Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

was a commercial objective. Ideology could sway revolutionary operators like Kerensky, Trotsky, Lenin et al., but not financiers.

Did the wolves of the Round Table actually succeed in their goal? Did they, in fact, capture the surplus resources of Russia? The answer to that question will not be found in our history books. It must be tracked down along the trail of subsequent events, and what we must look for is this. If the plan had not been successful, we would expect to find a decline of interest on the part of high finance, if not outright hostility. On the other hand, if it did succeed, we would expect to see, not only continued support, but some evidence of profit taking by the investors, a payback for their efforts and their risk. With those footprints as our guide, let us turn now to an overview of what has actually happened since the Bolsheviks were assisted to power by the Round Table network.

1- U.S. Cong., Senate, Bolshevik Propaganda, Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, 65th Cong., 1919, p. 802.

2. Sutton, Revolution, pp. 97-98.

292 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

ITEM: After the October Revolution, all the banks in Russia were taken over and 'nationalized' by the Bolsheviks—except one: the Petrograd branch of Rockefeller's National City Bank.

ITEM: Heavy industry in Russia was also nationalized— except the Westinghouse plant, which had been established by Charles Crane, one of the dignitaries aboard the S.S. Kristianiafjord who had traveled to Russia with Trotsky to witness the re-revolution.

ITEM: In 1922, the Soviets formed their first international bank.

It was not owned and run by the state as would be dictated by Communist theory, but was put together by a syndicate of private bankers. These included, not only former Tsarist bankers, but representatives of German, Swedish, and American banks. Most of the foreign capital came from England, including the British government itself.1 The man appointed as Director of the Foreign Division of the new bank was Max May, Vice President of

Morgan's Guaranty Trust Company in New York.

ITEM: In the years immediately following the October Revolution, there was a steady stream of large and lucrative (read non-competitive) contracts issued by the Soviets to British and American businesses which were directly or indirectly run by the Round Table network. The largest of these, for example, was a contract for fifty million pounds of food products to Morris & Company, Chicago meat packers. Helen Swift was married to Edward Morris who was the brother of Harold Swift. Harold Swift had been a 'Major' at the Red Cross Mission in Russia.

ITEM: In payment for these contracts and to return the 'loans'

of the financiers, the Bolsheviks all but drained their country of its gold—which included the Tsarist government's sizable reserve—

and shipped it primarily to American and British banks. In 1920

alone, one shipment came to the U.S. through Stockholm valued at 39,000,000 Swedish kroner; three shipments came direct involving 540 boxes of gold valued at 97,200,000 gold roubles; plus at least one other direct shipment bringing the total to about $20 million.

(Remember, these are 1920 values!) The arrival of these shipments was coordinated by Jacob Schiff's Kuhn, Loeb & Company and deposited by Morgan's Guaranty Trust.2

1. U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.516/129, August 28,1922.

2. U.S. State Dept., Decimal File, 861.51/815, 836, 837, October, 1920. Also Sutton, Revolution, pp. 159-60,165.

THE BEST ENEMY MONEY CAN BUY

293

ITEM: It was at about this time that the Wilson Administration sent 700,000 tons of food to the Soviet Union which, not only saved the regime from certain collapse, but gave Lenin the power to consolidate his control over all of Russia.1 The U.S. Food Administration, which handled this giant operation, was handsomely profitable for those commercial enterprises that participated. It was headed by Herbert Hoover and directed by Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, married to Alice Hanauer, daughter of one of the partners of Kuhn, Loeb & Company.

ITEM: U.S., British, and German wolves soon found a bonanza of profit in selling to the new Soviet regime. Standard Oil and General Electric supplied $37 million worth of machinery from 1921 to 1925, and that was just the beginning. Junkers Aircraft in Germany literally created Soviet air power. At least three million slave laborers perished in the icy mines of Siberia digging ore for Britain's Lena Goldfields, Ltd. W. Averell Harriman—a railroad magnate and banker from the United States who later was to become Ambassador to Russia —acquired a twenty-year monopoly over all Soviet manganese production. Armand Hammer—close personal friend of Lenin—made one of the world's greatest fortunes by mining Russian asbestos.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND: THE DEAF MUTE

BLINDMEN

In those early years, the Bolsheviks were desperate for foreign goods, services, and capital investment. They knew that they would be gouged by their 'capitalist' associates, but what of it? It wasn't their money. All they cared about was staying in power.

And that was not as easy as it may have seemed. Even after the coup d'etat in which they seized control of the mechanism of government, they still did not control the country at large. In fact, in 1919, Lenin had almost given up hope of expanding beyond Petrograd and a part of Moscow. Except for Odessa, all of Southern Russia and the Crimea were in the hands of General Deniken who was strongly anti-Communist. Speaking before the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin laid it out plainly:

1- See George F. Kennan, Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961), p. 180.

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