With the death of David Rockefeller at 101 earlier this week I have been intently reflecting upon one of the key insights that over forty years of power elite analysis has taught me: great and powerful men in the public eye often have key advisors and strategists that help shape and mold them in very distinct ways. Often these individuals are virtually unknown (or little known and instantly forgotten) in the muddled and shallow minds of the booboisie who trod the United States of Amnesia. Think of Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, or Franklin Roosevelt and Louis Howe and Harry Hopkins. In the case of the imperial Rockefeller dynasty of John D. Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller II, and John D. II’s five sons, I have noted seven such persons: Frederick T. Gates, Raymond B. Fosdick, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Beardsley Ruml, John J. McCloy, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. McCloy, Kissinger, and Brzezinski became great and powerful in their own right but had earlier played essential roles as counselors/servitors for the dynasty.
6:32 pm on March 25, 2017
