Like every new technology, radio and television infrastructure was built by small, individually owned companies in local areas. In the early days of radio a plethora of such companies existed, owned by local investors and operators. J. Evetts Haley, the somewhat biased historian from the Texas Plains, told us part of the truth about LBJ's radio station in a book he published in paperback in 1964 called A Texan Looks at Lyndon, part of which appears below.
 |
| J. Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon |
We learned from his clues that Austin's first AM radio station was developed as part of the University of Texas, operating non-commercially and financed by educational budgets that were managed by wealthy businessmen appointed to the board. Austin's station, KUT, was built in 1915 at the urging of a physics professor, S. Leroy Brown, but was seemingly dismantled in 1927 for lack of funds.
Dr. Brown was closely associated with physics teaching assistant, Ludwig Wilhelm Blau, a 1925 graduate of Evetts Haley's alma mater in Canyon, Texas, near Amarillo, who received his masters degree at UT Austin in 1927. He worked as an instructor at the Austin campus until he was hired in 1929 by Humble Oil's research department in Houston, where he moved to a house just north of Rice University--2027 Colquitt. Brown visited him there in 1932. The technology the physics professors invented for radio was found to be useful for locating oil in the ground. Could Blau have been Haley's unnamed source?
Haley's hero, James Marion ("Silver Dollar" Jim) West, Jr., was a son of the man who built a ranch southeast of Houston on which Humble Oil Company struck oil in 1938 and retained a long-term lease, eventually buying the fee simple title over which it laid a plethora of pipelines. It was this ranch from which NASA's Houston headquarters was carved, after first donating land to Rice Institute. Rice then sold 22 acres for a manned spacecraft center and received government funds in payment. The year Lyndon Johnson died in 1973, the space center was named for him. Much of the remaining land had been purchased by Exxon into which Humble Oil Company had merged. This land was developed by an Exxon-affiliated company called Friendswood Development.
It was telling that even before Johnson became President following Kennedy's assassination, one of J. M. West's sons, Wesley West, used LBJ's attorney, A. W. Moursund, when he sued his brother over their father's estate.
Lyndon's power depended upon his support of Franklin Roosevelt's policies. That support gained him entry into the circle of businessmen who used their insider knowledge and the President's powers of appointment to make money alongside members of the Roosevelt family. They were part of a group who put the Texas State Network together for FDR's son, Elliott. It was A.P. (Alva Pearl) Barrett through his Southwest Broadcasting company, who provided the funds for Elliott's radio empire. Barrett was also involved also in another of that decade's newest technologies--the airline industry.
The monetization of both the radio and airlines industries was then uppermost in the minds of wealthy investment bankers, such as Bobby Lehman and Averell Harriman, who controlled the board of Aviation Corporation (AVCO) even before WWII, and they continued to engage in a war of their own to secure government contracts and concessions--a battle that would continue throughout the war and even later as the British Security Coordination got into the act of protecting Britain's empire.
American Airways, Inc. named Cyrus R. Smith as its president. A. P. Barrett acquired Errett Lobban "E. L." Cord's Cord Corp. stock by means of a labor dispute described in a history of the Cord Corporation, described at a website (safe though not converted to https):
In early 1932, Aviation Corp., (AVCO) the parent company of American Airways, launched a hostile takeover of Cord’s Century Airlines by creating a labor dispute with Century’s pilots. Cord was not amused and spent the next few months secretly purchasing large chunks of Aviation Corp. stock...
The Air Mail Act of 1934 prohibited any air mail contractor from holding an interest in any other aviation enterprise, which prompted the restructuring of Cord’s aero empire. Aviation Corp. (AVCO) was required to divest itself of American Airways, which was reorganized as American Airlines, and the Airplane Development Corp became a subsidiary of the Aviation Manufacturing Company, which was a subsidiary of Aviation Corp.
E.L. Cord was noticeably absent from his automotive and aviation empire during 1934 and 1935 as he and his family fled to Great Britain in March of 1934 following a kidnap scare at their Beverly Hills home. He returned to the county early in 1936 to face charges of stock manipulation which were triggered when he sold back his controlling interest in Checker Cab Co. to Morris Markin, which attracted the interest of the Securities & Exchange Commission [then headed by Joseph P. Kennedy].
Thus Cord was caught in what today is called a pump and dump scheme and replaced with Lucius Manning. After returning from London, Cord sold his stock to Emanuel & Co and Schroder, Rockefeller & Co. The names Victor Emanuel, J. Henry Schroder, and Avery Rockefeller can all be found together in a book in the public domain, which can be freely printed and shared: The Best Kept Secrets by Kristin B. Thompson and Jason A. Wright, which states:
Avery Rockefeller was a director of the J. Henry Schroeder Banking Corporation and the Schroeder Trust Company. He was also a full partner and stockholder in its affiliate, Schroeder, Rockefeller and Company. It is not surprising to learn, therefore, that John Foster Dulles also had been the American representative of the Schroeder trust which was Hitler’s agent in the United States. Gerhardt Westrick had been a Sullivan and Cromwell representative in Germany where he represented such multi-nationals as ITT. And at the beginning of World War II, Dulles became a voting trustee of Farben- controlled American corporations in an attempt to prevent them from being seized as enemy property.
Instead of this man going down in American history as a tool of international monopoly and a possible traitor in war, he was appointed as a member of a special high-level consulting committee established by the Alien Property Custodian to formulate the basic policies of that office. And then he was chosen by President Eisenhower (CFR member) as Secretary of State. His brother, Allen Dulles (also a CFR member), also a partner of Sullivan and Cromwell, was equally enmeshed in the international cartel web as a negotiator with Farben interests for the Office of Strategic Services in Switzerland. (It was then that Allen Dulles had said, “Only hysteria entertains the idea that Germany, Italy or Japan contemplates war upon us.”) At the end of the war, after using his influence to protect Hitler’s agent, Westrick, 297 he was placed by President Eisenhower at the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Such is the power of the forces being described.
Perhaps the best way to judge the extent of hidden cartel power in the United States government is to observe how its German component fared during and after the war. As noted previously, its American holdings were seized by the federal government in February of 1942. Within a few months, all of the original directors and officers were compelled to resign. But whom did the government put in their places?
Operating control has passed to a group of men who are tied in with a constellation of corporate interests which is rising rapidly in American business under the leadership of an international financier, Victor Emanuel. Emanuel himself sits on the board of directors of General Analine and Film Corporation (CAF) [American I.C.’s new name] There is a liberal sprinkling of his associates among the other directors and officers. 298
Emanuel’s assumption of leadership over I.C.’s holdings in the United States is significant. Between 1927 and 19B4, he had been in London as an associate of the Schroeder banking interests. This is the same organization that, in conjunction with the Rockefeller group, represented I.C. and became the financial agent of Adolph Hitler.
As is well known, the Schroeders of London are related to the Schroeders of Germany. Baron Bruno Schroeder is credited with having introduced Hitler to the principal industrialists of the Ruhr. Baron Kurt Schroeder held a high rank in the SS and was known as “The SS banker.” The London banking house, J. Henry Schroeder and Company, was described by Time magazine in July, 1939, as an “economic booster of the Rome-Berlin Axis.” 299
And what of Victor Emanuel, President of Standard Gas and Electric, who dominated the “new” leadership of the Rockefeller-Farben empire? The answer was provided in one short sentence in a report of the Securities and Exchange Commission dated January 19, 1943. It said: “The Schroeder interests in London and New York have worked with Emanuel in acquiring and maintaining a dominant position in Standard affairs.” 300 (footnotes are at the bottom of pages at linked text)
Sid Richardson, the wealthy Fort Worth oilman, had discovered FDR would take his money but not do his bidding, with one important exception in 1944:
- Roosevelt appointed Sid Richardson's Republican friend from Texas, Robert B. Anderson, as a consultant to John J. McCloy and Robert A. Lovett, working for Secretary Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, to work with California oilman Edwin Pauley (also a big Democratic Party fundraiser) on the matter of confiscated German gold. That is a story in itself, which can be read at the link to this author's related blog, Where the Gold Is.
While other Texans left FDR's fold, Lyndon Johnson remained true to his New Deal hero all the way up to FDR's death in April 1945.
The seller of the radio station which would form the flagship of Elliott Roosevelt's network was Fort Worth attorney Raymond E. Buck, whose father was an appellate judge and close politically to FDR's Vice President John Nance Garner. Buck had acquired the station years earlier on behalf of his clients, A.P. Barrett and C.R. Smith, the same Cyrus Rowlett Smith whom Lyndon Johnson would appoint in 1968 to be Secretary of Commerce.
Prior to 1929, a series of owners included radio evangelist Frank J. Norris, who broadcast under call letters KFQB, and who surreptitiously transferred title to the radio license to Lone Star Broadcasting Company (set up by his henchman, J.M. Gilliam, publisher of The Searchlight), not long after W.P. "Wild Bill" McLean of the firm of McLean, Scott and Sayers acted as special prosecutor against Norris for the murder of D.E. Chipps in July 1926, a prosecution which resulted in an acquittal for Norris.
Buck's resume mentions also that he was general counsel and director for Southern Air Transport and associate counsel for American Airlines and General Dynamics. Southern Air Transport (in a Florida incarnation) was a CIA proprietary Company which helped launder opium profits from Vietnam. General Dynamics was one of Fort Worth's biggest money makers.
The state of Texas today granted a charter to the Texas State Network, Inc., Fort Worth Broadcasting company Incorporated by Elliott Roosevelt, Harry A. Hutchinson and Raymond E. Buck. The firm, which has 1,000 shares of no par value capital stock ($50,000 paid in), proposes to operate 23 Texas stations tied In with 108 stations of the Mutual Broadcasting company.
The radio advisory commission of Dallas today approved and submitted to the city council a one-year contract that would affiliate station WRR with the new network. The president's son bid last spring for managership of the Dallas station but the commission renewed its contract with Mgr. John Thorwald instead. Roosevelt then advanced the counter proposition. Thorwald said in Dallas the network's key stations would be WRR in Dallas and KFJZ or KTAT of Fort Worth.
Other stations under present plans, would be at Weslaco, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Galveston, Beaumont, Temple, Waco, Amarillo, Corsicana, Tyler, Longview, Paris, Sherman, Abilene, San Angela, Big Spring, Midland, Lubbock. Wichita Falls may be added later. At Fort worth, Roosevelt said he had no announcement to make concerning the new company.
The history of the northside area Googins had built can be seen in photos and captions in the "North of the Courthouse: Our Stockyards and Livestock Legacy" section of the Fort Worth: The Way We Were website. According to this history, in 1901 Amon Carter, Sr. had enticed the Swift packing company to build a plant in Fort Worth, which had been completed by 1913. Armour Co. also located nearby, and the two became partners in the Fort Worth Stockyards Company, which owned the land the plants were built on. In 1936 Swift acquired that land-owning company under its new umbrella called United Stockyards.
 |
| Jack White grew up near Googins Building |
It is intriguing to note here that, according to Zachary Sklar's documented script for Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, recently-retired Air Force Major General Edward G. Lansdale-- at some point between his retirement from the Air Force on Nov. 1, 1963 and his arrival at his son's home in Arizona following the assassination of JFK--was in that very neighborhood, staying at the Hotel Texas (where President Kennedy would deliver his last speech).
The hotel's address, 2415 Ellis Ave, intersects with West Exchange Avenue, the street leading into the center of today's Stockyards District. Based on the comments of Fletcher Prouty, General Y below, Stone's researchers came up with an interesting piece of evidence:
 |
JFK: The Book of the Film by Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar |
No comments:
Post a Comment