Editing David Rockefeller (section)

== Political connections ==
Rockefeller traveled widely and met with both foreign rulers and U.S. presidents, beginning with [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]. At times he served as an unofficial emissary on high-level business.<ref name="Around the world in 90 years">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J1t2AAAAMAAJ |title=Around the world in 90 years |last=Janus |first=Christopher George  |publisher=Sheffield Books |year=2003 |page=63}}</ref>  Among the foreign leaders he met were [[Saddam Hussein]], [[Fidel Castro]], [[Nikita Khrushchev]], and [[Mikhail Gorbachev]].<ref>{{harvp|Rockefeller|2002|p=194}}</ref>

In 1968, he declined an offer from his brother [[Nelson Rockefeller]], then [[governor of New York]],  to appoint him to [[Robert F. Kennedy]]'s Senate seat after Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, a post Nelson also offered to their nephew [[Jay Rockefeller|John Davison "Jay" Rockefeller IV]].<ref>{{harvp|Rockefeller|2002|p=485}}</ref> President [[Jimmy Carter]] offered him the position of [[United States Secretary of the Treasury]] but he declined.<ref name="Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t0y96IB9jsQC&pg=PT35 |title=Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend |last=Treaster |first=Joseph B.  |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |year=2011 |isbn=9781118160855 |page=35}}</ref>

Rockefeller was criticized for befriending foreign [[Autocracy|autocrats]] in order to expand Chase interests in their countries. ''The New York Times'' columnist [[David Brooks (cultural commentator)|David Brooks]] wrote in 2002  that Rockefeller "spent his life in the club of the ruling class and was loyal to members of the club, no matter what they did." He noted that Rockefeller had cut profitable deals with "oil-rich dictators", "Soviet party bosses" and "Chinese perpetrators of the [[Cultural Revolution]]".<ref name="nytimes" />

Rockefeller met [[Henry Kissinger]] in 1954, when Kissinger was appointed a director of a seminal [[Council on Foreign Relations]] study group on nuclear weapons, of which David Rockefeller was a member.<ref>{{harvp|Isaacson|2005|p=84}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|Grose|1996}}</ref> He named Kissinger to the board of trustees of the [[Rockefeller Brothers Fund]], and consulted with him frequently, with the subjects including the Chase Bank's interests in Chile and the possibility of the [[1970 Chilean presidential election|election of Salvador Allende]] in 1970.<ref>{{harvp|Isaacson|2005|p=289}}</ref> Rockefeller supported his "opening of China" initiative in 1971 as it afforded banking opportunities for the Chase Bank.<ref>{{harvp|Wilson|1986|pp=229–230}}</ref>

Though a lifelong [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] and party contributor, he was a member of the moderate "[[Rockefeller Republicans]]" that arose out of the political ambitions and public policy stance of his brother Nelson. In 2006, he teamed up with former [[Goldman Sachs]] executives and others to form a fund-raising group based in Washington, Republicans Who Care, that supported moderate Republican candidates over more ideological contenders.<ref>{{cite news |last=Forsythe |first=Michael |date=October 17, 2006 |title='Rockefeller Republicans' Open Wallets to Back Party Moderates |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a9_JqgSLvSgo |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930041712/https://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a9_JqgSLvSgo |archive-date=September 30, 2007 |publisher=[[Bloomberg News|Bloomberg.com]] |access-date=September 4, 2017}}</ref>

=== Central Intelligence Agency ties ===
Rockefeller was acquainted with [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) director [[Allen Dulles]] and his brother, Eisenhower administration Secretary of State [[John Foster Dulles]]—who was an in-law of the family<ref>{{harvp|Perloff|1988|p=104}}</ref>—since his college years.<ref>{{harvp|Rockefeller|2002|p=149}}</ref> It was in Rockefeller Center that Allen Dulles had set up his WWII operational center after [[Pearl Harbor]], liaising closely with [[MI6]], which also had their principal U.S. operation in the center.<ref>{{harvp|Srodes|1999|pp=207, 210}}</ref> He also knew and associated with the former CIA director [[Richard Helms]] as well as [[Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt Jr.]], a Chase Bank employee and former CIA agent whose first cousin, CIA agent [[Kermit Roosevelt Jr.]], was involved in the [[1953 Iranian coup d'état|Iran coup of 1953]].<ref>{{harvp|Rockefeller|2002|p=363}}</ref>

In 1953, he had befriended [[William Bundy]], a pivotal CIA analyst for nine years in the 1950s, who became the Agency liaison to the [[National Security Council (USA)|National Security Council]], and a subsequent lifelong friend.<ref>{{harvp|Bird|1998|pp=180–181}}</ref> In Cary Reich's biography of his brother Nelson, a former CIA agent states that David was extensively briefed on covert intelligence operations by himself and other Agency division chiefs, under the direction of David's "friend and confidant", CIA director Allen Dulles.<ref>{{harvp|Reich|1996|p=559}}</ref>