> Chapter 3

"THE NAKED CAPITALIST"

(By W. Cleon Skousen. Pub. 1970 by Mr. Skousen. Presently available from Reviewer, 9137 Edenbrook Way, West Jordan, UT 84088.)

This short book (121 pages of text) was the first anti-establishment review of Tragedy and Hope of which I am aware, but certainly was not the last. Mr. Skousen's credentials stem from a law degree at George Washington University, his service in the FBI from 1935 to 1951, and a career thereafter involving four years as Police Chief of Salt Lake City, the editorship of the police magazine Law and Order, a teaching position at Brigham Young University, and many years on lecture circuits in the United States and abroad. His work in the FBI was heavy into investigations of communism, and resulted in his earlier book The Naked Communist which reached the best seller list in 1961.

Quigley's book, appearing in 1966, was a revelation for which Mr. Skousen was already primed, and he took immediate advantage of it. He aimed for the core of the matter on his page 1, on which he related a conversation he had with Dr. Bella Dodd, "a former member of the National Committee of the U.S. Communist Party," as saying: "I think the Communist conspiracy is merely a branch of a much bigger conspiracy!" Skousen then explains:

"Dr. Dodd said she first became aware of some mysterious super-leadership right after World War 2 when the U.S. Communist Party had difficulty getting instructions from Moscow on several vital matters requiring immediate attention. The American Communist hierarchy was told that any time they had an emergency of this kind they should contact any one of three designated persons at the Waldorf Towers. Dr. Dodd noted that whenever the party obtained instructions from any of these three men, Moscow always ratified them. What puzzled Dr. Dodd was the fact that not one of these three contacts was a Russian. Nor were any of them Communists. In fact, all three were extremely wealthy American capitalists! Dr. Dodd said, 'I would certainly like to find out who is really running things."

Skousen relates the many similar puzzlements he has had during his years of investigation, and how he had "waited for thirty years for somebody on the inside of the modern political power structure to talk" as he had long expected that someone ultimately would. When Quigley's book appeared, he sought from it clues as to Quigley's motivation to publish. He quotes (p. 5) Quigley's single disagreement with the elites concerning his feeling that their historical impact has been so great that history should be permitted to properly record that impact, but further notes that Quigley "feels that the forces of total global control are now sufficiently entrenched so that they can reveal their true identity without fear of being successfully overturned." Quigley's sympathy with the secret goals of the elites is demonstrated, says Skousen, in the title of the book, "Hope" referring to the men composing the elite group, and "Tragedy" the men opposing that group.

Skousen then goes directly to Quigley's description of the apex of the secret control structure. Quigley, he says (p. 7), "points out that during the past two centuries when the peoples of the world were gradually winning their political freedom from the dynastic monarchies, the major banking families of Europe and America were actually reversing the trend by setting up new dynasties of political control through the formation of international financial combines. Dr. Quigley points out that these banking dynasties had learned that all governments must have sources of revenue from which to borrow in times of emergency. They had also learned that by providing such funds from their own private resources, they could make both kings and democratic leaders tremendously subservient to their will. It had proven to be a most effective means of controlling political appointments and deciding political issues."

Skousen then proceeds with a critique and elucidation of Quigley's account of the development by these major dynastic banking families and their minions of secret control over much of the political and economic life of Europe, the United States, and much of the rest of the world. He quotes Quigley's account of how commercial and savings banks and insurance companies were drawn into the web, strengthening its influence over both government and industry, and then repeats Quigley's list of the major banking families (p. 7), i.e., "Baring, Lazard, Erlanger, Warburg, Schroder, Seligman, the Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet, Fould, and above all Rothschild and Morgan." He digresses briefly (p. 8) to assure his readers that the banking conspiracy is not a "Jewish Conspiracy" as alleged by the well-known and fraudulent document called "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a document that we might label today an exercise in disinformation, aimed at discrediting the conspiracy's opponents. Skousen then quotes Quigley's description of how the "international" (or "merchant" or "private" or "'investment") bankers differ from legitimate commercial or savings bankers, particularly regarding the former's preoccupation with handling government debt, and its efforts to convince both government and business that the bankers could manage government debt better than government could. Quigley's narrative is then presented concerning the setting up of the Bank of England, and the overwhelming political power which it secretly acquired and exercised.

Skousen then quotes Quigley's description of the development in the United States of the Morgan and Rockefeller financial dynasties, and then goes to a summarization of their secret machinations which produced our Federal Reserve System. (Skousen's summary is fascinating, but we'll cover this subject much more thoroughly in a later review.) Skousen does set out to ask and then answer, Who controls the Fed? What are the goals of the Fed and the other central banks? What are the goals of the international banking families who control the central banks?

As to 'Who controls?' Skousen first explains (p. 15) who does not, namely, the government: "As we have previously noted, the dynastic 'banker families' in England had established their monopoly control over finance by setting up the Bank of England as a privately controlled institution which had the appearance of an official government institution. Similar centers of financial control had been set up in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland." Moving then to our Federal Reserve System, he says (p. 21), "The system consists of 12 'National Banks' but the only one of any significance is the one in New York. The New York bank has always been managed by someone completely congenial to the interests of the international bankers." He then notes Quigley's description of Benjamin Strong, the first governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (p. 23): "Strong owed his career to the favor of the Morgan Bank.... He became governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as the joint nominee of Morgan and of Kuhn, Loeb and Company in 1914. Two years later, Strong met [Montagu] Norman for the first time, and they at once made an agreement to work in cooperation for the financial practices they both revered." (Quigley, p. 326)

And just what were these "revered" financial practices and goals of the Fed and the other central banks? Skousen (p. 22) quotes Quigley as saying that the international bankers intended to use the financial power of Britain and the United States to force all the major countries to operate "through central banks free from all political control, with all questions of international finance to be settled by agreements by such central banks without interference from governments." (Quigley, p. 326) He continues by quoting Quigley concerning the higher-level goals of the dynastic bankers as being "nothing less than 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. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank, in the hands of men like Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Charles Rist of the Bank of France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world." (Quigley, p. 324, emphasis added)

And the goals of the dynastic banking families themselves? Mr. Skousen concludes the following (p. 24): "There is a growing volume of evidence that the highest centers of political and economic power have been forcing the entire human race toward a global, socialist, dictatorial-oriented society. And what has been most baffling about it has been the fact that this drift toward dictatorship with its inevitable obliteration of a thousand years of struggle toward human freedom, is being plotted, promoted, and implemented by the leaders of free nations and the super-rich of those nations whose positions of affluence would seem to make them the foremost beneficiaries of the free-enterprise, property-oriented, open society in which so much progress has been made. Certainly they, above all men, should know that in order for this system to survive, freedom of action and the integrity of property rights must be preserved. Then why are the super-capitalists trying to destroy them?

"Dr. Quigley provides an answer to this question but it is so startling that at first it seems virtually inconceivable. It becomes rational only as his scattered references to it are collected and digested point by point. In a nutshell, Dr. Quigley has undertaken to expose what every insider like himself has known all along - that the world hierarchy of the dynastic super-rich is out to take over the entire planet, doing it with Socialistic legislation where possible, but having no reluctance to use Communist revolution where necessary.

Having thus derived an understanding of the underlying causality pervading our recent political and economic lives, permitting many heretofore inexplicable events to suddenly become rationally understandable, Mr. Skousen proceeds forward with Dr. Quigley's wish to let history record who some of the major actors really are, and what they did. He thus follows Quigley's revelations concerning Ruskin, Cecil Rhodes, Milner's Round Table groups, the formation of the RIIA, the CFR, and the IPR, and their invasion of the media and the Ivy League colleges. Much of this was discussed in our own review of Tragedy and Hope.

But then Mr. Skousen arrives at and expresses what seems to us to be another highly cogent insight. We, in our review, discussed at some length Quigley's revelation concerning the insiders' buildup of Hitler during the decade before World War 2. Mr. Skousen spends much of the latter part of his book discussing the corresponding buildup by these same elites of Lenin and Stalin in the USSR and Mao Tse-tung in China. What is to be made of the fact that the elites were instrumental in building up the three most bloodthirsty dictators of the twentieth century - Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao, the first two of whom ended up in a violent war with each other? Some hardcore conspiracy buffs have suggested that the banking elites were in complete control of these dictators and their actions. The elites themselves of course publicly insist that no tie at all existed to such evil personages. Mr. Skousen, in contrast to both of these views, suggests that the real relationship was very much like the simple risk that a person will take to gain large rewards rapidly [perhaps like speculating in penny stocks]. He explains (p. 38):

"Power from any source tends to create an appetite for additional power. Power coming from wealth tends to create an appetite for political power, and vice versa. It was almost inevitable that the super-rich would one day aspire to control not only their own wealth, but the wealth of the whole world. To achieve this, they were perfectly willing to feed the ambitions of the power-hungry political conspirators who were committed to the overthrow of all existing governments, and the establishment of a central world-wide dictatorship along socialist lines.

"This, of course, was a risky business for the Anglo-American secret society. The super-rich were gambling on the expectation that when the violence and reconstruction had been completed by the political conspirators, the super-rich would then take over ... to guide mankind hopefully and compulsively into a whole new era of universal peace and universal prosperity.

"To take such a risk, the cadre of the super-rich had to ignore the most elementary aspects of the ferocity of the left-wing conspiratorial mentality. Mao Tse-tung has articulated the basic Communist conviction that political power comes from the barrel of a gun, and once they seize control it is their expressed intention to use the gun to prevent the super-rich or anyone else from taking that control away from them. [Similarly, Hitler repeatedly told Britain that he intended to realize his goals by going to war, not by diplomatic negotiation.]

"Nevertheless, the secret society of the London-Wall Street axis elected to take this risk. The master-planners have attempted to control the global conspiratorial groups by feeding them vast quantities of money for their revolutionary work, and then financing their opposition if they seemed to be getting out of control."

He then quotes Quigley's defense for the elites' support of such ruthless psychopaths, claiming that their own altruistic ends justified such means: "The chief aims of this elaborate, semi-secret organization were largely commendable: to coordinate the international activities and outlooks of the English-speaking world into one (which would largely, it is true, be that of the London group); to work to maintain peace; to help backward, colonial, and underdeveloped areas to advance toward stability, law and order, and prosperity along lines somewhat similar to those taught at Oxford and the University of London (especially the School of Economics and the Schools of African and Oriental Studies)." (p. 954) Mr. Skousen adds that his emphasis was inserted so that readers wouldn't miss the intent of the elites that their remade world be organized along the socialist lines taught by the listed British educational institutions.

Mr. Skousen then goes into Quigley's revelations concerning why the elites ventured into supporting left-wing organizations. Having spent a good part of his career in investigating domestic communist activities, he is in a remarkable position to compare his knowledge of those activities to Quigley's bland assertions. He quotes Quigley at length concerning the bankers' efforts, mostly by Morgan men, to control political parties and movements, naming which men infiltrated the Republicans, the Democrats, the extreme right, and the extreme left. He further quotes Quigley concerning the communist front groups set up by the Morgans, their efforts to block investigation by Congress, their support of the Institute of Pacific Relations and its infiltration by communist agents, and then a lengthy section concerning the Council on Foreign Relations, complete with names of major actors up to the time of publishing his book (e.g., Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Owen Lattimore, Christian Herter, John and Allen Dulles, Nelson Rockefeller, George Ball, Henry Kissinger, and many others).

Skousen then gets to the matter of the tax-exempt foundations, and their investigation by the Reece Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, a matter which Quigley himself had discussed in connection with congressional probing into IPR policies and actions. Skousen goes a little beyond our own review of Quigley's observations in that he also attempts to summarize the findings of Rene Wormser's book, Foundations: Their Power and Influence, which Quigley had noted and then dismissed as perhaps shocking to Wormser but not to him. Wormser's summarization (reproduced by Skousen, p. 60) of the efforts of the foundations to dominate U.S. education, for example, reads as follows:

"7. Foundations use their funds to subvert and control American education.

a. 'Conform or no grant!' (p. 140)

b. The birth of Educational Radicalism. (pp. 143-145)

c. Carnegie finances a socialist charter for education. (pp. 146-152)

d. The radical educators. (pp. 152-155)

e. The Progressive Education Association. (pp. 155-156)

f. Financing and promoting socialist textbooks. (pp. 156-167)

g. Financing Left-wing reference works. (pp. 167-171)

h. The National Education Association not designed to advance 'American' education. (pp. 142, 145, 160, 164-165, 216-217)"

Noting next that Wormser's book then spends 79 pages exclusively on the Ford Foundation, Skousen proceeds to combine his own and Wormser's knowledge concerning the personnel and works of that organization. Following the death of Henry Ford, Sr. in 1947, the scramble for control of the foundation was won by Paul G. Hoffman, who, says Skousen (p. 62), "was not only a member of the London-Wall Street nexus, but had been director of the principal propaganda arm of the Council on Foreign Relations and also a trustee for the Institute of Pacific Relations." Hoffman then brought in "the well-known global collectivist, Robert Hutchins" as his associate director, and through their joint efforts, "By 1956 the Ford Foundation had spent more than one billion dollars in contributions to 'education' and had thereby become a well-nigh all-encompassing influence over hundreds of colleges and universities."

The directorship of the foundation was handed in 1966 to McGeorge Bundy, shortly after he was hounded out of L. B. Johnson's administration by Congress because of his apparent efforts to support a communist coup attempt in the Dominican Republic. Skousen describes a number of Bundy's grantees and various of their activities, and then summarizes (p. 66): "Official Ford Foundation reports show that millions upon millions are being poured into revolutionary, communist-dominated or global collectivist organizations under the direction of McGeorge Bundy." Skousen lists a dozen or so of such organizations supported by the Ford Foundation, and then concludes, "So much for the activities of the major foundations which 'insider' Carroll Quigley says were 'not shocking' to him at all."

Mr. Skousen, after first noting the establishment's continually felt fear of exposure frequently alluded to by Dr. Quigley, then describes in some detail several attempts at such exposure following World War 2, some of which he was personally involved with. Included are: (1) revelations by Major Racey Jordan (From Major Jordan's Diaries, N.Y., Harcourt, Brace Co., 1952) concerning shipments to Russia, ordered in 1943 by Harry Hopkins under the Russian lend-lease program, of refined uranium and atomic bomb research documentation; (2) the U.S. involvement in disarming Chiang Kai-shek and the resulting conquest of China by the Chinese communists, to the anger and disgust of Americans when they began to find out about it; (3) the exposure in 1948 of the State Department's Alger Hiss as a communist spy; (4) the firing of General MacArthur during the Korean War for revealing to Congress that he was now fighting Chinese communist "volunteers" after essentially defeating the North Korean army; (5) the publication in July 1953 of the Senate Judiciary Committee's famous Jenner Report, entitled "Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments"; (6) the public stir raised by Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950's concerning communist infiltration into the State Department and elsewhere, activities which evoked paroxysms of rage and malevolence from Carroll Quigley (pp. 928 ff.); (7) the flood of anti-communist literature from such as J. Edgar Hoover, W. Cleon Skousen, Dean Manion, Dan Smoot, Robert Welch, Billy James Hargis and others, and the beginning of televised mass meetings and radio broadcasts concerning the communist menace, responded to by the establishment elites with the Reuther Memorandum proposing government measures to curb these activities, one of which was the FCC's "Fairness Doctrine," which required radio and TV stations to give free rebuttal time to anyone criticized within another purchased program; and (8) the rise of Senator Barry Goldwater as a presidential candidate challenging the establishment, an effort which again evoked a vitriolic diatribe from Quigley, and which the well-oiled establishment handled with a fair degree of ease.

Mr. Skousen ends the development of his narrative with a description, as of knowledge available to him in 1970, of the Bilderberg Group. Their conferences, he says (p. 108), "are held each year as an international master planning conclave. They are secret and attendance is restricted to invited 'guests.' These turn out to be about 100 men from the top inner circle representing the four major dimensions of power: the international banking dynasties, their corporations involved in vast, international enterprises, the American tax-exempt foundations, and the establishment representatives who have gained high offices in government, especially the United States government. These conferences always have the same chairman - his royal highness Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who, with his family, owns a massive fortune in the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corporation. Then, close at hand, will always be David Rockefeller representing his family and especially Standard Oil of New Jersey which is one of the largest corporate structures in existence. It is interesting that in the past two decades when political revolutions have occurred in various parts of the world, these two companies usually end up with all of the oil and natural gas concessions. This has been largely true in Africa, the Middle East, South America, and the Far East. These are also the companies whose installations seem to be virtually off limits to the bombers in both sides of any recent war. We mention this simply to demonstrate the fact that Dr. Quigley does seem to be correct in alleging that the political and economic forces of the earth are being woven into a gigantic monolith of total global power."

Skousen identifies the first meeting as being held in May 1954 at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Netherlands. After each of their annual meetings, he says, the conferees "depart to the four comers of the earth to carry out their adopted goals, but the world is never given the slightest hint as to what has been decided. This is particularly frustrating to Congress, which has tried several times to ferret out the activities of these Bilderberg conferences. Even when top government officials such as Navy Secretary Paul Nitze were placed under oath and interrogated, it became virtually impossible to learn anything of significance." Trusted members of the major media are invited, but also never report on the substance of the proceedings. Skousen names such personages representing the New York Times, the Atlanta Constitution, Look magazine, and Life magazine. Similar personages continue to represent the major newspapers and TV networks as this is being written in 1995. (The list of 1995 attendees was printed in the Washington weekly The Spotlight for 10/23/95. Call 800-522-6292. A few familiar names on that list were Lloyd Bentsen, Tom Foley, David Gergen, Richard Holbrooke, Peter Jennings, Henry Kissinger, and David Rockefeller.)

Mr. Skousen summarizes that the elites who wish to set up their world dictatorship recognize their main enemy to be the great middle class of the United States, which, being made up of individuals who have acquired a little education, property, and independence, will fight strenuously to keep them. The strategy of the elites is to squeeze the middle class to death by creating or exacerbating the major problems facing the society, including class warfare, crime, education, moral decay, etc., and then creating in response spurious governmental programs to "cure" the problems that they just created. He describes (p. 115) the enmity which Dr. Quigley holds toward the middle class: "The middle class is to be identified as the 'petty bourgeoisie,' the 'neo-isolationists' ... who are described by Dr. Quigley as 'often very insecure, envious, filled with hatreds, and are generally the chief recruits for any Radical Right, fascist, or hate campaign against any group that is different or which refuses to conform to middle class values.' (p. 1243)"

Mr. Skousen finally thanks Dr. Quigley for gratuitously giving us a peek behind the curtain, helping us to identify our real enemy and thus better aim our arrows of reform. Our future task, he says (p. 117), is political in nature, and should be aimed at "throwing the rascals out. Every Democrat, Republican, or Independent from the top of the federal government right down to the lowest official on the local level, who has been consistently supporting the collectivist policies and tactics of the global network, should be summarily replaced as fast as the electoral process will permit."

Truly a daunting job, but possible. Mr. Skousen then concludes, "It is time we got on with the task."