The Rockefeller Files: Chapter One by Gary Allen from archive.org

Chapter One 

The Multi-Billion Dollar Myth 

v 7/ 'you're thinking of colossal economic power, 
it doesn't exist. We have investments, but not 
control. " 

-Nelson Rockefeller 

At his Vice Presidential confirmation hearings, Nelson A. Rockefeller was as solemn and 
serious as P. T. Barnum swearing his freak show denizens were the real Mc Coy when he 
told the assembled solons: 

/ hope that the myth or misconception about the extent of the family's control over the 
economy of this country will be totally brought out and exposed and dissipated ...There is 
not this network of control which is popularly conceived. 

The Senators could not have been more polite. Nobody guffawed. The transcript does not 
indicate that they even tittered. After all, fools seldom get elected to the Senate these 
days. Nelson and David, as leaders of the Rockefeller Clan, are the nation's undisputed 
economic kings. No politician with enough savvy to be elected dog catcher laughs at a 
king. 

Guessing the magnitude of the Rockefeller financial empire has been a favorite indoor 
sport since the turn of the century. In a front-page story on September 29, 1916, the New 
York Times reported that family patriarch John D. Rockefeller's oil holdings alone were 
worth $500 million, and that he was America's first billionaire. Eight hours after the story 
appeared his oil shares had increased in value by a tidy $8 million. Not a bad return for a 
single day's labor, even for a Rockefeller. 




The Brothers Rockefeller,inheritors of a colossal fortune, are using their massive wealth, 
power, and prestige to create what they call the "New World Order. " Shown above (from 
left to right) are David, Chairman of the Board of both the Council on Foreign Relations 
and the Chase Manhattan Bank; Winthrop (now deceased); John D. an advocate of 
people control; Nelson, the "political" Rockefeller; and Laurance. After years of 
planning and campaigning, a brilliant coup d'etat has finally installed Nelson in the 
White House, without the risk of an election. 

About this period, however, the picture of the family's growing financial might becomes 
more murky. The Rockefellers began hiding their wealth from the public and the tax 
collector -in trusts and foundations. As reported in the Washington Post: 

For two generations, the great fortune passed down by John D. has been fractionated and 
made more complex by increasing layers of trusts and closely held companies, where no 
public reports are required, none volunteered, and all inquiries politely rebuffed. 

The Rockefellers invented a scheme, used by the super rich today, whereby the more 
money you appear to give away, the richer and more powerful you become. Through the 
help of captive politicians, guided by some bright boys in the family law offices, 
legislation was written and passed which would protect the Rockefellers and other elite 
super-rich from the repressive taxation they have foisted on everyone else. 

The key to this system is giving up ownership but retaining control. For example, most 
people don't believe they really own something unless they retain title to it in their own 
name. The Rockefellers know this is a big mistake. Often it is better to have your assets 
owned by a trust or a foundation-which you control-than to have them in your own name. 



For example, when Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis ordered Standard Oil broken up 
back in 1911, sly old John D. simply created some new foundations and gave his stock to 
them. The net effect was the same as if you took your wallet out of your right-hand 
pocket and put it in the left. In this case, however, Rockefeller not only managed to avoid 
income taxes, but also escaped the probate, estate and inheritance taxes which have 
ravaged the wealth of those not in the know. 

So three generations of Rockefellers have been - giving away millions of dollars - giving 
much of it to themselves. For example, if a Rockefeller gives a million dollars worth of 
stock in the Titanic Oil Corporation to the Dogood Foundation, which the family 
controls, he is not really out one million bucks. All he has done is transfer title of the 
securities to an alter ego. Of course, the foundation may then give away some of the 
money, or, more likely, donate some of the stock's future earnings to some allegedly 
worthwhile cause. But, as the few investigations by Congress into this devious field have 
shown, in the case of the Rockefellers such bequests somehow end up increasing the 
Rockefeller financial or political power. 

The upshot is that, through the past six decades, the public has had no way 'even to 
estimate Rockefeller wealth, let alone accurately measure the family's power and 
influence. But we can make some logical extrapolations from the few facts that are 
available. We know that through the magic of compound interest (as they say down at 
your friendly savings and loan branch), one dollar invested at the modest rate of five % 
per annum will double in thirteen years. This means that if the Rockefellers were earning 
only five % per year (a return they would find laughable), that modest $1 billion fortune 
in 1916 would have grown to over billion today. 

The late Stewart Alsop, a reporter who had excellent sources in the Eastern Liberal 
Establishment (a euphemism for the financial, political, academic and media Mafia 
controlled by the Rockefellers), used to scoff at the usually "accepted " Fortune magazine 
estimate of the family's fortune at between $1 and $2 billion. 

"It would not be at all surprising " Alsop concluded in his book:" Nixon and Rockefeller 
(published in 1960), "if all the Rockefeller family assets -all the Rockefeller - controlled 
money as well as the Rockefeller "owned money came to something like 10 billion 
dollars. 

If Alsop is correct, the Rockefeller holdings would now be a rather comfortable nest egg 
of some $25 billion. 

In view of the fact that the past fifteen years have produced much economic growth (as 
well, as much inflation), it could well be that $25 billion is a reasonable, even a 
conservative figure. 

Of course the family has never admitted being worth even a sizable fraction of this 
amount. When originally queried by the Senate Committee, good old' Nelson estimated 



his personal fortune at a paltry $33 million. After some very mild prodding by the 
Committee, this modest estimate was increased by 660 %. 

The Vice Presidential hopeful eventually admitted to being worth a more respectable 
$218 million-a sum, incidentally, that is greater than the combined wealth of all 37 
Presidents in this country's history. 

So great was public suspicion of the Rockefeller wealth that the family's financial 
adviser, J. Richardson Dilworth, was invited to testify before the House judiciary 
Committee. Dilworth became the Rockefeller family's key money manipulator in 1958. 
Prior to joining the Rockefellers he had been a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co., perhaps the 
most politically powerful international banking firm in the world. Kuhn, Loeb was, and 
still may be, a satellite of the immensely rich and powerful Rothschild family of Europe. 
Historically, the Kuhn, Loeb name has been synonymous with financial success and 
political intrigue, dating back to participation through senior partner Jacob Schiff in 
bankrolling the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.* (see None dare call it conspiracy) 

In the past, the Rockefellers have both competed with and cooperated with the 
Rothschilds. Dilworth's leaving Kuhn, Loeb & Co. to take control of the Rockefeller 
family purse strings was considered significant by students of the international financial 
and political machinations of the super-rich. 

Dilworth maintains an office designated as Rockefeller Family and Associates, 
occupying three entire floors at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Rockefeller Family and Associates 
is not a legal entity or corporation; it is simply a name to describe the organization which 
coordinates and manages the investments of the 84 descendants of John D. Rockefeller, 
Jr. 

With the well-oiled assurance of a successful mortician the urbane, sophisticated 
Dilworth laid to rest the committee's concern over the family's financial muscle. He used 
five charts, crammed with statistics, to dispel the notion that the family exercises 
inordinate power over the nation's economy. Rocky's critics found it difficult to dispute 
Dilworth's bewildering collection of figures; at times they could hardly keep up with 
them. The whole performance was as confusing as an Eisenhower press conference, and 
probably as deliberate. As one observer commented: 

.... the talk of convertible stocks, coupons and fiduciary obligations and the fact the vast 
holdings of The Rockefeller Foundation and other family-collected funds were not 
included in Dilworth's presentation left most members little more enlightened than they 
had been. 

According to Dilworth, the 84 living Rockefellers are worth a mere $1,033,988,000. 
(Presumably he rounded off the figures to the nearest thousand dollars.) The bulk of the 
assets disclosed by Dilworth were held in two trusts, one established by John D. Jr. in 
1934 for his children and one set up in 1952 for his grandchildren. 



But according to many sources, the Rockefellers have as many as 200 trusts and 
foundations, and it is possible they have hundreds, even thousands more. Why bother 
with so many? For one very simple reason: So that assets can be moved, merged, and 
manipulated so smoothly and so quickly that the public-and just as important, the tax 
experts from the Treasury Department-have no way of knowing just how much money is 
where. 

Suppose you had three buckets, one empty, two filled with water. Is there any way you 
could pour water from one bucket to another so quickly an observer could not tell how 
much water you had? 

But suppose, instead, you had five thousand buckets. And a hundred persons to help pour. 
And you were allowed to keep all but a few buckets and a few pourers hidden behind a 
high wall. Would your chances be better to keep your -liquid assets - secret? So it is with 
the Rockefellers. All trusts are not equal. Only a handful of attorneys in the country know 
how to establish the type of trusts the Rockefellers have. These specialized trusts are 
most emphatically not the sort your friendly local solicitor can create for you. They not 
only can eliminate probate, cut inheritance taxes, and reduce income taxes; unlike 
corporations, they can achieve almost total privacy. Theoretically, trustees can, within the 
privacy of their directors' meetings, create more and more trusts ad infinitum With a little 
effort, taxes disappear. With more effort, even the value of the holdings can be 
completely hidden. 

This explains why the Rockefellers use so many trusts. The fact is that we really don't 
know how many trusts the family has established. It may be thousands, or tens of 
thousands. Remember Nelson's explanation for the embarrassing fact that he did not pay 
any income tax in 1970-his trust fund managers had done a lot of shifting of investments 
in 1969. You can bet they moved their assets to accomplish this! 

In testifying before the Judiciary Committee, Dilworth did not discuss the family's 
holdings by individuals, but presented them as a single package. Dilworth said he had 
received "unanimous permission" from the Rockefeller family to make public the total 
figures of their holdings. "This in itself has been a unique experience, since it runs so 
completely against the grain of what we in the office consider to be one of our major 
responsibilities- the preservation of the separate identity and highly personal treatment of 
each account," he said. "Like other Americans, they value highly their right of personal 
privacy. " 

More importantly, the privacy within the trusts can conceal whatever assets the 
Rockefellers decided not to make public. If the family had chosen to open up the minutes 
of its trustees' meetings to Congressional investigators, we might have some idea of the 
true financial status of the family. No such suggestion was even whispered. We really 
have only the Rockefellers' word for the amount of wealth they control, and they 
obviously have a vested interest in minimizing its size. 



How about assets hidden in foreign countries? Are there Swiss bank accounts? Rocky 
says no, but he could be telling the literal truth, yet have foreign accounts held by trusts 
or other nominees, or securities "in street name (that is, in the name of a brokerage firm 
such as Merrill Lynch). Or assets can be held in a custodial account of a bank, such as 
(for example) Chase Manhattan. 

All that we know for sure is the first time Rocky was asked about his wealth he swore it 
was a paltry $33 million; later he admitted the figure was six (6) times higher. A slight 
miscalculation which anyone might make. 

We are supposed to swallow the propaganda that the Rockefellers are merely middle- 
class millionaires, not even in the, same financial ball park as Howard Hughes or those 
Texas wheeler-dealers. But, "Hideout Howard" and the Dallas money crowd are relative 
Johnny-Come-Latelys to the world of high finance. The Rockefellers have been refining 
oil for over a century and running banks for 75 -years. Although it cannot be proven 
because the evidence is hidden, few sophisticates swallow Dilworth's $1 billion figure- 
which does not even include any personal residential property, jewelry or other personal 
belongings; nor does it include Nelson's art collection, which he has valued 
(conservatively, we must assume) at $35 million. 

Nor are the Rockefeller homesteads your basic tract bungalows. The main homes of the 
clan are located at Pocantico Hills in New York. Established 45 years ago by old John D., 
the land alone was worth $50 million in 1930. Their value today defies estimate. When 
opened to the press for the first time in 1959, at the time of the marriage of Nelson's son 
Steven, the estate, with its 70 miles of private roads, was said to be 4,180 acres in size. 
Earlier reports claimed 7,500 acres. In 1929 there were 75 buildings occupied by the 
Rockefellers and their attendants; over 100 families lived on the estate. One addition has 
been a $4.5 million underground archives to store family records. One wag has described 
the palatial Pocantico Hills as the kind of place God would have built if he had had the 
money. 

No expense was spared by the family to remove minor blemishes on their pastoral 
paradise. 

The senior Rockefeller gave the New York Central Railroad $700,000 to move its tracks, 
and $1.5 million to a small college to shove off. 

Among the other chateaux owned by Nelson is the enormous Monte Sacro Ranch in 
Venezuela, his coffee plantation in Ecuador (the one where Juan Valdez waits for the 
perfect day to pick the beans), his several farms in Brazil, his 32-room Fifth Avenue 
duplex in New York City, the mansion in Washington, D. C, the little hideaway at Seal 
Harbor, Maine, etc., etc., etc.* 

In addition, at last count the Rockefellers owned seven huge ranches. Earlier this year 
1975, Nelson bought 18,000 empty Texas acres for -outdoor recreation. 



It is doubtful if any of the Rockefeller women will ever have to spend the night at the 
YWCA. The four of them have about 100 residences to choose from, including John D. 
Ill's spacious Beekman Place apartment in Manhattan, Laurance's sumptuous resorts in 
Hawaii and Puerto Rico, Nelson's Venezuela Finca, (large enough to swallow the entire 
city of New York), and David's Caribbean home. 

Needless to say, it takes an army of underlings to operate these elegant pads. There are 
500 full-time domestics, gardeners, guards and chauffeurs at Pocantico Hills alone, 45 at 
the family's Seal Harbor, Maine, retreat, and 15 in Nelson's Fifth Avenue apartment. All 
told, it has been estimated the Rockefeller women have at their beck and call about 2,500 
servants. 

Because the Rockefellers are forever on the wing-in their private jet fleets-each residence 
is permanently staffed, and nightly the sheets are turned down. One never knows when 
the boss might pop in. 

Of the corporate holdings described by Dilworth, the largest, of course, is Exxon, the new 
name for Standard Oil of New Jersey, one of the companies formed when John D. 
Rockefeller, Sr. was ordered to de-monopolize the Standard Oil Company. The stock 
directly owned by the family (not counting that held by such family controlled entities as 
banks and foundations ) amounts to $156,7 millions. Number two on Dilwoth's list is 
Rockfeller mere $98 million. Anyone who accepts this estimate of the Center's worth is 
probably negotiating to swap his life time savings for sole proprietorship in the Brooklyn 
Bridge. The Los Angeles Times observed on September 30, 1974 : 

* The Congressional hearings revealed that two houses in Washington "ostensibly owned 
by a Rockefeller attorney" actually belong to Nelson. 

Nobody but the stockholders (the four surviving Rockefeller brothers-Nelson, John D.III, 
David and Laurance - their sister, Abby, and the heirs of their brother Winthrop, who 
died in 1973, and a handful of Wall Street bankers) know its true value, but the educated 
guess of New York's real estate crowd is that Rockefeller Center, land and buildings, is 
worth $1 billion. 

Next in line in the family portfolio is $85-million worth of stock in Standard of 
California, followed by $72.6 million worth of IBM. Companies in which the family 
holds $10 million or more in stock include Chase Manhattan Bank, Mobil Oil Corp., 
Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Texas Instruments, and Minnesota Mining and 
Manufacturing. Altogether the Rockefellers own a significant portion of some 50 major 
American companies. 

So extensive are the family's holdings in securities that the Dilworth operation spreads 
over three entire floors at Rockefeller Center, and requires 154 full-time employees to 
manage the security portfolios. Working under Dilworth's supervision are fifteen top 
financial experts, who also double and triple in brass by serving on the boards of directors 
of nearly 100 corporations with combined assets of some $70 billion. 



When testifying before the judiciary Committee, Dilworth's main objective was to fortify 
Nelson's statement that his family's reputed financial power was a - myth - concocted by 
evildoers. "If you're thinking of colossal economic power, it doesn't exist. We have 
investments, but not control," claimed Rocky. 

"It should be stressed that both the family members and their investment advisers are 
totally uninterested in controlling anything," parroted Dilworth. "The family members are 
simply investors. The aim and hope of the advisers is over time to achieve a reasonable 
total return for our clients. "So seriously was the whole performance taken that not even a 
wink could be, detected in the hearing room, much less a discreet nudge under the table. 

Dilworth maintained that members of the family do not coordinate their investments. 
Their sharply differing views on investments, social and environmental policies, Dilworth 
claimed, have prevented them from ever voting their stock in unison. "There is no grand 
design or overall pattern," the Rockefeller hireling assured the committee. 

Dilworth went on to say that the last time the family interfered in the management of a 
company was in 1928 when John D. Sr. and Jr. forced Standard Oil Company (Indiana) 
to remove a chief executive. Such intervention now, purred Dilworth, is -totally foreign 
to this family. In the 17 years I've been on this job, I've never seen this family try to push 
people around." 

The Wall Street Journal sprang to the defense of the family on September 25, 1974: 

... "while Mr. Rockefeller is a bit modest about his economic clout, it is true that there are 
no individuals left in this society who are wealthy enough to alone substantially influence 
economic events. The wealth accumulated by John D. and the other tycoons of his era is 
diffused through a vast economy, controlled by foundations, trusts and the managers of 
large broadly based corporations. 

Power is diffused along with it" 

In April 1958, when it was reported that J. Richardson Dilworth, the man with the most 
snobbish "sounding name since Junius Pierpont Morgan or Jackie Gleason's immortal 
Reginald van Gleason, was appointed to his present position, the New York Times 
explained that the organization "manages and supervises" the Rockefeller family 
investments. The phrase "manages and supervises" suggests a coordinated effort at 
directing family finances. If the Rockefellers were not interested in maximizing their 
economic leverage, it would seem logical that each would pursue his own interests 
separately and retain his or her own battery of experts. 

Dilworth makes it sound as if the family has widely divergent views on social, economic 
and political questions. Yet we have not been able to find a single significant occasion 
when the four sons and daughter of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. differed.* 



And is it not curious that no member of the Judiciary Committee chose to grill Mr. 
Dilworth about the alleged disagreements which prevent the family from acting in 
financial unison? The New Yorker of January 16, 1965,tells us that the brothers and sister 
Abby "get together two or three times a year to discuss matters of interest to all of 
them.'The purpose of the conferences is to "collide and coalesce," as one of their senior 
advisers described it. 

Charles B. Smith, a top Dilworth, lieutenant, was a bit more forthright than his boss: "Our 
goal, like everybody else's, is to make wads and wads of money for the Rockefeller 
family." The Rockefeller family likes money. But, once you have achieved the ultimate 
of opulence in your standard of living (and the Rockefellers reached that plateau decades 
ago), making money for its own sake becomes a fairly academic exercise. 

Most people relax after they have reached the point of economic comfort and security. 
But, for some individuals, the ultimate ego trip has been the pursuit of power. In bygone 
days the rare individual with a manic desire for power seized a throne, or led conquering 
armies. Now that is all passe. Today, more worlds are conquered in board rooms than on 
battle fields. And, as we shall see, what happens on battle fields is often the result of 
decisions made in board rooms. 

All of us can name plenty of tyrants and despots from the past. Genghis Khan, Alexander 
the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin - these men brought misery and death to millions of 
people in the course of realizing their own perverted ambitions. But because the 
overwhelming majority of people do not possess such a psychotic thirst for power, they 
find it all but impossible to recognize its presence in others. 

* One subject on which the family is unanimous is furthering Nelson's political 
ambitions; the Rockefellers have contributed a staggering $25 million to various 
campaigns promoting Nelson for the Presidency. 

Most Americans just want to provide decent lives and comfortable futures for themselves 
and their families. They are willing to work hard to achieve the necessities of life and 
even many luxuries. But they could no more conceive of scheming, -plotting and 
conniving to become economic commissars or kings than they would be interested in 
abandoning civilization for life as headhunters along the Amazon. 

It is Mr. Average American and his family, however, who pay the price for the 
megalomania of the empire builders. Especially since our domestic would-be tyrants 
learned long ago that a political-economic conspiracy can become far more powerful than 
a criminal one-and is far, far safer for the participants. 

Whether or not such megalomania is carried by genes we do not know. What can be 
shown is that it has existed for at least three generations in the Rockefeller family. 
Despite the protests of the Rockefellers and their hirelings that they are totally 
uninterested in controlling anything, a survey of the evidence will reveal an all- 
consuming passion for control over everything and everybody. 



The House of Rockefeller is not just a wealthy and successful family. Instead, it is an 
Empire. No other family has deliberately sought control over so many institutions which 
affect every facet of American life. Whether it is government, business, energy, banking, 
the media, religion or education, at the apex of the power structure you will find 
Rockefeller money and Rockefeller front men and agents. Such total persuasiveness, 
influencing every important aspect of American life, cannot be happenstance. 



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Chapter Two