Friday, August 18, 2006

Wild Horse Desert: Los Kine�os: The Romanticized Version

Wild Horse Desert: Los Kine�os: The Romanticized Version




“There was a terrible drought in South Texas and Northern Mexico. Captain King traveled to the little hamlet of Cruillas in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

“The townspeople were in such dire straits that they sold all of their cattle to him in an attempt to survive the drought. A short distance out of town, slowly driving the cattle north toward Texas, Captain King realized that, in solving an immediate problem for the people of Cruillas, he had simultaneously removed their long-term means of livelihood. He turned his horse back toward the town and made its people a proposition. He would provide them with food, shelter and income if they would move and come to work on his ranch. The townspeople conferred and many of them agreed to move north with Captain King.

“Already expert stockmen and horsemen, these resilient denizens of the rugged Mexican range became known as Los Kinenos - King's people. They and many generations of their heirs would go on to weave a large portion of the historical tapestry of King Ranch. The expert Kineno cowboys now occupy a justifiably legendary place in the annals of the taming of the vast American West. The mystique of the Kinenos is alive and well, and descendants of the original Cruillas residents still live and work on the ranch today - providing a vital link with the past and giving the ranch a key aspect of its unique atmosphere.”

The vastness of the huge ranch on which he lived seems to have given him a wish to know more about the world. He would later turn his attention to being an educator. A definition of an educator is: to demonstrate a commitment to creating new knowledge, to applying knowledge to solving problems to synthesize various strands of knowledge, and to understanding how students learn.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Businessman Richard "Dick" King III's death has left a hole in South Texas

Friends, family remember area leader

King spent 43 years in local banking industry

By Jaime Powell Caller-Times
June 11, 2006




Businessman Richard "Dick" King III's death has left a hole in South Texas that his friends and family say will be difficult to fill.

"I have known thousands of men and seen them in business and he was as unusually as fine a man as I will ever know," said longtime friend and former business partner Robert Rowling. "I don't think I will ever know another man like Dick King. We don't have royalty in the U.S., but he is the closest we are ever going to get."

King, 75, a direct descendant of King Ranch founder Capt. Richard King, died Friday after a three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a nervous system disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, friends and family said.

He spent 43 years in the local banking industry, retiring as chairman of the Bank of America board of directors in 2003.

King also was a community leader, serving as chairman of Christus Spohn Development Foundation, the Chamber of Commerce and the Corpus Christi Area Economic Development Corp., among others.

Although King was a heck of a businessman and leader, he was an even better friend, Rowling, local businessman Sam L. Susser and longtime friend Charles DeCou agreed Saturday. His sense of humor was legendary and he could tell a story like no other.

"He took me on my first bird hunting trip.," Susser reminisced. "Walking around the ranch with him telling stories kept me charmed for hours on end. He always knew what to say and the right way to say it. He is going to be remembered more as a great friend than even his fantastic business sense. There is no one else like him. Everybody wants to say that when somebody passes, but it is really true."

DeCou said King's last days were rough and that he is in a better place. The years of memories are sweet.

King singing with the mariachis at Mexican restaurants in Laredo, the jokes he told that always made the crowd roar and him talking the preacher at church into hurrying up the church service so that he could get out to the golf course quicker, DeCou said.

"For someone who communicated so well and loved to tell stories and jokes, he was not able to," DeCou saidof King's last days. "It was a hard thing for all of us but you could still tell when he was telling a joke by the twinkle he got in his eye and the upturned grin."

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Monday at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd.

King is survived by two sons, Richard King IV and James Harrison King; a daughter, Kathryn Marie King; two stepdaughters, Lica Layton and Amy Ryder; a stepson, Benjamin Eshleman III; and eight grandchildren.

Contact Jaime Powell at 886-3716 or powellj@ caller.com

Tuesday, January 10, 2006





King Ranch: A Tickler of Events to Come!1/4/2005 2:08 AM
Isn't it intriguing that the voting boxes that determined LBJ's election were controlled by a man who worked for the interests that controlled our drug-running railroad in Laredo-- the Tex Mex? Is it the same drug network in Florida that controls those Broward County boxes? The same man was implicated in the death of the son of a South Texas attorney, alleged to have been killed by Mexican assassins mentioned in the Torbitt Document as having been involved in the Kennedy assassination. DUVAL COUNTY. Duval County (Q-15) is in south central Texas about fifty miles inland from the Gulf of Mexicoqv and seventy-three miles north of the Rio Grande. It is bordered by Webb, La Salle, McMullen, Live Oak, Jim Wells, Brooks, and Jim Hogg counties. San Diego, the county seat and most populous town, is on the Texas Mexican Railroad at the intersection of State highways 44 and 359 and Farm road 1329, about fifty-two miles west of Corpus Christi and eighty miles east of Laredo. Duval County's reputation for political corruption peaked with Lyndon B. Johnson's election to the United States Senate in 1948. The famous Box 13, which gave Johnson his eighty-seven-vote victory, was actually in Jim Wells County, but the manipulation of the returns was almost certainly directed by Parr. In the 1900 presidential election Duval County went Republican, but since that time, thanks largely to the efficiency of the Parr machine and the customary tendency of Hispanics to vote for Democrats, the county has delivered majorities to the Democratic party on the order of 94 percent in 1916, 98 percent in 1932, 95 percent in 1936, 96 percent in 1940, 95 percent in 1944, 97 percent in 1948, and 93 percent in 1964. In fact, only once between 1916 and 1972 did the Democratic candidate receive less than 74 percent of the vote in Duval County; that year, 1956, a mere 68 percent voted Democratic. Even after the demise of the Parr machine in 1975 Democrats continued to dominate. In the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections 82 percent of the county's voters cast ballots for the Democratic candidate. See: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/DD/hcd11.html The remainder of Parr's political career was highlighted by a seemingly endless series of spectacular scandals, involving election fraud, graft on the grand scale, and violence. His most celebrated scheme decided the outcome of the United States Senate race between Coke R. Stevenson and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1948. With Stevenson the apparent winner, election officials in Jim Wells County, probably acting on Parr's orders, reported an additional 202 votes for Johnson a week after the primary runoff and provided the future president with his eighty-seven-vote margin of victory for the whole state. Amid charges of fraud, the voting lists disappeared. Even more sordid controversies followed. As strong challenges from the Freedom party, consisting mainly of World War II veterans, developed in several South Texas counties, including Duval, two critics of Parr's rule and the son of another met violent deaths. While denying Parr's involvement in two of the killings, his biographer, Dudley Lynch, concedes that the evidence against Parr in the shooting of the son of Jacob Floyd, an attorney for the Freedom party, was both "highly circumstantial" and "highly incriminating." After this third murder, Governor Allan Shivers, Texas attorney general John Ben Shepperd, and federal authorities launched all-out campaigns to destroy the Parr machine. Investigations of the 1950s produced over 650 indictments against ring members, but Parr survived the indictments and his own conviction for federal mail fraud through a complicated series of dismissals and reversals on appeal. In the face of another legal offensive in the 1970s and a rebellion within his own organization, he finally relented. While appealing a conviction and five-year sentence for federal income tax evasion, the Duke of Duval committed suicide at his ranch, Los Harcones, on April 1, 1975. See also Boss Rule. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/PP/fpa36.html While you can't play "what-if" with any certainty, you have to wonder whether the area from San Antonio and Corpus Christi south would have known the same emptiness that prevailed in the in-between sections of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Chihuahua if the Anglos hadn't turned their particular talents and drives Valleyward. It started as a land of great ranches, which in themselves invite sparse settlement, and it might have remained as untaken as the country between Del Rio and Fort Stockton if Colonel Uriah Lott had not perceived that with a railroad, the Valley could become a year-round fruit and vegetable garden for much of the United States. Lott buttonholed B. F. Yoakum, who at the beginning of the twentieth century sent Captain J. E. Hinckley reconnoitering through the Valley into Mexico to find a way of tapping the riches-almost entirely potential-on either side of the border. He enlisted the irresistible enthusiasm of Theodore Roosevelt, who envisioned a road that would eventually extend all the way through Central America, where he had designs on the Panama Isthmus. Anglo American survey crews came in, built a steel bridge between Brownsville and Matamoros suitable for locomotives or buggies, and began planning other routes that would connect such diverse places geographically as New Orleans, San Antonio, Memphis, and Chicago. Down in Mexico, President Porfirio Diaz, who welcomed yanqui development (translated sometimes as exploitation), encouraged Yoakum and his cohorts, and even offered to help underwrite the cost. Some of the Anglos backing Yoakum remain memorable names three-quarters of a century after the event-Robert J. Kleberg, Robert Driscoll Sr., John G. Kenedy, Caesar Kleberg, and John J. Welder--to name only a few. On January 12, 1903, they received their charter to do business as the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway, to extend from Sinton to Brownsville, with reticulation of future roads to branch northward and eastward from there. The foundation of the paper work for connecting the Valley with the United States and Texas had been laid. Actually, the Anglos had been in the Valley since the period of the War against Mexico. They had been slow to arrive because the area from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande was disputed. Mexico had refused to accept Santa Ana's cession of the region to Texas, which meant that an enormous region in truth belonged to no one. Or worse, to whoever could take and hold it. It would have been comparable to a modern Lebanon except that fortunately it was empty of people. Then developers brought in the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway. The year was 1903, two decades after Texas had shut down land grants to railroads. No help would come from that source. Rumors of incoming railroads had been spread before, but no rails or locomotives had been seen. But like the neglected maiden who suddenly has three suitors, Brownsville began to be courted by the Southern Pacific and the Frisco-Rock Island, as well as the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico railroads. The town fathers voted to raise a bonus of 12,000 acres on either side of the projected road to the distance of four miles, plus $40,000 in cash, and forty to fifty acres within Brownsville itself for depot grounds plus twenty more acres for shops. The list of endorsers reads like a Who's Who of Texas for the first half of the twentieth century. Up in St. Louis, another syndicate of almost a hundred business leaders were banding together to see that the railroad got underway. The bulk of the capital would have to come out of Missouri. Ironically, the railroad that brought in the Yankees and the high-gear economy to the Valley went into receivership in 1913, a condition brought on largely by insufficient freight. When the Valley began its boom in the 1920s, the railroad came back, only to run into the growth of the trucking industry. See: http://www.public-humanities.org/tjfall97.html Dutch-born Uriah Lott, who had secured the financial assistance of Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King in the building of the Texas-Mexican Railroad to Laredo, was also hoping to give the Lower Valley the same access to the "outside world." A railroad to the Lower Valley would also give Corpus Christi another rail outlet. In 1889, consequently, Lott received a charter to build the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway. A.M. French, chief engineer on the project, ran several different lines to the river, but eventually agreed on a road that would join the Texas-Mexican Railroad some fifteen miles west of Corpus Christi at what is today Robstown. After sod was broken on the line on July 26, 1903, sweaty laborers set out hacking a right-of-way through the brush south toward the Lower Valley. See: http://riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Past/Book/Part2/railroad.html A native of New York and a steamboat pilot and captain by trade, King came from Florida to Texas and the Rio Grande in 1847 for Mexican War service. Commanding the steamboat, Colonel Cross , he served for the War's duration, transporting troops and supplies for the United States Army. He remained on the border after the Mexican War and became a partner in the Brownsville steamboat firms of M. Kenedy & Company (1850-1866) and its successor, King, Kenedy & Company (1866-1874). The principal partners were Richard King, Mifflin Kenedy (1818-1895) and Charles Stillman (1810-1875). These firms dominated the Rio Grande trade, on a near monopolistic scale, for more than two decades. See: http://www.king-ranch.com/sideshow1.htm Between 1862 and 1865 Stillman, King, and Kenedy transported Confederate cotton to Matamoros under contract for payment in gold. Stillman bought much of the cotton and sent it to his textile complex at Monterrey, but he sold even more of it in New York through his mercantile firm, Smith and Dunning. The United States government was a major purchaser. On one sale at Manhattan Stillman netted $18,851 on a gross of $21,504. His cotton buyers in Texas included George W. Brackenridge, and one of his major suppliers was Thomas William House [father of Col. E.M. House]. By the end of the war Stillman was one of the richest men in America. He concentrated his investments in the National City Bank of New York, which his son James later controlled, and supplied Brackenridge with $200,000 in the 1870s in order to establish the San Antonio National Bank. Stillman married Elizabeth Pamela Goodrich of Wethersfield, Connecticut, on August 17, 1849. He built a notable home in Brownsville in 1850 and lived in Brownsville and New York City until 1866, when he moved permanently to New York. He died there in December 1875. See: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/fst57.html Henrietta King In 1854, King had married Henrietta Maria Morse Chamberlain, a Presbyterian missionary's daughter. King Ranch Archives describe Henrietta King as mild-mannered with an iron will which carried her through the prolonged absences of her husband. She had been well-schooled, and was known to give polish and luster to her well-known, generous husband. She also proved she had fortitude, when, pregnant with her fifth child, she was present at the Ranch when the Union cavalry raided Rancho de Santa Gertrudis in 1863. Although the family moved to San Antonio following the raid, she moved them back in 1866 to continue the King family's ties to the land. Upon her husband's death when she was 53, Mrs. King controlled a vast area of South Texas and a business that was immensely successful, but not without problems. She immediately turned to Robert J. Kleberg Sr., a young lawyer who had been involved in the Ranch's legal business for several years. She appointedhim business manager on Jan. 1, 1886; six months later, he became her son-in-law when he married the youngest King daughter, Alice Gertrudis. Under Mrs. King's and Kleberg's guidance, cross fences were built to divide the sprawling acres into manageable pastures. They embarked on a brush control program. They suffered through South Texas' most crippling natural occurrence, drought. They helped to build the town of Kingsville in 1903-04. And continuing Captain King's prowess in diversifying, the Ranch became involved in banking, lumber, leather goods, newspapers and publishing, retail businesses and dairy farming. Under her leadership and that of Robert Kleberg, the Ranch's South Texas holdings had grown to 1.2 million acres, 94,000 head of cattle, 4,500 horses and mules, and 1,000 sheep and goats. Estate taxes, operational debt and lawsuits challenging the estate's division caused uncertainty. In her will, she stipulated a 10-year trust to give her heirs time to settle differences and arrange her affairs and assets. Her ultimate goal was to preserve the King Ranch as a single entity according "to my wishes and the wishes and views of my late husband, Captain Richard King." In response, Alice King Kleberg, Henrietta's youngest daughter and Robert's wife, consolidated much of King Ranch by buying out other heirs. Thus, in 1934, Mrs. Kleberg created King Ranch, Inc., and it was this entity that inherited Alice's part of the Ranch as well as the other property which she had purchased. She sold stock in the new corporation to her five children, and descendants of Robert and Alice Kleberg are the 60-some shareholders of today's King Ranch. From a Family Business to a Corporate Environment. The last quarter of the 20th Century has brought further changes to King Ranch. Since 1977, all overseas ranching operations except for that in Brazil was sold. The King Ranch's Corporate History statement credits James H. Clement and his successor John B. Armstrong with guiding the Company to eliminate debt and "...through the difficult Texas business environment of the 1980s and (they) oversaw the painful, and sometimes stormy, transition from a family business enterprise to the present corporate structure with outside directorship and professional management." Since 1988, the King Ranch Chief Executive Officer has not been a King family member, although the corporate board of directors still includes some descendants. By the early 1970's, King Ranch holdings totaled, worldwide, approximately 11.5 million acres. In 1974, with the death of Bob Kleberg and Dick, Jr., in poor health, the Family selected James H. Clement, Sr., the husband of King's great granddaughter Ida Larkin, as President and CEO. Together with successor John B. Armstrong (husband to King's great granddaughter, Henrietta Larkin), Clement steered the Ranch though the difficult Texas business environment of the 1980's. They also oversaw the transition from a Family business to a modern corporate structure -- based primarily on the lines of business established in the early years. Eventually, many of the foreign operations were liquidated as the focus shifted back to the traditional domestic lines of business. See: http://www.king-ranch.com/legend.htm See: http://archives.tamuk.edu/database/House.htm (Wedding Announcement - Henrietta Kleberg Larkin to Thomas Reeves Armstrong) Armstrongs mix gentility, old-fashioned Texas ranching Cowboys and candidates, princes and presidents have visited over the years By Mary Lee Grant © July 13, 1999 Caller-Times http://www.caller.com/1999/july/13/today/local_ne/3122.html ARMSTRONG - In the brush country south of Sarita, a few miles east of U.S. Highway 77, sophistication and political power have mixed with the independence of Texas pioneers. Here, 6-foot-4-inch Tobin Armstrong, the descendant of a Texas Ranger and a Yale scholar, and the petite brunette, Anne Armstrong, former U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, hold court. Guests at the 50,000-acre ranch have included former president George Bush; his son and presidential candidate Gov. George W. Bush, the Rockefellers and Prince Charles. Armstrong Ranch still is an old-fashioned Texas ranch, run by Tobin Armstrong, who oversees it by Suburban and mobile telephone. A colony of cowboys who live in houses surrounding the big house work the 2,500 Santa Gertrudis cattle while riding thoroughbred horses, the Armstrong version of cow ponies. "One of the best things about this ranch is that it is a grandchild magnet," said Tobin Armstrong, who has five children and 12 grandchildren, who visit the ranch frequently. The Armstrong Ranch was purchased in 1852 and settled in 1882 by John Armstrong III, a Texas Ranger from Tennessee. He had come to South Texas to clean up the border and became famous for capturing the notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin. His sons combined the sophistication of an East Coast education with the ruggedness of a ranch upbringing. Charlie Armstrong, Tobin Armstrong's father, graduated from Yale in 1908 and returned to South Texas to manage the ranch. Charlie's brother, Tom Armstrong, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School before going to work as an executive for Standard Oil Co. The Armstrongs were instrumental in bringing polo to South Texas, and when Prince Charles came to visit, Tobin arranged a match for him on the ranch's polo field. "I never rode a bought horse," Armstrong said. "I raised and trained my own thoroughbreds." Tobin Armstrong was tutored at home until he was 9, when he was sent to private school in San Antonio. He attended the University of Texas and Texas A&M University. Ties between the Armstrong Ranch and the King Ranch always have been close. Tobin's older brother, John Armstrong, married the King Ranch's Henrietta Kleberg, and his uncle, Tom, married her mother, Henrietta Kleberg Larkin. John Armstrong was the last family member to serve as president of the King Ranch. Despite the international circles in which they move, the Armstrongs are still ranchers to the core, talking of weather and rainfall as readily as business and politics. "Look how green the grass is,'' Anne Armstrong said on a recent hot day. "We haven't had it like this for several years. It will be good for the cattle." Staff writer Mary Lee Grant can be reached at 886-3752 or by e-mail at grantm@caller.com ANNE LEGENDRE ARMSTRONG Armstrong, Anne Legendre (1927-...), was the first woman to serve as United States ambassador to Britain. President Gerald R. Ford appointed her to the office, which she held in 1976 and 1977. She had previously been the first woman to hold the Cabinet-level post of counselor to the president. She was named to that position by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and served under both Nixon and Ford. Anne Legendre was born in New Orleans and graduated from Vassar College. She married Tobin Armstrong, a Texas cattle rancher, in 1950. She served as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1966 to 1968. In 1971 and 1972, she was cochairman of the Republican National Committee. As counselor to the President, Armstrong was a member of the president's Domestic Council, the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and the Commission on the Organization of Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy. Source: http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/worldbook/atozhistory/a/723253.html CURRENT SEC FILINGS RE: ANNE L. ARMSTRONG: http://www.secinfo.com/$/SEC/Name.asp?X=anne+l%2E+armstrong "Anne L. Armstrong" Latest Filing: 3/29/0 as Signatory As: Signatory (Director, Officer, Attorney, Accountant, Banker, Agent, etc.) List All Filings as Signatory Search Recent Filings (as Signatory) for "Anne L. Armstrong" "Anne L. Armstrong" has been a Signatory for the following 11 Registrants: American Express Co American Express Co Capital Trust I American Express Co Capital Trust II Boise Cascade Corp Boise Cascade Trust I Boise Cascade Trust II Boise Cascade Trust III General Motors Capital Trust D General Motors Capital Trust G General Motors Corp Halliburton Co ANNE L. ARMSTRONG, 71, Regent, Texas A&M University System; Member, Board of Trustees, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Member, National Security Advisory Board, Department of Defense; former Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 1981-1990; former Ambassador to Great Britain; joined Halliburton Company Board in 1977; Chairman of the Health, Safety and Environment Committee and member of the Management Oversight and the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committees; Director of American Express Company and Boise Cascade Corporation. Source: http://www.secinfo.com/dScRa.6Mx.htm 1931. Following his election to the House of Representatives in November 1931, Congressman Richard Kleberg asked Johnson to come to Washington to work as his secretary. Johnson held the job for over three years and learned how the Congress worked. See: http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/biographys.hom/lbj_bio.asp LBJ was a sleeper put in power by the King Ranch, which as was shown in part I of this series, is closely tied to Anne Armstrong, is a director of Halliburton. In 1942 until he left public office, LBJ was financed completely by Brown and Root, now part of Halliburton. In 1960 LBJ was thrust upon Kennedy as his vice president so LBJ could carry Texas for Kenney. LBJ had proved in 1948 that he and his team could guarantee winning the Texas vote. In 1963 Kennedy was killed most likely by an assassination network operated by the King Ranch group and Clint Murchison in Mexico. Murchison was, of course, very close to Rockefeller. As soon as LBJ became president, he escalated the war in Vietnam, which primarily benefited Brown and Root. If this year's election fraud is allowed to stand, what does Halliburton, headed by Dick Cheney, have planned for us? Although individual men die a generation at a time, networks of families live on. That is what Cheney represents. Thus it comes as no surprise to see what is happening in the presidential election is focused at the moment on Broward and Palm Beach Counties, Florida. A network such as Cheney represents is always prepared for any exigency. This same network was prepared to carry the vote in 1948 when Lyndon Johnson ran for the United States Senate. But Johnson was a Democrat, you say! Not so. He was an egotist and a pragmatist-- he did whatever he had to do to promote Lyndon. His opportunity to broaden his horizons came during the Depression, when he was offered a job in Congress working for a man, seemingly not unlike George W. Bush, a scion of a wealthy ranching family in South Texas with no real abilities or interests, who was elected to Congress on his name and needed someone to do the work for him--Congressman Kleborg. Part One of this series showed the history of Congressman Kleberg, and the King Ranch which his family owned--a ranch which was acquired with profits made from the shipping of contraband munitions during the Mexican War--a war orchestrated by persons who used Barbara Bush's ancestor, Franklin Pierce, to take the land south of the Nueces River from Mexico after Texas was annexed as a state. The ranches in this territory, owned by Richard King, Mifflin Kenedy and their partner Charles Stillman, operated as a buffer between the U.S. and Mexico. Resentful Mexicans, who felt their land had been stolen from them, engaged in continual raids across the new Rio Grande border. To counteract these raids, the Texas ranchers used the Texas Rangers, commanded by William G. Tobin to chase away the raiding parties. Tobin's family has continued its ties with the King Ranch family ever since. The Tobin family is intermarried with the King-Kleberg family and with the Armstrongs of San Antonio, Texas. From the present generation springs Anne Armstrong, who is a director of Halliburton alongside Dick Cheney. She has also served on the board of American Express with Henry Kissinger and Vernon Jordan--not to mention having been in London as Ambassador to the Court of St. James. British banking interests have been interested in the King Ranch since as early as 1882 when Mifflin Kenedy sold his adjoining ranch to a syndicate of Dundee, Scotland, called the Texas Land & Cattle Co., Ltd. (See The King Ranch Tom Lea). Within a year of that sale, King considered selling to the syndicate, but the deal was never closed. Another syndicate of unnamed eastern capitalists attempted to buy the ranch in 1907, the same year that Bostonian F.S. Pearson was involved in building railroads from Mexico through west and north Texas to connect to St. Louis. In 1902 the ranchers turned to B.F. Yoakum, friend of Uriah Lott, the creator of the Tex-Mex Railroad. As a result, a corporation was formed with shareholders including the Kings, Klebergs, Armstrongs, Kenedys and others--with Uriah Lott as president. The railroad became the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexican Railway--which like so many other railroads built by Lott was financed by G.H. Walker & Co. of St. Louis. WAS LBJ A TOOL OF THE DRUG LORDS? Once Lyndon Johnson began to make himself heard in Congress, he quickly attracted the attention of Franklin Roosevelt. He was groomed for many of the endeavors he would use to make his name by FDR backers such as Joe Alsop, who had begun his undercover intelligence career in the O.S.S. Alsop and his brother Stewart were related to FDR by marriage on his mother's side--the Delano family whose role in the opium trade has been documented previously on this website--as well as being the sons of Eleanor's first cousin, Corinne Robinson Alsop . In fact, it was Joe Alsop who in 1963 repeatedly suggested to Johnson that the only way to keep the Washington Post off his back was to appoint the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination. The Alsop, Delano, Roosevelt and Forbes families of Boston and New York were interwoven by marriage and by financial investment in enterprises such as the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. These families stem from a syndicate created by Thomas Handasyd Perkins of Newburyport, Massachusetts--forced out of the lucrative African slave trade to establish an alternative shipping empire based on opium. By the 1830s, the Russells had bought out the Perkins syndicate and made Connecticut the primary center of the U.S. opium racket. Massachusetts families (Coolidge, Sturgis, Forbes and Delano) joined Connecticut (Alsop) and New York (Low) smuggler-millionaires under the Russell auspices. http://www.tarpley.net/bush7.htm This account is supported by historical research conducted by John K. Fairbank in his 1968 article for the American Historical Association, posted at http://www.theaha.org/info/AHA_History/jkfairbank.htm . Fairbank indicates that the opium profits were invested in the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad and the Michigan Central. A man named John N. Alsop Griswold of New York, a Russell & Company partner at Shanghai, returned to become president of the Illinois Central in 1855 and was later chairman of the CB &Q. The CB & Q was, of course, based in St. Louis, and it constituted the northern extension of the same railroad that dipped southerly into Mexico through Kingsville and Laredo. It was financed by the same opium profits. See the NewsMakingNews article at http://www.newsmakingnews.com/lmharvardpart3.htm This railroad now stretches from Mexico to Canada under the control of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. http://www.tmm.com.mx/english/ihistoria/inuevatmm3.htm This railroad was the primary beneficiary of NAFTA. It is also steeped in allegations of drug smuggling. http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/wardrugs.html and http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200007103.shtml Alsop was aided in his handling of Johnson by Floridian, Phil Graham, the son-in-law of Eugene Meyer--the only man besides Bush's Uncle Herbie who is known to have invested in George H.W. Bush's first oil company in Midland, Texas. In December 1959, in preparation for the 1960 election, Graham was already busy planning how to clinch the Democratic nomination for Lyndon. As soon as Phil realized that Johnson was not going to make it, he hatched the plan for Kennedy to select Johnson as his running mate. Johnson himself would later credit Phil with pushing Kennedy to choose him. He told biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin that Phil "told Kennedy to make me vice president." Once Kennedy clinched the nomination, Phil and Joseph Alsop hurried to his suite at the Biltmore and explained the virtues of Johnson as running mate....According to Pierre Salinger, John Kennedy's press secretary, Phil [Graham] was one of the elite group of journalists--others were Ben Bradlee, Joe Alsop, Walter Lippmann--who could simply pick up the telephone and call JFK. They were very close. But the man who really gets credit for electing LBJ is usually said to be George R. Brown of Brown & Root. In the 1930's the Brown brothers were in a two-bit construction business, paving the streets of small towns in Central Texas. Almost overnight, in 1942 after teaming up with Johnson, they won their first government contract to build a dam, then a naval air station in Corpus Christi, near the district Cong. Kleberg had represented. Their next opportunity was to expand into shipbuilding. By 1947 George Brown was placed on the boards of a number of multi-national corporations with interlocking directorates. During George Brown's tenure on the ITT board other directors included Allan Kirby, an heir to the Woolworth fortune, Robert Young, a former stockbroker turned railroad tycoon connected with Allegheny Corp., and Robert McKinney-Young's cousin-of Davis Manufacturing. The names Allan Kirby and Robert Young provide a strong clue to Brown's other connections. Allan Kirby had had virtual control of Allegheny since 1937. Solomon Warfield had secured a number of shares of Allegheny preferred stock, "issued in a storm of controversy by the banker J.P. Morgan, who was a chief investor for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the time they were Duke and Duchess of York," for his niece, Wallis Simpson (later the Duchess of Windsor), which she inherited upon his death in 1927. This stock had always been her "first investment favorite," according to her biographer Charles Higham. When the Duke and Duchess became friends with Robert Young, allegedly after being introduced by mutual friend Robert Foskett after they moved to the Bahamas, Young and his wife Anita became one of their few close friends. Both Foskett and Young were directors of Allegheny and lived in Palm Beach, Florida. By 1941 Young owned a controlling interest in the Allegheny Corporation, a holding company which owned the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad of Baltimore. In 1954, after a long proxy struggle, and with the aid of fellow Texans Clinton Williams Murchison, Sr., and Sid Williams Richardson, Young gained control of the New York Central and became the chairman of its board. On January 25, 1958, Young apparently committed suicide with a shotgun at his winter mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/YY/fyo12.html Before his death, Young had convinced Murchison to entertain the Duke and Duchess and their entourage at his secluded ranch in the interior of Mexico in January 1950. This is the same ranch that has been alleged to have been used as a haven for the assassination team which operated out of the King Ranch. http://www.newsmakingnews.com/torbitt.htm There was testimony given in a Texas murder trial that there were twenty-five to thirty professional assassins kept in Mexico by the espionage section of the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation; that these men were used to commit political assassinations all over North, South and Central America, the East European countries and in Russia; that these men were the absolute world's most accurate riflemen; they sometimes took private contracts to kill in the United States; that the contact man for employment of the riflemen was a man named Bowen posing as an American Council of Christian Churches' missionary in Mexico; that you could reach Bowen through the owner of the St. Anthony's Hotel in Laredo, Texas. Albert Alexander Osborne, alias John Howard Bowen, alias J.H. Owen, a charter member and employee of the A.C.C.C., met Lee Harvey Oswald and accompanied him to Mexico City in late September of 1963. Osborne, alias John Howard Bowen, was discovered to have another person working with him who also used the alias John Howard Bowen. The second person also traveling as Bowen was Fred Lee Crismon, another agent for the munitions makers police agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command. Crismon also posed as a missionary and also used other aliases. Among the cognomens for Crismon were Fred Lee, Jon Gould and Jon Gold. Osborne and Crismon also bore a marked resemblance and appeared to be about the same age. Crismon was a Syrian immigrant and had been closely associated with Osborne since the 1920's. Crismon, Osborne and their riflemen charges in Mexico were based at Clint Murchison's huge ranch when not posing as missionaries in other areas of Mexico.

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Reply Date

Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/3/2005 6:31 PM

Here are the links!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/3/2005 6:34 PM

Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
sidewalk_cipher
1/3/2005 6:41 PM

Good Point Sidewalk Cipher!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/3/2005 10:36 PM

Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
EVW
1/4/2005 11:06 AM

Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
sidewalk_cipher
1/4/2005 12:55 PM

Re: Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
HardcoreHarry
1/4/2005 1:47 PM

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
sidewalk_cipher
1/4/2005 2:30 PM

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
HardcoreHarry
1/4/2005 3:38 PM

sure...
sidewalk_cipher
1/4/2005 4:05 PM

Your feeble powers of Justification
HardcoreHarry
1/5/2005 1:02 AM

Sidewalk_Cipher, do you read...
Capt Carrales
1/4/2005 7:14 PM

Re: Sidewalk_Cipher, do you read...
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 9:07 AM

Re: Re: Sidewalk_Cipher, do you read...
Capt Carrales
1/5/2005 12:15 PM

Re: Re: Re: Sidewalk_Cipher, do you read...
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 12:30 PM

Eric has never (en re time)...
Capt Carrales
1/4/2005 7:12 PM

Re: Eric has never (en re time)...
randallpret
1/6/2005 5:01 AM

Re: Re: Eric has never (en re time)...
Capt Carrales
1/6/2005 12:15 PM

Re: Re: Re: Eric has never (en re time)...
randallpret
1/7/2005 4:11 AM

Re: Re: Re: Re: Eric has never (en re time)...
sidewalk_cipher
1/7/2005 9:35 AM

Political beliefs, Sidewalk...
Capt Carrales
1/4/2005 7:09 PM

Seriously....
sidewalk_cipher
1/4/2005 4:15 PM

Eric and Sidewalk...
Capt Carrales
1/4/2005 7:16 PM

Re: Eric and Sidewalk...
randallpret
1/6/2005 5:06 AM

Re: Seriously....
HardcoreHarry
1/5/2005 12:46 AM

Re: Re: Seriously....
Capt Carrales
1/5/2005 12:13 PM

JAIME KENEDENO/ANTON SCOTT TRYING TO LURE U TO HIS TRAP
condotTTTT
1/10/2005 5:06 AM

XXX IS RAY FERNANDEZ
Jaime Kenedeno
1/10/2005 6:41 AM

Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
Cal
1/4/2005 2:14 PM

Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
Texas Cowgirl
1/4/2005 4:33 PM

Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
sidewalk_cipher
1/4/2005 4:39 PM

Sidewalk...
Capt Carrales
1/4/2005 7:18 PM

Re: Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
HardcoreHarry
1/5/2005 1:08 AM

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 9:06 AM

Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
Capt Carrales
1/4/2005 7:00 PM

Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
Texas Cowgirl
1/3/2005 10:38 PM

Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
texdisvet
1/3/2005 10:48 PM

Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/4/2005 12:59 AM

King Ranch: A Tickler of Events to Come!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/4/2005 2:08 AM

Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
texdisvet
1/3/2005 10:50 PM

Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
Texas Cowgirl
1/3/2005 11:00 PM

Here is some more insight?
Jaime Kenedeno
1/3/2005 11:34 PM

Texas Monthly Article
Jaime Kenedeno
1/3/2005 11:38 PM

This is the Case the Fernandez Cause is Based on!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/3/2005 11:31 PM

Re: This is the Case the Fernandez Cause is Based on!
Texas Cowgirl
1/4/2005 12:00 AM

Re: Re: This is the Case the Fernandez Cause is Based on!
texdisvet
1/4/2005 7:33 AM

Re: This is the Case the Fernandez Cause is Based on!
texdisvet
1/4/2005 7:37 AM

Mr Von Wade is not down? This will springboard him to another level!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/4/2005 10:23 PM

Re: Mr Von Wade is not down? This will springboard him to another level!
HardcoreHarry
1/5/2005 1:25 AM

BLAH BLAH BLAH
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 10:14 AM

The clash...
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 2:28 PM

Re: The clash...
HardcoreHarry
1/5/2005 2:52 PM

Re: Re: The clash...
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 3:33 PM

Re: Mr Von Wade is not down? This will springboard him to another level!
texdisvet
1/5/2005 12:46 PM

Tex: Things are not that simple! Quit being so judgemental!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/5/2005 2:41 PM

There is no such thing as "reverse discrimination"
Capt Carrales
1/5/2005 4:52 PM

Capitan: Pardon my terminology?
Jaime Kenedeno
1/5/2005 6:07 PM

Re: Capitan: Pardon my terminology?
Capt Carrales
1/5/2005 6:40 PM

"KEYS Radio Host Promotes "Borderline" Violence Against our People!
dannoynted1
1/4/2005 1:03 AM

Re: "KEYS Radio Host Promotes "Borderline" Violence Against our People!
texdisvet
1/5/2005 12:33 PM

Captain Carralles I agree with you about the two publications!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/4/2005 8:10 PM

Re: Captain Carralles I agree with you about the two publications!
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 12:57 PM

Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
cccgh
1/5/2005 4:59 PM

Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
sidewalk_cipher
1/5/2005 5:25 PM

Re: Re: Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
cccgh
1/5/2005 5:39 PM

CC: I agree with everything U Said but the throwing away part!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/5/2005 5:40 PM

Re: CC: I agree with everything U Said but the throwing away part!
cccgh
1/5/2005 5:51 PM

CC: I understand your feelings
Jaime Kenedeno
1/5/2005 5:57 PM

Re: CC: I understand your feelings
cccgh
1/5/2005 6:08 PM

Re: Re: CC: I understand your feelings
HardcoreHarry
1/5/2005 7:23 PM

Harry: Moderation is key if we want to unite and therefore a better S Tx
Jaime Kenedeno
1/5/2005 8:48 PM

Anglo is not the term for "White..."
Capt Carrales
1/6/2005 12:18 PM

Re: CC: I agree with everything U Said but the throwing away part!
LONEWOLF
1/6/2005 3:07 PM

Lonewolf: It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out?
Jaime Kenedeno
1/6/2005 3:44 PM

Re: Lonewolf: It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out?
LONEWOLF
1/7/2005 2:45 PM

Did, El Defenzor, ban you...
Capt Carrales
1/6/2005 12:52 PM

Yes, I am banned for 30 days for attacking the very cause I fought for!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/6/2005 2:06 PM

In find it hard to belief...
Capt Carrales
1/6/2005 2:44 PM

I can post from a different IP or Computer but if I put my name they delete
Jaime Kenedeno
1/6/2005 4:02 PM

Defenzor claims legal reasons
Jaime Kenedeno
1/6/2005 4:21 PM

Re: Defenzor claims legal reasons
Capt Carrales
1/6/2005 4:47 PM

Of Course I will continue Capt. I am elated to have found this room!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/6/2005 7:13 PM

Jaime, call the show!!!
Capt Carrales
1/7/2005 6:00 PM

What language should I speak? English or Spanish?
Jaime Kenedeno
1/7/2005 6:21 PM

DEFENZOR WANTS TO PLAY BY THIER OWN RULES!
Jaime Kenedeno
1/7/2005 8:10 PM

I pride myself on Keeping it real, "El Defenzor"
The Realist
1/9/2005 2:47 PM

SICKO JAIME/ANTON
condot
1/10/2005 4:50 AM

Re: Article on Eric Von Wade In El Defenzor Newspaper!
C.evans
1/17/2005 4:04 PM
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