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+---
+aliases:
+  - Antony C. Sutton
+  - Antony Sutton
+  - Anthony Sutton
+  - Anthony C. Sutton
+  - Antony Cyril Sutton
+category: "Authors & Journalists"
+tags:
+  - Person
+  - AntonySutton
+  - SkullAndBones
+  - WallStreetTrilogy
+  - HooverInstitution
+  - WesternTechnology
+  - BrownBrothersHarriman
+  - Trilaterals
+  - FederalReserve
+  - ColdFusion
+summary: "Antony C. Sutton, London-born economist and Hoover Institution research fellow from 1968 to 1973, wrote Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, the Wall Street trilogy and America's Secret Establishment."
+born: 1925
+died: 2002
+location: "Stanford, California"
+birthplace: "London, England"
+deathplace: "Reno, Nevada"
+created: 2026-10-26
+updated: 2026-10-26
+relations:
+  - type: employed_by
+    with: "[[Hoover Institution]]"
+    start: 1968
+    end: 1973
+    role: "research fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University"
+    fn: 1
+  - type: head_of
+    with: "[[Phoenix Letter]]"
+    start: 1984
+    role: "editor, Phoenix Letter, vol. 3, no. 8 (October 1984) masthead"
+    fn: 42
+---
+
+Antony Cyril Sutton (1925 to 2002) was born in London, educated at the Universities of London, Göttingen and California, and held a research fellowship at the [[Hoover Institution]] at [[Stanford University]] from 1968 to 1973. He died in [[Reno, Nevada]]. His Hoover studies of Western technology in the Soviet economy were published in three volumes, and his later books covered the financing of the Bolshevik and Nazi movements, the [[Skull and Bones]] and other [[Yale University]] senior societies, and the [[Trilateral Commission]].[^1][^2][^3][^4]
+
+The Library of Congress name authority record gives his birth year as 1925, his birthplace as London and his death place as Reno, Nevada.[^3] The author note in the reissue of Wall Street and FDR states that he was later an economics professor at [[California State University, Los Angeles]]; the author note in the 1981 printing of Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution describes him as a former economics professor there and "still affiliated" with the Hoover Institution.[^4][^5] The Hoover Institution Library and Archives holds the Antony C. Sutton papers (1920 to 1972, four manuscript boxes and one microfilm reel), acquired in 1990, which contain his writings and notes on wars, civil wars and revolutions from 1820 to 1970 and on the business investments of [[Armand Hammer]] in the Soviet Union.[^6]
+
+### Hoover Institution and Western Technology
+
+Sutton began his research into the transfer of Western technology to the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. The first volume of his study, covering 1917 to 1930, was completed in 1966 and published by the Hoover Institution in November 1968. The second volume, covering 1930 to 1945, was published in 1971. The third, covering 1945 to 1965, was completed in mid-1970 and published in November 1973, under the general title Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development.[^2][^7]
+
+In his own account to a House subcommittee in April 1974, Sutton said that he had examined the origins of each major Soviet process or technology, and that most of his information came directly or indirectly from Soviet sources, since the relevant United States material was largely classified.[^1] He described the three volumes as a precise technical examination of Soviet industry that traced where its technologies came from.[^2]
+
+The volumes were reviewed in academic journals. [[Michael R. Dohan]] of Queens College reviewed the second volume in the Slavic Review in December 1972 (volume 31, number 4, pages 904 to 905), and [[Howard J. Sherman]] of the University of California, Riverside reviewed the first in the American Political Science Review in September 1973 (volume 67, number 3, pages 1126 to 1128). [[Carl B. Turner]] of North Carolina State University reviewed the second volume in the same journal in September 1976 (volume 70, number 3, pages 1017 to 1018).[^8][^9][^10] Sutton's own bibliography, filed with the 1974 hearing, lists reviews of the first two volumes through March 1973 in Foreign Affairs (April 1969 and October 1971), Orbis, the Journal of Economic History (December 1969), the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Journal of Political Economy (March 1973), Technology and Culture (January 1973) and the American Historical Review (February 1973), among about fifty others.[^11] His bibliography also lists two reference volumes published by Hoover, Wars and Revolutions: a comprehensive list of conflicts, with fatalities (part one 1820 to 1900, 1971; part two 1900 to 1973, 1973).[^11]
+
+The Washington and Lee Commerce Review published his summary article "Western Technology in the Soviet Union: A Summation" in its first volume, Winter 1973.[^12]
+
+### The 1972 Republican convention and National Suicide
+
+Sutton's account of his own efforts before 1973 places a series of written testimony, articles and requests for records ahead of his book. He wrote that in 1969 he submitted written testimony to a Senate international finance subcommittee, under the title "Some aspects of Trade, Western technology and Soviet Military Capability." In 1971 he contracted with the United States Naval Institute Press for a book on the Western origins of the Soviet merchant marine, and in 1971 and 1972 he sought classified Department of Defense data for a two-volume study of military assistance to the Soviet Union.[^2]
+
+Sutton testified that in August 1972 he attempted to brief a national security subcommittee at the Republican convention on the problem, and that the only official response was an injunction not to make any more such speeches if he wanted to "survive." He stated that several million copies of that testimony were distributed.[^2] The Republican platform committee held hearings for a week in Miami Beach before the convention; [[John J. Rhodes]] of Arizona was its chairman, and he named as the "wordsmith" who wrote the document Martin C. Anderson, a former White House aide then with the Hoover Institution.[^13] The platform that the Committee on Resolutions proposed on August 21, 1972 stated, in its foreign policy section, that the party would "encourage increased trade for the benefit of our consumers, businessmen, workers, and farmers."[^14] [[Human Events]] published Sutton's article "The East-West Trade Fight" on March 11, 1972. It states that when the time came for expropriation of the concessions of the 1920s only "the favored few," among them [[W. Averell Harriman]], received compensation, describes the sale of 46 Centalign-B machines by the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company to the Soviet Union in 1959 for miniature ball bearing manufacture, and states that in late 1971 the Nixon administration issued one billion dollars in export licenses for the Kama truck plant.[^15] His bibliography also lists "The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex" in Human Events on September 9, 1972, and "It's time for Great Debate on U.S.-Soviet Trade" in Human Events on August 18, 1973.[^11]
+
+He then assembled the material he had into National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union, published by [[Arlington House]] in New York in October 1973, after advance copies became available in July.[^2][^16] Sutton testified that the book came to the attention of the Hoover Institution in about July 1973.[^2]
+
+### Departure from Hoover
+
+According to Sutton's 1974 statement, his name was removed from the Hoover personnel directory after the book came to Hoover's attention. In August 1973 he was removed from his position as research fellow. He wrote that the dust jacket of the third volume, then in press, was changed to describe him as "a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1968 to 1973."[^2]
+
+Sutton testified that he still had an office at Hoover and received a monthly research grant, but that he was not officially connected with the institution. He wrote that Hoover emphatically disassociated itself from his testimony.[^2] He called the treatment "reminiscent of" book burning in [[Adolf Hitler]]'s Germany and asked the Congress to investigate.[^17]
+
+### House testimony, April 1974
+
+On April 24, 1974 Sutton appeared as a witness before the Subcommittee on International Trade of the House Committee on Banking and Currency. The hearings covered H. Res. 774, a resolution on a prohibition of Export-Import Bank credit, and bills to implement the International Economic Policy Act of 1972. The subcommittee chairman was [[Thomas L. Ashley]] of Ohio.[^1]
+
+His oral summary described four sectors. He reported that he had identified 44 types of Soviet marine diesel engines, with a Western origin established for all but two. He stated that about 68 percent of Soviet merchant ships had been built completely in the West, and about 80 percent of the main diesel engines in Soviet ships had been built in the West.[^18] He said that he could identify no significant indigenous Soviet computer technology, and that professors in Toronto and at the Israel Institute of Technology confirmed the conclusion.[^18] He cited ball bearing manufacturing equipment and a plant in the Soviet Union for 10-ton military trucks built with United States firms. He concluded that Western technology went into the Soviet military-industrial complex and that the term "peaceful trade" was misleading.[^18] Asked by Ashley whether his conclusions were that the Soviet Union depended on the West for technology, that peaceful trade was a myth and that any exported industrial technology could be used for war, Sutton answered that this was accurate except that by "myth" he meant that the phrase diverted attention from the military use of exports.[^19]
+
+The other witnesses at the hearing included [[Franklyn D. Holzman]] of Tufts University, who testified immediately after Sutton and had told the subcommittee that the number of Western business arrangements in the Soviet Union of the 1920s "was larger than has commonly been believed," as Sutton had written in his books.[^20] A prepared statement from another witness likewise referred to "the recent work by Antony C. Sutton" for the same point.[^21] On a later hearing day, Representative [[Ben B. Blackburn]] of Georgia asked [[Roger E. Shields]], Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, whether he was familiar with Sutton's research, stating that Sutton found no indigenous Soviet computer technology, and then questioned the witnesses about the 1972 sale of 164 Bryant ball bearing machines to the Soviet Union, which Sutton's testimony also described.[^22]
+
+### The Wall Street trilogy
+
+Sutton's three books on finance use a common method: a chronology of named bankers and corporations, drawn from State Department files and congressional and wartime records, with the claim that a financial network linked those firms to revolutionary and fascist regimes. He described the method in the Preface to the first book, saying that the State Department Decimal File, particularly section 861.00, "contains extensive documentation on the hypothesized link."[^23]
+
+#### Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974)
+
+Sutton's preface, dated March 1974, states that he set out to test an old hypothesis that "international bankers" were linked to Bolshevik revolutionaries, and that earlier attempts had rarely been supported by hard evidence.[^23] He wrote that the German funding of the Bolshevik return from exile had been documented by [[Michael Futrell]], [[Stefan Possony]] and [[George Katkov]], and that his own work went beyond that record.[^24]
+
+The central figure of his account is the [[Morgan Guaranty Trust|Guaranty Trust Company]] of New York, which he describes as Morgan-controlled. Sutton wrote that [[Olof Aschberg]] was the Morgan agent in Russia before 1917, that Aschberg became head of [[Ruskombank]], the first Soviet international bank, and that [[Max May]] of Guaranty Trust became director of Ruskombank's foreign department.[^25] He wrote that [[William Boyce Thompson]], a director of the [[Federal Reserve Bank of New York]], contributed one million dollars to the Bolshevik cause for propaganda purposes, a statement he said was "substantiated by a cablegram."[^25] He describes the [[American International Corporation]], the [[Guaranty Securities Company]] and several other firms at 120 Broadway as the center of this activity.[^25][^26]
+
+The synopsis adds further claims. Sutton wrote that [[Ludwig Martens]], the first Soviet representative in the United States, was, according to the British intelligence chief Sir Basil Thomson, backed by funds from Guaranty Trust; that [[John Reed]] was financed by the New York banker Eugene Boissevain and employed by Harry Payne Whitney's Metropolitan magazine, Whitney being then a director of Guaranty Trust; that Thompson's American Red Cross Mission to Russia was a private venture and that British War Cabinet papers record Thompson's personal intervention with [[David Lloyd George]] in December 1917; and that [[Alexander Gumberg]] worked for Thompson's mission, became chief Bolshevik agent in Scandinavia, and later served as confidential assistant to Reeve Schley of [[Chase National Bank]] and to Floyd Odlum of the [[Atlas Corporation]].[^25] He also wrote that Wall Street firms including Guaranty Trust were involved with revolutionary activities in Mexico, that a Wall Street syndicate financed the 1912 [[Sun Yat-sen]] revolution in China, and that Colonel [[Edward Mandel House]] intervened to have [[Robert Minor]] released.[^25] Sutton wrote that the concentration of activity at 120 Broadway, where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the American International Corporation were located, appeared to be the foreign counterpart of [[Carroll Quigley]]'s claim that J. P. Morgan had infiltrated the domestic left.[^25]
+
+#### Wall Street and FDR (1975)
+
+The second book, dated October 1974 in its preface, extends the thesis to [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and the New Deal. Sutton wrote that the evidence was based largely on Roosevelt's own papers and that Wall Street financiers were associated with Roosevelt between 1917 and 1934.[^27] Its chapter on the 1934 [[Business Plot]] hearings describes [[Grayson M.-P. Murphy & Co.]] of 52 Broadway, and [[Smedley Butler]]'s testimony that [[Gerald P. MacGuire]] proposed a plan through that firm. Sutton wrote that Murphy was, in the early 1930s, a director of several companies controlled by the [[J. P. Morgan]] interests, including the Guaranty Trust Company, and that the speechwriter proposed for Butler, [[John W. Davis]], was a partner at Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Gardner and Reed.[^28] He suggested that Wall Street "had none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt in mind as 'the man on the white horse.'"[^28]
+
+#### Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976)
+
+The third book argues that German war preparation depended on American finance and technical transfers. Sutton quoted the [[Kilgore Committee]] of the United States Senate: "The United States accidentally played an important role in the technical arming of Germany."[^29] He wrote that the Kilgore Committee concluded that [[Standard Oil]], through an agreement with [[I.G. Farben]], had "fully accomplished I.G.'s purpose" of preventing American synthetic rubber production, and that the evidence was presented to the [[Harry S. Truman]], Bone and Kilgore committees.[^30] His bibliography lists the Senate Military Affairs subcommittee hearings "Elimination of German Resources for War" (1945), the 1944 hearings on "Scientific and Technical Mobilization," a Field Information Agency technical intelligence report of the Control Council for Germany, the Strategic Bombing Survey plant reports, and the I.G. Farben volume of the Nuremberg tribunal records.[^31]
+
+The chapter on the Thyssen funds states that [[Fritz Thyssen]] arranged a credit of 250,000 marks for Hitler through a Dutch bank affiliated with the Harrimans. Sutton noted that Thyssen's book I Paid Hitler, published in 1941 under Thyssen's name, was later repudiated, and wrote that its account put Thyssen's contribution at as much as one million marks.[^32]
+
+### America's Secret Establishment (1983)
+
+Sutton's preface, dated July 30, 1983 at Phoenix, Arizona, says that after the Wall Street series he received "an eight-inch batch of documents" that proved to be "the membership lists of an American secret society." He wrote that "the names spelled Power, with a capital P."[^33] The 2002 Trine Day edition repeats the account and states that the material arrived as an anonymous donation in the early 1980s.[^33][^34]
+
+In the book he identifies the material as the "Addresses" books of the Skull and Bones society, which he describes as the membership lists back to 1832. He asked how the material reached outside hands and wrote: "It is possible that one or more members, although bound by oath, would not be dismayed if the story became public knowledge. That's all we will say."[^35] The membership list he describes contains about 2,500 initiates.[^36]
+
+The book's sections are organized as numbered "memoranda," in which the author sets out hypotheses. Memorandum Number Four states Hypothesis One: that a secret society comprising members of old line American families and representatives of financial power has existed since 1833.[^36] The chart that the text places on page 19 presents the hypothesis in a radial diagram with the label "THE ORDER" at the center.[^36]
+
+#### Hypothesis One and the family tiers
+
+The chart lists nine old-line families with settlement dates and places: Whitney (1635, Watertown, Massachusetts), Stimson (1635, Watertown), Perkins (1631, Boston), Taft (1679, Braintree), Phelps (1630, Dorchester), Bundy (1635, Boston), Wadsworth (1632, Newtown), Lord (1635, Cambridge) and Gilman (1638, Hingham). It labels seven families of newer wealth with their sources of fortune: Rockefeller and Payne (Standard Oil), Harriman (railroads), Davison (J. P. Morgan), Weyerhaeuser (lumber), Pillsbury (flour milling) and Sloane (retail).[^36]
+
+Sutton wrote that a group of 20 to 30 families had come to dominate the society, and that the families fell into two groups. The first were "old line American families who arrived on the East coast in the 1600s, e.g., Whitney, Lord, Phelps, Wadsworth, Allen, Bundy, Adams." The second were "families who acquired wealth in the last 100 years, sent their sons to Yale and in time became almost old line families, e.g., Harriman, Rockefeller, Payne, Davison."[^37] He wrote that intermarriage among these families was common, and that the Puritan families "either intermarried with financial power" or took in the sons of money.[^36]
+
+### Brown Brothers Harriman, Union Banking and Prescott Bush
+
+Sutton's account of the [[Brown Brothers Harriman]] partnership says that by the 1970s the firm had "taken in so many of 'the Brotherhood'" that, of its 26 individual partners, "no fewer than 9 were members of The Order."[^38] The list he gives of partners who were members includes [[Prescott Bush]], whom he describes as a partner for over forty years, the father of President George H. W. Bush, and initiated in 1917. It also includes W. Averell Harriman (initiated 1913) and his brother [[E. Roland Harriman]] (initiated 1917).[^38]
+
+Sutton devotes a passage to the [[Union Banking Corporation]] of New York. He writes that Union Banking had eight directors, including four members of the Yale class of 1917, that Guaranty Trust was represented by [[Knight Woolley]], that two directors, Kouwenhoven and Groninger, were Nazi directors of the Rotterdam bank [[Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart]], which he identifies as the former von Heydt bank, and that Prescott Bush and [[Ellery Sedgwick James|Ellery S. James]] were partners in Brown Brothers, later Brown Brothers, Harriman.[^38][^39] In The Rise of Hitler he describes Union Banking as a joint Thyssen and Harriman operation, with E. Roland Harriman as a director in 1932.[^39][^40]
+
+### The Stimson and Bundy chain
+
+The book's section "The Whitney-Stimson-Bundy-Acheson Chain of Influence" follows a family line through a sequence of offices. Sutton wrote that [[Henry L. Stimson]] went to work for the Root firm in 1890 after Yale and Harvard Law School, married the daughter of a Skull and Bones member, was appointed Secretary of War by [[William Howard Taft]] in 1911, and held offices under every president from Taft through Truman except [[Warren G. Harding]].[^41] He wrote that Stimson brought [[Harvey Hollister Bundy]] into the wartime Pentagon as a special assistant, and that Stimson brought Harvey's son [[McGeorge Bundy]] into the Pentagon to work on the 1948 book On Active Service in Peace and War.[^41] Sutton summarized the pattern as Stimson using his office "to advance the career of fellow members of The Order," naming Harvey Hollister Bundy and McGeorge Bundy.[^41]
+
+Sutton's account of Stimson in the Second World War also refers to the atomic bombing of [[Japan]], which he says Stimson recommended in 1945.[^41]
+
+### Phoenix Letter and the Yale senior societies
+
+Sutton's October 1984 issue of the Phoenix Letter, which named him as editor and was published by Research Publications at a Phoenix, Arizona post office box, argues that the three Yale senior societies, Skull and Bones ([[Russell Trust]]), [[Scroll and Key]] (Kingsley Trust) and [[Wolf's Head]] (Phelps Trust), form a network. It states that Scroll and Key had been founded by members of Skull and Bones, and that "three quarters of the inner core" had been identified in his diagram of the society.[^42] The same issue cites [[George Wilson Pierson]]'s official history of Yale, and it states that the [[Elihu]] society catalog lists [[Anson Phelps Stokes]] as a Skull and Bones member and an honorary member of Elihu since its founding in 1903.[^42] The newsletter also says that it had not yet accounted for the power of Edward Mandel House, whom it had earlier identified as a friend of Yale initiates in the society.[^42]
+
+Sutton's booklet How the Order Controls Education is catalogued by archive.org with a 1985 date.[^43]
+
+### Trilaterals Over America and later works
+
+Sutton's book on the Trilateral Commission, in the 1995 edition titled Trilaterals Over America, states that the commission was founded in 1973 by the New York banker [[David Rockefeller]], then chairman of [[Chase Manhattan Bank]], and the Harvard academic [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]], later National Security Adviser to President [[Jimmy Carter]]. Its appendix lists members as of October 1978 and July 1993.[^44] The book refers to an earlier volume, Trilaterals Over Washington, written with [[Patrick M. Wood]] and published in Scottsdale, Arizona, by the August Corporation (the Library of Congress record gives c1978, 1979 printing).[^44][^45] The 1995 book directs readers to the Phoenix Letter, then in its twelfth year, at an address in Billings, Montana.[^44]
+
+His later titles include The War on Gold (1977), Energy: The Created Crisis (1979), The Federal Reserve Conspiracy (1995) and Cold Fusion: The Secret Energy Revolution (1999), each catalogued by archive.org.[^46]
+
+### Death and the 2002 edition
+
+Sutton's copyright page for America's Secret Establishment gives 1983, 1986 and 2002. The 2002 Trine Day edition includes a section on the Yale catalogue compiled by [[Kris Millegan]].[^34] Sutton died in 2002 in Reno, Nevada.[^3][^4]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: International Economic Policy: Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Trade of the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress, second session, on H. Res. 774 and H.R. 13838 and 13839 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1974), statement of Antony C. Sutton, April 24, 1974, pp. 156 to 167. https://archive.org/details/international-economic-policy-hearings-before-the-subcommittee-on-international-
+[^2]: Sutton, prepared statement, April 24, 1974, in International Economic Policy (1974), pp. 159 to 160 (volume chronology, publication dates, the 1972 Republican convention attempt, removal from Hoover and the dust-jacket wording).
+[^3]: Library of Congress Name Authority File, "Sutton, Antony C., 1925-2002," record n79122365 (birth 1925, London; death 2002, Reno, Nevada; source note citing the 2009 edition of America's Secret Establishment, p. iv). https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79122365
+[^4]: Author note, Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and FDR (reissue with publisher's note; born in London in 1925, educated at the universities of London, Göttingen and California, Hoover research fellow 1968 to 1973, later economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles, "He died in 2002"). The same note appears in the Trine Day edition of America's Secret Establishment, which adds a D.Sc. from the University of Southampton.
+[^5]: Author note, Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1981 printing), back cover ("still affiliated with the institution"; "former economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles"; "bom in London in 1925").
+[^6]: Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Antony C. Sutton papers, 1920 to 1972 (4 manuscript boxes, 1 microfilm reel; acquired 1990), Online Archive of California finding aid. https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt287033k0
+[^7]: Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 3 vols. (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1968, 1971, 1973), as listed in Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976), Selected Bibliography, pp. 209 to 210.
+[^8]: Michael R. Dohan, review of Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1930 to 1945, Slavic Review 31, no. 4 (December 1972): 904 to 905. https://doi.org/10.2307/2493797
+[^9]: Howard J. Sherman, review of Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1917 to 1930, American Political Science Review 67, no. 3 (September 1973): 1126 to 1128. https://doi.org/10.2307/1958770
+[^10]: Carl B. Turner, review of Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1930 to 1945, American Political Science Review 70, no. 3 (September 1976): 1017 to 1018. https://doi.org/10.2307/1959932
+[^11]: Sutton, prepared statement, April 24, 1974, in International Economic Policy (1974), Appendix A, "Bibliography of Published Works" (pp. 165 to 166) and Appendix B, "Reviews of Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, Volumes One and Two (up to March 1973 only)" (pp. 166 to 167).
+[^12]: Antony C. Sutton, "Western Technology in the Soviet Union: A Summation," Washington and Lee Commerce Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 1973), Lexington, Virginia.
+[^13]: Press summary of the 1972 Republican platform, Michael Raoul-Duval Papers, Box 23, folder "Republican Platform - 1976: Background Material, 1960-1975 (2)," Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (hearings for a week in Miami Beach; Representative John J. Rhodes, committee chairman, naming Martin C. Anderson of the Hoover Institution as the "wordsmith"). https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/sites/default/files/pdf_documents/library/document/0205/148729960.pdf
+[^14]: Republican Party, 1972 platform, proposed by the Committee on Resolutions to the Republican National Convention, August 21, 1972, Miami Beach, Florida, foreign policy section. https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/sites/default/files/pdf_documents/library/document/0205/1672784.pdf
+[^15]: Antony C. Sutton, "The East-West Trade Fight," Human Events, vol. 32, no. 11, March 11, 1972, p. 14.
+[^16]: Antony C. Sutton, National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union (New York: Arlington House, 1973).
+[^17]: Sutton, oral statement, April 24, 1974, in International Economic Policy (1974), p. 159 ("reminiscent of Hitler's book burning"; urging that Congress investigate), and prepared statement, p. 160 ("police state tactics of Hitler's Germany").
+[^18]: Sutton, oral statement, April 24, 1974, in International Economic Policy (1974), pp. 157 to 159 (marine diesel engines, the 68 and 80 percent figures, computers, ball bearings and trucks).
+[^19]: International Economic Policy (1974), colloquy between Chairman Ashley and Sutton following the panel testimony, April 24, 1974.
+[^20]: International Economic Policy (1974), statement of Franklyn D. Holzman, following Sutton's statement (the 1920s concession arrangements "larger than has commonly been believed").
+[^21]: International Economic Policy (1974), prepared statement of a panel witness preceding Sutton's, referring to "the recent work by Antony C. Sutton" on the 1920s concessions.
+[^22]: International Economic Policy (1974), questioning by Representative Ben B. Blackburn of Roger E. Shields and other witnesses, pp. 796 to 797 (Sutton's computer findings; Bryant Chucking Grinder ball bearing machines sold in 1972).
+[^23]: Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York: Arlington House, 1974), Preface, p. 11 (dated March 1974); the Decimal File quotation appears in the same preface.
+[^24]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974), note 1 to the synopsis, p. 169, citing Michael Futrell, Northern Underground (London: Faber and Faber, 1963); Stefan Possony, Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966); and George Katkov, "German Foreign Office Documents on Financial Support to the Bolsheviks in 1917," International Affairs 32 (1956).
+[^25]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974), "The Evidence Presented: A Synopsis," pp. 169 to 171 (Aschberg, May, Ruskombank, Thompson's one million dollars and the cablegram, 120 Broadway).
+[^26]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974), Chapter 8, "120 Broadway, New York City," pp. 125 to 137, and synopsis, pp. 171 to 172.
+[^27]: Sutton, Wall Street and FDR (New York: Arlington House, 1975), Preface, p. 9 (dated October 1974, Cupertino, California).
+[^28]: Sutton, Wall Street and FDR (1975), Chapter 10, "FDR: Man on the White Horse," pp. 144 to 147 (Murphy as director, the Butler plan, Davis and the speech, the "man on the white horse" passage).
+[^29]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976), p. 21, quoting the Kilgore Committee. The quotation begins "The United States accidentally played an important role in the technical arming of Germany."
+[^30]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976), pp. 21 to 22 and p. 68 (Standard Oil and the Jasco agreement, quoting the Kilgore Committee's conclusion that Standard "fully accomplished I.G.'s purpose").
+[^31]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976), Selected Bibliography, pp. 209 to 211 (Senate Military Affairs subcommittee hearings, 1944 and 1945; Control Council Field Information Agency report EF/ME/1, September 4, 1945; Strategic Bombing Survey reports; Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Volume VIII, I.G. Farben case).
+[^32]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976), pp. 102 to 103 (Thyssen, the 250,000 marks credit and the Harriman connection), and p. 106 (I Paid Hitler, "later repudiated").
+[^33]: Antony C. Sutton, America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones (Trine Day, 2002 edition), Preface, dated July 30, 1983 at Phoenix, Arizona.
+[^34]: Antony C. Sutton, America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones (Trine Day, 2002 edition), copyright page (1983, 1986, 2002) and the section "The Order of Skull and Bones Yale Catalogue," compiled by Kris Millegan.
+[^35]: Sutton, America's Secret Establishment (Trine Day, 2002 edition), section on the "Addresses" books (the membership lists back to 1832, and the remark about members bound by oath).
+[^36]: Sutton, America's Secret Establishment (Trine Day, 2002 edition), Memorandum Number Four, "Who Is In This Secret Society?" (membership of about 2,500 initiates, Hypothesis One) and the chart the text places on page 19.
+[^37]: Sutton, America's Secret Establishment (Trine Day, 2002 edition), section on the membership history from 1833, including the founders William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft and the description of the two groups of families.
+[^38]: Sutton, America's Secret Establishment (Trine Day, 2002 edition), section on Brown Brothers, Harriman, including the list of partners initiated into The Order in the mid-1970s.
+[^39]: Sutton, America's Secret Establishment (Trine Day, 2002 edition), section on the directors of Union Banking Corporation (eight directors, four Yale 1917 initiates, Knight Woolley, Kouwenhoven and Groninger, and Ellery S. James and Prescott S. Bush).
+[^40]: Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976), Table 7-1 and text, p. 103 (Union Banking Corporation directors in 1932, including E. Roland Harriman).
+[^41]: Sutton, America's Secret Establishment (Trine Day, 2002 edition), section "The Whitney-Stimson-Bundy-Acheson Chain of Influence," points 1 to 4, and the summary bullets that follow.
+[^42]: "The Yale Senior Society Program," Phoenix Letter, vol. 3, no. 8 (October 1984), Research Publications, Box 39850, Phoenix, Arizona, pp. 1 to 6.
+[^43]: Antony C. Sutton, How the Order Controls Education (1985), archive.org catalogue record.
+[^44]: Antony C. Sutton, Trilaterals Over America (1995), Chapter One, "What is the Trilateral Commission?" (founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller, then chairman of Chase Manhattan) and Appendix A, "Membership October 1978 and July 1993."
+[^45]: Library of Congress catalog record, Sutton, Antony C., and Patrick M. Wood, Trilaterals Over Washington (Scottsdale, Ariz.: August Corp., c1978, 1979 printing), call number HF1411 .S8864. https://www.loc.gov/item/78078277
+[^46]: Archive.org catalogue records for The War on Gold (1977), Energy: The Created Crisis (1979), The Federal Reserve Conspiracy (1995) and Cold Fusion: The Secret Energy Revolution (1999), by Antony C. Sutton.

10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Henry L. Stimson.md

@@ -0,0 +1,329 @@
+---
+aliases:
+  - Henry Stimson
+  - Henry Lewis Stimson
+  - H. L. Stimson
+  - Stimson
+category: "Political Figure"
+tags:
+  - Person
+  - SkullAndBones
+  - BlackChamber
+  - StimsonDoctrine
+  - ManhattanProject
+  - InterimCommittee
+  - JapaneseAmericanEvacuation
+  - MorgenthauPlan
+  - WarDepartment
+  - StateDepartment
+  - Kyoto
+summary: "Henry L. Stimson, Skull and Bones member and twice Secretary of War, chaired the Interim Committee that advised on the atomic bomb."
+born: 1867
+died: 1950
+location: "New York, New York"
+relations:
+  - type: member_of
+    with: "[[Skull and Bones]]"
+    role: "member, Yale class of 1888"
+    start: 1887
+    fn: 4
+  - type: employed_by
+    with: "[[Root & Clarke]]"
+    start: 1891
+    role: "clerk; admitted to the firm January 1, 1893"
+    fn: 8
+  - type: prosecuted
+    with: "[[American Sugar Refining Company]]"
+    start: 1906
+    end: 1909
+    role: "United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; rebating indictments"
+    fn: 11
+  - type: appointed
+    with: "[[William Howard Taft]]"
+    start: 1911
+    end: 1913
+    role: "Secretary of War"
+    fn: 13
+  - type: appointed
+    with: "[[Herbert Hoover]]"
+    start: 1929
+    end: 1933
+    role: "Secretary of State"
+    fn: 17
+  - type: appointed
+    with: "[[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]"
+    start: 1940
+    end: 1945
+    role: "Secretary of War, July 10, 1940 to September 21, 1945"
+    fn: 27
+  - type: employed_by
+    with: "[[United States Department of War]]"
+    start: 1940
+    end: 1945
+    role: "Secretary of War"
+    fn: 27
+  - type: head_of
+    with: "[[Interim Committee]]"
+    start: 1945
+    role: "chairman; George L. Harrison acted as chairman in his absence"
+    fn: 40
+  - type: participant_in
+    with: "[[Manhattan Project]]"
+    start: 1945
+    role: "advised the President on the use of the atomic bomb; struck Kyoto from the target list"
+    fn: 50
+  - type: partner_of
+    with: "[[McGeorge Bundy]]"
+    role: "co-author of On Active Service in Peace and War (1948), with Bundy credited for the writing"
+    fn: 2
+created: 2026-10-26
+updated: 2026-10-26
+---
+
+Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 to October 20, 1950) was a New York lawyer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Secretary of War under [[William Howard Taft]], Governor-General of the [[Philippines]], Secretary of State under [[Herbert Hoover]] and Secretary of War from July 1940 to September 1945 under [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]. He was born in New York City and died at Huntington, [[Long Island]].[^1] His memoir, *On Active Service in Peace and War*, was published in 1948 under his name, with the writing credited to [[McGeorge Bundy]].[^2]
+
+### Yale, Skull and Bones, and Root & Clarke
+
+Stimson wrote that in the autumn of 1884 he entered [[Yale University]] and joined the class of '88.[^3] The Yale Obituary Record for 1950 to 1951 lists his undergraduate honors as a first Berkeley Premium in Latin composition as a freshman, the first prize in English composition as a sophomore, a Townsend Premium and a philosophical oration appointment as a junior, and the DeForest Prize Medal and an oration appointment as a senior, together with membership in He Boule, [[Psi Upsilon]], [[Skull and Bones]], Chi Delta Theta and [[Phi Beta Kappa]].[^4] The Yale Banner of 1888 prints "Henry Lewis Stimson, of New York City" among the Commencement speakers of June 27, 1888, with the oration "John Hale and the Latitudinarians."[^5]
+
+[[Antony C. Sutton]]'s 1983 book on Skull and Bones carries a chart, "Hypothesis Number One," with the title "A Secret Society Dominated By Old Line American Families And New Wealth Has Existed From 1833 To The Present Day." It places the Stimson family among the old-line families around a central circle labeled "The Order," with the date "1635, Watertown, Mass." The chart also lists the Taft family (1679, Braintree, Mass.), the Bundy family (1635, Boston, Mass.) and the Harriman family (railroads). Sutton presented the chart as a hypothesis.[^6] [[Ron Rosenbaum]] wrote in [[Esquire]] in September 1977 that the society's members included [[W. Averell Harriman]], [[Henry Luce]] and Supreme Court Justice [[Potter Stewart]], together with Henry L. Stimson.[^7]
+
+After his admission to the New York County bar in June 1891, Stimson became a clerk in the office of [[Root & Clarke]], the firm of [[Elihu Root]]. He was admitted to the firm on January 1, 1893, on the same day as [[Bronson Winthrop]], who became his lifelong partner. The firm took the name Root, Howard, Winthrop & Stimson in 1897, when Clarke retired.[^8] The Obituary Record lists him as a New York lawyer from 1891 to 1950, and as counsel to Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts. It gives his marriage as July 6, 1893, in New Haven, to Mabel Wellington White, and his death as due to coronary thrombosis, with burial at Memorial Cemetery, Cold Spring Harbor.[^1]
+
+### Highhold
+
+Stimson described the family's property in the West Hills of the Township of Huntington on Long Island as lying "on the summit of the central ridge of Long Island" and affording "glimpses of the sound on the north and the distant ocean on the south." The family named the place [[Highhold]] from that view. He wrote that it had been their home "for forty-four years" when the memoir was written.[^9]
+
+### United States Attorney, Southern District of New York
+
+Stimson was United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1906 to 1909, and special assistant to the Attorney General in 1909 and 1910.[^1] The memoir says the first evidence for his rebating prosecutions came from the offices of [[William Randolph Hearst]] late in 1905, and that "within five months he had brought seven indictments, and in the following year his office brought fourteen more."[^10]
+
+His most important rebating prosecutions were against the [[American Sugar Refining Company]] and the railroads from which it had received rebates. The memoir states that the [[New York Central Railroad]] and the sugar company "had been partners in rebating, as Stimson proved in three successive jury trials." The sugar company "fought only one case and then surrendered without a trial on the remaining indictments." Its counsel came to Stimson's office and said: "Damn it, Stimson, we think you're wrong on the law and wrong on the facts, but we can't stand the publicity." The memoir also records Elihu Root's advice after Stimson's first successful trial, that the way to stop rebating was to keep prosecuting until railroads and shippers understood that they would be punished in the courts.[^11]
+
+The memoir describes a second major undertaking, the prosecution of [[Charles W. Morse]] for misusing the funds of the [[Bank of North America]].[^12]
+
+### Secretary of War under Taft
+
+Stimson accepted an offer from William Howard Taft to serve as Secretary of War; the Yale Obituary Record gives his term as 1911 to 1913.[^13] The memoir's second chapter, "With Roosevelt and Taft," follows the split between Taft and [[Theodore Roosevelt]] in 1912, during which Stimson remained with Taft's administration.[^14]
+
+### Nicaragua and the Philippines
+
+The Obituary Record lists Stimson as special Presidential representative in [[Nicaragua]] in 1927 and Governor General of the Philippine Islands from 1928 to 1929.[^1] The State Department's biography states that between 1918 and 1926 he served only as an occasional envoy to Latin America, mediating a dispute between Chile and Peru in 1925, and that he negotiated an end to the Nicaraguan civil war in 1927 before [[Calvin Coolidge]] appointed him Governor General.[^15] The memoir's chapter "As Private Citizen" includes a section titled "The Peace of Tipitapa," on the Nicaragua settlement of 1927, and the following chapter, "Governor General of the Philippines," gives the Philippine years a full treatment under the subheadings "The Background," "A Happy Year" and "Later Disappointments and Some Hopes."[^16]
+
+### Secretary of State and the Black Chamber
+
+Stimson was Secretary of State from March 28, 1929, to March 4, 1933, succeeding Frank Kellogg a few days after the Senate ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact. He headed the American delegation to the London Naval Conference of 1930 and the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932.[^17]
+
+In 1929 he closed the State Department's code-breaking office. The memoir says that "he closed down the so-called Black Chamber," which it describes as "the State Department's code-cracking office," and that "This act he never regretted." It adds that "In later years he was to permit and indeed encourage similar labors in another Department, but in later years the situation was different." The memoir gives the reason in these words: "Stimson, as Secretary of State, was dealing as a gentleman with the gentlemen sent as ambassadors and ministers from friendly nations, and, as he later said, 'Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.'" The passage places the decision under the principle that "the way to make men trustworthy is to trust them," and gives no date for the remark.[^18]
+
+The [[National Security Agency]] account of the office states that an agreement between the Acting Secretary of State and the Secretary of War in May 1919 created the Cipher Bureau, headed by [[Herbert Yardley]] and sponsored by the State Department, with the Army and Navy sharing the budget and the decrypts. It records that Stimson "made a decision to eliminate the Cipher Bureau," that the decision "likely was based on budget considerations, but it has come down to us as based on the need for acting in good faith in international relations," and that in May 1929 the Signal Corps took over cryptology from Military Intelligence and offered Yardley a place at a salary it expected him to refuse. The employees were paid three months' severance in late 1929; they had been paid from "confidential funds" and held no civil service status. The account adds that Yardley charged that Stimson had ended the bureau "strictly for moralistic reasons," and that Stimson did not deny this in his autobiography.[^19]
+
+In his 1931 book, *The American Black Chamber*, Yardley wrote: "The secret activities of the American Black Chamber, which I directed, ceased in 1929." The book's foreword says that "a new Secretary of State ordered the door of the Black Chamber closed and bolted."[^20]
+
+In 1932 Stimson appointed [[Harvey H. Bundy]], a Boston lawyer with experience in finance, as Assistant Secretary of State. The memoir says that the death of a senior officer had left the Department "without a senior officer experienced in economic matters," and that Bundy was appointed to fill that gap.[^21]
+
+### The Stimson Doctrine, 1932
+
+A telegram of January 7, 1932 from the Secretary of State to the [[Nanking]] consul general instructed him to deliver a note to the Chinese and Japanese governments. The same instruction went to the ambassador in [[Japan]], and the text was repeated to the consul at [[Geneva]] for transmission to the League of Nations. The note stated that the United States "does not intend to recognize any situation, treaty or agreement which may be brought about by means contrary to the covenants and obligations of the Pact of Paris of August 27, 1928."[^22]
+
+The Office of the Historian's essay on the Mukden Incident is titled "The Mukden Incident of 1931 and the Stimson Doctrine." It states that Secretary Stimson "issued the Stimson Doctrine in early 1932," that the United States would not recognize any treaty or agreement between Japan and China that violated American rights or agreements to which it subscribed, and that the policy "proved incredibly ineffectual in the face of on-going Japanese aggression and expansion."[^23] The Department's biography of Stimson states that the doctrine "later became known as" the Stimson Doctrine.[^24]
+
+The memoir's chapter on the Far Eastern crisis has a section headed "From Conciliation to Nonrecognition," and calls nonrecognition "a moral weapon, a moral sanction."[^25]
+
+### Secretary of War, 1940 to 1945
+
+Stimson went to New Haven for the Yale Commencement of June 1940. The memoir says that after addressing the alumni on compulsory military training he prepared a radio speech, delivered on June 18, that "fully set forth his principles and policies in the face of the crisis," and that its delivery put "him squarely on record before he accepted public office."[^26] The National Archives gives the dates of his service as Secretary of War as July 10, 1940, to September 21, 1945; [[Cordell Hull]] was Secretary of State from March 4, 1933, to November 20, 1944.[^27]
+
+The Department's principal civilian assistants included [[Robert A. Lovett]], who arrived in November 1940 as Stimson's air assistant, [[John J. McCloy]], and [[Robert P. Patterson]]. The memoir says that "only Patterson of all his civilian assistants was with Stimson from the beginning to the end." Harvey H. Bundy, who had served with Stimson before, is named among the same group.[^28]
+
+### Japanese American evacuation
+
+The [[Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians]] quoted Stimson's diary entry for February 10, 1942, which says: "The second generation Japanese [Nisei] can only be evacuated either as part of a total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese. This latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system to apply it."[^29]
+
+The commission records that Stimson met on February 18, 1942 with officials of the Department of Justice and the War Department about the executive order, and quotes his record of February 17 for the scale of the plan: "It will involve the tremendous task of moving between fifty and one hundred thousand people from their homes and finding temporary support and sustenance for them in the meanwhile, and ultimately locating them in new places away from the coast."[^30]
+
+[[Executive Order 9066]], dated February 19, 1942, carried the title "Executive Order Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas."[^31] The commission states that the order "empowered the Secretary of War or his delegate to designate military areas" to which entry of any or all persons could be barred.[^32] On February 20, 1942, Stimson wrote to [[John L. DeWitt]] delegating authority to implement the order within the [[Western Defense Command]].[^32]
+
+The commission's summary states that "In May 1944 Secretary Stimson put before President Roosevelt and the Cabinet his position that the exclusion no longer had a military justification." It concludes that the President delayed action "until the first Cabinet meeting following the Presidential election of November 1944," and that "The inescapable conclusion from this factual pattern is that the delay was motivated by political considerations."[^33] Its account of the Cabinet meeting of May 26, 1944 records [[Francis Biddle]] noting that the Secretary of War raised "whether it was appropriate for the War Department, at this time, to cancel the Japanese Exclusion Orders and let the Japs go home."[^34] The commission describes McCloy as the "civilian aide to Stimson responsible for Japanese American questions."[^35]
+
+### Bases and big powers, January 1945
+
+On January 23, 1945, Stimson sent Secretary of State [[Edward R. Stettinius Jr.]] a list of points under the heading "Bases and Big Powers," arguing that the four large powers would have to maintain security "during the time necessary to establish a permanent organization of the whole world," and that attempting to formulate the Dumbarton Oaks organization before settling those foundations repeated the error of creating the League of Nations without a prior guarantee of French security. The editors of the Foreign Relations series refer readers to the memoir's discussion at pages 599 to 605.[^36]
+
+### April 25, 1945: the briefing of Truman
+
+Stimson's memorandum of April 25, 1945, prepared with [[George L. Harrison]] and approved by [[George Marshall|George C. Marshall]] and Major General [[Leslie R. Groves]], began: "Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history." It stated that no other nation could reach the American position for some years but that this was "practically certain" not to last, and that a system of control would involve "such thorough-going rights of inspection and internal controls as we have never heretofore contemplated." It added that the question of sharing the weapon with other nations "becomes a primary question of our foreign relations."[^37]
+
+His diary for the same day records that he spent the morning on the paper with Harrison, showed it to Marshall and Groves, and then went to the White House by a route chosen so that the reporters waiting in the President's anteroom would not see him with Groves, whom Colonel McCarthy, the Secretary of the General Staff, had brought through underground passages to a room near the President. Stimson showed Truman the memorandum on the political aspects of "S-1," Groves reported on production, and Truman took one copy of the papers while Stimson and Groves kept the other. The same entry records a telephone conversation with McCloy about the war crimes plan for the San Francisco conference, in which Stimson wrote that the British "have come out strongly against having a trial and wish to kill the people offhand," and that Truman "strongly supported our position."[^38]
+
+### The Interim Committee and the Manhattan Project
+
+In April 1945 Stimson set up a committee "charged with the function of advising the President on the various questions raised by our apparently imminent success in developing an atomic weapon." It was known as the [[Interim Committee]], and advised on the atomic weapon then being developed under the [[Manhattan Project]]. The memoir states that Stimson was its chairman, but that the "principal labor of guiding its extended deliberations" fell to George L. Harrison, who acted as chairman in Stimson's absence. The memoir lists its other members as [[James F. Byrnes]], [[Ralph A. Bard]], [[William L. Clayton]], [[Vannevar Bush]], [[Karl T. Compton]] and [[James B. Conant]].[^39]
+
+The notes of the committee's meeting of Thursday, May 31, 1945, taken by its secretary, Second Lieutenant R. Gordon Arneson, list Stimson as chairman and present with the committee members the scientists [[J. Robert Oppenheimer]], [[Enrico Fermi]], [[Arthur H. Compton]] and [[Ernest O. Lawrence]], and, by invitation, Marshall, Groves, Harvey H. Bundy and Arthur Page. The notes open with Stimson explaining that the committee "had been appointed by him with the approval of the President, to make recommendations on temporary war-time controls, public announcement, legislation and post-war organization," and that Marshall shared with him the responsibility for recommendations to the President on the military aspects.[^40]
+
+The notes record the discussion of Russia. Byrnes feared that if information were given to the Russians even in general terms, "Stalin would ask to be brought into the partnership." Marshall favored building a combination of like-minded powers and raised the question whether two prominent Russian scientists should be invited to witness the test. Oppenheimer suggested that the subject be opened with the Soviets tentatively and in the most general terms. The notes record the view, "generally agreed to by all present," that the United States should stay ahead in production and research while making every effort to better its political relations with Russia.[^40]
+
+The afternoon session took up the effect of bombing on the Japanese. The notes state the conclusion "on which there was general agreement" as Stimson expressed it: that "we could not give the Japanese any warning," that the bomb should not be concentrated on a civilian area, but that the committee "should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible." At Conant's suggestion Stimson agreed that the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' houses. Groves objected to several simultaneous strikes. Under a separate heading, Groves stated that the program had been "plagued since its inception by the presence of certain scientists of doubtful discretion and uncertain loyalty," and the meeting agreed that nothing could be done about dismissing them until after the bomb had been used or at least tested. The notes close with the next meeting set for June 1, 1945, at 11:00 a.m. in the Secretary of War's office, to hear four representatives of industry.[^40]
+
+On June 6, 1945, Arneson wrote to Harrison that the notes of "the Thursday and Friday meetings" indicated the following action: that the committee, "while recognizing that the final selection of the target is essentially a military decision," recommended that the bomb be used against Japan as soon as possible, that it be used on a dual target, "that is, a military installation or war plant surrounded by or adjacent to homes or other buildings most susceptible to damage," and that it be used without prior warning. The memorandum also recommended that the committee advise the Secretary that there might be advantage in a small military panel on the highest level to discuss with him the type of target and the timing.[^41]
+
+The memoir records that the committee "on June 1, recommended that the bomb should be used against Japan, without specific warning, as soon as possible, and against such a target as to make clear its devastating strength." It continues: "The ultimate responsibility for the recommendation to the President rested upon me, and I have no desire to veil it."[^42]
+
+Stimson's memorandum of a conference with Truman on June 6, 1945, begins with the dispute with Charles de Gaulle over French troop movements into Italian territory, in which Stimson told Truman he had come to regard de Gaulle as psychopathic and that the President shared the opinion. It then reports that Byrnes had already told the President of the committee's work, and Stimson's account of its points of agreement: no revelation to Russia or others until the weapon had been successfully used on Japan, and an international committee of control with full power of inspection. Truman said he was thinking of the Polish, Rumanian, Yugoslavian and Manchurian settlements as the quid pro quo for bringing the Soviets into a partnership. In the same conference Stimson told Truman that he was holding down area bombing of Japan because he feared the United States would get "the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities," and that the Air Force might leave Japan so thoroughly bombed that the new weapon would lack "a fair background to show its strength," at which, the memorandum records, Truman laughed and said he understood.[^43]
+
+### Potsdam, July 1945
+
+The first test of the weapon in New Mexico took place on July 16, 1945, while Stimson was at Potsdam. Harrison's coded telegram of that date to Stimson reads: "Operated on this morning. Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations." Stimson's diary records that he took the first message to the President's house at 7:30 p.m. and showed it to Truman and Byrnes.[^44]
+
+On July 16 Stimson sent Truman a memorandum on the conduct of the war with Japan, urging that "we are at the psychological moment to commence our warnings to Japan," and recommending a warning delivered during the conference, with "the full force of our newer weapons" to follow if Japan persisted. His diary for July 17 records that Byrnes "was opposed to a prompt and early warning to Japan which I had first suggested," and that he outlined a timetable the President had apparently agreed to, so Stimson "pressed it no further."[^45] On July 20 Stimson proposed changing the words "until her unconditional capitulation" in the draft proclamation to "until she ceases to resist," observing that a capitulation was defined in his only dictionary as "a conditional surrender; a treaty."[^46]
+
+On July 21 Groves's special report on the test reached Stimson by courier. Stimson's diary describes it as "an immensely powerful document," states that it revealed "far greater destructive power than we expected," and records that he read it to Truman and Byrnes, who were "immensely pleased," and that the President said it "gave him an entirely new feeling of confidence."[^47]
+
+On July 25 Stimson met [[Joseph Stalin]] at Potsdam for eighteen minutes and spoke of the Teheran and Yalta conferences and the Pacific war. His memorandum of the conversation records Stalin saying that "Three Power intervention in the Pacific would surely speed up victory."[^48]
+
+### Kyoto
+
+Harrison cabled Stimson on July 21 that all his local military advisers "definitely favor your pet city," meaning Kyoto, and would like to use it as first choice if those on the scene selected it from the four possible targets.[^49] Stimson replied on July 23, asking for the date and for the name of the target or alternates, "always excluding the particular place against which I have decided," and adding: "My decision has been confirmed by highest authority." The Foreign Relations editors print his diary entries for the period. On July 22 Truman "strongly confirmed my view and said he felt the same way." General [[Henry H. Arnold]] told Stimson he agreed "about the target which I had struck off the program." On July 24 Stimson gave Truman his reasons again, and Truman was "particularly emphatic in agreeing" that a "wanton act" at Kyoto "might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians."[^50]
+
+In the Harper's article Stimson wrote: "With President Truman's warm support I struck off the list of suggested targets the city of Kyoto. Although it was a target of considerable military importance, it had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be spared. I approved four other targets including the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."[^51]
+
+### The Hiroshima decision and the 1947 Harper's article
+
+The memoir states that "It was in the fall of 1941 that the question of atomic energy was first brought directly to my attention." It describes Stimson's article in [[Harper's Magazine]] of February 1947 as "a careful record of his personal connection with this issue."[^52]
+
+The article was reprinted in the *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists* of February 1947. It prints the memorandum of July 2, 1945, which proposed a warning to Japan and stated: "I personally think that if in saying this we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance." Stimson wrote of that memorandum: "It was designed to promise destruction if Japan resisted, and hope, if she surrendered," and that the atomic bomb was not mentioned in it because "on grounds of secrecy the bomb was never mentioned except when absolutely necessary, and furthermore, it had not yet been tested." He wrote that the Potsdam ultimatum of July 26 "very closely followed" the memorandum "with the exception that it made no mention of the Japanese Emperor," and that on July 28 Premier Suzuki rejected it by announcing that it was "unworthy of public notice."[^51]
+
+The article states that "all the evidence I have seen indicates that the controlling factor in the final Japanese decision to accept our terms of surrender was the atomic bomb," and, of the two bombs, that "The two atomic bombs which we had dropped were the only ones we had ready, and our rate of production at the time was very small." It describes Hiroshima as an army center and Nagasaki as a naval and industrial city. Its closing passage reads: "The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss it over."[^51] The two bombs were dropped on [[Hiroshima]] and [[Nagasaki]] in August 1945.
+
+The memoir's introduction states that "The writing of the book has been the work of Mr. McGeorge Bundy. Its style and composition are his."[^53] Bundy's note at the end of the book describes the sources as "two: Mr. Stimson himself and his records," and describes the diary as beginning in 1910, with "a long account of the period May, 1911 to March, 1913, written in the spring of the latter year," sporadic entries between 1913 and 1926, and a separate manuscript volume of entries made overseas in 1918.[^54]
+
+### The Morgenthau Plan
+
+On September 5, 1944, Stimson sent Roosevelt, through Hull, his comments on a Cabinet Committee paper on the treatment of Germany. He wrote that "With the exception of the last paragraph I find myself in agreement with the principles stated therein." The paragraph called for the German standard of living to be "held down to subsistence levels" and for German economic position in Europe to be eliminated.[^55] [[Henry Morgenthau Jr.]] wrote to Stimson on September 6, 1944: "I do not remember anybody suggesting closing down the Saar."[^55]
+
+Stimson's memorandum of September 9, 1944 set out his objection to the Morgenthau proposal: "The fundamental remedy of Mr. Morgenthau is to provide that the industry of Germany shall be substantially obliterated."[^56] The editors of the Foreign Relations series state that Stimson's diary for September 7, 8 and 9, 1944 shows that the enclosures were prepared with the assistance of McCloy, and that Stimson presented them at a meeting between the Cabinet Committee on Germany and Roosevelt on September 9.[^57]
+
+### Papers and diaries
+
+Stimson's papers for the years before 1933 were placed on deposit in the Yale University Library in 1949 and became a gift on February 11, 1952.[^58] They are held by the Manuscripts and Archives department as the Henry Lewis Stimson papers, MS 465.[^59] The National Security Archive's collection of atomic bomb documents prints diary entries of April 25, May 14 and 15, June 6 and July 1945 from the Stimson Diary at Yale, with a microfilm copy at the Library of Congress.[^38] The editors of the Foreign Relations series cite Stimson's diary for September 1944 to the "Stimson Papers."[^57]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1950-1951 (New Haven: Yale University, 1951), entry "Henry Lewis Stimson, B.A. 1888," pp. 11-12 (born September 21, 1867, New York City; died October 20, 1950, Huntington, N.Y.; lawyer 1891-1950; U.S. attorney Southern District of New York 1906-9 and special assistant 1909-10; Secretary of War 1911-13 and 1940-45; Secretary of State 1929-33; special Presidential representative in Nicaragua 1927; Governor General of the Philippine Islands 1928-29; London Naval Conference 1930 and Geneva Disarmament Conference 1932; marriage of July 6, 1893; coronary thrombosis; burial). Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives, http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_record/1925_1952/1950-51.pdf.
+
+[^2]: Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), Introduction by Henry L. Stimson, p. xi; "A Note of Explanation and Acknowledgment" by McGeorge Bundy, pp. 673-674; title page (Secretary of War 1940-45, Secretary of State 1929-33).
+
+[^3]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. I, pp. 3-6, quoting "In the autumn of 1884 I entered the class of '88 at Yale."
+
+[^4]: Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1950-1951, entry "Henry Lewis Stimson, B.A. 1888," p. 11 (Berkeley Premium, English composition prize, Townsend Premium, DeForest Prize Medal, "He Boule, Psi Upsilon, Skull and Bones, Chi Delta Theta, Phi Beta Kappa").
+
+[^5]: *The Yale Banner*, vol. 47 (New Haven, 1888), "Commencement" section, Commencement speakers, June 27, 1888 ("'John Hale and the Latitudinarians,' by Henry Lewis Stimson, of New York City"). https://archive.org/details/yalebanner02univgoog.
+
+[^6]: Antony C. Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones* (1983), chart "Hypothesis Number One," with the family entries for Stimson (1635, Watertown, Mass.), Taft (1679, Braintree, Mass.), Bundy (1635, Boston, Mass.) and Harriman (railroads).
+
+[^7]: Ron Rosenbaum, article on Skull and Bones, *Esquire*, September 1977.
+
+[^8]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. I, pp. 3-6 (admission to the bar in June 1891, clerkship with Root & Clarke, admission to the firm on January 1, 1893, Bronson Winthrop, and the 1897 firm name).
+
+[^9]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. I, p. 6 (West Hills, Township of Huntington, the central ridge of Long Island, the name "Highhold," and forty-four years).
+
+[^10]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. I, p. 9 (Hearst's office, seven indictments within five months, fourteen more the following year).
+
+[^11]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. I, pp. 9-10 (New York Central and the American Sugar Refining Company, three successive jury trials, the company's surrender on the remaining indictments, the counsel's remark, and Root's advice).
+
+[^12]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. I, p. 10 (prosecution of Charles W. Morse for misusing the funds of the Bank of North America).
+
+[^13]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. II, p. 29 (Taft's offer of the Secretary of War post, accepted by Stimson); Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University 1950-1951, p. 11 ("Secretary of War of the United States 1911-13"); United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Henry Lewis Stimson," Biographies of the Secretaries of State (appointed Secretary of War by Taft in 1911), https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/stimson-henry-lewis.
+
+[^14]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. II, "With Roosevelt and Taft," pp. 18-55, and table of contents ("The Split of 1912").
+
+[^15]: United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Henry Lewis Stimson," Biographies of the Secretaries of State (Chile-Peru mediation of 1925, Nicaraguan civil war of 1927, appointment as Governor General by Coolidge, Secretary of State from March 1929), https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/stimson-henry-lewis.
+
+[^16]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), table of contents and chapter headings: ch. V, "As Private Citizen," section "The Peace of Tipitapa" (pp. 101-116); ch. VI, "Governor General of the Philippines" (p. 117), with sections "The Background," "A Happy Year" and "Later Disappointments and Some Hopes" (pp. 117-154).
+
+[^17]: United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Henry Lewis Stimson" (Secretary of State: appointed March 5, 1929; entry on duty March 28, 1929; termination March 4, 1933; succeeded Frank Kellogg; London Naval Conference 1930; Geneva Disarmament Conference 1932), https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/stimson-henry-lewis.
+
+[^18]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. VII, p. 188 (the Black Chamber passage and the principle that "the way to make men trustworthy is to trust them").
+
+[^19]: National Security Agency, "The Black Chamber", https://www.nsa.gov/History/Cryptologic-History/Historical-Events/Article-View/Article/2740622/the-black-chamber/ (May 1919 agreement and $100,000 appropriation; Stimson's decision; May 1929 Signal Corps reorganization; severance and "confidential funds"; Yardley's charge and Stimson's autobiography).
+
+[^20]: Herbert O. Yardley, *The American Black Chamber* (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931), ch. 1, "The State Department Code Room" (the "ceased in 1929" sentence) and Foreword (the "new Secretary of State" sentence).
+
+[^21]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. VII, p. 193 (appointment of Harvey H. Bundy as Assistant Secretary, and of Herbert Feis as Economic Adviser, after the death of an officer named Cotton).
+
+[^22]: United States Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1932, Volume III, The Far East*, telegram, The Secretary of State to the Consul General at Nanking (Peck), January 7, 1932, document 10, p. 7, with the text of the note (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1932v03/d10).
+
+[^23]: United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, "The Mukden Incident of 1931 and the Stimson Doctrine," Milestones: 1921-1936, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/mukden-incident.
+
+[^24]: United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Henry Lewis Stimson," Biographies of the Secretaries of State ("what later became known as the 'Stimson Doctrine'"), https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/stimson-henry-lewis.
+
+[^25]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), ch. IX, "The Far Eastern Crisis," section 1, "From Conciliation to Nonrecognition," beginning p. 220.
+
+[^26]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), p. 317 (Yale Commencement of June 1940, the radio speech of June 18, 1940, and "before he accepted public office").
+
+[^27]: National Archives, Records of the Office of the Secretary of War (Record Group 107), agency history note ("The wartime Secretaries of War were Henry L. Stimson, July 10, 1940-September 21, 1945, and Robert P. Patterson"), https://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/military/rg-107.html; United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, "Cordell Hull" (appointed March 4, 1933; served until November 20, 1944), https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/hull-cordell.
+
+[^28]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), p. 338 (Lovett's arrival in November 1940 as air assistant, Patterson's service "from the beginning to the end," and Harvey H. Bundy's earlier service with Stimson).
+
+[^29]: Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, *Personal Justice Denied* (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), pp. 79-80, including nn. 151-152 (Stimson diary, February 10, 1942).
+
+[^30]: *Personal Justice Denied* (1982), p. 83, including nn. 166-167 (Stimson's record of February 17, 1942, and the meeting of February 18, 1942).
+
+[^31]: National Archives, "Executive Order 9066: Resulting in Japanese-American Incarceration (1942)," transcript of Executive Order No. 9066, February 19, 1942 (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9066).
+
+[^32]: *Personal Justice Denied* (1982), p. 99 (the powers conferred by Executive Order 9066, and Stimson's letter of February 20, 1942 to DeWitt).
+
+[^33]: *Personal Justice Denied* (1982), Summary, p. 15 (May 1944 position; delay until after the November 1944 election; "motivated by political considerations").
+
+[^34]: *Personal Justice Denied* (1982), p. 227 (Cabinet meeting of May 26, 1944, and Biddle's note).
+
+[^35]: *Personal Justice Denied* (1982), p. 47 (McCloy as civilian aide to Stimson responsible for Japanese American questions).
+
+[^36]: United States Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Volume I, General: The United Nations*, document 6, Memorandum by the Secretary of War (Stimson) to the Secretary of State, January 23, 1945, with editorial note citing Stimson and Bundy, *On Active Service in Peace and War*, pp. 599-605 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v01/d6).
+
+[^37]: Memorandum discussed with the President, April 25, 1945, Henry Stimson Diary, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library (microfilm at the Library of Congress), in National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, "The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II," Document 3b (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/3b.pdf); see also Document 3a, the memorandum of April 23, 1945 prepared by Groves.
+
+[^38]: Stimson Diary, April 25, 1945, in National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, Document 3d (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/3d.pdf); Document 3c (War Department record of the arrangements for Groves to accompany Stimson); the collection's index of documents drawn from the Stimson Diary (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/).
+
+[^39]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), "The Atomic Bomb and the Surrender of Japan," p. 616 (the committee set up in April, its chairmanship, and the list of members).
+
+[^40]: "Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, Thursday, 31 May 1945," signed R. Gordon Arneson, Secretary, Records of the Army Corps of Engineers (RG 77), Manhattan Engineer District, Harrison-Bundy files, folder 100, in National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, Document 12 (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/12.pdf), sections on the opening statement, Russia, effect of the bombing on the Japanese, undesirable scientists and next meeting.
+
+[^41]: Memorandum from R. Gordon Arneson to Mr. Harrison, June 6, 1945, RG 77, Harrison-Bundy files, folder 100, in National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, Document 14 (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/14.pdf).
+
+[^42]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), p. 617.
+
+[^43]: Memorandum of Conference with the President, June 6, 1945, Stimson Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, in National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, Document 15 (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/15.pdf).
+
+[^44]: United States Department of State, *Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, Volume II*, document 1303, Harrison to Stimson, July 16, 1945, with the editorial footnote quoting Stimson's diary of July 16 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1303).
+
+[^45]: *Foreign Relations: The Conference of Berlin, 1945, Volume II*, document 1236, Stimson to the Secretary of State, with memorandum for the President, "The Conduct of the War with Japan," July 16, 1945, and the editorial footnote quoting Stimson's diary of July 17, 23 and 24 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1236).
+
+[^46]: *Foreign Relations: The Conference of Berlin, 1945, Volume II*, document 1241, Stimson to the President, "Proposed Proclamation to Japan," July 20, 1945 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1241).
+
+[^47]: *Foreign Relations: The Conference of Berlin, 1945, Volume II*, document 1305, Groves to Stimson, editorial footnote quoting Stimson's diary of July 21, 1945 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1305).
+
+[^48]: *Foreign Relations: The Conference of Berlin, 1945, Volume II*, document 710a-109, Memorandum by the Secretary of War, "Conference with Generalissimo Stalin, 25 July 1945, 1225 to 1243 at Schloss Cecilienhof" (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d710a-109).
+
+[^49]: *Foreign Relations: The Conference of Berlin, 1945, Volume II*, document 1307, Harrison to Stimson, July 21, 1945, with editorial footnote on the selection of Kyoto as a possible target (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1307).
+
+[^50]: *Foreign Relations: The Conference of Berlin, 1945, Volume II*, document 1310, Stimson to Harrison, July 23, 1945, with editorial footnote quoting Stimson's diary of July 22 and 24, 1945 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1310).
+
+[^51]: Henry L. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," *Harper's Magazine*, February 1947, as reprinted in *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists*, vol. 3, no. 2 (February 1947) (https://archive.org/details/sim_bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists_1947-02_3_2), sections on the memorandum of July 2, "The Use of the Bomb" and "A Personal Summary," and the Bulletin's editorial "The Decision to Use the Bomb."
+
+[^52]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), p. 609 (the fall of 1941, and the Harper's article as "a careful record").
+
+[^53]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), Introduction, p. xi.
+
+[^54]: Stimson, *On Active Service in Peace and War* (1948), "A Note of Explanation and Acknowledgment," pp. 673-674.
+
+[^55]: *Foreign Relations of the United States: Conferences at Quebec, 1944*, document 85, The Secretary of War (Stimson) to the President, September 5, 1944, and footnote quoting Morgenthau's letter to Stimson of September 6, 1944 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944Quebec/d85).
+
+[^56]: *Foreign Relations of the United States: Conferences at Quebec, 1944*, document 90, Memorandum by the Secretary of War (Stimson), September 9, 1944, enclosure 1 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944Quebec/d90).
+
+[^57]: *Foreign Relations of the United States: Conferences at Quebec, 1944*, document 90, editorial footnote on Stimson's diary for September 7, 8 and 9, 1944, citing "Stimson Papers" (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944Quebec/d90).
+
+[^58]: Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1950-1951, p. 12 ("Mr. Stimson's papers for the years prior to 1933 were placed on deposit in the University Library in 1949, and became a gift February 11, 1952").
+
+[^59]: Henry Lewis Stimson papers (MS 465), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library (https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ms.0465).

10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Ngo Dinh Diem.md

@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@ relations:
     start: 1963-08-24
     end: 1963-11-02
     role: "target of the generals' coup"
-    fn: 35
+    fn: 37
   - type: investigated
     with: "[[Church Committee]]"
     reverse: true
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ relations:
     role: "subject of the interim report on alleged assassination plots"
     fn: 2
 created: 2026-10-01
-updated: 2026-10-01
+updated: 2026-10-26
 ---
 
 Ngo Dinh Diem (died November 2, 1963, [[Saigon]]) was premier of the [[State of Vietnam]] from July 7, 1954, and president of [[South Vietnam]] until he and his brother [[Ngo Dinh Nhu]] were killed during the [[1963 South Vietnamese coup d'état|generals' coup of November 1 and 2, 1963]].[^1][^2] Two [[Central Intelligence Agency]] stations in Saigon worked with his government from its first weeks, and the CIA paid money through him to armed sects in 1954.[^3][^4] A [[Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group|Michigan State University group]] under contract to his government advised his police from 1955 to 1962.[^5] The Senate's [[Church Committee]] found in 1975 that the [[United States]] encouraged the coup against him but neither desired nor was involved in his death.[^2]
@@ -132,35 +132,35 @@ In October 1961 President Kennedy sent General [[Maxwell Taylor]] and [[Walt Ros
 
 On May 8, 1963, South Vietnamese troops in Hue fired on [[Buddhists in Vietnam|Buddhists]] celebrating Buddha's birthday, killing nine and wounding fourteen. By July 4 Generals [[Duong Van Minh]], [[Tran Van Don]], [[Le Van Kim]] and [[Tran Thien Khiem]] had agreed on the necessity of a coup. Shortly after midnight on August 21 Nhu ordered forces loyal to him to attack pagodas across the country; over thirty monks were injured and 1,400 arrested.[^2]
 
-On August 24 the State Department sent telegram 243 to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. It stated that the "US Government cannot tolerate situation in which power lies in Nhu's hands," authorized Lodge to tell key military leaders that the United States would find it impossible to continue support unless the Nhus were removed, added that "if, in spite of all of your efforts, Diem remains obdurate and refuses, then we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved," and instructed the country team to "make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary." It was drafted by [[Roger Hilsman]], cleared by Hilsman, [[Michael V. Forrestal|Michael Forrestal]] and [[George Ball]], and approved for transmission by [[Averell Harriman]].[^13] Taylor later said it was sent without the concurrence of the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs or the CIA; Hilsman maintained that the President and representatives of the agencies concerned had cleared it.[^13]
+On August 24 the State Department sent telegram 243 to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. It stated that the "US Government cannot tolerate situation in which power lies in Nhu's hands," authorized Lodge to tell key military leaders that the United States would find it impossible to continue support unless the Nhus were removed, added that "if, in spite of all of your efforts, Diem remains obdurate and refuses, then we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved," and instructed the country team to "make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary." It was drafted by [[Roger Hilsman]], cleared by Hilsman, [[Michael V. Forrestal|Michael Forrestal]] and [[George Ball]], and approved for transmission by [[Averell Harriman]].[^13] The Krulak memorandum of August 24, 1963 records Forrestal's account that he, Roger Hilsman and "Governor Harriman" had converted a proposed course of action into an instruction to Lodge, that the instruction had been sent to the President for approval, and that it was not something on which Defense clearance was desired.[^14] Harriman's title on that date was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.[^15] Taylor later said it was sent without the concurrence of the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs or the CIA; Hilsman maintained that the President and representatives of the agencies concerned had cleared it.[^13]
 
-Lieutenant Colonel [[Lucien Conein]] and another CIA officer were told on August 26 to convey the substance of the telegram to Generals Khiem and [[Nguyen Khanh]], reminding them that "we cannot be of any help during initial action of assuming power of state." On August 29 a message from the [[White House]] authorized General [[Paul Harkins]] to confirm that the United States would support a coup with a good chance of success, and Kennedy cabled Lodge the same day: "Until the very moment of the go signal for the operation by the Generals, I must reserve a contingent right to change course and reverse previous instructions."[^2] On August 30 Taylor sent the President a CIA-sourced table of the probable loyalties of the units around Saigon in a coup, rating the Presidential Guard most likely to remain loyal and the airborne brigade likely to act against Diem.[^14]
+Lieutenant Colonel [[Lucien Conein]] and another CIA officer were told on August 26 to convey the substance of the telegram to Generals Khiem and [[Nguyen Khanh]], reminding them that "we cannot be of any help during initial action of assuming power of state." On August 29 a message from the [[White House]] authorized General [[Paul Harkins]] to confirm that the United States would support a coup with a good chance of success, and Kennedy cabled Lodge the same day: "Until the very moment of the go signal for the operation by the Generals, I must reserve a contingent right to change course and reverse previous instructions."[^2] On August 30 Taylor sent the President a CIA-sourced table of the probable loyalties of the units around Saigon in a coup, rating the Presidential Guard most likely to remain loyal and the airborne brigade likely to act against Diem.[^16]
 
-On October 2 Secretary of Defense [[Robert McNamara]] and Taylor reported that there was "no solid evidence of the possibility of a successful coup, although assassination of Diem or Nhu is always a possibility." They recommended withholding commodity import funds, which together with [[Public Law 480]] made up 60 to 70 percent of Vietnam's imports, suspending two [[Agency for International Development|AID]] loans, and cutting off MAP and CIA support to the units of Colonel [[Le Quang Tung]] unless they were placed under the [[Joint General Staff (Vietnam)|Joint General Staff]]. They held that "no initiative should be taken to encourage actively a change in government" and called for "an intensive clandestine effort, under the Ambassador's direction, to establish necessary contacts" to appraise coup prospects.[^15] Taylor had written to Diem the day before as "an old friend of South Vietnam," and had met Minh privately on September 29 and October 1.[^16][^17]
+On October 2 Secretary of Defense [[Robert McNamara]] and Taylor reported that there was "no solid evidence of the possibility of a successful coup, although assassination of Diem or Nhu is always a possibility." They recommended withholding commodity import funds, which together with [[Public Law 480]] made up 60 to 70 percent of Vietnam's imports, suspending two [[Agency for International Development|AID]] loans, and cutting off MAP and CIA support to the units of Colonel [[Le Quang Tung]] unless they were placed under the [[Joint General Staff (Vietnam)|Joint General Staff]]. They held that "no initiative should be taken to encourage actively a change in government" and called for "an intensive clandestine effort, under the Ambassador's direction, to establish necessary contacts" to appraise coup prospects.[^17] Taylor had written to Diem the day before as "an old friend of South Vietnam," and had met Minh privately on September 29 and October 1.[^18][^19]
 
 ### The generals and Conein, October 1963
 
-On the night of October 2 Conein, who had known many of the generals since the Second World War, met Don at [[Nha Trang]] with the approval of the deputy chief of mission, [[William Trueheart]], whose guidance was to neither encourage nor discourage coup thinking.[^18] On October 5 Minh told Conein that he needed to know the American position and outlined three plans, the first being the assassination of Nhu and Ngo Dinh Can with Diem kept in office, which he called the easiest; Conein said he could not answer.[^19] The station recommended to Lodge that "we do not set ourselves irrevocably against the assassination plot." [[John McCone]], the Director of Central Intelligence, cabled on October 5 that "we cannot be in the position of stimulating, approving, or supporting assassination," and on October 6 that the recommendation be withdrawn; William Colby, then chief of the Far East Division, drafted the first cable. Conein testified that Lodge told him of McCone's position around October 20 and that he then told Don the United States opposed assassination.[^2] A CIA cable to Lodge of October 9 stated that Washington did not wish to stimulate a coup but would not thwart a change of government or deny aid to a new regime, and that knowledge was confined to an extremely limited group in the White House, State, Defense and the CIA.[^20]
+On the night of October 2 Conein, who had known many of the generals since the Second World War, met Don at [[Nha Trang]] with the approval of the deputy chief of mission, [[William Trueheart]], whose guidance was to neither encourage nor discourage coup thinking.[^20] On October 5 Minh told Conein that he needed to know the American position and outlined three plans, the first being the assassination of Nhu and Ngo Dinh Can with Diem kept in office, which he called the easiest; Conein said he could not answer.[^21] The station recommended to Lodge that "we do not set ourselves irrevocably against the assassination plot." [[John McCone]], the Director of Central Intelligence, cabled on October 5 that "we cannot be in the position of stimulating, approving, or supporting assassination," and on October 6 that the recommendation be withdrawn; William Colby, then chief of the Far East Division, drafted the first cable. Conein testified that Lodge told him of McCone's position around October 20 and that he then told Don the United States opposed assassination.[^2] A CIA cable to Lodge of October 9 stated that Washington did not wish to stimulate a coup but would not thwart a change of government or deny aid to a new regime, and that knowledge was confined to an extremely limited group in the White House, State, Defense and the CIA.[^22]
 
-Conein's after-action report of November 1 states that the majority of officers wished Diem to have honorable retirement and exile, but that "as to Ngo Dinh Nhu and Ngo Dinh Can, there was never dissention. The attitude was that their deaths, along with Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu would be welcomed."[^2] Conein received 3 million piasters on October 24 and kept them in a safe at his house; on October 29 Lodge cabled that a request for funds should be anticipated.[^2] The station's cable 2023 of October 29 on Conein's meeting with Don the day before, held at a dentist's office, which listed coup units and described two escape tunnels from [[Gia Long Palace]], was sent eyes only to McNamara, [[Roswell Gilpatric|Gilpatric]], Taylor, [[Victor Krulak|Krulak]] and [[William Bundy]] at Defense, among others.[^4][^21]
+Conein's after-action report of November 1 states that the majority of officers wished Diem to have honorable retirement and exile, but that "as to Ngo Dinh Nhu and Ngo Dinh Can, there was never dissention. The attitude was that their deaths, along with Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu would be welcomed."[^2] Conein received 3 million piasters on October 24 and kept them in a safe at his house; on October 29 Lodge cabled that a request for funds should be anticipated.[^2] The station's cable 2023 of October 29 on Conein's meeting with Don the day before, held at a dentist's office, which listed coup units and described two escape tunnels from [[Gia Long Palace]], was sent eyes only to McNamara, [[Roswell Gilpatric|Gilpatric]], Taylor, [[Victor Krulak|Krulak]] and [[William Bundy]] at Defense, among others.[^4][^23]
 
-At the White House on October 29 Colby estimated pro-Diem and anti-Diem forces at about 9,800 each, with 18,000 neutral. Secretary of State [[Dean Rusk]] said that the United States needed 48 hours' notice, not four, of any coup. Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] called his opposition to a coup "the minority view," and Taylor and McCone agreed with him; McNamara proposed that the deputy chief of mission, the acting CIA chief and Harkins jointly decide "what our agent Conein would say and do."[^22] Around October 30 Colby wrote to McCone proposing that Nhu be installed in his brother's place as a "strong, reasonably well oriented and efficient potential successor," whose "highly unfavorable public image" the United States should help improve; the proposal drew no support.[^4] Conein later recalled that Lodge had remarked that if nothing happened and Lodge made his scheduled trip to Washington, Conein would never work another day for the government.[^4]
+At the White House on October 29 Colby estimated pro-Diem and anti-Diem forces at about 9,800 each, with 18,000 neutral. Secretary of State [[Dean Rusk]] said that the United States needed 48 hours' notice, not four, of any coup. Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] called his opposition to a coup "the minority view," and Taylor and McCone agreed with him; McNamara proposed that the deputy chief of mission, the acting CIA chief and Harkins jointly decide "what our agent Conein would say and do."[^24] Around October 30 Colby wrote to McCone proposing that Nhu be installed in his brother's place as a "strong, reasonably well oriented and efficient potential successor," whose "highly unfavorable public image" the United States should help improve; the proposal drew no support.[^4] Conein later recalled that Lodge had remarked that if nothing happened and Lodge made his scheduled trip to Washington, Conein would never work another day for the government.[^4]
 
 ### November 1 and 2, 1963
 
-On the morning of November 1 Diem received Lodge and Admiral [[Harry D. Felt|Harry Felt]] and complained that that junior CIA officers were "poisoning atmosphere by spreading rumors of coups against him," naming one officer, Hodges.[^23] Speaking alone with Lodge afterwards, Diem asked him to consult "Mr. Colby of CIA and former Ambassador Nolting" about Nhu, saying that Colby had told him it was "too bad that brother Nhu was living in an ivory tower," and asked Lodge to tell Kennedy that he was "a good and a frank ally."[^24]
+On the morning of November 1 Diem received Lodge and Admiral [[Harry D. Felt|Harry Felt]] and complained that that junior CIA officers were "poisoning atmosphere by spreading rumors of coups against him," naming one officer, Hodges.[^25] Speaking alone with Lodge afterwards, Diem asked him to consult "Mr. Colby of CIA and former Ambassador Nolting" about Nhu, saying that Colby had told him it was "too bad that brother Nhu was living in an ivory tower," and asked Lodge to tell Kennedy that he was "a good and a frank ally."[^26]
 
-The coup began early in the afternoon; Harkins cabled Taylor that instead of four hours' or two days' notice "we got approximately four minutes."[^25] An aide to Don asked Conein to bring all available money to the Joint General Staff headquarters, and Conein brought 3 million piasters, about $42,000, which was given to Don to buy food for the troops and pay death benefits. Don wrote in his memoir, *Our Endless War*, that Conein "offered us money and weapons, but I turned him down."[^2][^21] Conein stayed at the Joint General Staff headquarters through the coup, relaying what Minh and Don told him; CIA officers in the streets supplied, with him, nearly all the authoritative information Washington received over the next twenty-four hours.[^4] At 4:30 p.m. Diem telephoned Lodge and asked, "What is the attitude of the US?" Lodge replied that he lacked information and instructions, said he was concerned for Diem's safety, and asked whether Diem had heard of the offer of safe conduct if he resigned; Diem answered, "I am trying to reestablish order."[^4]
+The coup began early in the afternoon; Harkins cabled Taylor that instead of four hours' or two days' notice "we got approximately four minutes."[^27] An aide to Don asked Conein to bring all available money to the Joint General Staff headquarters, and Conein brought 3 million piasters, about $42,000, which was given to Don to buy food for the troops and pay death benefits. Don wrote in his memoir, *Our Endless War*, that Conein "offered us money and weapons, but I turned him down."[^2][^23] Conein stayed at the Joint General Staff headquarters through the coup, relaying what Minh and Don told him; CIA officers in the streets supplied, with him, nearly all the authoritative information Washington received over the next twenty-four hours.[^4] At 4:30 p.m. Diem telephoned Lodge and asked, "What is the attitude of the US?" Lodge replied that he lacked information and instructions, said he was concerned for Diem's safety, and asked whether Diem had heard of the offer of safe conduct if he resigned; Diem answered, "I am trying to reestablish order."[^4]
 
-In Washington, before the outcome was known, Rusk cabled Lodge that "since coup is wholly Vietnamese," premature American recognition would falsely brand it as American-inspired. A second telegram, drafted by Hilsman and [[McGeorge Bundy]], instructed Lodge that acceptance of the coup in the United States would be "greatly increased" if the generals continued to develop "strongly and publicly" their charge that Nhu had been "dickering with Communists"; Lodge replied the next day that he knew "of no hard evidence of such a desire."[^26][^27] Rusk told Senator [[J. William Fulbright]] by telephone at noon that "our own involvement is minimal."[^28]
+In Washington, before the outcome was known, Rusk cabled Lodge that "since coup is wholly Vietnamese," premature American recognition would falsely brand it as American-inspired. A second telegram, drafted by Hilsman and [[McGeorge Bundy]], instructed Lodge that acceptance of the coup in the United States would be "greatly increased" if the generals continued to develop "strongly and publicly" their charge that Nhu had been "dickering with Communists"; Lodge replied the next day that he knew "of no hard evidence of such a desire."[^28][^29] Rusk told Senator [[J. William Fulbright]] by telephone at noon that "our own involvement is minimal."[^30]
 
 At 6:20 on the morning of November 2 Diem called Don and offered to surrender if he and Nhu were given safe conduct to an airport. Lodge had cabled on October 30 that key leaders might request evacuation, and Conein was charged with obtaining an aircraft; when Minh and Don asked for one, a station officer told Conein it would take twenty-four hours, because it would have to come from [[Guam]] and could fly Diem only to a country that granted asylum.[^2] The station officer, [[David Smith (CIA)|David Smith]], also named France as the country most likely to grant asylum and put at twenty-four hours the time needed to bring in an aircraft able to reach Paris without intermediate stops.[^4] An escort appeared at the palace at 8:00 a.m., but Diem and Nhu were not there.[^2]
 
-When Conein returned to the Joint General Staff about 10:30 a.m., Minh told him the brothers were dead and had killed themselves in a Catholic church, to which Conein responded that someone had better construct a more plausible story. Minh offered to show him the bodies, and Conein declined.[^2][^4] Conein reported that he believed Minh had ordered the executions.[^4] The embassy reported that day several versions: that the brothers had spent the night at a Cholon clubhouse owned by a Chinese businessman, gone to church in the morning and been picked up by the army and locked in a vehicle; that Minh had told the former finance minister that they had shot themselves with a gun left in the vehicle "due to an inadvertence"; and that an aide to General Khanh, who saw the bodies, said they had been assassinated at least at the direction of General [[Mai Huu Xuan]].[^29] Most station reporting attributed the decision to kill them to Minh, and the various reports agreed that the killing was carried out by an officer named Nhung, described variously as Minh's bodyguard and as a supporter of Mai Huu Xuan.[^4] On November 16 an officer of unknown reliability gave the CIA two photographs of the bodies in which their hands appeared tied behind their backs, and said they had been shot and stabbed in the vehicle taking them to the Joint General Staff.[^2]
+When Conein returned to the Joint General Staff about 10:30 a.m., Minh told him the brothers were dead and had killed themselves in a Catholic church, to which Conein responded that someone had better construct a more plausible story. Minh offered to show him the bodies, and Conein declined.[^2][^4] Conein reported that he believed Minh had ordered the executions.[^4] The embassy reported that day several versions: that the brothers had spent the night at a Cholon clubhouse owned by a Chinese businessman, gone to church in the morning and been picked up by the army and locked in a vehicle; that Minh had told the former finance minister that they had shot themselves with a gun left in the vehicle "due to an inadvertence"; and that an aide to General Khanh, who saw the bodies, said they had been assassinated at least at the direction of General [[Mai Huu Xuan]].[^31] Most station reporting attributed the decision to kill them to Minh, and the various reports agreed that the killing was carried out by an officer named Nhung, described variously as Minh's bodyguard and as a supporter of Mai Huu Xuan.[^4] On November 16 an officer of unknown reliability gave the CIA two photographs of the bodies in which their hands appeared tied behind their backs, and said they had been shot and stabbed in the vehicle taking them to the Joint General Staff.[^2]
 
-The news reached Kennedy during a meeting at 9:35 a.m. on November 2, when Forrestal brought in a telegram reporting the deaths.[^30] Rusk instructed Lodge that the generals should establish publicly that the deaths were suicides "if this true," through an impartial group.[^31] McGeorge Bundy cabled Lodge that evening that the generals "should not be left under illusion that political assassination is easily accepted here."[^32] The State Department instructed all diplomatic posts, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, to distinguish the Saigon coup from its opposition to military coups against democratic governments elsewhere.[^33] Lodge recommended resuming commercial import payments "on a periodic and selective basis without public announcement so as to avoid appearance of blank check or of pay-off."[^34]
+The news reached Kennedy during a meeting at 9:35 a.m. on November 2, when Forrestal brought in a telegram reporting the deaths.[^32] Rusk instructed Lodge that the generals should establish publicly that the deaths were suicides "if this true," through an impartial group.[^33] McGeorge Bundy cabled Lodge that evening that the generals "should not be left under illusion that political assassination is easily accepted here."[^34] The State Department instructed all diplomatic posts, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, to distinguish the Saigon coup from its opposition to military coups against democratic governments elsewhere.[^35] Lodge recommended resuming commercial import payments "on a periodic and selective basis without public announcement so as to avoid appearance of blank check or of pay-off."[^36]
 
-The Church Committee concluded that the details of the deaths were not known and that there was no available evidence of direct or indirect American involvement in them.[^2] Taylor, asked in 1981 whether the killing had been a covert operation, answered, "Not if you mean a covert operation conducted by the CIA."[^35]
+The Church Committee concluded that the details of the deaths were not known and that there was no available evidence of direct or indirect American involvement in them.[^2] Taylor, asked in 1981 whether the killing had been a covert operation, answered, "Not if you mean a covert operation conducted by the CIA."[^37]
 
 ### Footnotes
 
@@ -177,25 +177,27 @@ The Church Committee concluded that the details of the deaths were not known and
 [^11]: *United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967*, Book 2, Part IV.A.4, "U.S. Training of the Vietnamese National Army, 1954-1959," DTIC ADA542557, https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA542557
 [^12]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence via the Deputy Director (Plans), "Position Papers for President Ngo Dinh Diem Visit," May 9, 1957, CIA-RDP80R01731R000700500014-9, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80r01731r000700500014-9
 [^13]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. III, *Vietnam, January-August 1963*, document 281, telegram 243 from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, August 24, 1963, and source note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v03/d281
-[^14]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, *Vietnam, August-December 1963*, document 24, Taylor to the President, CM-856-63, August 30, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d24
-[^15]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 167, McNamara and Taylor to the President, "Report of McNamara-Taylor Mission to South Vietnam," October 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d167
-[^16]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 163, Taylor to President Diem, October 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d163
-[^17]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 162, memorandum for the record by Taylor, October 1, 1963, and source note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d162
-[^18]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 171, CIA Saigon station telegram 1385, October 3, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d171
-[^19]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 177, CIA Saigon station telegram, October 5, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d177
-[^20]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 192, CIA telegram to the Ambassador in Vietnam, October 9, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d192
-[^21]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 225, CIA Saigon station telegram 2023, October 29, 1963, and source note quoting Tran Van Don, *Our Endless War*, pp. 98-99, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d225
-[^22]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 234, memorandum of conference with President Kennedy, October 29, 1963, 4:20 p.m., https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d234
-[^23]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 261, Saigon telegram 854, November 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d261
-[^24]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 262, Saigon telegram 841, November 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d262
-[^25]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 267, Harkins to Taylor, MAC J00 8512, November 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d267
-[^26]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 264, telegram 673 to Saigon, November 1, 1963, and document 266, telegram 674 to Saigon, November 1, 1963, with source notes, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d264 and https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d266
-[^27]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 270, Saigon telegram 875, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d270
-[^28]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 265, memorandum of telephone conversation between Rusk and Senator Fulbright, November 1, 1963, 12:01 p.m., https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d265
-[^29]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 273, Saigon telegram 888, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d273
-[^30]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 274, editorial note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d274
-[^31]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 271, telegram 688 to Saigon, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d271
-[^32]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 278, Bundy to Lodge, CAP 63602, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d278
-[^33]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 277, circular telegram 833, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d277
-[^34]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 270, Saigon telegram 875, November 2, 1963, paragraph 1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d270
-[^35]: Robert S. Gallagher, "Gen. Maxwell Taylor: Memories of Peace and War" (interview), *American Heritage*, vol. 32, no. 3 (April/May 1981), https://www.americanheritage.com/gen-maxwell-taylor-memories-peace-and-war
+[^14]: Memorandum for the Record by the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (Krulak), Washington, August 24, 1963, National Defense University, Taylor Papers, T-172-69. *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961 to 1963*, vol. III, document 282. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v03/d282
+[^15]: Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Harriman) and the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Hilsman), *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961 to 1963*, vol. III, document 243. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v03/d243
+[^16]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, *Vietnam, August-December 1963*, document 24, Taylor to the President, CM-856-63, August 30, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d24
+[^17]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 167, McNamara and Taylor to the President, "Report of McNamara-Taylor Mission to South Vietnam," October 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d167
+[^18]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 163, Taylor to President Diem, October 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d163
+[^19]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 162, memorandum for the record by Taylor, October 1, 1963, and source note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d162
+[^20]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 171, CIA Saigon station telegram 1385, October 3, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d171
+[^21]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 177, CIA Saigon station telegram, October 5, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d177
+[^22]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 192, CIA telegram to the Ambassador in Vietnam, October 9, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d192
+[^23]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 225, CIA Saigon station telegram 2023, October 29, 1963, and source note quoting Tran Van Don, *Our Endless War*, pp. 98-99, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d225
+[^24]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 234, memorandum of conference with President Kennedy, October 29, 1963, 4:20 p.m., https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d234
+[^25]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 261, Saigon telegram 854, November 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d261
+[^26]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 262, Saigon telegram 841, November 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d262
+[^27]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 267, Harkins to Taylor, MAC J00 8512, November 1, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d267
+[^28]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 264, telegram 673 to Saigon, November 1, 1963, and document 266, telegram 674 to Saigon, November 1, 1963, with source notes, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d264 and https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d266
+[^29]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 270, Saigon telegram 875, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d270
+[^30]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 265, memorandum of telephone conversation between Rusk and Senator Fulbright, November 1, 1963, 12:01 p.m., https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d265
+[^31]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 273, Saigon telegram 888, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d273
+[^32]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 274, editorial note, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d274
+[^33]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 271, telegram 688 to Saigon, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d271
+[^34]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 278, Bundy to Lodge, CAP 63602, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d278
+[^35]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 277, circular telegram 833, November 2, 1963, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d277
+[^36]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. IV, document 270, Saigon telegram 875, November 2, 1963, paragraph 1, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d270
+[^37]: Robert S. Gallagher, "Gen. Maxwell Taylor: Memories of Peace and War" (interview), *American Heritage*, vol. 32, no. 3 (April/May 1981), https://www.americanheritage.com/gen-maxwell-taylor-memories-peace-and-war

10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Rockefeller family.md

@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ relations:
     start: 1955-03-10
     fn: 9
 created: 2026-09-22
-updated: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-10-26
 ---
 
 The Rockefeller family's fortune came from [[Standard Oil]]. In 1870 [[John D. Rockefeller]] and his associates formed the Standard Oil Company (Ohio), with the largest refining capacity of any firm in the world; in 1882 the Standard Oil Trust took in Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York, with headquarters at 26 Broadway in New York; after a Supreme Court decision in 1911 it was broken up into 34 companies.[^1] The Court's opinion of May 15, 1911 names "The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and thirty-three other corporations" as appellants, together with John D. Rockefeller, William Rockefeller and five other individual defendants, and affirmed the decree with directions to modify it.[^2] The family's philanthropies followed: the [[General Education Board]], the [[Rockefeller Sanitary Commission]] and, chartered in 1913, the [[Rockefeller Foundation]], which by the 1920s owned stock in thirteen oil companies and nine pipelines. When [[Charles Evans Hughes]], a Standard Oil counsel and Foundation trustee, became secretary of state, the British Foreign Office complained that "Washington officials begin to think, talk, and write like Standard Oil officials."[^3]
@@ -50,7 +50,12 @@ Nelson, a director of Standard Oil of New Jersey's Venezuelan subsidiary, Creole
 
 The Foundation paid for the founding in 1943 of the [[Allan Memorial Institute]] in Montreal, where [[D. Ewen Cameron]] later conducted the depatterning experiments funded under [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA]].[^12] David founded the Council of the Americas in 1963 and in 1973, with [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]], the [[Trilateral Commission]].[^5]
 
+### Skull and Bones
+
+[[Percy Avery Rockefeller]] is listed under the class of 1900 in the index of members that [[Antony C. Sutton]] reproduces.[^13] Sutton's chart of the society's families lists the Rockefeller family among the new-wealth families, beside the Payne family, under Standard Oil.[^14] In 1977 [[Ron Rosenbaum]] wrote in [[Esquire]] that [[J. Richardson Dilworth]], "the Bonesman who now manages the Rockefeller fortune," could be asked how wealthy the society is.[^15]
+
 ### Footnotes
+
 [^1]: ExxonMobil, "Our History," corporate history timeline, entries for 1870, 1882 and the 1911 dissolution. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/company/who-we-are/our-history
 [^2]: *Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States*, 221 U.S. 1 (decided May 15, 1911), opening paragraph and concluding part of the opinion of Chief Justice White. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/221/1
 [^3]: Colby, Gerard, and Charlotte Dennett. *Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon.* HarperCollins, 1995, chs. 2-3.
@@ -63,3 +68,6 @@ The Foundation paid for the founding in 1943 of the [[Allan Memorial Institute]]
 [^10]: Colby and Dennett, Introduction (2017) and ch. 23, as cited on the Henry A. Kissinger page.
 [^11]: Executive Order 11828, January 4, 1975.
 [^12]: Marks, John. *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control.* Times Books, 1979, ch. 8.
+[^13]: Antony C. Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1900 (Rockefeller, Percy Avery). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
+[^14]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), chart "Hypothesis Number One," new-wealth families. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
+[^15]: Ron Rosenbaum, "The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones," *Esquire*, September 1977. https://archive.org/details/print-article-the-last-secrets-of-skull-and-bones-esquire-september-1977