http://www.newsmakingnews.com
Dr. George Rupp, President of Columbia University -- Fascism, Money
Laundering (and the CIA, too)
By Alex Constantine Copyright, 2000
The 1988 issue of Louis Rukeyser's Business Almanac reports, "the
largest fines for money laundering came in 1986," the occasion of this
record-breaking event being the federal audit of Texas Commerce Bank of
Houston, "hit with $1.9 million in civil fines for not reporting cash
transactions." Dr. George Rupp, a director of the bank, also then president
of Rice University, sat on the board of the Panhandle Eastern Corporation in
Houston, a holding company for the state's natural gas industry. Robert
Mosbacher, former President Bush's Commerce Secretary, served with Rupp on
the board of Texas Commerce Bank -- an institution controlled throughout
the1900s by the family of James Baker III, President Bush, Sr.'s secretary of
state and a partner in Baker & Botts, a law firm that largely serves
Morgan-Rockefeller interests.
Linda Minor, a Houston-area attorney and student of the city's
commercial history, informs us that the Bakers "formed one of the component
banks that later merged into Texas Commerce -- for a client of his, Hugh
Hamilton, who appeared to be a front from Scottish distilling interests. The
Baker law firm always acted on behalf of clients and used other people's
money to gain power for themselves. Their major clients were the Union
Pacific, Southern Pacific and even the Missouri Pacific Railroads. They also
were very into representation of power companies. Baker & Botts was actually
the attorneys for the 'Octopus' from its first days." The 1994 Columbia
Electronic Encyclopedia offers this capsule bio of Dr. George Erik Rupp:
"1942, American educator and theologian, b. Summit, N.J. He studied in
Germany before graduating from Princeton Univ. He earned a B.D. degree from
Yale Univ. and a doctorate from Harvard. A Presbyterian minister, he has
spent most of his career in the field of higher education. After serving as
vice chancellor of the Univ. of Redlands, Redlands, Calif.,
he taught at the Harvard Divinity School, was Dean of Academic Affairs at the
Univ. of Wisconsin at Green Bay, and became president of Rice Univ. in 1985
[Note: Rice was founded by the grandfather of James Baker III, Captain James
A. Baker -- originally intended as a world center for the study of the
fascist-style eugenics, all the rage at the turn of the century]. He was
named president of Columbia Univ. in 1993. He is the author of Commitment and
Community (1989)."
The "Enemy Alien" Chair at Rice University.
Everybody knows the war is over,
Everybody knows the good guys lost...
-- Leonard Cohen
Dr. Rupp could be counted on to "keep the secrets" at Rice U. There were
others. There was, for instance, Franz Brotzen, the mysterious presence at
Rice -- an "enemy alien," according to the draft board -- who got along
famously with the "prickly" career college president, as reported in the Rice
University Weekly (April 27, 1995), a story that chronicles the rise of a
well-respected spy from Nazi Germany:
Spy Questions To Classroom Lessons Mark Brotzen's Life
By Meg Langner, Rice News Correspondent
In early 1945, Franz Brotzen, now a Rice University professor emeritus,
was a U.S. military officer charged with helping to organize the
once-powerful Nazi spy network in the Soviet Union into a resource for the
United States.
The German high command knew the war would soon end. They expected no
mercy from the Soviets but hoped to be punished less severely when they
surrendered to the Americans, said Brotzen, the Stanley Moore Professor
Emeritus of Materials Science.
The United States knew very little about the Soviet Union at that time, he
said, and when the Allies won the war, the Nazis decided to turn over to the
United States their intelligence on the Soviets.
During the war, Germany controlled large spy networks within the
U.S.S.R., but as the Nazis retreated before the Soviet forces, the system
fell into disarray, Brotzen said.
Brotzen, along with three other American intelligence officers, was sent
into Germany following the surrender of the Nazis, where he lived for six
months interviewing former-Nazi officers who had served on the Eastern front.
He fulfilled the American government's request for information on the Soviet
Union by
figuring out how facts could best be obtained.
"That was quite an exciting time, sort of a little bit out of spy
novels," he said.
Brontzen left Germany for Brazil and eventually settled in at Rice
University to conduct research in materials science.
Brotzen, born in Berlin, graduated from the gymnasium during the
depression and landed a job with I.G. Farben, the chemical monopoly that
manufactured poison gas for the "Solution," made extensive use of slave
labor, etc. Farben maintained symbiotic bonds with a host of German and
American corporations and the Nazi genocidists throughout the war. German
spies under Farben corporate cover were dispatched throughout South America
before the war, and the young drug salesman did fit the profile. Brotzen
joined Farben's pharmaceutical division at the age of 18, and was quickly
transferred to Brazil. In Teofilo Otoni, he worked temporarily in the sales
department and contracted his share of diseases, he says, while wandering
through the jungle, but survived to see WW II erupt. He left Farben, by his
own account, and took a job in Rio de Janeiro importing steel mill
construction equipment. Franz began to read about metallurgy and his interest
in materials science was kindled. Brotzen headed for the U.S. to pursue a
degree and arrived on December 1, 1941 -- a week before Pearl Harbor. His
draft status: "enemy alien," but Brotzen quickly landed a job in
Cleveland, Ohio anyways. He took evening classes at the Case School of
Applied Science. A year after his entry into the States, he was drafted by
the Army and packed off to a military intelligence training school in
Maryland. The German expatriate spy rose to officer rank and taught at the
military intelligence center until the final phase of the war, when he was
sent back to Germany to liaison with the Nazi intelligence high command along
the Eastern front. A year later, he returned to the U.S., earned his
doctorate at Case. and went on to become a full professor at Rice University
in 1954:
His research has spanned almost every field within materials science,
from work on materials' mechanical, electronic and magnetic behavior to
studies of their physical chemistry, and Brotzen has long been
internationally recognized as an
outstanding researcher.
He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and received the U.S. Senior
Scientist Award from Germany's Humboldt Foundation in 1973. He is a fellow of
ASM International and is the 1995 recipient of the Case Institute of
Technology Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award.
Brotzen has also been involved in student life at Rice. That he enjoys
and excels in teaching is proven by the number of awards he has won: four
George R. Brown Awards for Superior Teaching, the Gold Medal from the Alumni
Association, the Minnie Stevens Piper Award and the Student Association's
Mentor Award.
He is also a strong supporter of the college system. He and his wife,
Frances, have been masters of both Jones and Brown, and they remain active
Brown associates, welcoming and counseling advisee groups each year.
The couple also gives an annual scholarship in Brown and Jones and a
substantial summer travel award open to all undergraduates from all colleges.
Brotzen has been active in university administration as well. In the
early 1960s he was responsible for Rice's federal funding, which he helped
increase from $1 million to $13.5 million.
And as the dean of engineering from 1962 until 1966, he expanded Rice's
research and graduate programs in engineering.
He has also served on "practically every committee that ever existed on
campus," according to Ronald Sass, Rice professor of ecology and evolutionary
biology. Brotzen has spent a total of approximately 20 years on each of the
Faculty Council and the University Council and its predecessors.
"He's someone who has ... a deep and abiding love for this institution,"
said Ronald Stebbings, professor of space physics and astronomy. "When I was
a senior member of the administration, I often found that I'd learn important
details about the running of the place from my weekly lunches with Franz.
"I can't think of anybody, frankly, who really has a clearer picture, on
a day-to-day basis, of the wide range of things that are going on this
campus."
Although he has made an enormous contribution to Rice over the years,
Brotzen has kept up interests outside engineering and away from Rice. He
loves to travel and has seen much of the world. He is an art buff. He follows
sports and stays active in the Democratic Party.
He has taught as a visiting professor at schools including the Max Planck
Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, and the Federal Polytechnic Institute in
Zurich, Switzerland....
Brotzen has been an integral part of the Rice community.
He retired in 1986, but President George Rupp immediately asked him to
become the Stanley C. Moore Professor Emeritus of Materials Science and
Brotzen has continued his research and taught every semester since, except
one. There's no telling when he will actually retire.
"I'm having a ball, I'm having a very good time, so why change?" Brotzen
said.
Some faculty members at Rice University will back the occasional Aryan
Obermensch. This is the same institution of "higher learning" that once had a
particularly vile KKK chapter on campus, and withstood 17 years of federal
pressure to admit Blacks before the courts forced the school to give up its
discriminatory policies (Rice Thresher, March 29, 1996). At the David Irving
Web site, the disgraced Holocaust revisionist credits a Rice scholar with
furthering his writing career: "April 22, 1996 Professor Francis Loewenheim,
at Rice University in Houston, tells the author he has read and discussed
[Irving's] Goebbels book with Professor Gordon Craig, the noted historian at
Stanford; after seeing what Loewenheim has written for the Philadelphia
Inquirer, Craig agrees the book should be published. John Walsh at The
Independent phones Mr. Irving, and mentions that the review by Professor
Donald Watt (London School of Economics), which they're publishing next week,
is highly favorable...."
David Irving is a role model to the ultra-right fringe of Rice
University's student body.
On December 12, 1997, the Austin American-Statesman reported: "A
Holocaust museum has rejected the donation of an advertising fee from Rice
University's student newspaper after it printed an ad from a group that
doubts the Holocaust occurred. 'This money is tainted and its purpose is to
deny the murder of millions of human beings, Jews and non-Jews alike, and
aims to deny Holocaust survivors the opportunity to bear witness for those
who cannot speak for themselves,' said Abraham J. Peck, executive director of
Holocaust Museum Houston."
Dr. Rupp's prominent pal James Baker III joined the Rice University
Board of Governors in 1993. The Rice/Baker relationship is symbiotic. Grandpa
Baker was instrumental in the founding of the university and served as its
first chairman from 1891 through 1941. James Baker III inherited the
ultraconservative obsessions of his grandfather, served in three right-wing
administrations (Secretary of Commerce under President Ford, Reagan's
chief-of-staff and treasury secretary in the Bush, Sr. regime. In August
1988, Baker was the chairman of then Vice President Bush's presidential
campaign). When Clinton defeated Bush four years later, Baker moved on to
Rice to direct the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, a think
tank that serves the corporate sector.
In July1993, Dr. Rupp, the former Harvard Divinity School lecturer and
world-class money launderer, was christened head of Columbia University. Four
years later, the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 5, 1997) reported
that the students and faculty at Columbia had "mixed feelings" about their
president. "Though he was popular for his fund-raising success and several
well-handled situations, his 'prickly' personality and plans for the
undergraduate college have raised concerns."
Concerns that extended beyond Harlem. A paid advertisement about Rupp's
cooperation with the German government appeared in the Washington Post in
September1994, placed by the Church of Scientology. The CoS has struggled
with the German government for years. Scientology's cavil in the Post accused
Columbia and the German government of collaborating to whitewash history:
"Nazis stormed through the streets of German cities, terrorizing and killing
Jews and members of religious minorities. Although news of these events
reached the outside world, nothing was done. Today, we would be wise not to
ignore the early warning signs from a country which has twice this century
brought the world to war, and whose government is today
attempting to rewrite history with an exhibition at Columbia University
puffing up so-called German resistance to the Nazis - a spectacle that,
according to the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, is intended
solely to polish Germany's international prestige."
Dr. Rupp also rolls out the silk carpet for the intelligence
establishment, though he is only the latest administrator to do so. In 1968,
the North American Congress in Latin America (NACLA) published a report that
accused, "most of the evidence points to indirect relationships, but because
the CIA is closed and secret and because the Columbia Administration refuses
to discuss its CIA relations, it is quite possible that CIA-CU ties are far
more direct and pervasive than the public data now indicates. In fact, our
own information indicates that these ties are so direct as to involve a
highly influential group of men in dual positions of leadership -- inside
Columbia and in the CIA itself." The Agency funded its fronts on campus via a
maze of private trusts. One of the most generous was the Farfield Foundation,
a major contributor to a number of CIA dummy fronts, represented at Columbia
by Gardner Cowles, a Teachers' College trustee, and William A.M. Burden. Both
sat on the board of the Farfield Foundation. Burden, a Farfield founder, was
also a director of Lockheed Aircraft. The foundation made a number of
contributions in 1962 and 1964 to Columbia for "travel and study"
fellowships. Another funding source was Sigurd Larmon, president of the
advertising firm Young and Rubicam. Larmon was one of the academics selected
