Nelson Rockefeller Takes Care of Everybody

If kissinger's the consigliere and ford's just another capo, guess what that makes rocky

In Our First Pass over the tiny mountaintop airfield, it seemed that we were going to hit the side of the mountain, which would have meant the end of me, Nelson Rockefeller and my story. But it would have been a bonanza for conspiracy buffs. What was the ex-editor of Ramparts, who had done so many CIA exposés, doing on a little prop plane with the Vice-President, who was just then completing his committee's investigation of the CIA? Of course, there was no sinister connection; I was just a reporter conning his way onto a flight, hoping for one of those spontaneous interviews that had embarrassed Rockefeller so many times before. If it had been up to the Secret Service, I never would have made it. I tilted their computer so badly that I was never even allowed to go to the bathroom in the old Executive Office Building without an escort. But the Rockefeller people themselves were less uptight.

Indeed, Rockefeller's most striking quality is his total confidence in his ability to co-opt anyone, even an aging New Leftist like me. Once it was clear that I was just another intellectual and not a potential assassin, I was able to hang around with him for over a month. He permitted it because of his deeply ingrained assumption that people with brains or pens who could possibly annoy him by what they write can simply be hired and made to forget "all that negative stuff"--by which he means a less-than-full understanding that Rockefeller is our most useful and disinterested "problem solver," as he puts it.

The man does not feel that he can be hurt by words. Rockefeller's aides cannot even get him to read major articles about himself, unlike Henry Kissinger, who begins his morning by reading clips of everything said about him on the previous day. We may have social mobility in America, but we also have an economic class structure and Rockefeller knows that this is his country and his Government, while Kissinger has always believed that he is passing and living on borrowed time. When I tried to talk with Kissinger at press conferences, there was a nervous look in his eye that reminded me of my days of trying to hustle someone's girlfriend at a Loews theater in the Bronx. By contrast, when I was introduced to Rockefeller, he looked me right in the eye, grabbed my arm and said, "Hi ya, hear you're writing a book about me. What a great opportunity for a young man. This is going to be very interesting for you." Well, if a Rockefeller can't be confident, who the hell can?

So off we went each day: he in the first limousine, the Secret Servicemen in the station wagon behind and I and press secretary Hugh Morrow or deputy press secretary John Mulliken, both friendly types, in the third vehicle. The Secret Service guys looked like either Charles Aznavour or Robert Redford. They wore sunglasses and sat in that station wagon with their fingers on the triggers of their Uzi submachine guns. Two of them stared out either side of the car and one looked through the back window at us. It was really quite dramatic: When die Vice-President's car pulled to a stop, the doors of the station wagon would fly open and--the car still moving--the SS guys popped out and rushed ahead.

Once we stopped to have cocktails with the entire Supreme Court: another afternoon it was an hour with the empress and shah of Iran; and on a third occasion, Rocky spent a relaxing evening at the Kennedy Center with Nancy and Henry Kissinger. In the process, I kept finding myself squeezed up against a lot of the people whom I had spent most of my adult life demonstrating against. They are not a bad bunch of people to have hors d'oeuvres with, if you can forget things like the shah's secret police or Attica. But I came away from all this with no doubts at all that America has a ruling class and that it gets along quite smoothly with its counterparts abroad.

Ironically, I had just published a book (America After Nixon) on the power of the top multinational corporations and the ways they run this country, and some of the more sophisticated liberal critics said I had an exaggerated view of their power. One of these critics, Robert L. Heilbroner, writing in the New York Review of Books, should have known better, since the Rocky people told me he had worked for them in the Fifties. In fact, when Rockefeller assembled his Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, Morrow ran through his old Rolodex for possible recruits and found Heilbroner's name. He called him and offended him by trying to hire him back at the old rate of pay. Morrow explained, "I didn't know anything about him--you know, that he'd gone on to write books, and I thought he'd just come back as a researcher like when he worked under Kissinger before." Interestingly, it was another review of my book that got me in with the Rocky crowd.

The day I was trying to get onto the Rockefeller plane, Business Week had come out with a long, serious review. Although the reviewer considered me a Marxist, he said my main thesis about the crisis of corporate power in America was valid. As I stood in Morrow's office, I looked down on his desk and saw my picture and the review staring up at me. My immediate thought was, "Damn, it's all over and the Secret Service is going to hustle my ass out of here in two minutes."

But it was just the opposite. Rockefeller greeted me with, "Hey, fellow, I see ya got a best seller on your hands. Looks like a really interesting book." Since the main point of my book, which is hardly a best seller, is that people like the Rockefellers pretty much run this country at the expense of the rest of us, I was perplexed. But after getting to know die man, I came to understand that Rockefeller implicitly believes in die Marxist analysis of economic classes and struggle--he's just on the other side. It's a refreshing contrast to all of those liberal academics who tell us that we live in a pluralistic society.

Nelson Rockefeller was born to rule. But he was not trained in the grabbing, hustling tradition of his grand father--those days are over. You can no longer just take from people. You have to make them want to give it to you. Since earliest childhood, the Rockefeller boys were perfectly trained in the art of doing just that. Nelson Rockefeller is the Godfather; he takes care of his own, he envelops all who come his way. He charms and binds you to him and is probably better at it than any other man in this country. He is very clear about his class interests and die central role of his family in making capitalism work. He's so secure in his power that he cannot conceive of die possibility that there are people in this world with whom he cannot cut a deal. And no matter who they are, if they have a measure of power and have survived, then he will deal.

For decades, through his purchase of intellectuals, his various commissions and his private dinners with the powerful of this world, he has been "solving our problems," and the less we know about it, the more effective he can be. Indeed, becoming V.P., just like becoming governor, was, in a sense, counterproductive, because the public began to be dimly aware that he and others like him, who share none of our daily travail about paying the bills and holding a job, have, in fact, determined that they are the neutral, and the best, arbiters of our fate. The Rockefellers are not powerful simply because of their immense wealth. Critics of Rockefeller at the Senate and House confirmation hearings missed this point. There are other rich people in this country. What makes some, like Nelson and his brother David (and Averell Harriman and C. Douglas Dillon), particularly important is that by adroit use of their wealth and training, they have become the arbiters of our essential political consensus. They will not be grubby. They are trusted by other rich and powerful people precisely because they are expected to look out for the larger interests of their class and not just the bank or corporation they happen to own. If you believe in the survival of corporate capitalism, the Rockefellers are the "good people" who are above petty interest and conniving.

In the Godfather view of corporate capitalism, you have to give favors to hold the whole thing together, and holding it together is Rockefeller's main task in life. In his view, society is a web in which he is the chief spider. Rockefeller believes that he must plan for our future:

Rockefeller: I'm a great believer in planning.

Scheer: What kind of planning?

Rockefeller: Economic, social, political, military, total world planning.

Scheer: Does the question of class enter into this at all?

Rockefeller: Not to me.

I asked him when we were on that plane ride about any possible conflicts between the needs of die multinational corporations and labor and he said there were none: "My feeling is that that segment [labor] is terribly important, but they're going to be taken care of if our economic system works, which is what I was talking to these guys about--we're hobbling the economic system by accelerating social objectives."

The "guys" that he had been talking with were Arthur Burns, head of the Federal Reserve System, and Alan Greenspan, the President's top economic advisor. Rockefeller had been huddled with them in one corner of the plane. I did not then understand the importance of our destination. Why were we flying to this Virginia mountaintop? The Presidential photographer told me that the year before, Vice-President Ford had made the same trip and almost crash-landed. When we disembarked, there were 15 limousines waiting and a few helicopters circling overhead. In a scene reminiscent of James Bond, our caravan wound its way through the hills of Virginia guarded by those helicopters. I sat in the back of my limousine--the poor little rich boy--with a telephone next to me and no one to call. Finally, we arrived at The Homestead, a spa made famous in the Thirties, when Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt threw her lavish parties there. It's an ornate affair of colonnades and high ceilings and I knew something important must be happening, because as I crossed the lobby with Morrow, he suddenly said, "Oh, there's David. Hi, David, this is Bob Scheer. Bob, this is David Rockefeller and his wife, Margaret."

David was in a golfing setup and was very relaxed and friendly, as was his wife, who wanted to know if Nelson's wife, Happy, had gotten in yet. Within die next half hour, I saw Thomas Murphy, chairman of General Motors, and Edgar Speer, head of U. S. Steel.

It turned out that we had flown down to one of the very important quarterly (continued on page 82)Nelson Rockefeller(continued from page) meetings of the Business Council, a group of the country's top 200 industrialists and bankers. Rockefeller closeted himself with some of the leaders to go over his speech for that night. I wandered the lobby in a daze. After 15 years of doubts, college debates with professors and confusion about whether America really has a ruling class, I had suddenly found myself right smack in the middle of it.

Rockefeller, of course, was in his element, and that evening, once the crab cocktails and steak had been put away, he rose to tell the assembled corporate heads what they wanted to hear: "I enjoy this opportunity because, frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I feel that those of you in this room symbolize, really, the essence of what our country stands for....Now we find ourselves in a situation in which many of those values are challenged as never before....No group knows this better than you, because you men and women--so many of you representing much-maligned multinational corporations...we, as Americans, should be so grateful that your ingenuity and your imagination and your drive has seen the opportunities that existed in this world...."

We tend to think of large multinational companies as independent and rival entities, but the opposite is actually the case. The top men of finance and industry meet frequently for hard talks and friendly social encounters. They speak the same language and generally like one another, or at least it seemed that way to me at the Business Council gathering. Waiting in line for dinner, Walter Wriston of First National City Bank and David Rockefeller of rival Chase Manhattan were almost backslap-ping. Coke and Pepsi were about five feet apart in the receiving line. Farther down the line was Dr. Frank Stanton, former president of CBS, David Packard of Hewlett-Packard, Arthur Wood of Sears, Roebuck and on and on through the corporate elite. Douglas Dillon, who served on the CIA commission with Rockefeller, is also a member. It's a club of the people who actually run things in this country and the unique value of Rockefeller to all this, believe it or not, is that he is the club member who is supposed to have his finger on the public pulse. He has taken it upon himself to be their contact with us. He has chosen to be the politician rather than the banker or the captain of industry, that decision flows not merely from ego needs but also from an understanding of the division of responsibilities within the Rockefeller family. On the plane back that night, I asked Rockefeller about the difference between his role and David's. He said, "Well, David is concerned with the world, he's the banker, so he has to take care of the global problems, and I started with the domestic--how to build domestic consensus for what has to be done."

This building of domestic consensus--that is to say, agreement among all of us on what we should not agree upon--has been Rockefeller's outstanding contribution to the corporate world. It involves the selling of that peculiar and perverse notion--which would be ludicrous in any country not so hooked on notions of class-lessness and social mobility--that Rockefeller is somehow best qualified to interpret our needs and aspirations. He grabs your arm, gets close to your face and says, "You know, we've got a great country. I'm optimistic about die future and we're going to solve these problems."

Never, never in his entire life has Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller been permitted to think that his family and its holdings might have contributed to, let alone created, any of those problems. Since his youth, he has been surrounded by the "best" minds of the era, who have constantly reassured him that the Rockefellers were synonymous with virtue.

Rockefeller informed me that his mother had told him it was very important to associate with people smarter than yourself. That's why her husband, John D., always brought the most famous intellectuals in the world to the house. Take Nelson's favorite professor at Dartmouth, Stacy May. Nelson liked him so much that upon graduation he hired him. That gentleman has, in fact, been in and out of Rockefeller's employ for the past 40-odd years. "He was the chief economist for the War Production Board [World War Two]. He worked for me for years afterward....He made these studies for me in Latin America." Can you imagine hiring your favorite college professor? Kissinger worked for Rockefeller for 15 years and, as someone who comes from the neighborhood next to Henry's, I can assure you that this sort of relationship is pretty one-sided. Rockefeller says that Henry is smart the way men used to say a woman had a cute ass--it's a useful attribute, it even turns you on, but it's negotiable. He didn't buy Henry with his $50,000 gift (which, along with similar gifts to other Rocky intimates, was revealed during the V.P. confirmation hearings)--the purchase occurred long before and was hardly so crass. Kids like Henry are raised not to believe in their own legitimacy. They can make up for it in all kinds of ways: Be witty or head of the class or at least a ladies' man; but deep down there is the horrible perception that you are on this planet by the barest of accidents. Nothing you say or think, none of your angst and none of your term papers matter one iota unless you plug into the people who have real authority. You can go to New York's City College at night, read The New York Times on the subway, even get to study and teach at Harvard, but real authority and power come rarely and they come only through association with those who were born to rule.

And that's how Rockefeller buys you. Most of the people around him are upward mobile--they still have to worry about their checks' bouncing. But the world is divided into those who worry about their checks' bouncing and those who don't, and our reality is not Rockefeller's, no matter how many campaign blintzes he eats. Last year, Rockefeller stopped to make a phone call at the Washington National Airport, the first such effort at personal dialing in many years, and he turned to Morrow and asked him for a nickel for the phone.

•

On the flight back to Westchester, I wondered how I was going to get down to Manhattan, but you soon learn not to worry about things like that when you're around Rockefeller. A limousine, chauffeured, no less, with a phone in the back, was put at my disposal. Chauffeured limousines just suddenly appear if you're on the right side. And, of course, what's really scary is that all of a sudden an important part of you wants to be on the right side.

Rockefeller knows how to take care of people, but he also will frequently cut them off. Bill Ronan now works in the Rockefeller family offices in Rockefeller Center after getting §625,000 without which he could not have survived that "family crisis." Morrow, it appears, was able to deal with his personal problems for less--he got $135,000, plus a $30,000 loan. This is the big time and that's why people hang in there. Some get big gifts and then get cut out. Henry Diamond (who was the Wunderkind New York State Commissioner of Environmental Conservation when Rockefeller was governor and then executive director of the Commission on Critical Choices) has now been dropped from die inner circle. But he had previously received a gift of $100,000. Some say he's on the outs because he's Jewish; others that it's because he turned his air conditioner on at the wrong time. It seems that in the 55th Street headquarters of Critical Choices, Rockefeller would not tolerate air conditioners above him leaking drops of water. That meant that those above him would sweat like crazy in the summer so that Rockefeller would not be disturbed by dripping water.

I honestly don't know if that's what turned him off about Diamond, but I do know that Diamond left Critical Choices and went off to join a law firm founded by William Ruckelshaus. Diamond is now on the list of people who . don't get to see Rockefeller. I witnessed the depressing effect of his fall from grace (continued on page 92)Nelson Rockefeller(continued from page 82) when I last visited him. He was moody and had lost his sense of certainty and power. Kissinger is a brilliant intellectual opportunist and Diamond is only soso. I guess that's why he couldn't cut the mustard.

•

On rare occasions, Rockefeller has come UP against intellectuals who are not opportunists and it has confused him. Take Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican Marxist painter. Well, Rockefeller's mother had this terrific idea that Rivera should be commissioned to do the principal mural for Rockefeller Center. It was part of the radical chic of the Thirties and young Nelson was then a director of Rockefeller Center--cutting his business teeth negotiating salaries with the Rockettes. So he said, Terrific, I'll go get Rivera, "who's one hell of a guy," to come here and do a mural.

Rivera painted a huge mural in the lobby of Rockefeller's father's building--and right there in the middle of the mural was Nikolai Lenin as the hero saving the people from the capitalists. Rockefeller and his mother told Rivera that it had to go. And you know what Rivera did? He said no. That is an error you can be sure Kissinger has never committed. But Rivera didn't know how to handle success and Rockefeller simply ordered the offending mural chipped away.

The real point of all this concerns the relevance, or rather the political relevance, of art and, in a larger sense, ideas. Rivera wanted to do the mural precisely because he felt that Rockefeller Center was the symbol of capitalism. The Rockefellers wanted the mural because Rivera was a well-known artist who should have had his price.

According to Joe Alex Morris, the approved family biographer, who had full access to all correspondence on such matters:

As the painting progressed, the directors of Rockefeller Center became alarmed. Instead of following the sketch and synopsis that he had presented, Rivera was putting on the wall a picture with far-reaching political implications. On May 4, 1933, Rockefeller wrote to Rivera: "While I was in the...building at Rockefeller Center yesterday viewing the progress of your thrilling mural, I noticed that in the most recent portion of the painting you had included a portrait of Lenin. The piece is beautifully painted, but it seems to me that his portrait appearing in this mural might very seriously offend a great many people. If it were in a private house, it would be one thing, but this mural is in a public building and the situation is therefore quite different. As much as I dislike to do so, I am afraid we must ask you to substitute the face of some unknown man where Lenin's face now appears."

When Rivera refused, Rockefeller wanted the mural removed to the Museum of Modern Art, where he could charge 25 cents admission (it was the Depression). This proved impractical, however, and Rockefeller ordered that it be destroyed.

One Saturday midnight in February 1934, workmen began chip ping the painting from the plaster wall....It was typical of Rockefeller that he held no resentment against Rivera, although the artist wouldn't speak to him for years.

Ponder that last sentence--Rockefeller held no resentment. Imagine! He has scraped off the goddamn mural--broken up the plaster--and it is thought to be wondrous that he does not harbor resentment. He doesn't even harbor resentment over the fact that we have not yet elected him President. These are viewed as mere details in the management of our affairs that can be taken care of in due course by the right assistants.

Rockefeller learns from his tactical mistakes, and years later he told an admiring crowd at New York's New School for Social Research (whose administration admires the financial contributions it has received from the Rockefeller Foundation) that the Rivera mural should have been put on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art not for a quarter but for a dollar. We all know that MOMA is a tax-deductible club for the Rockefellers. They use it for celebrating birthdays and the like, as well as for boosting the works of artists whom they have patronized. A driving force at the museum since its inception, Rockefeller is a major collector who can buy up much of the output of an artist and then "make" his reputation by exhibiting the work at the museum. The value of the collection owned by Rocky goes up accordingly. So when Rockefeller talks about the museum, it's as someone might talk about finding the wherewithal for his tropical-fish collection; it's a hobby that can be made profitable and, even if it doesn't make money, it's a hell of a lot of fun and it's tax-deductible. In the New School speech on March 15, 1967, made long after American students had begun to think for themselves, Rockefeller had the nerve to talk about the destruction of the Rivera mural as a funny little anecdote:

I could relate another incident that grew out of a partly cultural, partly commercial experience, and that was this: My mother and I tried to help my father in the decoration of Rockefeller Center. Some of you remember that, too. We had Diego Rivera there and he undertook a major mural. Frieda, his wife, who was very attractive, but whose political implications [sic] were even stronger than his, got him incorporating the most unbelievable subjects into this mural [laughter]. I know that birth control now has become more acceptable. In those days, it wasn't. Of course, we were right across from Saint Patrick's, as you know [laughter].

And then he got into politics, and he had Stalin--or was it Lenin? I've forgotten--featured in the center. And then he started some social commentaries on American life, and there was a lady with a syphilitic ulcer on her face playing cards [laughter]. I finally said, "Look, Diego, we just can't have this. Art is free in its expression, but this is not something you are doing for yourself nor for us as collectors. This is a commercial undertaking. Therefore, we have to have something here that is not going to offend our customers but is going to give them pleasure and joy," and so forth. "And you've got this so you have about every sensitive subject incorporated into your mural."

Now, Rockefeller has trouble reading speeches, because he has dyslexia that perhaps dates back to the days when his old man tried to turn him from a left-hander into a righty by attaching a rubber band to his hand with a long string at the dinner table and pulling on it every time he tried to use the left one. As a result, Rockefeller is a joy to cover because much of what he says is extemporaneous, outrageous and close to what he really thinks. In that little lecture on art and Rivera, he presented his entire view of ideas and intellectuals. That which can be collected and stored, no matter how weird or controversial, will produce no social change and might fetch a higher price someday--just as long as it can be placed in a museum or a scholarly book. It will be an entertainment for the elite and that, too, will not threaten real power. But ordinary people would be going into the lobby of Rockefeller Center, and for them to see that mural was threatening.

•

While I was following Rockefeller around, he went to the museum of Modern Art and spent an evening gloating. Elite guests of the museum were drinking champagne in the sculpture garden when Rockefeller came bounding through with Happy in tow, exuding all of that compulsive energy of his. I hung around while he greeted wealthy sponsors of the museum.

The first thing that hits you when you're standing next to Rockefeller is (continued on page 180)Nelson Rockefeller(continued from page 92) that he's shorter and fatter than you would have expected from his pictures. He is also older in appearance. There's a splotchiness to his skin that suggests the palsy and liver ailments of the old. There is one other thing. The face doesn't really hold together after the smile. When he can't hold that half-grimace, half-smile any longer, his face begins to decompose and reveal him for what he is--a fairly tired, very overextended older man. Still, that huge energy propels him through dozens of events each day, in and out of cars and planes, with the smile always back in place at the right moment. It's as if a new motor has been implanted in a body too old for the strain. There is a persistent sense that something has to give soon.

Even in his older years, Rocky continues to demonstrate a warmth and charm that are not totally contrived. He was educated to be warm and open in a fraternity-boy sort of way, and one senses that after these many years, it sits naturally with him. Rocky is as alive and sexy as he is rich and cunning, and it is just that package that has made him so formidable and dangerous. The charm works right up to the point that you remember something like Tom Wicker's book on Attica. But too often he gets to set the stage and then he can really milk an audience.

That night at the Museum of Modern Art, Rockefeller gave a speech about enthusiasm, and, in particular, enthusiasm for art and artists. His great observation, then as so often, was that ideas and art need not be threatening to the rich of this country if only the rich will learn to manage those ideas properly. To make that point, he went back to an incident involving Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc., who, along with Rockefeller, was one of the early trustees of die museum. But before he could get to that, it started to rain and the guests fled the garden. There were broken champagne glasses all around. Happy was wandering about, repeating what seems to be her one permitted line in public life: "So good to see you." She said it to me three times. I asked her in a moment of journalistic abandon if all of those ruined hairdos and broken champagne glasses and the other disarray symbolized the fall of the American ruling class, much like similar scenes in the czar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. But it was as if I had not spoken at all. She just said, "It's so good to see you."

Rockefeller was equally irrepressible. He was going on about the wonderful bed he'd bought Happy. "You read all about it in the papers, didn't you?" he asked. There was a "serious" woman art critic from The New York Times at the reception. She was one of five specialists covering the event--it involved the five Times reporters covering society, architecture, politics, art and fashion; so there was a lot of news fit to print. Rockefeller enthusiastically told her about die Max Ernst bed he had bought for the new Vice-President's residence in Admiral's House. Rockefeller always loves to talk about art, even in a crushed press conference in the rain:

Critic: I'm very interested in the Max Ernst bed you bought for your wife. [Two schnooks from U.P. tried to ask about the CIA investigation he was heading, but Rockefeller was there for art.]

Rockefeller: You are? How about that? Have you seen it?

Critic: I have seen it. I'm writing it up for the Times. I was wondering why you would happen to buy it.

Rockefeller: Well, I'll say it. I take all of the catalogs of all the exhibitions and all of the auctions and I saw this and I was crazy about it. Happy's furnishing the house, so I thought this would be my contri bution--she's doing all the rest and I thought the bed was in the spirit that I believed in--

Critic: Thank you, thank you--

Rockefeller: And I've always admired Max Ernst and I thought this was a very fitting entrance to Washington of Max Ernst.

Critic: What was the price?

Rockefeller: Don't ever ask about price.

It was later reported that die bed cost $35,000.

After the interviews were over, William Paley, chairman of the board of the museum and of CBS, spoke of his 40-year association with Rockefeller in the running of the life of the museum.

The mood was chummy and Rockefeller was relaxed, so he told the Luce anecdote:

Let me end by telling you about a most interesting evening spent at the end of World War Two following a little dinner here when Henry Luce [who] was a member of the board of trustees...had a concern as to whether really modern art, so called, quote, unquote, was or could be a subversive influence in this country, and this was, well, it's hard to think of it now that way, but I'm going back, this was '45 and we had a dinner, Bill Paley, Jock Whitney, Henry Luce, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. [a professor of art history and first director of the museum] and myself. After dinner, we went around the gallery. The museum was closed and Alfred gave one of the most fascinating, interesting, perceptive philosophical discussions which he and Henry carried on. The rest of us observed and supported Alfred, but at the end of that evening, Henry was totally reassured as to the vitality of a free society and that rather than being subversive, modern art in all of its forms was the only true area in which freedom still existed uninhibited and that it was the greatest force for the future of America that we could have.

It is an anecdote that defines the role of the artist as one of political impotence.

When I went upstairs after Rockefeller departed with his "Good to see yous" and "Isn't the museum getting just terrific and marvelous?" even Picasso's Guernica seemed literally the castrated bull put out to pasture. They had done it again. When you hang out with Rockefeller, you know that there is a they and it's not a radical's paranoid fantasy. This man who chipped off the Rivera mural can somehow emerge not as a Brezhnev, bullying sensitive artists, but as what he calls himself--an "avant-garde collector." And the utter gumption of the man is epitomized by the fact that he thinks he did Rivera a favor by instructing him about the taming of his "destructive" or "subversive" emotions. It is in this same spirit that Rockefeller discusses the youth rebellions of the Sixties: "those times of emotion that we have to get behind us."

What Rockefeller wants from his art is what he wants from his politics. He doesn't want the rest of us to get "emotional," because to be emotional would mean to be pissed off at the Rockefellers. Get it? Anger, hate, emotion are expressed or contained in one corner of a museum. If you can accept that, baby, then make your funny-looking beds or weird constructions, or drip paint all over the fucking canvas; he couldn't care less.

It's only when the finger of the artist points at the sources of power in this country that he reacts. Do that and you're being rude, adolescent, simplistic, fanatical and, worst of all, emotional. People of real power are never emotional; they don't have to be, because they can just administer. If you have power and can just administer, then emotion is wasteful.

•

Rockefeller's influence over the arts now extends into the worlds of symphonies, ballets, operas and individual fellowships. This is done through the vehicle of a lifelong friend, Nancy Hanks, who has been in his employ virtually throughout her adult life. She is now on the Government payroll as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Do you know what that means? It means that you are in your loft somewhere and there's no money for going out for tacos anymore and you're about to give up on the whole bit--and how do you know you can paint or write, anyway, and who says you're special and why don't you get a real job, like, in the post office and forget this art stuff? Right? And just at that moment, an old professor of yours hears that you're going nuts and says, "I'll tell you what. I'll write a letter and maybe, just maybe you'll get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts." And do you know what that means? Why, to begin with, you get a cabin somewhere in the country so you can get your head together and create. Your kid goes to a private school and isn't beaten up for a while and you take your love out to the best French restaurants. And you have a year to screw around and create, and you want to really know what? You don't have to produce a goddamn thing. They don't even want you to produce something, because then they have to edit it, print it or hang it, and that causes problems for them. All they really want you to do is acquiesce (know the word: Adapt with grace and the world's your oyster).

And Nancy, by virtue of her association with Rockefeller, is the lady in this country who can give you so much money that you can hardly handle it. And you want to know what's even more terrific? It's called a fellowship, and therefore a good chunk of it is tax-free.

Art has its place, all right, and Nancy has worked out a scheme to make sure it doesn't become a public issue. For those interested in the subject, I would recommend a reading of The Performing Arts--the Rockefeller-panel reports on the future of theater, dance and music in America, which Nancy told me contain ten-year plans already implemented to prevent the socialization of American art. What she means is keeping the power over ballet, opera, Lincoln Center, museums, etc., in the hands of the same people who form the boards of directors of the largest corporations--yet getting the public, you and me, through tax dollars, to pay for it. (In 1975, the National Endowment for the Arts received over $74,000,000 of the taxpayers' money and only 17,500.000 from private contributors.) Nancy told me that the Rockefeller art plan has already succeeded. It involves matching Government funds to tax-deductible corporate gifts and leaves power over the distribution of those funds in private (read corporate) hands. If it had not already succeeded, we might now have things like the BBC or serious arguments about what ought to be shown on friend Paley's CBS.

The Hanks-Rockefeller relationship is typical of a whole series of such relationships that he has had with women. They all involve strong personal as well as political ties, with the emphasis, as always, on loyalty to him. The women generally start out as idealistic volunteers in some Rockefeller-related project and end up as lifelong functionaries, as well as members, of his inner clan. Joan Braden is the closest of such associates.

•

Joan Braden met Rockefeller in 1942, when she was blushing and beautiful and eager to help powerful men help the world. The idea that it might involve a contradiction has only recently entered her head. But back then, in the Forties, when the Rockefellers owned a nice chunk of Latin America, Joan actually believed that her boss, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin-American affairs, was on the side of the peasants of Latin America.

Where do such ideas come from? Joan is a very intelligent and capable person. But who can believe that the Rockefellers, who hire people for a nickel an hour, also want to help them? The intriguing thing is that the Rockefellers themselves believe it. They were raised to believe it and an army of scholars was hired to provide them with the data saying it's true. So what's an impressionable young girl to do? Rockefeller mesmerized her with what are called facts and he told her of his best intentions. And he does have the best intentions. You remember you can't just take, you have to make them want to give it to you. So Rockefeller learned Spanish. He can say "Hi ya, fella" in five languages. He'll do or say anything to make it look like it really all does come together in the end.

Well, Joan--as often happens with unmarried women close to Rockefeller--found a husband who was also in Rocky's camp, and that was Tom Braden, who, two years after their marriage in 1948, became an official of the CIA. Now, let's not get paranoid--just conspiratorial or cynical. The CIA has never been a manifestation of right-wing hysteria--it has always been a Yale-Dartmouth Harvard show. It is the old-boy network par excellence and Rockefeller has been as close to the CIA as any other man in America; and if that is not public knowledge, it only attests to the effectiveness of his press staff. Tom Braden has been one of the most significant public apologists for the evil (and I'm sorry, but trying to bump off Castro is evil) that the CIA has committed. Joan was the one who brought Rockefeller over to the CIA in 1954.

Last May, I was in the Rockefeller family archives in Rockefeller Center and I found a letter that said that Rockefeller was invited to CIA headquarters to give a talk. Guess who sent the invitation? Joan Braden.

Tom has described in some detail his work for the CIA. He was a division chief in charge of dealing with the cultural organizations and foundations that were fronts for the agency. When our exposure in Ramparts of some of these fronts caused a major flap, Braden wrote an article in The Saturday Evening Post titled "I'm Glad the CIA Is 'Immoral.'" He described funneling sums of money through the labor movement. As an illustration: "It was my idea to give the $15,000 to Irving Brown [of the American Federation of Labor]." Brown has worked directly under a fellow named Lane Kirkland, who is George Meany's number-two man at the A.F.L.-G.I.O. and also a close associate of Rockefeller's. Kirkland now serves on Rockefeller's Commission on Critical Choices. He told me that he had full knowledge of all CIA monies tunneled through the A.F.L. and that they were all spent under his supervision. And he told me this in an interview held during the very weeks last May when he was serving as a member of the commission that was supposed to be looking into abuses of the CIA's power. The farce of that investigation was obvious. All Rockefeller had to do was sit around with his buddies Kirkland and Braden and Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, and talk about what they knew. Or, more to the point, how much they were then forced to reveal.

Since the focus of their inquiry was supposed to be on the CIA's interference in domestic American life, the Rockefeller-Braden relationship has some interesting ramifications. For instance, we know that these gentlemen share a profound enthusiasm for cultural institutions.

Joan described how she and Rockefeller and Tom all got together. "[Nelson] actually got Tom to come down to the Museum of Modern Art, but Tom really worked less directly for him than I did. He worked for the board of trustees of the museum. He never worked, as I did, directly for Nelson. I met Tom through him."

There seems to be no limit to Moma's uses, particularly when we refer to Braden's Saturday Evening Post description of what he was doing with other cultural institutions between 1950 and 1954 in his CIA role:

I remember the enormous joy I got when the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U. S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have bought with a hundred speeches. And then there was Encounter, the magazine published in England....Money for both the orchestra's tour and the magazine's publication came from the CIA and few outside the CIA knew about it. We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Another agent became an editor of Encounter. The agents could not only propose anti-Communist programs to the official leaders of the organizations but they could also suggest ways and means to solve the inevitable budgetary problems. Why not see if the needed money could be obtained from "American foundations"? As the agents knew, the CIA-financed foundations were quite generous when it came to the national interest.

Now, of course, Rockefeller also knows a great deal about foundations and solving budgetary problems and one of the revelations about his generous gifts to friends concerned a loan he made to set Tom up with an Oceanside, California, newspaper. It would seem that the Rockefeller Commission should have begun its inquiry by investigating the Rockefeller-Braden relationship.

The connection gets so intricate that there are too many bodies in too many closets to keep up with. But let's focus on two. At the very time Tom was running those CIA programs, wife Joan was running quite a few things for Rockefeller--particularly the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC) programs in Venezuela and Brazil. It would be naive to think that Joan would not want to coordinate such programs with the agency and that letter in the Rockefeller archives indicated a very informal working relationship between Joan and Rockefeller. At the meeting Joan set up, there were eight days of intensive analysis of the covert activities of the CIA throughout the world. All sessions took place in the auditorium of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

The first were August 4--7, 1953, and for those who are sticklers for details of this sort, the secret manual said that they met from 0900 to 1200 hours each day. The second group of meetings that Rockefeller addressed took place November 3--6, 1953. The whole affair was treated with great cloak-and-dagger secrecy, as the following excerpt from the official instructions indicates:

This training course as a whole is classified Secret. You are cautioned to guard your conversation going to and from the auditorium. Since passes are not shown upon entering the chartered Capital Transit buses, anyone may be riding with you and overhearing your remarks. You are also cautioned not to drop any classified papers on the floor of the auditorium.

Well, somebody must have dropped one of those papers and, as a result, I know that Rockefeller held forth on the role of the CIA in a changing economic world. He was then Undersecretary of Health, Education and Welfare, as well as the chairman and president of the board of IBEC and president of the American International Association for Economic and Social Development. But it really doesn't matter which hat Rockefeller has on at any given moment. He wears so many and it is his firmest philosophical belief that there could never be any conflict of interest in anything he does or with which he is concerned.

If IBEC is in Venezuela and Brazil, and if Standard Oil is also in those countries, and if the CIA is there as well, then shouldn't they coordinate their activities? Of course, it will all come out right for the Rockefellers and for the country. It's a thick-as-thieves world he moves in and the cast of characters that assists him is fairly unchanging. His good friends Dillon and Kirkland were on the most recent CIA inquiry committee, just as, when Rockefeller was watching the CIA as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, he had good friends Johnny Foster (formerly in charge of research for the Defense Department and now a V.P. of TRW Inc.) and Edward Teller (father of the H-bomb) to help him out. If they didn't get enough time to chat at committee sessions, they could always meet at the Commission on Critical Choices; and if that weren't enough, there were those dinners.

For instance, right smack in the midst of the CIA investigation, Joan sneaked in a secret dinner to show Helms a little support. Helms was the guy responsible for a lot of the CIA activity that Rockefeller was then supposed to be investigating. He was hurting no matter how much Rocky tried to protect him. You may recall his flipping out at CBS reporter Daniel Schorr, calling him "killer Schorr" and what the papers the next day referred to as a "derogatory sexual expletive." Well, in the interest of historical accuracy, let me report that what I heard him say was "you cocksucker." They had to take Helms into another room to get composed.

So one can understand Joan's little private dinner of support. Only word of what was said there somehow leaked out onto the front page of The Washington Post and it was shocking, because the story had Robert McNamara, the head of the World Bank, offering a toast to Helms and saying, No matter what you did, I'm behind you. Which could be taken to mean condoning all sorts of violations of the laws of the land and old-fashioned decency as well. I asked Joan for her version of the dinner and was amazed to find out that her close friend Kissinger (they have a private lunch once a week when he's in town) was there, as well as Senator John Glenn, whose name had not appeared in the Post story. Joan conceded to me that the toast had been made but that the Post had gotten it wrong:

Scheer: Was the toast at this party made by McNamara?

Joan: They were made by McNamara, Averell [Harriman] and Stuart Symington.

Scheer: But it was McNamara who was supposed to have said, "I don't care what you did, but I support it."

Joan: The only reason I don't want to talk about that is that I didn't at the time--it was wrongly reported...I think it's wrong when you have people for dinner to talk about it. I never gave the guest list--it's funny the way it happened, the way the story got out.

Scheer: But it's part of history now, so why not set it straight?

Joan: Well, I will--I tell you, as a matter of fact, because I think Bob [McNamara] had said, in fact, simply that Dick Helms did not act without the approval of the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense...his point was that whatever Dick Helms did was in the context of the decision by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense....Basically, Bob McNamara is an unemotional man not given to this sort of thing, but this evening this guy was under attack, and they didn't come for that, but once here and realizing whatever you may think of Dick Helms or whatever he may have done, his own personal struggle over the last two years--being called back five, six times....I had dinner with him and played bridge the night before he yelled at Daniel Schorr....

Which is a cozy enough understanding, but it obscures some basic points. Helms goes back to the Allen Dulles days at the CIA--he, more than anyone around, literally knows where the bodies are buried, and he is still the Ambassador to Iran, whose leader, the shah, was reinstalled in power by the CIA. This gathering of the Braden clan to give support to Helms, when Joan's close buddy Rockefeller is supposed to be trying to get information out of him, is quite suspect. But this is a club that makes its own rules.

One little footnote as to why hubby Tom left the CIA: Joan told me that it was not a matter of political disagreement with what it was doing but rather that it didn't pay enough: "If you have no money and your wife insists on having ninety million children, then you have to do something to make more money." What Braden did was have Rockefeller set him up in the newspaper-publishing venture. Helms stayed on, not being one of the direct beneficiaries of die Rockefeller largess, at least as far as we know. But they are close friends, and in the midst of that investigation, there was yet another dinner with Helms, only this one was thrown by David Rockefeller at the Pocantico Hills estate. The occasion was the departure of the shah of Iran; it was the last night of his May trip to this country.

At a somewhat less elaborate dinner, which he bought for me at Sans Souci, Morrow described that night with the shah and Helms. We were a bit rushed, because Morrow had to stay up late to do the final edit on the CIA report. In fact, as we left his office. I jokingly offered to help with die editing, given my experience from the old Ramparts days. In response, he held up one of the many brown-paper bags around his desk that had the word BURN printed on it in big red letters.

He conceded that a great deal of thought goes into the selection of such a dinner list, and in this case it included David as host, Nelson, Dillon, the shah of Iran, Helms and Mrs. W. Vincent Astor. The discussion was serious and to the point. When it was completed, the shah took a small plane down to J.F.K. for his big flight home.

The point about dinners of this sort is not that any particular one can be singled out as the center of a particular conspiracy but rather that they are the normal way of doing business in this country. Rockefeller attends such a dinner virtually every night. There was one the night before with Kissinger and the chief of state of Senegal, and one a few days later with James Cannon, who runs die Domestic Council, George Woods, who used to run the World Bank, and Robert McNamara, who now does.

It is so much the norm of this club, and certain individuals are so securely members, that it simply did not occur to Rockefeller that for all he had learned about the activities of the CIA (or, more accurately, had known about all along), he should not necessarily be meeting socially with Helms a few days before a report was due on him.

But what of the other ironies of such a gathering? The Rockefeller holdings in oil companies are substantial and are presumably in conflict with the shah. Also, there was Dillon, of the big investment-banking interests, with holdings relating to Iran, and then, finally, Rockefeller in his other hat as Vice-President, representing all of us gasoline consumers. But it has always been this way. The dinners merely reflect and cement die understandings among the powerful. The interests of the average citizen are assumed to be represented by the good intentions and public spirit of the gathered elite. And there is no real difference between this style of operation and the official mechanism of Government with the exception that with the latter, a million lower-level bureaucrats are on the fringes of the act to provide some democratic cover. They do make lots of little decisions, but in terms of planning the big shifts of policy--like, do we have a cold war or detente? or how best to preserve the power of the multinational corporations--it's the business of the inner club, and Rockefeller provides the best illustration of that.

•

There is no question but that in terms of the current planning within the Executive branch of Government, Gerald Ford is a bystander--a small-town politician--and that Rockefeller's old club is running things. It is certainly spinning the big visions about where things should go in this country over the next 40 years and making decisions that will very dramatically affect our world. And we are not, in any sense, participating in those decisions.

Rockefeller believes that American corporate capitalism is at a point of crisis in the world, and he is quite frank in stating that the working out of concrete plans for the survival of that system is the main contribution that he must make in what remains of his life. He believes that the system with which his family is connected is endangered and he speaks about it in such terms. He told me:

A lot of people don't want to be bothered or upset or disturbed by these awful things that are happening abroad, but more and more they are coming to realize that this is the fact, and I happen to be a great believer in Darwin's concept of the survival of the fittest, those who can adapt to their environment. OK, that's the way I feel [and then he pulls you closer with those almost whispered tones of the Godfather]. This is a very exciting, open period, and if we are as smart and intelligent as I think we are as a nation, we'll work these things out, and if we get rid of the emotional things, I mean get them behind us...our emotional traumas are, I think, going to pass and we'll be able to settle down and sort this stuff out and approach it intelligently. I'm very optimistic about the future, I'm glad to see you. You really understand me.

By "awful things," he means poorer people in the world wanting a share of the pie; by "emotional issues," he means all of the resistance from Vietnam to Attica that people put up to his rule; and by being glad to see me, he means he thinks he's got me conned because I kept my mouth shut and nodded appreciatively every few minutes. But the real question in all of this Darwinian analysis is, Whose survival are we talking about--Exxon's and the Rockefeller family's? Isn't it about time that the idea that Rockefeller's interests and those of die average taxpayer are synonymous should appear ludicrous to us? How long can he get away with the notion that he is our neutral problem solver? Evidently, for a while yet.

When Rockefeller gave up the New York governorship, it was ostensibly to devote full time to the Commission on Critical Choices, which was basically a gathering of his buddies such as Herman Kahn, George Woods, Jim Cannon and Nancy Kissinger. He put up the first 31,000,000 and Laurance Rockefeller the second. They tried one session of elites under 40 to get some youth into the act and it turned out to be a disaster--"too unstructured," said Rockefeller.

The purpose of the Critical Choices sessions was for a group of Rockefeller's choosing to figure out the long-run plans for the rest of us. The group includes old friends like Nancy Hanks, Robert Anderson, chairman of Atlantic Richfield Company, John Knowles, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Clare Boothe Luce, Daniel Moynihan, Paley and Bess Myersen. This private commission also involved Jerry Ford (as Vice-President), Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and the majority and minority leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress.

Remember, it was Rockefeller who said, "I'm a great believer in planning; economic, social, political, military, world planning." Does the question of class enter into this at all? "Not to me," he said. Which is awfully convenient if you happen to occupy the highest position of economic class power. It also allows the various commissions to proceed from the assumption that what's good for the Rockefellers, who are financing them, is also good for the nation. Therefore, they can serve their boss and the people as well. This becomes a more serious question when we realize that these studies are not meant to gather dust on library shelves.

Concretely, we do have Kissinger, who directs our National Security Council and our State Department, and his training for those positions was primarily in the Rockefeller employ. Rocky had been his boss for about 15 years. And Nancy is still in die Rockefeller employ. She has been in charge of the foreign-policy studies of the Commission on Critical Choices, which has systematically studied the prospects for and requirements of U. S. policy throughout the world. That is to say that while Henry is taking care of the day-to-day affairs of foreign policy, Rockefeller has wife Nancy charting out the long-range plans for different sections of the world (the ménages a trois of Rockefeller are endless).

As an illustration of the complementary roles of Nancy and Henry Kissinger, take Cuban policy and the matter of Nancy's sending James D. Theberge, now Ambassador to Nicaragua, down to Havana to interview Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, the Cuban vice-premier, on the prospects for improved Cuban-American relations. It was a detailed exploration of what conditions would have to be met in order to extend the "détente" with Russia to Cuba. As it turned out, Rodriguez was driving a hard bargain. He said that the U. S. had no right to impose an embargo on Cuba and that it must be lifted before there could be future talks. Although Theberge said that he had come as a private citizen, it was known to all that the wife of the Secretary of State, who also happened to be an employee of the Vice-President, had sent him. It was a bargaining session and a typical Nelson-Henry show. Again, they were speaking for us. It was long-range planning being done for the U. S. Government outside its normal channels. It was not at all under the purview of ordinary citizens. And again, this is not the exception but the rule.

On our flight to Virginia, the subject of Cuba and Castro came up. Rockefeller told me all about this unofficial contact:

Castro's a pretty smart guy. You've got to hand it to him; he's lasted. The Soviets have helped him, but he's lasted and he's shown the kind of flexibility that it takes to move with an evolving situation. As part of our work on Critical Choices, we sent a fellow down there to interview his minister of foreign affairs--it's under Nancy Kissinger...you ought to read this thing, because it's goddamn interesting, and this guy's talking to Castro, I mean the minister of foreign affairs. It's a transcript and he says, look, sure we want open trade relations, but don't kid yourself. We are part of the Communist bloc, we're going to stay there and die bloc's going to get bigger and the biggest mistake you ever made was allowing our government to exist. He just lays it, he just tells it like it is...this is a very open, frank--I read it with fascination....Remind Hughie that we ought to get you a copy of this thing.

But even with Hughie Morrow and Rockefeller trying to get me the document, it took three weeks, because Nancy and Diamond didn't want me to have it. The main reason for their reluctance was that it illustrates how Rockefeller and Nancy were making American foreign policy, even though the electorate had not authorized them to do so. Which is really how it works. You and I don't send scholars to foreign countries to explore the possibilities of détente. But Rockefeller and his staff have been doing just that for 40 years.

More than any other single source, Rockefeller's various commissions have been feeding the basic data and training the key personnel for our foreign policy. But what is less noticed is that he has a Kissinger on the domestic side by the name of Cannon who came into the Ford Administration from Critical Choices.

The Executive branch of the Government is divided into two funnels that basically feed the President all the data on the choices he must make. Those members of the Cabinet who deal with defense meet with the National Security Council. Those concerned with all phases of domestic policy go through the Domestic Council. Just as Kissinger is central to the functioning of the NSC, Cannon is the executive director of the Domestic Council.

Rockefeller is, by virtue of being Vice-President, a vice-chairman of the Domestic Council; but in this case, Ford asked Rockefeller to take charge of the Domestic Council and, in particular, to "direct the staff." The measure of his power was his selection of his trusted cronies to run this body. As Richard Dunham, who is now a deputy director of the Domestic Council, explained it: "It's essentially the staffing system, coordinating system for domestic items, matters, development of policy for Presidential determination and all the related decisions ranging from day-today decisions relating to more substantial questions, relating to fundamental or longer-range policies, but in the domestic area."

Rocky had become V.P. in mid-December, but it wasn't until Mardi that he got Cannon into his job. One of his predecessors on the Domestic Council had been John Ehrlichman. The Washington Star asked Cannon: "When John Ehrlichman had the job you have now, the council was used as a way for the White House to keep its finger in everything that was going on. Is that still the case?"

Cannon's answer was typical Ehrlichmanese: "Our purpose is to develop a very good staff system which manages a systematic determination of what is going on in all departments...to bring matters together on one memo to the President so that the President can focus on the central issues and evaluate the argument for and against each proposal."

But Ehrlichman was working for Nixon, not Agnew. And there's poor Jerry Ford playing at being President, while Rockefeller's man feeds him memos about die vital choices that have already been worked out by Rockefeller's Commission on Critical Choices, for which Cannon worked. Any sharp executive secretary knows that the power to define the choices in the last and only memo to reach the boss is the power to make the decision.

How close is Cannon to Rockefeller?

Dunham said, "He's close. He has worked on both the Government side, as a go-between for the governor in New York and the Federal Government, and in the private payroll as a member of the staff of the Critical Choices commission. In that sense, they are close."

Dunham did not work for the Critical Choices commission, but his relation to Rocky is no less close. "We have worked together, well, it's now been over fourteen years. I've been at many social occasions with him." I asked Dunham if either he or Cannon were permitted to call Rockefeller by his first name and he said no, "The only ones who do are very close to him." It is possible for one to work closely for 14 years with Rockefeller and still not be close in a personal sense. I was told by several confidants that only five people call him Nelson: Morrow, Woods, Kissinger, Oscar Ruebhausen, a prominent New York corporate attorney, and Bill Ronan. Family-retainer types say Mr. Nelson, because they are around more than one of the brothers. So it's Mr. David, etc. Longtime associates, except for the inside five, call him Governor. Recent arrivals call him Mr. Vice-President. Cannon and Dunham aren't as important as Henry, so it's Governor to them. But they are loyal.

When one turns to look at what the Critical Choices commission does, it is clear that it feeds its recommendations directly into our Government's policies. Recently, for instance, President Ford ordered the chairmen of die Federal regulatory agencies to lay off the corporations. This had been a core idea of Rocky's commission.

The press was wrong to dismiss Critical Choices as just a platform for a Rockefeller candidacy. Rockefeller takes panels seriously and there is a direct connection between what was discussed at Critical Choices and the decisions that are currently being made by the U. S. Government. Rockefeller had the money to buy the best brains in the country and bring them in for interminable meetings to hammer out a consensus for the rest of us. It's not the only private input into the Executive branch, but there is no doubt of its strong influence.

As V.P., Ford was invited to attend Critical Choices sessions--and an examination of the proceedings indicates they pursued one basic goal: developing a new politics in this country to usher in the new era of corporate operation. It is Rockefeller's view that we have gone too far with social legislation, that the corporations, his and others, are hamstrung and that a new strategy has to be implemented that will "unfetter" the corporations.

It is now Ford's view that the Government should give "maximum freedom to private enterprise." Speaking of Ford's recent curb on Government regulatory agencies, The New York Times said that "in effect, the President called for a reversal of the nearly century-long trend toward Federal supervision of key industries and national resources aimed at regulating competition and representing consumer interests."

As Rockefeller told me, the starting point is the greatness of the multinational corporations. "The multinationals, in my opinion, have got to be one of the great contributions of our system...but, hell, they've got the greatest system for taking technology, know-how management, capital to any part of the world overnight; it's the most unbelievable program for diffusing knowledge."

Critics of the multinationals point out that they are extremely effective in exploiting cheap labor, ripping off resources and generally making mockery of social legislation. Even Kirkland, who has been Rockefeller's token labor representative on the Critical Choices commission, has broken with him on this, because the top labor bureaucracy knows that the demands won by the unions (not to mention corporate tax reform, environmental controls, etc.) are being vitiated by companies' simply moving their production operations abroad and playing off one country against another. But Rockefeller the Godfather says Kirkland should not worry:

Rockefeller: Well, Lane's worried about exporting jobs.

Scheer: But he's saying that those corporations are escaping the progressive legislation.

Rockefeller: Well, what he doesn't say is that the American people want all the social legislation, they want ecology, they want safety, they want all this stuff, but they want cheap goods, too.

Scheer: But in the critical choices for Americans, are we now dealing with critical choices for different Americans--say, labor unions as opposed to multinational corporations? Are there different interests in America now that didn't surface before?

Rockefeller: There seem to be, but in reality they are inseparable.

Scheer: They're inseparable?

Rockefeller: I don't think you can talk about the interests of one group without talking about the interests of the other--they see themselves in conflict, but they are part of a web or warp and it starts to unravel the rest. Now, how the balance is maintained between those sections is very important.

And Mr. Nelson has hit it right on the head. How the balance is maintained determines who gets screwed and who does the screwing. Or, if you like his image of the web, the question is who's going to be the big spider weaving it. But the image I like best is still that of a family--a world family built snugly around the worldwide corporate interests of the Rockefeller family--a Protestant famiglia far more ominous than any old-fashioned Italian Mafia.

The real power in this country is not in the gambling casinos of Reno or in the Presidency. Indeed, it doesn't even matter very much whether Rockefeller gets to be President--that's an ego trip. He doesn't need it. He already has the power and he should learn from the errors of the Mafia chieftains who got too much of a hankering for public recognition. If he would only hold back more and let Jerry Ford front for him a little more often, we could all go on believing that America is actually ruled by Midwestern Congressmen. But Rockefeller is moving too fast, and in a time of economic recession, to have its richest and most powerful man pretend to be suffering equally with the rest of us and to be our neutral problem solver is so absurd that it is becoming obvious to the ruled.

•

As the plane began its descent, the Secret Servicemen cut out their poker game, Rockefeller's family collected their personal items for the short trek to the Pocantico Hills estate and I pursued my interview with Rocky up to the last moment.

We finally landed in Westchester and Rockefeller and Happy, Morrow and I and the Secret Servicemen struggled through the aisle. Happy for the last time said, "So good to see you."

Rockefeller said, "He doesn't miss anything."

Morrow said, "He does his homework, Nelson."

Rockefeller said finally, "Take care, my friend. I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm glad to see you. You really understand me."