Mondays with Murray: Rothbard on JFK, LBJ, and Crony Capitalism

November 18, 2013 Jason Grimley

In preparation for today's interview with Hunter Lewis, as well this week's upcoming interview with Roger Stone, author of The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ,I turned to Murray Rothbard for his thoughts on the subjects we'll be discussing. Rothbard laid out the relationship between both former Presidents JFK and LBJ, the establishment, and their crony corporate partners in his book, Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. On JFK:

e strong Rockefeller influence on Kennedy foreign policy is best seen in the fact that the new President continued Allen W. Dulles as head of the CIA. It was at the urging of Dulles that Kennedy decided to go ahead with the CIA’s previously planned and disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Fidel Castro’s regime had recently nationalized a large number of American-owned sugar companies in Cuba. It might be noted that Dulles’s old law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell served as general counsel for two of these large sugar companies, the Francisco Sugar Co. and the Manati Sugar Co., and that one of the board members of these firms was Gerald F. Beal, president of the Rockefeller-oriented J. Henry Schroder Bank, of which Dulles had once been a director.Not only that. John L. Loeb of the Loeb, Rhoades investment bank, whose wife was a member of the Lehman banking family, owned a large block of stock in the nationalized Compania Azu- carera Atlantica del Golfo, a big sugar plantation in Cuba, while one of the directors of the laer company was Harold F. Lin- der, vice-chairman of the General American Investors Company, dominated by Lehman Brothers and Lazard Frères investment bankers. Linder was appointed head of the Export-Import Bank by President Kennedy.Aer the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Dulles was replaced as head of the CIA by West Coast industrialist John A. McCone, who also had the capacity to serve the administrations of either party with equal ease. Under-Secretary of the Air Force under Truman and head of the Atomic Energy Commission under Eisenhower, Mc- Cone was president of the Bechtel-McCone Corporation, and represents the first major incursion of the international Bechtel con- struction interests into American politics. McCone was also a board member of the California Bank of Los Angeles, and of the Rockefeller-dominated Standard Oil Company of California.

On Lyndon Johnson:

One important meeting at which it was decided to escalate the Vietnam War was held in July 1965. the meeting consisted of Johnson, his designated foreign policy and military officials, and three key unofficial advisers: Clark M. Clifford, the chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and an attorney for the du Ponts and the Morgan-dominated General Electric Co.; Arthur H. Dean, a partner in Rockefeller-oriented Sullivan & Cromwell and a director of the CFR; and the ubiquitous John J. McCloy.Shortly after the meeting, a distinguished national committee of power elite figures was formed to back President Johnson’s aggressive policies in Vietnam. Chairman of the committee was Arthur H. Dean; other members were Dean Acheson; Eugene Black, who, after retiring as head of the World Bank, returned to be a director of Chase Manhattan; Gabriel Hauge of Manufacturers’ Trust and the CFR; David Rockefeller, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank and a vice-president of the CFR; and two board members of AT&T, William B. Murphy and James R. Killian, Jr. Indeed, of the 46 members of this pro-Vietnam War committee, were prominent businessmen, bankers or corporate lawyers. Later, when Johnson needed to raise taxes to supply more funds for the war effort, he selected thirteen businessmen to head the lobbying effort.A fascinating aspect of the Johnson administration was the heavy influence of men connected with the powerful Democratic investment banking house of Lehman Brothers. Johnson’s first Under-Secretary of State, George Ball, who left because of increasing disillusionment with the Vietnam War, would later become a key partner of Lehman Brothers. Johnson’s most influential unofficial adviser was long-time and personal legal and financial adviser Edwin L. Weisl, a New York attorney who was a senior law partner to Cyrus Vance at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. Not only was this law firm the general counsel to Lehman Brothers, but Weisl himself was dubbed by Fortune magazine as “Lehman’s eighteenth partner.” Weisl had great influence at Lehman and occasionally sat in on partners’ meetings. He was also reputed to be the closest friend of senior partner Robert Lehman, and sat on the board of the Lehman-controlled One William Street Fund.

Kennedy and Johnson are like just about every other President in U.S. history, with strong ties to the banking and commercial interests of the time. When so much power is placed in one office - indeed, in one government - the worst and most powerful in society will flock to control that power.Check out both of this week's episodes of the Lions of Liberty Podcast to learn more about these Presidents and crony capitalism.Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!