by Gerard Colby
Thy Will Be Done
The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil
Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett
By the descriptions of all who had seen them, there were no more inoffensive and charming human beings on the planet than the forest Indians of Brazil, and brusquely we were told they had been rushed to the verge of extinction. The tragedy of the Indian in the USA in the last century was being repeated, but it was being compressed into a shorter time.… The official report said pioneers leagued with corrupt politicians had continually usurped Indian lands, destroyed whole tribes … in which bacteriological warfare had been employed, by issuing clothing impregnated with the virus of small pox, and by poisoned food supplies. Children had been abducted and mass murder gone unpunished. The Government itself was blamed to some extent for the Indian Protection Service’s increasing starvation of resources over a period of thirty years. The Service had also had to face “the disastrous impact of missionary activity.”
Norman Lewis
The Sunday Times (London)
February 23, 1969
To the forty-seven journalists killed while reporting in Guatemala during military dictatorships between 1978 and 1985, and to their colleagues of the press who have died similarly in Brazil and other countries, trying to bring to the world the news of what is happening in the frontiers of “developing” nations.
The loss of liberty in general would soon follow the supression of the liberty of the press; for it is an essential branch of liberty, so perhaps it is preservative of the whole.
—JOHN PETER ZENGER
(1697–1746)
CONTENTS
Series Introduction
The End of an Era: An Introduction and Brief Update for the 2017 Edition
Introduction
I
THE LEGACY
1 The Baptist Burden
2 The Fundamentalist Controversy
3 Rethinking Missions
4 The Apostolic Vision
5 The Rites of Political Passage
6 Good Neighbors Make Good Allies
7 The Mexican Tightrope
II
WORLD WAR II: THE CRUCIBLE
8 The Coordinator
9 The Sword of the Spirit
10 The Shining Dream
11 The Dancer
12 Preempting the Cold War
13 Latin America’s First Cold War Coup
III
ARCHITECTS OF EMPIRE
14 American Wings over the Amazon
15 The Pretender at Bay
16 The Latin Road to Power
17 In the Wake of War—and the CIA
IV
PROPHETS OF ARMAGEDDON
18 Ike’s Cold War General
19 Disarming Disarmament
20 Messengers of the Sun
21 The Hidden Persuaders
22 The Brotherhood
23 Ascent of the Hawk
V
THE DAY OF THE WATCHMAN
24 Deadly Inheritance
25 Building the Warfare State
26 Miracles Déjà Vu
27 Camelot Versus Pocantico: The Decline and Fall of John F. Kennedy
VI
THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS
28 To Turn a Continent
29 Operation Brother Sam
30 Beneath the Eyebrows of the Jungle
31 Mistaken Identities
32 Poisons of the Amazon
33 Death of a Continental Revolution
34 The Enemy Within
35 Apocalypse Now: The Tribes of Indochina
36 “Nation-Building” Through War
37 Tet: The Year of the Monkey
38 Nelson’s Last Charge
VII
A NEW WORLD ORDER
39 Invasion of the Amazon
40 Rocky Horror Road Show
41 Forging the Dollar Zone
42 In the Age of Genocide
43 Critical Choices
44 Hiding the Family Jewels
VIII
DAYS OF JUDGMENT
45 SIL Under Siege
46 The Betrayal
47 The Great Tribulation
48 Thy Will Be Done
Appendix A: The Rockefeller Mission to the Americas (1969)
Appendix B: Members of the Rockefeller Commission on CIA Abuses (1975)
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
SERIES INTRODUCTION
I
We the people seem to have the freest book trade in the world. Certainly we have the biggest. Cruise the mighty Amazon, and you will see so many books for sale in the United States today as would require more than four hundred miles of shelving to display them—a bookshelf that would stretch from Boston’s Old North Church to Fort McHenry in South Baltimore.
Surely that huge catalog is proof of our extraordinary freedom of expression: The US government does not ban books, because the First Amendment won’t allow it. While books are widely banned in states like China and Iran, no book may be forbidden by the US government at any level (although the CIA censors books by former officers). Where books are banned in the United States, the censors tend to be private organizations—church groups, school boards, and other local (busy)bodies roused to purify the public schools or libraries nearby.
Despite such local prohibitions, we can surely find any book we want. After all, it’s easy to locate those hot works that once were banned by the government as too “obscene” to sell, or mail, until the courts ruled otherwise on First Amendment grounds—Fanny Hill, Howl, Naked Lunch. We also have no trouble finding books banned here and there as “antifamily,” “Satanic,” “racist,” and/or “filthy,” from Huckleberry Finn to Heather Has Two Mommies to the Harry Potter series, just to name a few.
II
And yet, the fact that those bold books are all in print, and widely read, does not mean that we have the freest book trade in the world. On the contrary: For over half a century, America’s vast literary culture has been disparately policed, and imperceptibly contained, by state and corporate entities well placed and perfectly equipped to wipe out wayward writings. Their ad hoc suppressions through the years have been far more effectual than those quixotic bans imposed on classics like The Catcher in the Rye and Fahrenheit 451. For every one of those bestsellers scandalously purged from some provincial school curriculum, there are many others (we can’t know how many) that have been so thoroughly erased that few of us, if any, can remember them, or have ever heard of them.
How have all those books (to quote George Orwell) “dropped into the memory hole” in these United States? As America does not ban books, other means—less evident, and so less controversial—have been deployed to vaporize them. Some almost never made it into print, as publishers were privately warned off them from on high, either on the grounds of “national security” or with blunt threats of endless corporate litigation. Other books were signed enthusiastically—then “dumped,” as their own publishers mysteriously failed to market them, or even properly distribute them. But it has mainly been the press that stamps out inconvenient books, either by ignoring them, or—most often—laughing them off as “conspiracy theory,” despite their soundness (or because of it).
Once out of print, those books are gone. Even if some few of us have not forgotten them, and one might find used copies here and there, these books have disappeared. Missing from the shelves and never mentioned in the press (and seldom mentioned even in our schools), each book thus neutralized might just as well have been destroyed en masse—or never written in the first place, for all their contribution to the public good.
III
The purpose of this series is to bring such vanished books to life—first life for those that never saw the light of day, or barely did, and second life for those that got some notice, or even made a splash, then slipped too quickly out of print, and out of mind.
These books, by and large, were made to disappear, or were hastily forgotten, not because they were too lewd, heretical, or unpatriotic for some touchy group of citizens. These books sank without a trace, or faded fast, because they tell the sort of truths that Madison and Jefferson believed our Constitution should protect—truths that the people have the right to know, and needs to know, about our government and other powers that keep us in the dark.
Thus the works on our Forbidden Bookshelf shed new light—for most of us, it’s still new light—on the most troubling trends and episodes in US history, especially since World War II: America’s broad use of former Nazis and ex-Fascists in the Cold War; the Kennedy assassinations, and the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Orlando Letelier, George Polk, and Paul Wellstone; Ronald Reagan’s Mafia connections, Richard Nixon’s close relationship with Jimmy Hoffa, and the mob’s grip on the NFL; America’s terroristic Phoenix Program in Vietnam, US support for South America’s most brutal tyrannies, and CIA involvement in the Middle East; the secret histories of DuPont, ITT, and other giant US corporations; and the long war waged by Wall Street and its allies in real estate on New York City’s poor and middle class.
The many vanished books on these forbidden subjects (among others) altogether constitute a shadow history of America—a history that We the People need to know at last, our country having now become a land with billionaires in charge, and millions not allowed to vote, and everybody under full surveillance. Through this series, we intend to pull that necessary history from the shadows at long last—to shed some light on how America got here, and how we might now take it somewhere else.
Mark Crispin Miller
THE END OF AN ERA
AN INTRODUCTION AND BRIEF UPDATE FOR THE 2017 EDITION
David Rockefeller Sr., who died at the age of 101 on March 20, 2017, was sitting in his office on the fifty-sixth floor at 30 Rockefeller Center when he gazed out the window facing south and saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapse, first one and then the other. In a matter of minutes, two of the tallest buildings in the world had cascaded floor by floor into a smoldering heap of rubble. To most Americans, the attacks of September 11, 2001, were the result of a horrific and brazen act of terror against their country. To CBS anchor Dan Rather, it was an attack on the very symbol of American economic and international power. To David Rockefeller Sr., who, with his brother Nelson, was most responsible for building and financing the World Trade Center, the 9/11 attacks were, quite simply, unbelievable.
Sitting in a sparsely decorated room and dressed in a well-tailored suit, David was asked by ABC what he thought as he watched the buildings collapse. Looking straight into the camera, his square face, now lightly creased with age, betrayed a seemingly earnest attempt to hide his emotions. “It was hard to believe what I saw was actually happening,” he said.1 Then he paused, sighed, and turned slightly away, his eyes cast downward, as if in mournful reflection over what it all meant for the country, for his family, and for business.
On October 21, 2002, David was asked again about the World Trade Center when he appeared on the Charlie Rose television show to discuss his newly published book, Memoirs. Rose asked if he, as head of Chase Manhattan, and his brother, as governor of New York, “were responsible, really, for the World Trade Center?”
David, smiling, nodded his head yes, “We worked together on that.” He went on to explain his role in revitalizing downtown Manhattan as chairman and founder of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association. He and Nelson, as governor, “were convinced there was a need to focus on trade which had always been the heart of New York’s business and there was no incentive for that trade. And therefore the World Trade Center, which was built by the Port Authority … was the right thing to do at the time.”2
Before the attacks, the summit of the World Trade Center featured a pictorial display of a world without borders. This was a vision of corporate globalization. It reflected the views of the two men whose business interests spanned the globe. Both were lifelong advocates of free trade as the key to prosperity and the means to avoiding dangerous trade wars, which, they believed, led to world wars. The Standard Oil heirs had combined their formidable resources to create two giant monuments to free trade—and to themselves, as savvy New Yorkers wryly nicknamed the Twin Towers “Nelson” and “David.”
If David had the inclination to reflect more deeply on the meaning of 9/11 in his Memoirs, he ultimately chose not to. Archivists, however, at the depository of his family’s papers in Sleepy Hollow, New York, did take up the subject soon after the attacks. The Rockefeller Archives Center devoted its Fall 2001 newsletter to the Twin Towers, inviting scholars to read firsthand from original sources about the history of the World Trade Center. In a section entitled “Globalization,” the editors made a remarkable confession: “To the extent that international terrorism must be understood as a reaction to, and to some degree a manifestation of, globalization, the Rockefeller Archive Center is a substantial research resource with material regarding many aspects of international trade, diplomacy, and collaboration:
The [materials] range from (but are not limited to) documentation of the international investment and philanthropic activities of the Rockefeller family; to the service of Nelson A. Rockefeller in five US presidential administrations; to the interest and activity of John D. Rockefeller 3rd in east and south Asia; to the global activities of the Rockefeller Foundation; [to] the West African, Southeast Asian, and Eastern European programs of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.”3
The fact that the Rockefeller Archives Center, in a traumatized post 9/11 America, so readily attributed globalization as a cause of terrorism—and so readily acknowledged the family’s leading role in globalization—speaks to a reality that escapes most people except those who have had the opportunity to delve into the Rockefeller family archives: At every turn, the founder, John D. Rockefeller Sr., and his second and third generation heirs, were met with resistance as they built and expanded their empire out of oil, mining, agribusiness, commercial real estate, ranching, and banking.4
Yet, even as the family archivists acknowledge globalization as a huge modern-day challenge, David, in his book, ignores its roots. The expansion of his forbears’ business interests into America’s rural south and southwest, as described and documented in Thy Will Be Done, brought severe economic disruption to people’s lives and an undying hatred of the Eastern Establishment. In this respect, his memoirs, with all their details about the people he met (and influenced) around the world, are ultimately, an effort to bring out the best of the family legacy, written “if for no other reason,” he told Charlie Rose, “than for my children and descendants”—and, arguably, to answer the family’s critics once and for all.
Burnishing the Image through “Good Works”
While globalization is now a household word, the names of its most passionate promoters are not. The eclipse of the 1 percent is no accident. It was a century ago that John D. Rockefeller Jr. paid Ivy Lee a handsome fee to burnish the villainous public image of his father, Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller Sr., whose ruthless business practices earned him many enemies. The public began seeing photos of an aged Senior smiling as he handed out dimes to children during the Great Depression, while educators, scientists, and healers pulled in tens of millions of dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation to perform good works for the “wellbeing of mankind,” as John D. Rockefeller Jr. described his new foundation’s mission.
Today, the Rockefeller Foundation’s board is free of Rockefellers, but not the legacy of Rockefeller influence, which includes the extensive investments in fossil fuel companies that continue to this da
y. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a newer foundation—the Rockefeller Family Fund, which the fourth generation of Rockefellers established to advance their more liberal agendas—quietly dole out additional millions to liberal and progressive organizations, universities, nonprofits, and the media. While the Rockefellers’ “good works” through their tax-free foundations generate a lot of publicity and praise from mass media, their banks, corporate ventures, and, of course, the political influence gained by their wealth, get very little, if any, critical attention. Accordingly, they have escaped criticism for their nonexistent withdrawal of oil holdings from their foundations and personal portfolios—and their name’s involvement in New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal, allegedly because Democratic officeholders were stalling on approving the Rockefeller Group’s projected real estate projects in the area. 5
Recasting the Legacy of Nelson Rockefeller
When this book first came out in 1995, the only thing most people knew about the leader of the third generation, Nelson Rockefeller—other than his being governor of New York (1959–1973) and, for a brief time, vice president under Gerald Ford (1974–1977)—was how he died in the middle of a sex act with his young mistress. Few people had any idea that Nelson, as President Roosevelt’s coordinator of inter-American affairs and then assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, had shaped US foreign policy in Latin America during World War II. Hardly anyone was aware of how he had used his many connections to Latin American businessmen, media moguls, and generals to try to effectively control the destiny of a continent after ridding it of German, Italian, Japanese, and British competition.
No one knew, it seems, that Nelson Rockefeller was heavily involved in intelligence and “national security” matters, becoming President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s special assistant in charge of cold war strategy and psychological warfare, and chairing the National Security Council’s supersecret Special Group that oversaw CIA covert operations.
No one knew that his mentor in Latin American affairs, former assistant secretary of state Adolf Berle Jr., had a role in overthrowing Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas in 1945 and, with Rockefeller’s confidante Col. J. C. King, CIA director of Clandestine Operations in the Western Hemisphere, had a role in overthrowing Brazil’s President João Goulart in 1964.