Strange Death of Franklin Roosevelt - Emanuel Josephson




The Dynasty's Naval Interests
F.D.R.—Hereditary Naval Secretary

President Wilson was a quite synthetic creation of the Wall Street interests. The principal figure in building him up and imposing him on the nation was his intimate friend and life-long associate Cleveland H. Dodge, a Princeton classmate of Wilson's and an in-law of the Rockefellers who together with Cyrus Hall McCormick, gave him the Princeton professorship, privately supplemented his salary in conjunction with Percy R. Pyne (National City Bank), promoted him to Princeton's president, and through George Harvey, the Morgan-Ryan-Rockefeller agent and president of Harper's Publishing Company, secured him the governorship of New Jersey from Democratic boss, Senator James Smith, Jr. on payment to him of $75,000 by Dodge. (McCombs, Making Wilson President, p. 20)

In 1908, Harvey predicted in Harper's Weekly, on behalf of the Wall Street crowd, that Wilson would be elected Governor of New Jersey in 1910, and President in 1912. And the clique carried out their scheme on time and without a hitch, while making it appear to the public that Wilson actually opposed the political bosses who put through the deal that made him President.

Dodge was not engaged in politics for his health. He was director of the National City Bank, a principal of the Phelps Dodge Copper Company, and heavily interested in the munition industry—including Remington Arms Company, Winchester Arms Company and Union Metallic Cartridge Company. With such heavy interests at stake it was necessary that he be assured that his pal, Woodrow Wilson, would take orders without question and that Wilson assure his associates of it. This Wilson did in dinners arranged with representatives of the Rockefeller-Morgan crowd. Among them was a dinner for Wilson held at Beech wood, home of Frank A. Vanderlip, President of the National City Bank, which was attended by James Stillman and William Rockefeller. (John Winkler, The First Billion.p. 210).

Wilson agreed to permit Vanderlip to write the monetary views for his speeches. But Wilson would not take these views directly from Vanderlip because he did not want the public to realize that his pretended opposition to the financial interests and the trusts was a fraud. William G. McAdoo served as go-between. (Frank A. Vanderlip and Boyden Sparks, From Farm Boy to Financier, pp. 225-226).

At the time of Wilson's inauguration. Dodge was under indictment in the Territory of New Mexico and Arizona for a land deal fraud. Following Wilson's inauguration, the case was promptly dismissed.

Peace is not conducive to great profits in the munitions industries. Dodge was more than a little interested in a good sized war. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had campaigned for Wilson with the support of Dodge and his Rockefeller-Morgan allies. The hold that the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty had on Wilson is illustrated by his appointment of Frederic A. Delano, F.D.R.'s uncle, as vice-governor of the Federal Reserve Bank, a key position in national finance.

On Wilson's election, nothing could have been more readily taken for granted than the appointment of Senator Franklin Delano Roosevelt, thirty-one years old, to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, just as previously Theodore Roosevelt had been appointed to the post by McKinley. For naval armor, armaments and ship-building is one of the principal interests of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty. As Daniel W. Delano relates in My Cousin In The White House (Pic, July 8, 1941) it was a Delano, a cousin of F.D.R.'s who built the first armor-clad, screw-driven warship and for generations the family engaged in ship-building and seafaring. Under the influence of his mother, F.D.R. had passionately devoted himself to seafaring and specialized in a study of naval vessels and naval warfare to prepare him to carry on a family tradition.

For in the past half century the job of Naval Secretary has become a hereditary prerogative of the Roosevelt-Delano Dynasty. In every administration which has not been headed by one of its members as President, it has been represented by one or more Secretaryships in the Navy Department, to take care of their naval interests. A list of these is impressive.

[Book Cover] from The Strange Death of FDR by Emanuel Josephson

HEREDITARY NAVAL SECRETARIES
OF ROOSEVELT-DELANO DYNASTY

President Secretary/Asst. Sec'y.
McKinley T. Roosevelt
T. Roosevelt
Taft
Wilson F.D. Roosevelt
Harding T. Roosevelt Jr.
Coolidge T. Roosevelt Jr.
T.D. Douglas (T.R.'s nephew)
Hoover Chas. Francis Adams
F.D. Roosevelt Henry L. Roosevelt
Nicholas Roosevelt
Delano
Delano
Delano

Arrived in Washington, Franklin was still under Teddy Roosevelt's tutelage, as his Dynastic heir-in-the-making. He took residence in the home of Teddy's sister, Anna Cowles. To provide the brains, press relations and ghost writing, Louis Howe went along and was placed on the Navy Department payroll.

One of the most important shipyards in naval construction is the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock. It was built and privately owned by Collis P. Huntington, builder of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Miss Helen D. Huntington was the first wife of Vincent Astor, nephew and cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. E. A. Adams was Secretary-treasurer of the Company and Charles Frances Adams, Hoover's Secretary of the Navy, became a director in 1940 when the stock was first sold to the public.

It is interesting to note how the business of the Newport News Shipbuilding soared whenever the Roosevelts were on the job. The Company received its first naval construction contracts—three gunboats—in 1897 when Teddy Roosevelt was on the job as Assistant Secretary. It received no new contracts until T. R. became President—two battleships in 1900, a third in 1901, a monitor in 1902, a fourth battleship in 1903, three cruisers in 1905, a fifth and sixth battleship in 1906, a seventh battleship in 1907, a fourth and fifth cruiser in 1908. Under Taft, Newport News did not do so well; merely two destroyers and one battleship in 1910, one destroyer in 1911, and a destroyer and ammunition lighter in 1912. The drop in tonnage was even more significant. During Teddy Roosevelt's presidency Newport News had built 134,243 tons and under Taft a mere 23,652.

With a Roosevelt back on the job, this time F.D.R., Newport News business began to pick up again; in 1913, two colliers, 38,000 tons, more than the whole Taft administration; in 1914, one battleship and two oil barges, total 28,670; in 1916, one battleship, 31,400 tons; in 1917, one battleship, 32,000 tons. The total tonage built by the shipyard prior to our entry in to the war was 130,000, right back to the old standard.

F.D.R. was ready to realize his childhood dream, a real naval war with real battleships! The benevolent, philanthropic Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests provided him with not one, but with two wars.

In Mexico, the Rockefeller controlled Pierce-Waters Oil Company demanded of Diaz that he permit the importation of Standard Oil products from the United States tax free. Diaz refused. The Rockefeller interests financed Madero to stage a revolution. (They told Barron, p. 141). The British oil interests and Lord Cowdray backed Victoriano Huerta who in February 1913, ousted Madero and executed him. Wilson's angel Dodge and his Rockefeller-Morgan allies then financed and furnished with munitions Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa despite an embargo. When a German ship attempted to land arms at Vera Cruz, in April 1914, American warships shelled the town. On July 15, 1914, Huerta was forced out and Carranza took over for the Morgan-Rockefeller interests. Villa then turned on Carranza, resulting in American intervention. There was little naval action in the Mexican incident to delight the heart of F.D.R. and his munitions industry associates.

World War I, provided by the Rockefeller-Standard-Oil-British-Royal-Dutch feud, made up with action aplenty. When the British capitulated to the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests in Saudi Arabia and the Near East, we were doomed to enter the war. But the conspirators delayed the declaration until after they had engineered Wilson's reelection on a "keep us out of the war" platform. But they had made sure that their plans would not fail, by putting up an opposition candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, who was equally their agent. In the meantime F.D.R. had strained at the leash, he was so anxious to have his nice little war to play with. He reported, according to the New York Times (April 7, 1937, 20:6) that the Navy had begun extensive purchases of war supplies in 1916.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was 35 years of age and in good physical condition at the outbreak of World War I. But through the same family influence that enabled him to manage to evade the Bar examination requirement for the practise of law, he was able to evade the draft and active military service, by appointment to a swivel chair job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In that job he was in a position to help his kin profit enormously from naval construction.

The support that F.D.R. had from the behind-the-scene bosses of the Wilson administration is clear from the fact that though he was merely Assistant Secretary, he exercised full and absolute authority and deliberately violated all laws and regulations with perfect assurance and absolute freedom of any checks or restraints. His rampant militarism and wild, unrestrained and profligate spending on munitions must have delighted the hearts of the Dodges and other munitions and armament interests among his backers and the Dynasty.

After the armistice, when plans of naval disarmament and of junking vessels in the service and scrapping many under construction, were under consideration, Franklin Delano Roosevelt continued to demand a greater Navy, more men and more ships "to put the Navy in fighting trim". He demanded a supplemental appropriation of over eighteen million dollars.

Investigation by the House Appropriations Committee subsequently revealed that under Franklin Delano Roosevelt's direction the keels of ninety-six destroyers costing $181,000,000 had been laid after the armistice; and that ten cruisers costing, on a "cost plus" basis, a total of $100,000,000 had been rushed ahead to completion after the armistice. When completed they proved defective or worthless. They were scrapped. The performance was little short of criminal and should have barred F. D. Roosevelt forever from holding public office in the opinion of the investigators.

Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company delivered twenty small destroyers in 1919 and 1920. Business was good.

The next big spurt in Newport News Shipbuilding's naval construction business came in the mid-thirties when Congress authorized President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to spend a small fraction of P.W.A. appropriations on national defense. What money was spared from hoeing leaves was spent on naval construction. Newport News delivered between 1937 and 1939, two aircraft carriers, two light cruisers, and two destroyers, a total of 73,885 tons. During World War II Newport News fared splendidly.

In later days the "Big Three", Newport News, Bethlehem and New York Shipbuilding shared fairly evenly in the contracts so that all the interests got a break. The smaller shipbuilding companies did not fare so well. A representative of the Bath Iron Works testified before a Senate investigating committee that when he sought a Naval contract he was advised to "see" Eleanor Roosevelt's secretary.

John T. Flynn reports in his Country Squire In The White House) that Franklin Delano Roosevelt boasted before an audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music about wasting money during the war.

He did not hesitate to undertake huge expenditures even before Congress had made any appropriations. He even then had the contempt of Junker Bismarck for legislatures. "Roosevelt was a devotee to the use of commandeering orders", writes Ernest Lindley, his campaign biographer (Franklin D. Roosevelt, p. 143).

"It is perfectly true that I took the chance of authorizing certain large expenditures before Congress had actually appropriated the money," F.D.R. was forced to confess at a Congressional committee hearing in 1920.

He acknowledged that he had violated enough laws to send him to jail for 999 years. But Dynastic law-breakers do not go to jail. They become presidents, dictators and kings.

When the Navy adopted oil-burning Diesel engines, and required oil for fuel, the interests of the Dynasty naturally turned to oil. The outcome was the Teapot Dome scandal—a conspiracy to divert, by corruption of government officials, a large tract of Naval oil reserve land involving the Sinclair and Doheny oil companies, and in the background, the Standard Oil of Indiana, the Midwest Oil Company and others.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. resigned from his position of director of the Sinclair Refinery Company to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. At his request Harry F. Sinclair in 1919 gave the position of vice-president to his brother Archibald Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. then arranged to secure the release of oil lands by the Navy to Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall for disposal to Sinclair. Roosevelt then arranged to have President Harding sign an executive order drawn up by Secretary Fall giving the land to the Sinclair and Doheny interests.

Subsequent investigation and prosecution revealed that the deal was characterized by bribery and corruption on a large scale. Archibald Roosevelt was assigned the task of carrying a little black bag containing $100,000 in cash to Fall. Secretary Fall received a total bribe of nearly $500,000 of which $100,000 was paid by Doheny, and $230,000 in Liberty bonds and $106,000 in cash, including $35,000 for a trip to Russia to negotiate oil leases by Sinclair. Fall was found guilty of criminal malfeasance and sent to jail in 1931. The Standard Oil of Indiana, through its subsidiary Midwest Oil Company was paid $1,000,000 to relinquish claims to the field.

Rockefeller stood by Col. Stewart, President of the Standard Oil of Indiana in spite of exposure of this corruption. But when investigation revealed in 1928 that Stewart, like the other participants in Continental Trading Company had failed to turn over to their companies a 25 cent commission per barrel on over 33 million barrels of oil purchased for them, Rockefeller was compelled to display indignation on behalf of stockholders. He retired Col. Stewart on a mere $75,000 a year pension. But his sons Robert G. and James Stewart were well cared for in the role of Standard Oil executives. The investigation revealed that Harry Sinclair had boasted that the entire deal was "protected" by the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests.

The Roosevelts involved in the Teapot Dome deal were shielded and immune from prosecution, as is usual with members of the Dynasty. The incident did make it very clear, however, that they are not in politics for their health. The Dynasty and its Navy interests are distinctly of commercial character. The Dynasty's interests in Rockefeller's Saudi Arabia oil, in the pretended interest of the Navy, will be related later. It was on so far grander a scale that it makes the graft in Teapot Dome look like peanuts.