by Jim Marrs
The mammoth university now encompasses an undergraduate college, four graduate divisions, six professional schools as well as libraries, laboratories, museums, clinics, and other institutions; nursery and K-12 schools; a continuing-studies program; and an academic press. In 2003, a university center opened in Paris to accommodate the school’s program of European studies. Closely connected to Rockefeller’s University of Chicago is the English world’s most accepted authority on everything, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Formerly a privately held not-for-profit company, Encyclopaedia Britannica, headquartered in Chicago, also owns Merriam-Webster Incorporation, one of the world’s leading publishers of dictionaries and thesauri.
Until recently, the encyclopedia firm was owned by the William Benton Foundation, whose sole beneficiary was the University of Chicago, in accordance with the wishes of its namesake, Senator William Benton, a former vice president of the university.
A former senator from Connecticut, Benton graduated from Yale University in 1921, then worked in advertising until becoming a part-time vice president of the University of Chicago in 1932. During World War II, he served as assistant secretary of state in Washington, D.C., until 1947, during which time he was active in organizing the United Nations. He served as a member of and delegate to numerous United Nations and international conferences and commissions. A declared Democrat, he was U.S. senator from 1949 until 1953. From 1943 until his death in 1973, Benton was chairman of the board and publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
It was announced in 1996 that 100 percent of the company’s stock was purchased for an undisclosed amount by an investment group led by Jacob Safra, who headed the Swiss bank of his name, which in 1955 opened a branch in Brazil. Bank Jacob Safra Switzerland is part of the Safra Group, a far-flung chain of financial institutions. Some conspiracy researchers see the private ownership of the world’s premier encyclopedia as the perfect means for controlling public knowledge, particularly in the areas of history and science.
“The creation and funding of the University of Chicago had done much to enhance Rockefeller’s public relations profile among Baptists and educators…. The only difficulty was that education, on the whole, wasn’t in bad shape,” explained Paolo Lionni, author of The Leipzig Connection, his 1993 book that traced the deleterious effects of experimental psychology on the education system back to German professor of philosophy Wilhelm Max Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology. “The indigenous American educational system was deeply rooted in the beliefs and practices of the Puritan Fathers, the Quakers, the early American patriots and philosophers. Jefferson had maintained that in order to preserve liberty in the new nation, it was essential that its citizenry be educated, whatever their income. Throughout the country, schools were established almost immediately after the colonization of new areas.” These school systems included ones established by the Quakers in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, the free school movement in New York, and a large number of “normal schools,” so named for helping to set the norms for education. By the start of the twentieth century, the United States was home to many major universities, which turned out thousands of well-trained teachers each year.
Lionni noted: “Educational results far exceeded those of modern schools. One has only to read old debates in the Congressional Record or scan the books published in the 1800s to realize that our ancestors of a century ago commanded a use of the language far superior to our own. Students learned how to read not comic books but the essays of Burke, Webster, Lincoln, Horace, Cicero. Their difficulties with grammar were overcome long before they graduated from school, and any review of a typical elementary school arithmetic textbook printed before 1910 shows dramatically that students were learning mathematical skills that few of our current high school graduates know anything about. The high school graduate of 1900 was an educated person, fluent in his language, history, and culture, possessing the skills he needed in order to succeed.”
The agenda behind Rockefeller’s creation of the GEB may have been revealed in correspondence from Frederick T. Gates, Rockefeller’s choice to head the board.
Gates wrote, “In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply.
“The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm.”
Paolo Lionni wrote: “It would be false to say [John D. Rockefeller] was the mastermind of international intrigue and deception. But it wouldn’t be false to say the Rockefeller money has been used in various ways to forward social and global control through economics, foundations, the United Nations, universities, banking, industry, medicine, and, of course, education, psychology, and psychiatry…
“It is not incorrect to say that a major segment of today’s modern institutions exist not because of honest study and concern for the truth in the respective fields but because Rockefeller’s money was available at their inception to fund incredible PR campaigns, establish ‘professional’ publications and societies, steamroller over any competition (regardless of their legitimacy or value), and continue selling the ideas until accepted and institutionalized within the basic fabric of society.
“…That’s a tremendous amount of control and involvement for one group! What if the theories and practices they funded and continue to fund are fundamentally flawed and don’t lead to the best possible situations in the various fields mentioned? Well, the views in most of those areas are fundamentally flawed and they don’t lead to the best solutions in ‘mental health,’ education, medicine, sanity, and happiness. But, most likely, despite all ‘humanitarian’ posturing, they were never intended to.”
NORMAN DODD, DIRECTOR of research for the House Select Committee to Investigate Foundations and Comparable Organizations, reported that in 1952 the president of the Ford Foundation told him bluntly that “operating under directive from the White House,” his foundation was to “use our grant-making power so as to alter our life in the United States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.” Now, with the collapse of communism, the advent of the United Nations and NATO, along with various economic treaties now in place, it would appear that this globalist goal is close to becoming realized.
Dodd also stated that the congressional investigation found that the Guggenheim, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations and the Carnegie Endowment were “working in harmony to control education in the United States.” He added that these entities had been subverted from the original goals of their creators by subsequent directors—another example of wealth taking control of existing organizations.
Some of the past and current organizations and foundations linked by membership or funding to the plutocracy that once supported the Nazis include the Agency of International Development, American Civil Liberties Union, American Council of Race Relations, American Press Institute, Anti-Defamation League, Arab Bureau, Aspen Institute, Association of Humanistic Psychology, Battelle Memorial Institute, Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Cuban Studies, Center for Democratic Institutions, Christian Socialist League, Communist League, Environmental Fund, Fabian Society, Ford Foundation, Foundation for National Progress, German Marshall Fund, Hudson Institute, Institute for Pacific Relations, Institute on Drugs, Cr
ime and Justice, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Mellon Institute, Metaphysical Society, Milner Group, Mont Pelerin Society, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Council of Churches, New World Foundation, Rand Institute, Stanford Research Institute, Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, Union of Concerned Scientists, International Red Cross, and the YMCA.
David N. Gibbs, associate professor of political science at the University of Arizona, noted that the intelligence community has long taken advantage of academia to propagate their views and philosophies—as always, through the distribution of money. He wrote: “While pundits never tire of the cliché that American universities are dominated by leftist faculty who are hostile toward the objectives of established foreign policies, the reality is altogether different: The CIA has become ‘a growing force on campus,’ according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The ‘Agency finds it needs experts from academia, and colleges pressed for cash like the revenue.’ Longstanding academic inhibitions about being publicly associated with the CIA have largely disappeared: in 2002, former CIA director Robert Gates became president of Texas A & M University, while the new president of Arizona State University, Michael Crow, was vice chairman of the agency’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel Inc…. The CIA has created a special scholarship program, for graduate students able and willing to obtain security clearances. According to the London Guardian, ‘the primary purpose of the program is to promote disciplines that would be of use to intelligence agencies.’ And throughout the country, academics in several disciplines are undertaking research (often secret) for the CIA.”
AMERICAN YOUTH WERE educated in the principles of National Socialism before World War II.
In 1935, Ernst Mueller, head of the German-American Settlement League, acquired lakeside property in Yaphank, Long Island, and invited Americans of German descent to visit and relax. He also formed a group called the German-American Youth. The youth in Yaphank constructed tents on platforms, called Camp Siegfried. Gustave Neuss, the grandson of German immigrants, whose father served as a judge in Yaphank, recalled: “Some of the parents complained about the harsh conditions and at least one removed her daughter from the camp because of this. The regimen included education in pro-Nazi doctrine to ensure a new generation having the pure Aryan philosophy.” Neuss’s father initially was friendly with the German organization but soon turned against them because of their anti-Semitism and un-American speeches.
The youth organization was part of the German-American Bund, an anti-Semitic fraternal group formed in the 1930s by a merger of the National Socialist German Workers Party and the Free Society of Teutonia. German-American Bund activity was not limited to Yaphank and the New York City area. Neuss wrote: “Groups of the pro-Nazis were located throughout the United States. Hitler’s claim was that after he had conquered Europe he would then take over the USA. The Bund and other pro-German groups located throughout the country provided a cadre of subversives to assist in such a takeover.”
Although many German-American organizations existed in the prewar United States, the Bund was among the only ones to express support for Nazi ideals. In February 1939, Bund leader Fritz Kuhn addressed a crowd of about twenty thousand in Madison Square Garden and railed against President “Frank D. Rosenfeld” and the “Bolshevik-Jewish conspiracy” threatening America. Once the nation entered the war, some Bund members fled the country while others were placed in internment camps.
Although the American Nazi Bund never developed into a serious threat—even Hitler tried to distance himself from it—the subversion of the educational process under which it prospered continued.
THE NATIONAL TEACHERS Association, now known as the National Education Association, was founded in 1850 as a professional teacher organization, but today has become the largest labor union in the United States, representing almost 3 million educators. In 1966, the NEA merged with the American Teachers Association, an organization primarily concerned with education in the black community, yet another special interest of the Rockefellers, who funneled money into black education programs and organizations. By 1964, Rockefeller’s General Education Board had spent more than $3.2 million in gifts to support black education, criticized by some as merely a means to instill white values and worldviews in black students.
According to William H. Watkins, author of The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1954, John D. Rockefeller Sr. was more concerned with shaping a new industrial social order than providing a useful education. “The Rockefeller group demonstrated how gift-giving could shape education and public policy,” commented Watkins.
Conservative Republican Pat Buchanan decried the efforts of the NEA as a negative influence on American education. In a 1999 interview, he stated that “ever since the judges have gotten heavily into education, and the National Education Association has gotten into control of the Department of Education, test scores go down, there’s violence in classroom, things are going wrong.” Criticism also has been leveled at the NEA Ex-Gay Educators Caucus, whose literature states the purpose of the caucus is to “work within the NEA to make policy changes to ensure that the Ex-Gay voice is heard.” Opposing the Ex-Gay Educators Caucus at the 2004 NEA National Convention was Kevin Jennings, a former private-school teacher in Massachusetts and founder of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, who has partnered with the NEA in promoting acceptance of homosexuality using curriculum materials in the nation’s schools, beginning as early as kindergarten and the elementary grades. At the convention, Jennings was presented the NEA’s human rights “creative leadership” award.
Education today is mixing drugs with student control. In years past, if a child was acting up or caught staring out the window, he or she received a rap on the knuckles with a ruler and was told to stay with the rest of the class. Today, the child is sent to the school nurse, who oftentimes tells the parents the student has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and recommends the administration of Prozac (94% sodium fluoride) or Ritalin, psychotropic drugs that have been shown to produce psychosis in lab rats. At least one state has put a stop to this practice. In 2001, the Connecticut House voted 141–0 on a law prohibiting school personnel from recommending to parents that their children take Ritalin or other mood-altering drugs. Republican State Representative Lenny Winkler, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, quoted studies showing the number of children taking Ritalin nationally jumped from 500,000 in 1987 to more than 6 million by 2001. The bill also prohibited the state’s Department of Children and Families from taking children away from parents who decline to put their children on mood-altering drugs.
A 1999 study at the Human Development Center at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire found that thirteen “ADHD” children on medication, over four years, performed progressively worse on standardized tests than a group of thirteen normal children with similar IQs and other characteristics. Another study, by Dr. Gretchen LeFever, an assistant professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Eastern Virginia Medical School, revealed that while children in her community used the drug Ritalin two to three times more than the national rate, their academic performance in relation to their peers showed no improvement. For her persistence in questioning the rising incidence of drug use in schoolchildren, Dr. LeFever was fired in 2005.
Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, in his 1991 book Toxic Psychiatry, wrote: “Hyperactivity is the most frequent justification for drugging children. The difficult-to-control male child is certainly not a new phenomenon, but attempts to give him a medical diagnosis are the product of modern psychology and psychiatry. At first psychiatrists called hyperactivity a brain disease. When no brain disease could be found, they changed it to ‘minimal brain disease’ (MBD). When no minimal brain disease could be found, the profession transformed the concept into ‘minimal brain dysfunction.’ When no minimal brain dysfunction could be demonstrated, the label became ‘attention deficit disorder.’ Now it�
�s just assumed to be a real disease, regardless of the failure to prove it so. ‘Biochemical imbalance’ is the code word, but there’s no more evidence for that than there is for actual brain disease.”
Alan Larson, a former secretary of the Oregon Federation of Independent Schools, criticized the expanding diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD) and was an outspoken critic of the indiscriminate use of drugs, proclaiming, “[T]he labeling of children with ADD is not because of a problem the kids have; it is because of a problem teachers who cannot tolerate active children have.”
According to John Cornwell, author of Hitler’s Scientists, the center of psychoanalysis shifted from Germany to the United States after the war. “[M]any of the homegrown analysts were German trained,” he noted. This charge was echoed by Dr. Thomas Roeder, Volker Kubillus, and Anthony Burwell in their book Psychiatrists—the Men Behind Hitler. “In the period since 1971,” they wrote, “child and adolescent psychiatry developed completely along the theoretical and methodological lines developed by its Nazi-era founders.”
The influx of Nazi-trained psychiatrists after World War II, particularly in the military and intelligence fields, has produced a blossoming of psychological disorders. The American Psychiatric Association, in its 1952 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), defined only 112 mental disorders. By the publication of DSM-IV in 1994, the number had grown to 374.
