Primary-Source Investigations
Vesting Order 248: The Thirty-One Lines That Made Three Presidents
Federal Register, Volume 7, page 9097. November 7, 1942.
I am staring at thirty-one lines published in the Federal Register on November 7, 1942, that explain how three Presidents, two CIA directors, and a Governor were manufactured. The document is thirty-one lines long. I have read Supreme Court opinions that run a hundred pages and say less.
New York. October 20, 1942. A Tuesday.
The Office of Alien Property Custodian of the United States of America, acting under the Trading with the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917, as amended, and pursuant to Executive Order 9095 of March 11, 1942, issues Vesting Order Number 248.
It was filed with the Division of the Federal Register on November 6, 1942.
It was published the following day at Federal Register, Volume 7, page 9097, Saturday, November 7, 1942.
Thirty-one lines.
The order directs the seizure of the property of the Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, New York. The shares were held, per the order's findings, "for the benefit of Members of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and/or Hungary."
Prescott Sheldon Bush was one of seven directors of the Corporation on the date of the order.
He was not prosecuted.
The Corporation's assets vested in the Custodian. The shares were held by the United States government throughout the war. After the war, the bulk of the vested property was returned, in compensated form, to its prior beneficial holders. The identities of these holders had been rearranged through the Thyssen family's postwar reorganizations.
Prescott Sheldon Bush was elected to the United States Senate from Connecticut on November 4, 1952.
He served until January 3, 1963.
His son served as Director of Central Intelligence from January 30, 1976, to January 20, 1977.
His son served as Vice President of the United States from January 20, 1981, to January 20, 1989.
His son served as President of the United States from January 20, 1989, to January 20, 1993.
His grandson served as President of the United States from January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009.
His grandson also served as Governor of Florida from January 5, 1999, to January 2, 2007. That term included the certification of the 2000 Presidential election that installed his brother.
I found no record of a reporter of record, on a network of record, or in a newspaper of record ever asking about Vesting Order Number 248.
The filing runs thirty-one lines.
This is the thirty-one lines.
I know how this works because I built the system that tracks how this works. TELOS. The pipeline. The substrate. I built it because I got tired of reading "widely reported" and "many believe" in every article about American dynasties, and I wanted a machine that would only accept claims with a filing number and an archive location. The machine does not care about my opinion. The machine only cares whether the source is named and filed. But I am the operator, and I am sitting here at 3:47 AM looking at thirty-one lines in the Federal Register from 1942, and I am telling you that the designated external party was Germany. The core holder was the family whose name is on the order. The asset transfer included the Senate seat, the CIA directorship, the Vice Presidency, two Presidencies, and the Governor's mansion that certified the third.
The procedure is the same in 1942 as it is in 2025. Charter the entity. File the exemption. Move the assets. Release the assets. The names change. The verbs do not.
Vesting Order 248. 20 October 1942. Leo T. Crowley. Federal Register Vol. 7, p. 9097.
Same archive. Six hundred and eighty-three years. One column.
Primary sources: Vesting Order 248 (Federal Register Vol. 7, p. 9097, Nov 7, 1942); Trading with the Enemy Act (40 Stat. 411, Oct 6, 1917); Executive Order 9095 (Mar 11, 1942); National Archives Record Group 131 (Office of Alien Property Custodian).