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Now a few paragraphs of the authors' about Mr. HeDeservedIt aka RFK :
* RFK disagreed with Johnson, Rockefeller and the CIA on their claims that local Communist party members were behind a popular revolt that demanded the return of Juan Bosch to D.R. RFK refused to support the invasionof DR in 1965.
* "Two monts later, during a trip to Latin America Kennedy's differences with Rockefeller on foreign affairs became more direc. Kennedy had a bitter argument with the U.S. deputy charge' d'affaires in Peru over Standard Oil's and the embasy's equating Standard Oil's interest with those of the United States "out there" question from Obama today? How can we see how far right we have come if this aspect of RFK is censored, or deemed not worthy of discussion? There is no basis of comparison thanks to Alex and Amy... but isn't that what the Foundation Funded Left is all about?. Sorry, N. H. again] Fortunately, the explosive Standard Oil contraversy did not specifically come up at Kennedy's press conference. "He did receive a general question on nationalization," Ambassador J. Wesley Jones reported to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, "to which he responded that question of nationalization to be decided by country concerned and would be respected by us so long as there is just and fair compensation"
If Kennedy's comment gave oil executives and embassy officials the jitters, it was still only official U.S. policy and probably the best that could be expected from the Liberal Senator. As Kennedy left Lima for Santiago, the capital of Chile, and a tour of conditions in American-owned mines, the embassy was relieved it had been spared contraversy.
However, Kennedy had had a "frank and free" discussion that did not get reported to the ambasadork of to Rusk, until a story appeared in the local press. He had met with Peruvian artists and intellectuals, who immediately asked about Standard Oil. "Are yo aware of the problem of IPC I understand Presidne belaunde is trying to get an acceptable solution form the company, said Kennedy.
Perhaps. But first it would be established what is understood as acceptable and then, what is more serious, that such solution will not be accepted by IPC
The Peruvians were only repeating what was commonly understood in both Lima and Washington. Johnson had already sent to Peru fellow Texan Robert B. Anderson, Eisenhower's former deupty defense secretary and treasury secretary and a man who knew the Rockefellers, having worked with Nelson in the Special Group and having been involved in subsequent business ties between texas oil interests and Nelson's International Basic Economy Corporation. Anderson had called on President Belaunde in mid-July "to explain to him that his demands beyond anything an international oil company could accept.
then David Rockefeller made a trip to Lima, arriving a week ahead of Kennedy, to persuade the Belaunde government to back down. Belaunde's officials listened closely, for here was an unparalleled combination of financial and political power in the flesh of one man. David was not just the brother of one of the best-known Americans in Latin America and not just president of the Chase bank. He also represented the Council For Latin America, the enlarged offspring of the Business Group, which now numbered over 200 companies, 85 percent of all American firms conducting business in Latin America. Furthermore, as if to make the change of fortune since Dallas absolutely clear, David Rockefeller now had official status in the Johnson administration as chairman of the finance committee of the US Business Advisory Council of the Alliance for Progress (p. 538-539, Thy Will Be Done) --------------- SKIP OVER THIS PART IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ IT --- It occurs to me that to understand the significace of this last comment it might be necessary to recall this previous description of the transition from JFK to LBJ as it was perceived in Latin America
Brazil 1964 - Brazil is the largest nation in the South American continent, and one of the world's richest in terms of natural resources. In 1961 a young idealistic nationalist named João Goulart became president and he began promoting policies of land reform, nationalization, and industrialization to try to make the most of his nation's enormous potential.
During Goulart's presidency he became good friends with President Kennedy who began the Alliance for Progress foreign aid initiatives involving Brazil in 1961. These initiatives were made on a government-to-government basis, sidestepping the World Bank and the IMF and the profit-driven initiatives of Wall Street, and they were widely criticized by Establishment spokesmen such as Nelson and David Rockefeller, and in Wall Street mouthpieces such as the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine, and in McCloy's CFR journal Foreign Affairs.
Gerard Colby in his book Thy Will Be Done offers David Rockefeller's perspective on how the United States should approach foreign economic development, and the quote within it is from Rockefeller's paper, "A Reappraisal of the Alliance for Progress," written in February of 1963,
The Cold War doctrine of counterinsurgency had brought U.S. policy full circle, blurring means and ends: Development was necessary for order, and order was necessary for development. David Rockefeller had explained the first half of this thesis from an exclusively corporate interpretation of development in 1963. He had called upon President Kennedy to shift foreign economic aid away from government-to-government aid. Such aid allowed governments in underdeveloped countries to fund publicly owned enterprises that competed with privately owned (often American controlled) companies. Local government aid, in turn, encouraged political independence from Washington and greater national sovereignty - including nationalization of American holdings. David wanted Kennedy to proclaim a shift in foreign-aid policy toward private entrepreneurs, both American and allied local investors, on the grounds that private enterprise per se was the basis of freedom: "The first requirement is that the governments - and, as far as possible, the people - of Latin America know that the U.S. has changed its policy, so as to put primary stress on improvement in the general business climate as a prerequisite for social development and reform." But David went beyond the classical liberal argument of the market basis for individual liberty. He extended it to suggest that U.S. policy should not merely prefer private enterprise, but should oppose public enterprise and its creation out of private corporations, no matter what the public's grievances or the corporation's crimes. David wanted a general U.S. policy that discouraged all nationalizations... David and his corporate allies feared "possible changes in the rules of the game." To soothe corporate jitters in corporate boardrooms and securities exchanges, the "obstacles" that a developing nation usually erected to protect its infant industries, small farms, and working-class' buying power had to be done away with... Multinational corporate ideology had not yet advanced to the point of asserting that these protections were "outmoded" in their global marketplace, but this would be the next step.
JFK had very different ideas from David Rockefeller on how developing nations could realize their potential, and JFK's ideas were viewed much more favorably by those nations than were the Establishment's clever ideas promoting neo-imperialism. Perhaps that partially explains the anguish felt in Brazil, and worldwide, at the death of JFK, as Colby describes,
News of John Kennedy's murder sent a shudder through Brazil. Then came grief such as had not been shown for the death of any foreign leader since President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As then, Brazilians sensed that the world had taken a dramatic turn. A shroud had been hung over the face of the future, making the loss of Kennedy so unexpectedly personal. In Rio de Janeiro, rivers of grief swept through the streets as lines of people converged to mourn at the U.S. Embassy Ambassador Lincoln Gordon was startled by the emotional crowds and what they could mean for President Lyndon B. Johnson in Latin America. "The experience we had that Friday afternoon and evening and the following weekend, I suppose, was repeated all over the world," he later recalled. "But in Rio it was a most dramatic thing. We opened a book at the chancery and another one at our residence, and over that weekend we had a line of people stretching for three of four blocks. It was continuous, day and night, of every class of person, every type, poor, rich, middle class, most of them weeping. It was a most extraordinary outpouring of emotion. So as a reaction to that, there would inevitably be some doubts about Kennedy's successor." There was no doubt in Washington's higher circles, however, about Lyndon Johnson. The former Senate majority leader was no maverick like Kennedy. He was the classic insider among Washington's power brokers. _ After Kennedy's death in November of 1963 major changes occurred in the Alliance for Progress program, changes which, as noted by Gibson, were received very favorably by David Rockefeller, as he made clear in a 1966 article he wrote for Foreign Affairs. Major changes also took place in the Brazilian government, when President Goulart was removed from power in a CIA-backed right-wing military coup in March of 1964. Brazil then endured two decades of death squads and dictatorships before any meaningful form of democracy was allowed to surface again.
The Establishment's interest in Brazil came chiefly through the Brazilian holdings of the Rockefeller family, which by the 1960's were extensive and diverse, from oil and mining, to electricity and communications, to cattle ranching, agriculture, and of course banking and investment. Much of them were managed under the umbrella of Nelson's massive multinational corporation, the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC), which also included holdings throughout the rest of South and Central America, in Southeast Asia, and in Africa as well. Rockefeller's influence in South America, and the influence of the IBEC, is documented extensively in the previously mentioned book written by Gerard Colby in 1995, Thy Will Be Done - The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. As the title infers, the Rockefeller's designs on the resources of South America were cleverly cloaked by their support for Protestant evangelism, especially through the missionary work of William Cameron Townsend and Wycliffe Bible Translators. In the United States Billy Graham was the most prominent name among a host of evangelicals that have always had strong financial backing from the secular Rockefellers. This may help explain how American corporate initiatives against Third World nationalism came to be falsely portrayed by Big Christianity in America as "Christian" initiatives fighting against "Communism."
Even before João Goulart became president of Brazil the CIA had his eye on him. Colby writes,
A stocky, handsome man with a large popular following, Goulart viewed himself as Getulio Vargas's spiritual successor in the struggle to rid Brazil of foreign domination. For that reason alone, he made Washington nervous at every step in his rise to power. As Vargas's minister of labor, he had built himself a base among Brazil's growing, restless working class. In gestures all too reminiscent of Argentina's Juan Peron, he found every opportunity to deliver rousing, populist speeches to the masses.
Colby describes how in 1963 Goulart presided over the nationalizing of a subsidiary of American-owned International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). The president of ITT then began to furiously lobby congress for an amendment to Kennedy's 1962 foreign-aid bill that would immediately cancel all aid to any country that nationalized, repudiated a contract, or specially taxed or regulated any American company. According to Colby,
Such a Big Stick approach appalled President Kennedy, who worried that it would further enflame Third World nationalism, appear to corroborate Soviet propaganda about "U.S. imperialism," and force the United States to take the side of American companies more often than was merited.
Kennedy fought the amendment to the bill, and then helped mediate a settlement between ITT and the Brazilian government. Afterwards, Goulart made an offer to buy out all American-owned utilities that were squeezing the Brazilian economy with steadily jacked up rates. Colby writes,
Kennedy endorsed the idea. He wanted to avoid Brazilian anger at rising electric bills. "It's that damned U.S. company," he thought Brazilians would say when their monthly bills arrived.
Unfortunately for Brazil, Goulart's plan was shelved because of lack of internal political support for such an ambitious move. His next action was to order his finance minister to apply a limit on the amount of net profits that foreign companies would be allowed to take out of the country, and then he asserted control over foreign aid. Up to that point much of it was being poured into favored states within Brazil, but Goulart mandated that it must first be channeled through the federal government. These were all policies aimed at improving the general welfare of the Brazilian people, but they conflicted with the profit motives of the American Establishment.
Goulart also turned his attention to the United States' largest producer of iron ore, the M.A. Hanna Mining Company, that had a major presence in Brazil. Hanna was the main iron ore supplier of National Steel, which in turn supplied 40% of Chrysler Corporation's steel, and all three companies were highly invested in by the Rockefeller family. In 1962 President Goulart issued an expropriation decree against Hanna's iron ore concession. It was appealed in the Brazilian courts by Hanna's CEO George Humphrey, but by early 1964 it looked as if Goulart's decree would be passed. JFK was out of the way, and the time had come for the Establishment to act.
No time was wasted because Humphrey was a firm Establishment insider. He had previously been Eisenhower's Treasury secretary, and his company's law firm was Milbank and Tweed, the law firm of John J. McCloy. "The Chairman" then took control of the Goulart situation during the very same time that he was beginning his work with the Warren Commission on the JFK assassination. McCloy would work to cover up the successful American coup at the same time as he planned for a Brazilian coup, and as these two tasks began President Lyndon Johnson awarded him the Freedom Medal at a White House ceremony in the State Dining Room.
Biographer Kai Bird describes how McCloy took command,
McCloy quickly set about educating himself on the situation by seeing all the appropriate officials at the State Department, the World Bank, the IMF, and the CIA. As it happened, one of the men he had worked with in Germany after the war, Lincoln Gordon, was now the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil. Gordon was back in Washington temporarily that week and gave McCloy his own highly pessimistic assessment of the situation... In preparation for the worst, McCloy set up a channel of communication between the CIA and Hanna's man, Buford . Thereafter, whenever Buford returned from one of his frequent trips to Rio de Janeiro, he would drive out to the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for a debriefing. According to Buford, McCloy also arranged for him to meet periodically with the CIA station chief in Rio. "Through this fellow," recalled Buford, "we had many, many meetings with the military people who were opposing Goulart behind the scenes."
Bird relates that on February 28 McCloy flew out to Rio de Janeiro to meet with President Goulart. In his pocket he had two proposals to settle the dispute between Hanna Mining and the Brazilian government. Goulart readily agreed to both of the proposals and promised to set up a meeting between Hanna officials and government representatives to work out the deal. Goulart felt greatly relieved at this turn of events, but he had no way of knowing that the proposals were never meant to be lived up to. Several days later Goulart pressed on with his reforming agenda, announcing at a rally his plans to nationalize "all private oil refineries and some landholdings."
At the same time the powerful anti-Goulart opposition shifted into a higher gear. Demonstrations for and against Goulart took place throughout Brazil and tensions escalated. Bird writes,
Hanna officials were now very worried. Back in their Cleveland headquarters, Humphrey and Buford considered sending McCloy down to Rio once again. But McCloy knew from his contacts in the intelligence community that the time for deal making was over. On March 27, 1964, Colonel Walters cabled Washington that General Castello Branco had "finally accepted leadership" of the anti-Goulart "plotters." Three days later, he told Ambassador Gordon that a military coup was "imminent." The following morning, Washington's contingency plan for a Brazilian coup, code-named Operation Brother Sam, was activated as a U.S. naval-carrier task force was ordered to station itself off the Brazilian coast. Well before the coup began, the Brazilian generals were told that the U.S. Navy would provide them with both arms and scarce oil. The Goulart regime, however, collapsed so quickly that the protracted civil war predicted by the CIA on March 31 never developed. The generals who planned and executed the coup did not need the arms or oil supplies waiting for them off the coast. Hanna Mining Company, in fact, ended up giving the generals more direct assistance than did Operation Brother Sam. The initial army revolt occurred in Minais Gerais, the state in which Hanna had its mining concession. When these troops began marching on Rio, some of them rode in Hanna trucks. In Rio itself, Jack Buford was in constant touch with the local CIA station chief, who kept him informed by phone on Goulart's movements.
Throughout President Goulart's brief term he was continually labeled a "Communist" by much of the Brazilian elite, by a large segment of its military and by the Establishment-controlled mass media in the United States. The hysteria was so effective that a year later the House of Representatives took as credible the testimony of US Southern Command General Andrew O'Meara, who stated, "The coming to power of the Castelo Branco government in Brazil last April saved that country from an immediate dictatorship which could only have been followed by Communist domination." http://www.redmoonrising.com/AmericanBabyl...m#Brazil%201964 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now back to RFK in Brazil in 1965:
But whatever Rockefeller gained for Standard Oil was undermined when Senator Kennedy arrived. Kennedy's comments about Standard Oil's recalcitrance were published in the Peruvian Press.
"So then, why don't you act?" Kennedy reportedly asked the Peruvians.
"Because pressures exist which involve the power of IPC and the problems of credit badly needed by the country," one of them repleid. "In some way, if you will pardon the expression, it could be said to blackmail"
Kennedy stayed on the offensive, challenging the Peruvians to act for themselves:
In the conversation I had with the students at the Perucian-American Cultural Institute I heard many complaints and criticisms, but not once was I told about what they thought or what they supposed should be done in this or that problem. I think that the action is up to you people. President Kennedy had to act against some large American firms; Argentina has cancelled its oil contracts; years ago Mexico nationalized its oil, and what happened? It is up to you not to get overwhelmed and to act according to your interests and according with what you consider is more convenient. And nothing can happen, as nothing happened before
The authors do not make RFK seem like the leftist that he wasn't. Yet they also capture his own senes of how different the Latin American policy of the 'the Kennedy's' was from the direct investment, more clearly unilateral policies of LBJ and Nelson Rockefeller: Did RFK's perception of these differeneces reflect a real division within the US ruling class or a fatal naivity on the part of an indoctrinated Cold Warrior who was, nevertheless, subject to change:
Kennedy's belief that in the United States democratic government already prevailed over privilege was unshaken. "Do you really believe," he asked, "that the enterprises and companies have so large an influence here and so much political influence over the US Government? During President Kennedy's administration, businessmen did not enter the White House. My trip to Latin America was certainly not looked on with favor by the State Department. But from what you people tell me, I can say again that it is up to you to change things ifthey are as you said"
"And how about the Marines? asked one man, referring to the recent Dominican intervention.
"Surely, you are not aware, Mr. Kennedy," said another, "that not long ago Mr. Rockefeller said in Lima that future financing is conditional to the favorable solution to the problems of the IPC and the International Telephone Company
Kennedy's face tensed. "And what importance do you give to this kind of threat? We Kennedy's, we eat Rockefellers for Breakfast"
The US Embassy in Lima asked Kennedy "for a statement clarifying" his view. Kennedy refused either to denounce the Peruvians of to retract his statements. "Someone at the gathering leaked the incident to the press," Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin later told Rockefeller family historians Peter Colier and David Horowitz, "and it got around. When we stopped in Argentina, a reporter rushed up to Bobby and said Johnson Administration] "Senator, is it true that you have breakfast with Rockefeller every morning?"
The Johnson White House was not amused. "The stories have him in effect saying:'Go ahead and nationalize. Others (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico) have done this. In the end, things work out," William Bowdler reported to National Security Adivsor McGeorge Bundy. "I don't see that there is anything that we can do about the episode, Bowdler, concluded.
Lyndon Johnson disagreed. Something could be done.
Kennedy's views on the Dominican Republic and on Peru won him no praise in Room 5600 < Nelson's bunker in Rockefeller Center>. Neither did his damning of Apartheid in South Africa as an evil comparable to "discriminatin in New York, serfdom in Peru, starvation in India mass slaughter in Indonesia, and the Jailing of intellectuals in the Soviet Union" David Rockefeller was the most active American banker promoting financial ties with South Africa (Thy Will Be Done, pp. 540-541)
Amy Goodman might imply that RFK was the same as LBJ. Rockefeller knew they wern't, and funds her, into eternity.
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