The Franklin Roosevelt Era

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), Harvard 1903, was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University from 1917 to 1923, during the period when Harvard was establishing its School of Public Health. He was a member of the New York State Legislature, 1911-13; Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1913-20; Governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, and President of the United States from 1933 to 1945. Howard S. Cullman was treasurer of his capaigns for governor.

"While it is still largely unknown, William J. Donovan (1883–1959) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt formed a close relationship during their time at the law school together. At the time, Donovan was a star of the Columbia football team and simultaneously attended both the college (BA 1905) and law school (LLD 1907). Roosevelt, an avid sports fan, became even more admiring of Donovan after he won the Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal and Medal of Honor as a battalion commander in the "Fighting 69th" Regiment in World War I. Promoted regimental commander, Donovan led his unit in the New York City victory parade in 1919. In considerable secret, Roosevelt—then assistant secretary of the navy—made Donovan a member of the Office of Naval Intelligence after Donovan returned from Europe. Roosevelt sent Donovan to Siberia in 1920 to observe and report on anti-Bolshevik operations and Japanese activities. This began Donovan's career as a presidential intelligence agent. Despite being members of different parties (as Republican candidate, Donovan ran unsuccessfully for governor of New York against Herbert Lehman in 1932) and Donovan's outspoken opposition to the New Deal, the two men remained close friends. For example, Donovan was one of a small number of guests at FDR's birthday party in Warm Springs, Georgia, in early 1933.... Officially, Donovan was a Wall Street lawyer deeply involved in Republican party politics in the 1920s and 1930s. But he led a secret, double life. FDR sent Donovan to Ethiopia in 1935–36, to Spain during the Civil War, to Britain in 1940 and to a large swathe of Europe and the Middle East in 1941 to observe events and report back to the president.... These missions led to Donovan's appointment as civilian coordinator of information (COI) in 1941, followed by his recall to active duty as a colonel and appointment to head the military Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942." In 1947, President Truman created the CIA, which was "built largely on the framework of the OSS and staffed overwhelmingly by COI and OSS veterans. Anticipating a Republican presidential victory in 1948, then in 1952, Donovan campaigned quietly but intensively to head the CIA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was gravely disappointed by Eisenhower's refusal to do so. Instead, Donovan was appointed ambassador to Thailand, where he carried activities related to containing the expansion of the PRC. Poor health forced him to resign, and he died shortly afterwards. But, for better or worse, his legacy as the founding figure of the CIA has had enormous influence over the conduct of U.S. foreign and national-security policy over the past fifty years. His statue in the main entrance to the CIA building attests to his perpetual presence as the guiding spirit of the organization." (William J. Donovan (1883-1959). By Brian Sullivan. C250 Celebrates Your Columbians.) Donovan was a close personal friend of Albert and Mary Lasker, and was on the Board of Directors of the Lasker Foundation in the 1950s.

FDR's cousin, George Emlen Roosevelt, was a director of the Guaranty Trust from 1929 until 1959. George Emlen Roosevelt did fundraising for the United Hospital fund in 1919. In 1928, he was a director of International Telephone & Telegraph, which was subsequently used to funnel money to Adolph Hitler. He was involved in the creation of New York University's new health center, along with Thomas J. Watson Sr., whose International Business Machines were indispensable to the Nazi's recordkeeping during the Holocaust.

The National Foundation and the Salk Institute

FDR established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1937, with his former business partner, Basil O'Connor, as its president. Its first trustees were Cornelius N. Bliss [Jr.], John S. Burke, Carle C. Conway, James V. Forrestal, S. Parker Gilbert, W. Averell Harriman, Jeremiah Milbank, Keith Morgan, Thomas E. Murray Jr., Basil O'Connor, Edward Stettinius Jr., Thomas J. Watson, and Clarence Woolley, of New York; George E. Allen, Commissioner of the District of Columbia; Robert V. Fleming of Washington; James F. Bell of Minneapolis; William L. Clayton of Houston; Robert H. Colley of Philadelphia; Harvey C. Couch of Pine Bluff, Ark.; Walter J. Cummings, Marshall Field and Walter P. Murphy of Chicago; Fred J. Fisher of Detroit, Edsel B. Ford of Dearborn, Mich.; Elton Hoyt 2d of Cleveland; William F. Humphrey of San Francisco; John R. Macomber of Boston; Leighton McCarthy of Toronto; Robert E. McMath of Bethlehem, Penn.; Carroll B. Merriam of Topeka; Charles E. Perkins [Jr.] of Santa Barbara, Cal. [a classmate of FDR]; George Rand of Buffalo, Robert W. Woodruff of Atlanta, and S. Clay Williams of Winston Salem. (To Lead Paralysis Drive. New York Times, Nov. 25, 1937.)

The National Foundation provided most of the funding for Jonas Salk's work on his polio vaccine. James S. Adams of Lazard Freres and the American Cancer Society was involved in fundraising for the National Foundation in 1939. A number of officials of the National Foundation became trustees of the Salk Institute after it was set up in 1963: Basil O'Connor, President of the National Foundation; Coy C. Eklund, a National Foundation Trustee; Melvin A. Glasser, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Foundation; Harry E. Green, a member of the Chicago and Cook County Chapters of the National Foundation; and Joseph F. Nee, Senior Vice President of the National Foundation.

Newly elected directors of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, located at the famous address of 120 Broadway in New York, included Bayard F. Pope, who later became a director of Benson & Hedges in 1953, which then merged with Philip Morris. (Aid Drive on Paralysis. New York Times, Jun. 12, 1943.)

The National Cancer Institute

"...Congressman Maury Maverick introduced, on April 29, 1937, bill HR 6767, 'to promote research in the cause, prevention, and methods of diagnosis and treatment of cancer, to establish a National Cancer Center in the Public Health Service, and for other purposes.' In drafting the bill, which ultimately placed the proposed National Cancer Center within the Public Service, Congressman Maverick received legal advice from the Public Health Service and expert medical guidance from Dr. Dudley Jackson, of San Antonio, Texas. After reconciling competing views regarding its mission and structure, the National Cancer Act, PL. 244 with an annual budget of $700,000, was passed by a joint committee of Congress on July 23, 1937, and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 5 of the same year. The first Director of the new institute, who was to report directly to the U.S. Surgeon General, was Carl Voegtlin, head of Pharmacology at the Public Health Service. Voegtlin merged his group with researchers at the Office of Cancer Investigations of Harvard University to establish the first core of researchers at the NCI, and issued the first thirteen fellowship grants." (The War on Cancer: An Anatomy of Failure, a Blueprint for the Future. By Guy B. Faguet. Springer 2005.) The Office of Cancer Investigations was under Dr. Joseph W. Schereschewsky, a crony of former President William H. Taft, Skull & Bones 1878.

Sen. Royal S. Copeland introduced the legislation in the U.S. Senate. (Senate Votes For $1,450,000 Cancer Center. Washington Post, Jul. 23, 1937.) Copeland was a former professor at the University of Michigan, and was the president of the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1908. He proclaimed at their convention in Chicago that "Outdoor air is the thing people need," and that "The body will care for all the germs and diseases. If the people will stop taking something every time they feel sick, in five years they will be sleeping on porches winter and summer, enjoying good health." (Urges Outdoor Air For Cure of Ills, Instead of Drugs. Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1908 p. 8.) The president of the Chicago Homeopathic Medical Society in 1908, Dr. C. Gurnee Fellows, was Mary Woodard Lasker's father's cousin, and her parents had been married at his house. Mrs. Copeland was a patroness of the Flower Homeopathic Hospital in New York City, along with Mrs. Webster B. Todd, the mother of former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

Original members of the National Advisory Cancer Council of the National Cancer Institute, appointed by Surgeon General Thomas Parran in 1937: James Ewing, Director of Memorial Hospital; Dr. Francis C. Wood, Director of the Crocker Institute of Cancer Research at Columbia University; Harvard University President James B. Conant; Dr. Arthur H. Compton of the University of Chicago; C.C. Little, Managing Director of the American Society for the Control of Cancer; and Dr. Ludvig Hektoen of Chicago. In 1938, Dr. James B. Murphy of the Rockefeller Institute and Dr. Mont R. Reid replaced Ewing and Wood. (Named to Cancer Council. New York Times, Dec. 11, 1938, p. 30.) Ewing, Hektoen, Little, Murphy, Parran, and Wood were all affiliated with the American Society for the Control of Cancer, the predecessor of the American Cancer Society. Francis Carter Wood had proclaimed in 1916 that 'it had now been established almost beyond question that cancer was not a germ disease nor in any way allied to germ diseases,' and Ewing and Little were likewise hostile to the Germ Theory of cancer.

The National Institutes of Health

Rep. Frank Keefe, R-WI

Warren G. Magnuson

Warren Grant Magnuson (1905-1989) was born out of wedlock in Moorhead, Minn., and adopted by William Grant and Emma (Anderson) Magnuson, who ran the Nickleplate bar in Moorhead. "As a boy Magnuson delivered telegrams for Western Union in Moorhead and across the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota, where he became friends with the Stern family, owners of the Dakota National Bank. Bill Stern, fifteen years his senior, became a lifelong friend and adviser." He attended the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State in Fargo, then went west and entered the University of Washington in 1925. He married Eleanor Maddieux, in June 1928. They were divorced in 1934. "Magnuson was recruited into politics while still in law school by A. Scott Bullitt, Washington State's most prominent Democrat, a candidate for governor and a 'wet' in the state's battle over legal prohibition of alcohol." He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1932. "Two years later Magnuson replaced the brilliant, mentally troubled Marion Zioncheck, a college friend, as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives from the state's First Congressional District. He represented the district until 1944, when he was appointed to fill a Senate vacancy from Washington State. He remained a power and a fixture in the Senate until his defeat in 1980." He was a poker-playing buddy of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson" (he was a freshman senator with LBJ on the House Naval Committee). "Magnuson's critics focused on his bachelor ways in private life and on how he earned the means to support this lifestyle. He was a lawyer-lobbyist for Northwest Airlines and the Minneapolis grain company Archer Daniels Midland while a member of Congress, creating conflicts of interest that would not pass muster under later congressional rules." He married Jermaine Peralta, a Seattle widow, in 1964. He was diagnosed with diabetes in 1975 and died of congestive heart failure. (Warren Grant Magnuson. The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 2: 1986-1990. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.) He was admitted the bar of Washington State bar in 1929, and was an attorney with Stern & Schermer, Seattle, 1931-32. (Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.)

Magnuson was Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee in 1956, and his protégé, Kenneth A. Cox, was special counsel for its television inquiry that year. Cox was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission in 1963 to stack the deck for anti-smoker John Banzhaf's so-called Fairness Doctrine ruling of 1967, which forced broadcasters to air anti-smoking propaganda if they carried cigarette ads. Sam Rayburn's nephew was a commissioner since 1952, and his friend Lyndon Johnson was the President who appointed Cox, as well as militant anti-smoker Nicholas Johnson. Magnuson was Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Commerce in 1965, when the Cigarette Advertising and Labeling Act was passed. He asked former New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner, administrator of the Cigarette Advertising Code, "The Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission [Paul Rand Dixon] noted yesterday that the Code does nothing to inform the public of the health hazards associated with cigarette smoking. Do you have any comments to make on that?" Sen. Pearson of Kansas asked about this as well. (Report of Proceedings. Hearing held before Committee on Commerce, S. 559 and S. 547, Bills to Regulate Labeling of Cigarettes, and for Other Purposes. March 30, 1965.)

In 1967, Magnuson received a special citation for "His leadership in sponsoring Federal legislation to protect the public against the harmful effects of cigarette smoking." (American Cancer Society Annual Meeting Highlights. Hill & Knowlton, Oct. 17, 1967.)

Dr. William B. Hutchinson of Seattle was a crony of Sen. Magnuson, and was a member of the Panel of Consultants (Yarborough Committee) for the Mary Lasker-initiated National Cancer Act of 1971, which was intended "to remove the National Cancer Institute from NIH and establish a NASA-like agency charged with conquering cancer in the same way the moon was conquered." And, in 1974, Mary Lasker's biggest campaign donation of $5,000 went to Magnuson. (Cancer Society Ducks Issues, Misuses Clout, Critics Say. By Frank Greve. Miami Herald, Apr. 24, 1978.)

Albert Lasker was Assistant Secretary of the Navy during FDR's administration. His role as a major fundraiser for Roosevelt is briefly mentioned in the 1950 book "Roosevelt and Hopkins," by Robert E. Sherwood. Lasker's crony, Chicago newspaperman and politician Frank Knox was appointed Secretary of the Navy by FDR. In 1942, Lasker liquidated the Lord and Thomas advertising agency, which became Foote, Cone and Belding. His former executive vice president for Chicago, David M. Noyes, became a consultant to the chairman of the War Production Board (1942-44), and eventually the assistant of former Pres. Harry Truman from 1953 to 1972.

Select Committee on Wartime Health and Education

In 1943, Florence Mahoney's stooge Sen. Claude Pepper was made the chairman of the Select Committee on Wartime Health and Education within the Committee on Education and Labor: "It was a pivotal moment in the nation's history, which Florence Mahoney and Mary Lasker perceived. These would be the first congressional hearings ever held to review government-supported research. The women recognized that they could influence the conduct and content of the hearings, thus legitimizing their ideas in a public forum. The hearings would be a springboard for virtually all of their future activities (with the exception of birth control), addressing research on diseases, mental health, and aging.... Pepper sent two subcommittee staff members to New York to review what Lasker was compiling about the economic impact of diseases. In addition, she and Mahoney offered to help line up witnesses who could tell the subcommittee what was in the best interests of the nation" [sic], including Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads of Memorial Hospital (later Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center).... They had told him the sum and substance of what they believed the hearings should accomplish and were confident that he would echo their views. He did."

"Noting one witness' profession as an investment banker, Pepper pointedly asked David M. Heyman, board president of New York City's Public Health Research Institute, if he thought there was anything 'improper' in having the government support private-sector research. It was a 'necessary function of government,' Heyman replied, and would not adversely affect profit-making companies engaged in research." This is contradicted by the historical evidence that the more the government got involved in funding, the more the private sector atrophied. Probably the best description of what the financial interests wanted is the public's money without the public's control. Pepper claimed that they were not "advocating socialized medicine," but Mary W. Lasker shortly began advocating precisely that. Henry S. Simms of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeon's was the parrot of Mary Lasker's health cost claims.

The government's witnesses, including Office of Scientific Research and Development Director Vannevar Bush and NIH Director Dr. RE Dyer, were reluctant to expand the government's role. Pepper pointedly asked the latter, "By the way, who makes up the National Advisory Health Council? Are there any members of the council other than professional men -- any businessmen or people from other research organizations?" At the time, they were largely scientists. In the future, the Council would be packed with Mary Lasker, Florence Mahoney, and their families and friends and fellow travelers and business cronies.

Sen. Claude Pepper

From: Chapter 1. Biomedical Science and the Culture Warp. By Donald S. Fredrickson.

[Donald S. Fredrickson was director of the National Institutes of Health from 1975 to 1981.]

Vannevar Bush wrote in his memoirs that "he had nothing to do with medical research, and did not want to have..." Bush said that the Committee on Medical Research of the OSRD was set up after Roosevelt, "weary of an office full of medical organizations each demanding to set up a medical research committee," ordered that "he wanted this medical show put under Bush and he didn't want to hear another damn thing about it." The CMR was expecting to be demobilized when Roosevelt supposedly wrote a letter to Bush (Nov. 17, 1944) asking how government support for health and science could be continued after the war. "Before turning to the answers and the drama of their development, one should pause to wonder why Franklin Roosevelt had come to write such a letter to Bush. Roosevelt was not hostile to science, but did not possess any discernible science policy. In addition he had just been through his fourth presidential election and was bearing a crushing burden of running a war and planning for peace. Historians have tended to shy away from one possible explanation. In a 1960 biography of Albert Lasker, John Gunther wrote that Mrs. Mary Lasker, just commencing her lifelong advocacy of government support for medical research in 1944, sent a note to FDR requesting the government to consider continuing medical research in peacetime. The letter went to the President through Anna Rosenberg, a member of the War Mobilization Advisory Board who had an office in the East Wing of the White House. The President is said to have then passed it on to Judge Rosenman, who in turn drafted the note to Bush." As to the origin of the letter, Rosenman said that he knew nothing, while Anna Rosenberg replied that "John Gunther's reference... as to how the National Institutes of Health came about is completely correct. I remember clearly this incident because I often thought about how the Institutes grew and became so important." Oscar Cox, an attorney who had worked with Bush in setting up the NDRC and OSRD, may also have been involved.

Bush set up the Bowman Committee, chaired by Isaiah Bowman, president of The Johns Hopkins University and a vice president of the National Academy of Science. Its members included Edwin Land; Warren Weaver of the Rockefeller Foundation (who was one of the first trustees of the Salk Foundation); the director of Bell Laboratories; and the chairmen of Standard Oil of Indiana and Dewey and Almay Chemicals. He also assembled a Committee of Medical Advisors, which included future anti-smoking acitvist Alton Ochsner and James J. Waring, co-founder of the Webb-Waring Lung Institute of Colorado Springs.

Members of the Bowman Committee, et al. There were four committees, one for each question in the letter. (Science - The Endless Frontier, Part 6. The Means to the End. Vannevar Bush, 1945.)

Members of the Bowman Committee: Dr. Isaiah Bowman, chairman, president of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. J.T. Tate, vice chairman, research professor of physics, Univrrsity of Minnesota; Dr. W. Rupert Maclaurin, secretary, professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Oliver E. Buckley, president of Bell Telephone Laboratories; Dr. Walter C. Coffey, president of the University of Minnesota; Dr. Oscar S. Cox, deputy administrator of the Foreign Economic Administration; Col. Bradley Dewey, president of Dewey & Almy Chemical Co.; Dr. Clarence A. Dykstra, provost of the University of California - Los Angeles; Dr. C.P. Haskins, director of Haskins Laboratories; Dr. Edwin H. Land, president and director of research, Polaroid Corporation; Dr. Charles E. MacQuigg, dean of the College of Engineering, Ohio State University; Dr. Harold G. Moulton, president of the Brookings Institution; Rev. J. Hugh O'Donnell, president of the University of Notre Dame; Dr. I.I. Rabi, professor of physics, Columbia University; Dr. Warren Weaver, director for natural sciences, Rockefeller Foundation; Dr. Robert E. Wilson, chairman, Standard Oil Co. of Indiana; Dr. William E. Wrather, director, U.S. Geological Survey.

Members of the Committee of Medical Advisors: Dr. W.W. Palmer, chairman, professor of medicine, Columbia University, and director of medical service of Presbyterian Hospital, NYC; Dr. Homer W. Smith, secretary, director, physiology laboratory, School of Medicine, New York University; Dr. Kenneth B. Turner, assistant secretary, assistant professor of medicine, Columbia University; Dr. W.B. Castle, professor of medicine, Harvard University, and associate director, Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, Boston City Hospital; Dr. Edward A. Doisy, director, department of physiology and biochemistry, St. Louis University School of Medicine; Dr. Ernest Goodpasture, professor of pathology, School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University; Dr. Alton Ochsner, professor of surgery and head and head of the department of surgery at Tulane University; Dr. Linus Pauling, head of the division of chemistry and chemical engineering and director of the chemical laboratories at the California Institute of Technology; Dr. James J. Waring, professor of medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine.

[Committee on Education]: Dr. Henry Allen Moe, chairman, secretary-general of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; Mr. Lawrence K. Frank, secretary; Mr. Henry Chauncey, assistant secretary; Dr. Henry A. Barton, director of the American Institute of Physics; Dr. C. Lalor Burdick, special assistant to the president, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.; Dr. J.B. Conant, president of Harvard University and chairman of the National Defense Research Committee; Dr. Watson Davis, editor and director of Science Service; Dr. R.E. Doherty, president of the Carnegie Institute of Technology; Dr. Paul E. Elicker, executive secretary, National Association of Secondary School Principals; Mr. Farnham P. Griffiths, lawyer, San Francisco; Dr. W.S. Hunter, professor of psychology, Brown University; Dr. T.R. McConnell, dean of the College of Science, Literature and Arts, University of Minnesota; Mr. Walter S. Rogers, director of the Institute of Current World Affairs; Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory; Dr. Hugh S. Taylor, dean of the Graduate School, Princeton University; Dr. E.B. Wilson, professor of vital statistics, Harvard University School of Public Health. [Dr. Edwin B. Wilson of the Harvard School of Public Health was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Tobacco Industry Research Council from 1954 to 1964.]

[Committee on Defense]: Dr. Irvin Stewart, chairman, executive secretary of the Office of Research and Development; Mr. Cleveland Norcross, secretary, executive assistant to the executive secretary of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; Dr. J.P. Baxter III, president of Williams College; Dr. Karl T. Compton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. J.B. Conant, president of Harvard University; Dr. A.N. Richards, vice president of the University of Pennsylvania in charge of Medical Affairs, and chairman of the Committee on Medical Rsearch of the OSRD; Dr. M.A. Tuve, director, applied physics laboratory, Johns Hopkins University; Mr. Carroll L. Wilson, executive assistant to the Director of the OSRD.

The National Mental Health Act

In 1945-46, Sen. Pepper introduced the first National Mental Health Act. "Mahoney made sure that the Cox newspapers ran stories about it and the Miami Daily News editorialized for it. Washington Post publisher Eugene Meyer also took an interest and did the same." Thus, they also inflicted the pestilence of psychiatry upon us. Mary Lasker's role in this bill was concealed from the public at her insistence.

Henry L. Stimson, Skull & Bones 1888

Henry Lewis Stimson (1867-1950) was Secretary of War from 1940 to 1945, and Roosevelt's chief adviser on atomic policy. He was the son of Dr. Lewis A. Stimson, and Rev. Henry A. Stimson (S&B 1865) was an uncle. He married Mabel Wellington White, the daughter of Charles A. White, S&B 1854. Dr. John Rogers (S&B 1887) was a brother-in-law. (Bulletin of Yale University. Obituary Record of Graduates of the Undergraduate Schools Deceased during the Year 1950-1951, pp. 11-12. Dr. Stimson was one of the M.D.s who founded Cornell University Medical College, with financial backing from Oliver H. Payne. Henry L. Stimson was a member of the Central Council of the Charity Organization Society of New York 1901-04, and a vice president 1911-14. J.R. Roosevelt was a vice president.

Mrs. Henry L. Stimson (S&B 1888) was a fund-raiser for the United Hospital Fund in 1919. Guaranty Trust / Central Trust directors/trustees Cornelius N. Bliss [Jr.], Adrian Iselin Jr., J.P. Morgan [Jr.], Percy R. Pyne, George Emlen Roosevelt, James Speyer, and Albert H. Wiggin, and the wives of Speyer and Oliver Harriman, were members of the campaign committee. Other fund raisers included Mrs. C.B. Alexander; M.N. Buckner (S&B 1895); Mrs. Benjamin Brewster (S&B 1882); W.V. Griffin; Mr. & Mrs. Oliver G. Jennings (S&B 1887); Ivy L. Lee; Ogden L. Mills; William Fellowes Morgan; Carll Tucker; Allen Wardwell (Yale 1895); Frank S. Witherbee (S&B 1874); and A. Zinsser. The distribution committee included Otto T. Bannard (S&B 1876), Cornelius N. Bliss, and James Speyer. (Hospitals Seek $1,000,000. New York Times, Oct. 25, 1919.)

"By a strange coincidence of fate, it was Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy who, together with Robert B. Anderson, formed Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson's team of financial experts concerned with tracking WWII gold looted by the Axis powers. Indeed, Lovett and McCloy were responsible for negotiating the secret agreement hidden behind the Bretton Woods Agreement concerning the establishment of the Black Eagle trust that was to make use of plundered WWII bullion in the postwar years." (Project Hammer Reloaded. By David G. Guyatt. Nexus Magazine Aug.-Sep. 2003;10(5 ).)

cast 02-23-08