashed and Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash and travelers' checks. No explanation was ever offered - in fact none was ever asked for by the complacent American press - as to why the head of one of the leading oil companies of America was flying to see the ex-President of the United States with $61,000 in his briefcase. (438-440)

Robert Sherrill also wrote about Anderson and Richardson in his book, The Accidental President (1967):

Anderson's powerful influence over Lyndon Johnson, and the position Anderson was marked to play in directing the financial policies of the Johnson administration, were both known and predictable from the beginning. They have been intimate allies for thirty years of politics in Texas and Washington. They were especially intimate in the creation of an oil program which, without much public awareness, had developed to a controversial crisis that was effectively quashed only by Kennedy's death.

The seed of that program was really planted, more than a quarter of a century ago, on a passenger train clacking through the night. There are several accounts of what happened, but one goes this way: oil millionaire Sid Richardson, and President Roosevelt's son Elliott, and Bill Kittrell, a kind of protegy of Sam Rayburn's and a well-known man about Texas, were keeping each other company on a trip to Washington. But the conversation was beginning to droop, so Richardson sent Kittrell into the chair car to scout for a fourth for a round of bridge. By and by Kittrell came back with a young Army colonel in tow, an open-faced fellow by the name of Dwight Eisenhower.

From the train trip developed a strong friendship between Eisenhower and Richardson; after the war, when Eisenhower was being rushed by both political parties, his Texas oil pal showed up in Paris to tell him that if he ever did get into politics he could count on plenty of Richardson money.

Exactly what generosity Richardson showed has never been more than wildly hinted at, but it apparently was enough to make Eisenhower moderately grateful. When Richardson and other Texas oil men recommended Robert Anderson, Eisenhower named him Secretary of the Navy. The importance of this to Texas oil men is a matter of almost comical stress. Anderson, a resident of landlocked Fort Worth, knew nothing of naval affairs before he got the post, but that hardly matters; all he needed to know was that Texas is the largest oil-producing state and that the Navy is the largest consumer of oil as well as leaser of valuable lands to favored oil firms. From this producer-consumer relationship things work out rather naturally, and it was this elementary knowledge that later made John Connally (who had for several years, through the good offices of his mentor Lyndon Johnson, been serving as Sid Richardson's attorney and who later became executor of the Richardson estate) and Fred Korth, also residents of Fort Worth, such able secretaries of the Navy, by Texas standards...

Eisenhower, on the urging of Richardson and Lyndon Johnson, named him to the office of Secretary of Treasury, and on June 21 (1957), ten days after selling his gift oil property, Anderson was free and clear to tell the Senate Finance Committee that he held no property that would conflict with his interest in the cabinet post.

A few weeks later Anderson was appointed to a cabinet committee to "study" the oil import situation; out of this study came the present-day program which benefits the major oil companies, the international oil giants primarily, by about one billion dollars a year.

Although Standard of Indiana, one of the companies involved in Anderson's million-dollar windfall, used the resulting import program to great success, moving in a few years from a company with no foreign holdings to one of the largest overseas oil explorers, there was nothing illegal in this mutual benefit. Anderson could be charged with nothing more than poor taste.

Nor was Anderson held solely responsible for the oil import program's formula; not at all. Industry insiders believed-and their beliefs were printed in industry publications-that equally influential in the shaping of the program were Lyndon Johnson and his ally in all things pertaining to oil industry legislation, the late Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. Kerr, an owner of the Kerr-McGee Oil Company, did very well under the new oil program, but his attitude toward conflict of interest was singularly easygoing. "Hell," he once remarked, "if everyone abstained on grounds of personal interest, I doubt if you could get a quorum in the U.S. Senate on any subject."

What Drew Pearson, Jack Anderson, Jonathan Kwitny and Robert Sherrill missed was the connection between these events and John J. McCloy. Is it therefore a coincidence that it was McCloy who played the most important role of all in producing a unanimous Warren Commission report that JFK was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald?

[Myra Bronstein]

Ok, so back to Eisenhower, I feel that he may not have been above taking a few favors, like those John described (and needless to say Johnson was a lying thug), and letting the spooks go way too far. But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too late.

Anyone agree, disagree?

**********************************************************

"But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too

late."

But, he apparently did in his final State Of The Union Address, where he warned America and the in-coming Kennedy administration of the Military Industrial Complex. His presidential veto had largely been ignored and overruled by the Chiefs of Staff, and after turning the keys of the White House over to Kennedy, in so many words, advised him to watch his back with regard to the Bay of Pigs operation. This is from the book of William Manchester's, "One Brief Shining Moment."

Eisenhower was a West Point career military man, like MacArthur, and the American people trusted him and needed him to be their leader in the decade following WW II. The 50's have often been touted as the most prosperous for the U.S. industrially, with that proverbial "chicken in every pot" everyone longed for during the Great Depression years of the 1930's. Well, that almost became a reality for everyone. FDR's New Deal no doubt helped pave the path for the stability and certainly for the burgeoning middle-class that blossomed during the halcyon days of the 50's and early 60's.

Thanks Terry. Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs.

I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative.

*************************************************************

"Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs."

I think he was made to bend to the pressures being put on him by a basically W.A.S.P.-ish constituency, which is what the majority rule was back in those days. Remember, if you could have someone like William Randolf Hearst create the Spanish-American War, with banner headlines claiming "REMEMBER THE MAINE," just to sell newspapers, or influence half of the East Coast into believing they were being invaded from outer space by Martians with the "War Of The Worlds" broadcast, look at what you could convince the entire citizenry of the U.S. into doing, especially after what happened at Pearl Harbor.

"I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative."

Spot on, as they say in the U.K.

"THE END OF THE INNOCENCE" words and music by Don Henley

Remember when the days were long

And rolled beneath a deep blue sky

Didn't have a care in the world

With mommy and daddy standing by

When happily ever after fails

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers dwell on small details

Since daddy had to fly

But I know a place where we can go

That's still untouched by man

We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by

And the tall grass wave in the wind

[chorus]

You can lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair fall all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies

But now those skies are threatening

They're beating plowshares into swords

For this tired old man that we elected king

Armchair warriors often fail

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers clean up all details

Since daddy had to lie

But I know a place where we can go

And wash away this sin

We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by

And the tall grass waves in the wind

[chorus]

Just lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair spill all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last

Now we've come so far, so fast

But, somewhere back there in the dust

That same small town in each of us

I need to remember this

So baby give me just one kiss

And let me take a long last look

Before we say good bye

[chorus]

So, just lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair fall all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Wonderful lyrics.

Then there's "Simple Song of Freedom" from the great Bob Darin:

"...

Brother Solzhenitsyn, are you busy?

If not, won't you drop this friend a line

Tell me if the man who is plowin' up your land

Has got the war machine upon his mind?

Seven hundred million are ya list'nin’?

Most of what you read is made of lies

But, speakin’ one to one ain't it everybody's sun

To wake to in the mornin’ when we rise?

..."

[Terry Mauro]

Ok, so back to Eisenhower, I feel that he may not have been above taking a few favors, like those John described (and needless to say Johnson was a lying thug), and letting the spooks go way too far. But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too late.

Anyone agree, disagree?

**********************************************************

"But he didn't grasp the true scope and depths of the evil he was dealing with in terms of Nixon, Dulles brothers, CIA, Prescott Bush, etc. And the U-2 episode was the eye-opener, but it was too

late."

But, he apparently did in his final State Of The Union Address, where he warned America and the in-coming Kennedy administration of the Military Industrial Complex. His presidential veto had largely been ignored and overruled by the Chiefs of Staff, and after turning the keys of the White House over to Kennedy, in so many words, advised him to watch his back with regard to the Bay of Pigs operation. This is from the book of William Manchester's, "One Brief Shining Moment."

Eisenhower was a West Point career military man, like MacArthur, and the American people trusted him and needed him to be their leader in the decade following WW II. The 50's have often been touted as the most prosperous for the U.S. industrially, with that proverbial "chicken in every pot" everyone longed for during the Great Depression years of the 1930's. Well, that almost became a reality for everyone. FDR's New Deal no doubt helped pave the path for the stability and certainly for the burgeoning middle-class that blossomed during the halcyon days of the 50's and early 60's.

Thanks Terry. Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs.

I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative.

*************************************************************

"Well that FDR sure was another tough one to figure. One the one hand he's robbing Japanese Americans of their possesions and locking them up and letting Pearl Harbor happen. On the other hand he's creating super progressive domestic New Deal programs."

I think he was made to bend to the pressures being put on him by a basically W.A.S.P.-ish constituency, which is what the majority rule was back in those days. Remember, if you could have someone like William Randolf Hearst create the Spanish-American War, with banner headlines claiming "REMEMBER THE MAINE," just to sell newspapers, or influence half of the East Coast into believing they were being invaded from outer space by Martians with the "War Of The Worlds" broadcast, look at what you could convince the entire citizenry of the U.S. into doing, especially after what happened at Pearl Harbor.

"I don't quite get him. I'm starting to wonder if he was seriously adversely influenced by Churchill. I haven't read a lot about Churchill but I get the strong impression that he never met a war he didn't like, would not rest until he dragged Roosevelt into the war (of course that may have been necessary to save Britian), and was very manipulative."

Spot on, as they say in the U.K.

"THE END OF THE INNOCENCE" words and music by Don Henley

Remember when the days were long

And rolled beneath a deep blue sky

Didn't have a care in the world

With mommy and daddy standing by

When happily ever after fails

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers dwell on small details

Since daddy had to fly

But I know a place where we can go

That's still untouched by man

We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by

And the tall grass wave in the wind

[chorus]

You can lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair fall all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies

But now those skies are threatening

They're beating plowshares into swords

For this tired old man that we elected king

Armchair warriors often fail

And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales

The lawyers clean up all details

Since daddy had to lie

But I know a place where we can go

And wash away this sin

We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by

And the tall grass waves in the wind

[chorus]

Just lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair spill all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last

Now we've come so far, so fast

But, somewhere back there in the dust

That same small town in each of us

I need to remember this

So baby give me just one kiss

And let me take a long last look

Before we say good bye

[chorus]

So, just lay your head back on the ground

And let your hair fall all around me

Offer up your best defense

But this is the end

This is the end...of the innocence

Wonderful lyrics.

Then there's "Simple Song of Freedom" from the great Bob Darin:

"...

Brother Solzhenitsyn, are you busy?

If not, won't you drop this friend a line

Tell me if the man who is plowin' up your land

Has got the war machine upon his mind?

Seven hundred million are ya list'nin’?

Most of what you read is made of lies

But, speakin’ one to one ain't it everybody's sun

To wake to in the mornin’ when we rise?

..."

*********************************************************************

Yes, there were those special folks with a social and political conscience, who expressed it in their music once-upon-a- time, back then.

I always found this simple line from one of CSNY's albums, released around the time of "Four Dead In Ohio" [i believe], to be most poignant. Sung a capella, with no instrumental accompaniment.

"FIND THE COST OF FREEDOM"

To find the cost of freedom,

It's buried in the ground.

Mother Earth will swallow you,

Lay your body down.

"Has anybody stopped to think that from 1953 until 1977, the man in charge of U.S. foreign policy had been on the Rockefeller family payroll? And that from 1961 until 1977, he (meaning Rusk and Kissinger) was beholden to the Rockefellers for his very solvency?"

Well, hell's bells, John! You're a guy after my own heart! I'm so glad there's someone else besides me pointing the finger in the direction that it truly belongs. You know, folks can analyze a film, snapshot, bullet trajectory, head wounds, etc. til the cows come home. But, when you come right down to it, it goes above and beyond the mundane details of the physical aspects of the kill. You want oil men? Well, who's the grand- daddy of them all? You need a huge amount of collateral to cover your bases, your losses, your asses, as well as your trail? You got it! And, where might that financial house, that's going to be able to handle the job in the most expedient way, be located? It's the connecting of the dots, in the right direction, and IMHO, the yellow brick cobblestone road that always leads back to Nassau Street, NYC.

I should make it clear that I am quoting Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, 1984 (page 178). However, that is not to say I disagree with Kwitny. His early death denied us a brave investigative reporter. I highly recommend all of his books.

***************************************************************

"I should make it clear that I am quoting Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, 1984 (page 178). However, that is not to say I disagree with Kwitny. His early death denied us a brave investigative reporter. I highly recommend all of his books."

Thanks for clarifying that, John. It's always best to appear unbiased, to a certain degree, when presenting information. I've been watching the late night "journalism" classes being presented as distance learning modules, on PBS. They even get down to how to present numbers, say like 5 versus five, and in what context of the story you're supposed to use which. Very interesting.

[Chris Brown]

Richard,

Good Afternoon.

This may come as a surprise to you. I can understand you and many other Yanks being pissed off. I am a 55yrs old Brit and it never ceases to amaze me that whenever the subject of world conflict comes up in conversation the majority of my friends tend to lay the blame at the USA’s door.

I have made the point more than once, mostly at the 19th hole, when there are a good many of us around the table, that none of us have been called on to defend our country.

That on a similar table at a golf club in the States a similar age group will more than likely have lost friends or acquaintances in previous conflicts.

One thing I know for sure (my late father told me this from his experience in WW2) is that when the US send their troops into action they have the best equipment available, unlike our own troops.

Yes I’m surprised that the isolationist view has not taken a stronger hold in your country.

Regards

Chris Brown.

PS. I am not a Tory.