During one of his rare public appearances in March 2015, David Rockefeller came to the small art gallery on the family estate in Pocantico Hills to announce that, upon his death, he was giving an additional 500 acres to New York state.
The then-99-year-old had already donated 1,400 acres of the Rockefeller State Park Preserve to New York — along with a $4 billion endowment.
Using a walker, the philanthropist was helped to the podium by his son David Rockefeller Jr. He read a statement there that made his love of New York very clear.
We chatted at various public events over the years, and his dedication to, and effect on, New York was always as clear as his gaze.
Rockefeller and I talked two days after 9/11, when the 86-year-old was clearly shaken by the attack.
Active in the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association, he had suggested creating the original World Trade Center to provide a focus for international trade. He later proposed using its excavated materials for a landfill that would become Battery Park City.
He got the news of the 9/11 attacks during his daily cardio fitness routine, he said. He subsequently watched the smoke and the buildings collapse from his office window.
“It was a terrifying moment,” he said. “It was one of the most effective as well as frightening evil acts that this country has ever experienced.”
“It never occurred to me [the WTC would become like a military target and] could arouse this kind of evil attack. I don’t think anyone could have imagined it,” he added. “It was alarming.”
Even in the immediate aftermath, the global thinker recognized that along with the large loss of life and personal tragedy, there had been a “huge loss” of office space, leaving tenants needing offices.
“I would think the business community would not hold off putting up another large building if that was appropriate and needed,” he said. As to leaving it with only a memorial, he noted, “It isn’t the kind of memorial we want to perpetuate.”
“One thing I feel strongly about is that the downtown community is a strong one and, terrible as [the attack] is, it will not stop New York from being the leading city in the world in trade and finance.”
By then, it was also known that the terrorists were from the Middle East, and Rockefeller explained that the globalist organization he founded in 1973, known as the Trilateral Commission (which conspiracy theorists believe really rules the world), never involved Middle Easterners but rather what were then “the great three trading areas, of the US, Europe and Japan.”
“We have had topics of discussion that involved the Middle East and the US and invited them to those discussions, but we never attempted to include them as it was not appropriate for our objective,” he explained.
“It was developed because it was felt that particularly Japan, though important and growing in trade, did not have much contact with the US and Europe and business leaders,” he said. “It would bring the Japanese more into the European/US economic zone. The Middle East is not in the same league; it’s a different league.”
In a later biography, he wrote, “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”