The Invisible Man of the New World Order: Raymond B. Fosdick (1883-1972)
…Or Why the Rockefellers Aren’t Reptilians
By Will Banyan Copyright © September 2005 (Revised April 2008/February 2015)
Why does war command a solidarity of devotion and sacrifice that cannot be marshaled for peace?Raymond B. Fosdick, Foreign Affairs, January 1932We let cynicism and lies and partisan politics get the better of us, and we chucked the League out of the window to satisfy a miserable political quarrel…Our generation in America has betrayed its own children and the blood of the next war is on our hands.Raymond B. Fosdick to Harry E. Fosdick, 29 March 1920
Introduction
Since the late 1940s, hundreds of books have been published purporting to reveal the existence of a conspiracy to establish a global totalitarian dictatorship or ‘New World Order’, complete with a world army, world currency, global religion, and world government. Some of the classic texts in this much-derided genre included The Blue Book of the John Birch Society (1959), Kent and Phoebe Courtney’s America’s Unelected Rulers (192), John Stormer’s None Dare Call It Treason (1964), Alan Stang’s The Actor (1968) and Gary Allen and Larry Abraham’s landmark work None Dare Call It Conspiracy (1971). Many more important books about the N.W.O. appeared during the 1970s most of them written by Gary Allen including Richard Nixon: The Man Behind The Mask, (1971), Kissinger: The Secret Side of the Secretary of State (1976) and The Rockefeller File (1976). Key titles of the 1980s included Larry Abraham’s Call It Conspiracy (1985), William P. Hoar’s Architects of Conspiracy: An Intriguing History (1985), A. Ralph Epperson’s The Unseen Hand (1985), and James Perloff’s The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline (1988).
The period since the 1990s, however, must count as a golden age for N.W.O. research with the market flooded with new authors and new theories incorporating UFOs, mind-control, ancient astronauts and genealogy. Among the most significant works in recent years are: William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse (1991), Jim Marrs’ Rule by Secrecy (1996), Fritz Springmeier’s The Bloodlines of the Illuminati (1995), and the plethora of books by British researcher David Icke – among them The Robots Rebellion (1995), The Biggest Secret (1999), Children of the Matrix (2001), Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster (2002) and Tales from the Time Loop (2004) – and his late American antagonist, Jim Keith, author of Casebook on Alternative 3 (1994), Black Helicopters Over America (1994) and Saucers of the Illuminati(1999). More recent contributions of note include British researcher Nicholas Hagger’s two volumes: The Syndicate (2004) and The Secret History of the West (2005); and Daniel Estulin’s The True Story of the Bilderberg Group (2007).
All of these books go to great lengths to name the guilty parties, the organizations, families, and individuals said to be behind the New World Order plot. Some of the groups named include secret societies such as the Illuminati, Freemasons, and Skull and Bones; and policy-planning organizations prime among them the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers and more recently the Project on the New American Century. The families and individuals identified include the usual suspects: the House of Rothschild, the Rockefellers (David Rockefeller in particular), Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Colonel’ Edward House, George Bush Senior, and now George Bush Junior, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz. Reviewing the countless books, magazines, articles, and websites critically examining the New World Order one cannot help but notice that in a remarkable oversight, the name of one seemingly obscure, yet actually very important figure is missing from this roll call of the damned.
That individual, whose existence I first discussed in Part 1 of my series ‘Rockefeller Internationalism’ (which appeared in Nexus magazine in 2002/3), is Raymond Blaine Fosdick (1883-1972). In a career which included time as an aide to US General John Pershing (Commander of US forces in Europe during World War I) during the Paris Peace Conference; Under-Secretary-General for the League of Nations in 1919-1920; and nearly three decades of close involvement in the network of foundations established by John D. Rockefeller Junior, including as a trustee to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, the International Education Board, the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Foundation, and later president of three of these philanthropies, including 12 years as President of the Rockefeller Foundation; Fosdick hardly warrants being written off as a peripheral figure. John D. Rockefeller Junior once described Fosdick as one of his ‘close and valued associates for nearly forty years’;[1] yet he remains largely unknown to most readers of this genre and is rarely mentioned, if at all, by New World Order researchers.[2]
This omission occurs despite more than a few mainstream histories crediting Fosdick with converting Junior into a supporter of the League of Nations. Instead, with most researchers unaware of Fosdick’s key role, less plausible explanations for the Rockefeller involvement in the N.W.O. have been advocated. One in particular which has gained in popularity in recent years argues that the supposedly noble lineage of the Rockefellers is evidence they are of the ‘Illuminati bloodline’ or are even ‘reptilian hybrids’ that are therefore destined – if not genetically and spiritually programmed – to seek world domination.
The primary objective of this research paper is to alert other researchers and interested readers to the importance of Fosdick. Rather than being a marginal figure in the history of the New World Order, it is my contention that was it not for Fosdick’s calculated and ultimately successful effort to recruit John D. Rockefeller Junior to his way of thinking about world order, it is highly unlikely the Rockefeller name would be associated in any way with the push for international government.
To verify this hypothesis, this paper will be divided into two parts. In the first part, those arguments put forward for Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order pre-dating the 1920s (the time when Fosdick became a close adviser to Junior) will be critically examined. This will include allegations the Rockefellers are Rothschild frontmen; that they possess Illuminati or ‘reptilian’ lineage, and were behind the League of Nations from the outset. In the second part the focus will be on the career of Fosdick, tracing his relationship with both Woodrow Wilson and John D. Rockefeller Junior, the origins and evolution of his liberal internationalist philosophy, his work for the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation, and above all the evidence that it was he who convinced Junior to back the League. Ultimately, it will be shown that Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order was not predetermined, whether genetically, genealogically or financially, but was due in large part to the ideological influence of one man: Raymond Blaine Fosdick.
Part One: The Rockefellers And The New World Order
To properly understand Fosdick’s role in the New World Order it is necessary to revisit and reconsider a version of history that most of us in this field take for granted, namely that Rockefeller family involvement in the alleged world government plot probably dates back to the 1860s, when John D. Rockefeller Senior began his relentless and ruthless quest to dominate oil production in the United States. There are three ‘factoids’ offered in support of this contention:
- It is claimed that were it not for crucial funding provided by the House of Rothschild, John D. Rockefeller Senior would never have been able to create Standard Oil.
- The Rockefellers received those funds because they allegedly share the same ‘Illuminati’ or ‘reptilian’ bloodline as the Rothschilds and a host of other families implicated in the N.W.O., thus guaranteeing their involvement.
- The Rockefellers are alleged to have been behind Colonel House, who is credited with manipulating President Woodrow Wilson into supporting both US involvement in the First World War and the subsequent creation of the League of Nations.
These are controversial allegations and proponents of these claims could be justifiably credited with attempting to alert the public to little-known historical material that might otherwise remain hidden. On closer inspection, however, each of these so-called ‘facts’ is revealed as standing on the tenuous ground. In their eagerness to go beyond the boundaries of mainstream history with its sedate conclusions, some of these authors have succeeded only in producing sloppy research, repeating unsubstantiated claims without searching for original sources, and ignoring any evidence which conflicts with their theories. In the sections that follow we will attempt to illustrate the significant empirical flaws in each of these claims.
1.1 Frontmen for the Rothschilds?
To present Rockefeller involvement in the New World Order as somehow inevitable numerous analysts claim the Rockefellers are actually surrogates for the House of Rothschild. Hollywood film producer Myron Fagan, for example, in a lengthy polemic against the Council on Foreign Relations delivered in the 1960s, claimed that it was the banker Jacob Schiff, who was, in fact, an ‘agent of the Rothschilds’, who had ‘financed the Standard Oil Company’.[3] David Icke, referring to the fortunes of J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller in his book …and the truth shall set you free (1995), repeated this allegation, though somewhat more cautiously:
There is evidence to suggest that the House of Rothschild was behind both of these great American business and banking empires, a demonstration of the Rothschilds’ brilliance for hiding the extent of their power and control behind frontmen and organisations.[4]
Four years later in The Biggest Secret (1999), however, Icke was more certain, charging that the Rockefellers ‘became the most powerful family in the United States with the help of Rothschild money and, no doubt, through other sources, too.’ This apparent fact prompted Icke to dismiss the Rockefellers as little more than ‘wealthy “gofers” answerable to higher powers’, who used ‘Rothschild and Payseur funding to build vast empires which controlled banking, business oil, steel etc, and ran the United States economy…’ while remaining ‘subordinate to the central operational control centre in Europe, especially London.’[5] Fritz Springmeier, another of Icke’s sources, claims in his controversial Bloodlines of the Illuminati (1991) that Rockefeller originally made his money selling narcotics before he branched out into oil, although ‘it was Rothschild capital that made the Rockefellers so powerful.’[6] In his detailed history of the New World Order, David A. Rivera claims: ‘In this country [U.S.], through their American and European agents, [the Rothschilds] helped finance Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and Harriman’s Railroad.’[7]
More precise information on the alleged Rothschild link is provided in the book of the video, The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (1998), produced by Patrick S. J. Carmack. According to Carmack:
The National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in congressional hearings as one of three Rothschild banks in the United States, provided John D. Rockefeller with the money to begin his monopolisation of the oil refinery business, resulting in the formation of Standard Oil. Jacob Schiff, who had been born in the Rothschild Green Shield house in Frankfurt and who was then the principal Rothschild agent in the US, advised Rockefeller and developed the infamous rebate deal Rockefeller secretly demanded from railroads shipping competitors’ oil.[8]
The primary source of these allegations by Carmack, Icke and Springmeier, appears to be American researcher Eustace Mullins. In his book Murder by Injection, Mullins argues that the focus on Rockefeller’s greed ‘obscures the fact that from the day the Rothschilds began to finance his march towards a total oil monopoly in the United States from their coffers at the National City Bank of Cleveland, Rockefeller was never an independent power…’ Mullins continues:
However much of the Rockefeller wealth may be attributed to old John D.’s rapacity and ruthlessness, its origins are indubitably based in his initial financing from the National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in Congressional reports as one of the three Rothschild banks in the United States and by his later acceptance of the guidance of Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who had been born in the Rothschild house in Frankfurt and was now the principal Rothschild representative (but unknown as such to the public) in the United States.[9]
According to Mullins, it was Rockefeller’s demonstrated callousness in the pursuit of his business goals that probably persuaded the Rothschilds to provide him with financial backing. Once they were sure they had ‘found their man’, the Rothschilds had sent their ‘personal representative, Jacob Schiff, to Cleveland to help Rockefeller plan further expansion.’ To prove his contention, Mullins quotes the following lines about Schiff from the 16 December 1912 edition of Truth magazine:
Mr Schiff is head of the great private banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, which represents the Rothschild interests on this side of the Atlantic. He is described as a financial strategist and has been for years the financial minister of the great impersonal power known as Standard Oil.[10]
These allegations, though somewhat sparse with regard to concrete evidence, suggest a relationship in which the Rockefellers were not only financially dependent upon the Rothschilds for their rise to wealth power, but were ultimately subordinate to them. The basic dynamic of the alleged relationship can be seen in the following diagram (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Alleged relationship between the Rothschilds and the Rockefeller Empire
Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes evident that the Rothschild-Rockefeller connection rests on at least four unproven assertions:
1.1.1 Who Did Rockefeller Borrow From?:
Although it is indisputable that John D. Rockefeller relied heavily upon bankers during the early years to finance the rapid growth of his oil business, there is remarkably little evidence that he borrowed exclusively, if at all, from Rothschild-controlled banks, especially their alleged subsidiary the National City Bank of Cleveland (NCBC). The problem, however, as anyone pursuing this issue will soon discover, is that in the numerous books tracing Rockefeller’s rise, his lenders are rarely identified. Ron Chernow in Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr(1999), for example, notes that despite ‘his populist mistrust of bankers, Rockefeller owed much of his incandescent rise to their assistance.’ The identity of Rockefeller’s first non-family lender is given, but instead of an identifiable Rothschild proxy we have Truman P. Handy, a ‘kindly, benevolent old banker’. Chernow mentions more borrowing undertaken by Rockefeller during the 1860s, including his relations with two other bankers, William Otis and Stillman Witt, though not the banks they represented. But for Rockefeller’s biggest initial purchase, when he bought out his partners to take control of Cleveland’s largest oil refinery in February 1865 for $72,500, certain ‘sympathetic bankers’ are mentioned but not actually identified.[11]
Commenting on the same deal, Peter Collier and David Horowitz, authors of The Rockefellers(1976), observe only that Rockefeller ‘already had good enough standing in the Cleveland financial community to be able to borrow the purchase price.’[12] Similarly, Ferdinand Lundberg in The Rockefeller Syndrome (1975) observes that Rockefeller ‘was constantly in need of new capital for expansion. He constantly borrowed heavily from the banks, where he was increasingly welcome as he always paid back on the dot.’ Unsurprisingly Lundberg does not name any individual bankers, but he does note that in his seemingly relentless search for cash, in 1867 Rockefeller had gone into partnership with the flamboyant Henry M. Flagler who had brought into Standard Oil new funds from both himself and his uncle, the wealthy whiskey distiller Steven V. Harkness.[13] The need for Flagler and his rich uncle naturally begs the question: where was Rockefeller’s supposed Rothschild benefactors?
No more clues are to be found in David Freeman Hawke’s John D. (1980), which makes much of Rockefeller’s apparent belief in his father’s philosophy that one should ‘[b]orrow money in the present…in order to accumulate a fortune in the future.’ Hawke even quotes the view of Rockefeller’s first business partner, Andrew Clark, that he was ‘the biggest borrower I ever saw.’ But besides repeating the stories about Handy, Flagler, and Harkness, and claiming that ‘John D. was a familiar face at all Cleveland banks’; not one of these banks is identified.[14] Commercial Bank president Truman P. Handy is mentioned briefly in Jules Abels The Rockefeller Millions(1965) as the source of a loan for $2000 for one of Rockefeller’s first business ventures, the firm of Clark and Rockefeller, which sold farm goods. Abels notes that ‘possibly out of gratitude Rockefeller later made Handy rich’, lending money to buy Standard Oil stock.[15]
Histories of the oil industry are just as vague. Daniel Yergin’s much-vaunted account, The Prize(1992), for instance, notes: ‘As the oil boom progressed, Rockefeller, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the Great Game, continued to pour both profits and borrowed money into his refinery.’[16] The first volume of a much earlier work, Williamson and Daum’s The American Petroleum Industry (1959), although giving a fairly thorough chronicle of the oil refining companies acquired by Standard Oil, and Rockefeller’s clever tactics, is largely silent on where the money came from.[17] Anthony Sampson’s The Seven Sisters (1975) maintains the paucity of detail, noting that Rockefeller ‘expanded with great daring, borrowing wherever he could, and bringing in new partners.’[18] As always, Rockefeller’s insatiable need to borrow money is acknowledged, but his lenders remain largely anonymous.
At this point, it would be tempting to conclude that Mullin’s allegations ought not to be set aside as inconclusive and unreliable, but retained as an otherwise suppressed insight into how the world really works. Proponents of the Rothschild-Rockefeller connection might even decide that, at best, the above authors were either ignorant of or indifferent to the question of precisely who lent Rockefeller his money. But, at worst they might suspect that these same writers of being part of a deliberate effort to suppress information about the Rothschild link. There is, however, at least one detailed source that throws Mullins claims into doubt.
Grace Goulder’s book, John D. Rockefeller: The Cleveland Years, (1972), produced by a Cleveland based historical society, provides some of the missing details. According to Goulder, Rockefeller’s first lender, Handy, was the president and principal stockholder of Cleveland’s then biggest bank, the Commercial Branch of the State Bank of Ohio. Handy, who had migrated to Cleveland from Buffalo in 1832, had revived the Commercial State Bank at the urging of George Bancroft, described as a ‘historian and statesman’ from Massachusetts, whose interests included state banking. Bancroft had raised ‘$200,000…in the East for the purpose.’ Handy, then in his mid-twenties, was made cashier; by the 1860s, when Rockefeller was starting out in business, he was a bank president.[19] As noted in the other accounts, it was Handy who gave Rockefeller his first loan; but it seems that it was not the last. Rockefeller would later recall: ‘For long years after, the head of this bank was a friend indeed; he loaned me money when I needed it, and I needed it almost all the time.’[20]
Handy and the Commercial State Bank were not to be Rockefeller’s only source of finance. He also developed a close business relationship with the Second National Bank of Cleveland, and two of its officers, Stillman Witt from its board of directors, and Witt’s son-in-law, Dan Eells, who would later become president of the Commercial National Bank. The relationship with Rockefellers was close, according to Goulder, Witt and Handy were ‘always his allies’; Witt was even ‘his friend.’[21]
Goulder’s account of Witt, Handy and Eells, and the banks they represented: the Commercial State Bank, the Second National Bank and the Commercial National Bank; and the evidence of Rockefeller’s close relationship with those financiers obviously conflict with Mullins’ specific allegations about the National City Bank of Cleveland.[22] While it is possible that he may have borrowed from the NCBC, there is no evidence that Rockefeller relied exclusively or predominately upon that institution. But more importantly, there is also no evidence that the banks we know he did borrow from were Rothschild-controlled. Obviously, a more exhaustive study of Rockefeller’s borrowing during that period and of the ownership of the various financial institutions in Cleveland might reveal such a connection,[23] but until that research is done Mullin’s claims must be treated as conjecture.
1.1.2 The Rothschilds and the National City Bank of Cleveland:
The second fallacy concerns the original allegation of Rothschild control of the National City Bank of Cleveland. Mullins’ claims this fact was revealed in ‘Congressional reports’, however, his account is imprecise and unreliable. It is unclear as to what Congressional investigation or reports Mullins is referring to, and the researcher seems destined to hit a dead-end unless one probe further on the Internet where the source is finally revealed to be a Congressional report from the mid-1970s. We can find this source cited in Rivera’s Final Warning:
A May 1976 report of the House Banking and Currency Committee…revealed that Rothschild Intercontinental Bank Ltd, which consisted of Rothschild banks in London, France, Belgium, New York and Amsterdam, had three American subsidiaries: National City Bank of Cleveland, First City Bank of Houston, and Seattle First National Bank.[24]
The problem is of course in how Mullins has used this information. Rivera has utilized it to illustrate continuing Rothschild control of the US banking industry and ultimately the Federal Reserve System (although its significance is debatable). Mullins, though, seems to think this information proves the Rothschilds financed the Rockefellers; but this seems unlikely for a number of reasons. For one, this snippet of information only establishes Rothschild control of the NCBC in the 1970s and gives no clues as to whether they controlled it in the 1860s or 1870s.
It seems unlikely, though, that the Rothschilds, or their agent, August Belmont (1813-1890),[25]had a significant interest in the NCBC in the mid-19th century. Indeed, Belmont’s attempts to coax the Rothschilds into establishing a formal arm of the bank in the US had failed, leading to a decline in their influence. In fact, a frustrated Belmont would later complain of his employers ‘utter want of appreciation of the importance of American business.’[26] Combined with the absence of evidence of Rockefeller borrowing exclusively or primarily from the National City Bank of Cleveland, the finding of the Congressional committee is of limited relevance to events in Ohio in the 1860s.
1.1.3 Rockefeller and Jacob Schiff:
Mullins claims that banker Jacob Schiff was the middle-man between the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, but again the evidence is sparse and inconclusive. In Niall Ferguson’s massive history of the Rothschilds, The House of Rothschild (1998), Schiff barely rates a mention and is not identified in any substantive collaborative role with the Rothschilds beyond charity work. As numerous other mainstream accounts have long established, Rothschild’s primary representative in the US, a market they otherwise neglected, was August Belmont & Company. Yet this does not mean that Schiff had no dealings with the Rothschilds, as Evyatar Friesel, reviewing Naomi Cohen’s Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (1999), notes that in America’s ‘expanding economy’ of the 19th century:
Schiff entered with gusto into the financing of railroads and of new industries. As in the past, the Jewish bankers of different countries collaborated closely. Schiff and Ernest Cassel, the great English banker and industrialist, maintained close and personal business connections…Schiff, Cassel, the Rothschilds of London, and the Warburgs of Hamburg…collaborated in a wide range of businesses, especially the very rewarding financing of railroads.[27]
As for collaborating in the expansion of Standard Oil, it was claimed in a 1911 article in McClure’s Magazine that during the 1890s Schiff, of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., had been working with John D. Rockefeller Senior in his battle against J.P. Morgan for control of the railroads.[28] Chernow also notes that Rockefeller collaborated with Kuhn, Loeb & Co in 1911 to take control of the Equitable Trust Company, and also on numerous bond issues.[29] Yet in the broad scheme of things that was the Standard Oil colossus, Schiff was but one of a myriad of financiers who assisted Rockefeller’s relentless march to national dominance, especially once he had shifted operations from Cleveland to New York in the 1880s. Furthermore, the discerning reader would observe that ‘collaboration’ does not automatically imply subordination, whether of Schiff to the Rothschilds or of the Rockefellers to Schiff; or vice versa. Indeed even if Rockefeller had borrowed from a Rothschild source, it seems unlikely that he would have been beholden to influence as much of his borrowing, according to Charles Morris's book The Tycoons (2005) were: ‘mostly cash flow loans that were quickly repaid, not long-term investment capital.’[30]
1.1.4 The Rothschilds and Globalism:
The final fallacy is the assumption, should a crucial dependency upon Rothschild-sourced money ever be proved, that being in debt to the House of Rothschild makes one automatically beholden to their globalist agenda. Aside from the fact that it is not normally the case for major banks to impose upon their corporate debtors the requirement they support the bank’s plans for world domination; Rockefeller managed his debt burden with such adroitness the banks were very rarely in a position to impose such conditions. The other problem, though, is in determining if the Rothschilds ever favored world government in the first place.
There is a reason for caution given that most researchers tend to cite as proof of this alleged goal the words of historian Caroll Quigley in his book Tragedy and Hope (1966), rather than any documentary evidence from the Rothschilds. Quigley had claimed that by end of the 19th century, the ‘far-reaching aim’ of many of the world’s leading bankers, prime among being the House of Rothschild, was to create ‘a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.’[31] This phrase has been widely interpreted to mean that the Rothschilds desire world government.
