Freeport Sulphur's Board of Directors has always held an astounding number of heavy hitters. Look at some of the Directors from the '60s and '70s.
An early participant in the Bay of Pigs planning, he also was one of the ones strongly pushing for the assassination of Fidel Castro. Burke served on the Committee for a Free Cuba, along with Time/Life mogul Clare Booth Luce and Virginia Prewett-a journalist David Phillips said he knew quite well. The former Chief of Naval Operations also gave an endorsement to an organization well know to readers of Probe, INCA-Information Council of the Americas, a CIA-allied Latin American propaganda organization.
Augustus "Gus" Long was Chairman of Texaco for years. Texaco, like Freeport, had investments in Cuba. Unlike Freeport, Texaco's operation was designed to run at a loss, as a tax write-off. Long had also done "prodigious volunteer work for Columbia Presbyterian Hospital." Those of you who read our last issue of Probe will recall the that Columbia Presbyterian was a client of the Mullen Company, and that a former employee of the Mullen Company had described Columbia Presbyterian as a hotbed of CIA activity. Gus Long once had to step aside so a building at Columbia University could be named after Armand Hammer instead. Long then got a library named after himself. The Rockefellers are generous donors to Columbia University.
Lovett had been General Partner at Brown Brothers, Harriman (he married a Brown.) He had served as Undersecretary of State, Assistant Secretary of War, and Secretary of Defense. He sat on the National Security Council. Ruling class researcher and author G. William Domhoff called Lovett a "Cold War architect." Lovett once accused Army Intelligence (G-2) of ineptitude when he learned that German scientists hadn't been brought out of Nazi Germany yet. Lovett was also best friends with Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman and Warren Commission member John J. McCloy. These two, along with Harvey H. Bundy, formed a close working relationship. Harvey H. Bundy was the father of McGeorge and Bill Bundy.
President Kennedy tried to sign up Lovett for a role in his administration. Although Lovett declined, his suggestions must have carried a lot of weight with Kennedy. For the State Department, Lovett proposed Dean Rusk. For Defense Secretary, either his friend John J. McCloy or Robert McNamara, his protege. And for the Treasury, McCloy or C. Douglas Dillon. Kennedy took Rusk, McNamara, and Dillon.
As the third husband of Abby Rockefeller-sister of David, Laurance, John III, and Nelson-Mauze was the Rockefellers' brother-in-law.
Second cousin to Nelson, David, Laurance and Abby, Godfrey was the brother of James Stillman Rockefeller. Godfrey was a trustee of the Fairfield Foundation, which provided funds to Encounter, a British publication later revealed to be financed by the CIA. Fairfield also financed the Congress for Cultural Freedom, also exposed as a CIA front.
Benno C. Schmidt was an original partner in J. H. Whitney & Company, where he knew former deputy director of the CIA William Jackson. Schmidt taught law at Harvard, and had worked for the War Production board. Schmidt eventually ran Yale University, the CIA's favorite academic recruiting ground. He was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases, a center that had become a pet project of the most secretive of the Rockefeller brothers, Laurance Rockefeller. Schmidt was also heavily involved with David Rockefeller, as the two of them jointly owned "Orleans Farm" in Australia-a showcase ranch.