The Day David Rockefeller Learned About Ron Paul

Gary North

Nov. 17, 2011

Back in 2007, someone interviewed David Rockefeller. He brought up Ron Paul's call for the government to reassert its Constitutional prerogatives and take over the Federal Reserve System. Rockefeller admitted that he had never heard about this. Then he dismissed the idea as peripheral.

The man asking the question had it wrong. Paul called for the abolition of the FED, not the government's operation of it. There is a big difference. Paul wants no central bank, not a Congressional version of it.

This incident reveals two things. First, Rockefeller was remarkably uninformed about American politics. Not knowing about Ron Paul in late 2007 seems astounding. Had he not heard of Paul in 2007? Obviously, he had not. Paul had been saying this ever since 1976. Second, it also indicates that the issue had not gotten onto the public's radar in 2006 and earlier. Ron Paul put the Federal Reserve on the public's radar. He was the first politician since 1914 who had.

We forget how little the public knows. We may not know how little David Rockefeller knows. Note: he earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. He is not a dummy.

He asked someone who was off-camera about this. We can hear a brief response.

Back around 1988, Rockefeller and an assistant -- the son of a very famous foreign policy expert -- interviewed Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. He wanted to know which figures in the conservative movement were hostile to him. Weyrich mentioned the John Birch Society. "Who else?" he asked. "The hard- money movement," Weyrich replied. "What's that?" Rockefeller asked. The assistant said, "I'll brief you later."

Rockefeller was intrigued. "Who are they?" Weyrich mentioned me and Larry Abraham. (Thanks, Paul. He blew our cover.) "What are they saying?" Weyrich accurately replied: "They are saying that you and your big business colleagues are making deals behind the Iron Curtain, so that when full trade resumes, you will already be set up there."

Weyrich reported to me and to Abraham that Rockefeller replied, "They're right," and then went on at some length to describe their efforts. Within a few months, the Berlin Wall went down. In 1991, the USSR committed suicide.

All I am saying here is this: For a man still at the top of the pinnacle of influence, he has remained out of touch with respect to the American Right, which is among his greatest enemies, along with the American Communists -- defunct for over 20 years -- and some fringe groups on the Left.