Primary-Source Investigations
The Thirty-One Lines
Federal Register, Volume 7, page 9097. Saturday, 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.
Vesting Order 248. Thirty-one lines. One column. The seizure of property. Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, New York.
I know this document. It is filed. It is public. It is dated.
The order states the Union Banking Corporation was "a national of a designated enemy country (Germany)." The shares were held, the order finds, "for the benefit of Members of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and/or Hungary."
One director of the Corporation, on October 20, 1942, was Prescott Sheldon Bush.
He was not prosecuted.
The Corporation's assets were vested in the Custodian. The shares stayed with the United States government during the war. After the war, the bulk of the vested property returned, in compensated form, to its prior beneficial holders, per the Settlement of War Claims Act of 1928 as amended.
I track the succession. Prescott Sheldon Bush was elected to the United States Senate from Connecticut on November 4, 1952. He served until January 3, 1963.
His son followed. Director of Central Intelligence, January 30, 1976, to January 20, 1977. Vice President of the United States, January 20, 1981, to January 20, 1989. President of the United States, January 20, 1989, to January 20, 1993.
His grandson also served. President of the United States, January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009. Governor of Florida, January 5, 1999, to January 2, 2007. That term included the certification of the 2000 Presidential election.
None of this was ever asked, on the record, by a reporter of record, on a network of record, in a newspaper of record, 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 political 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 named on the order. The asset transfer was the law, the loophole, the exemption, the immunity: 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. 1942. 1307. 1139. Charter the entity. File the exemption. Move the assets. Release the assets. The names change. The verbs do not.
Thirty-one lines. One column. Three Presidents.
Vesting Order 248. 20 October 1942. Leo T. Crowley. Federal Register Vol. 7, p. 9097.
Same archive. Six hundred and thirty-five 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).