Bourke Hickenlooper

Bourke Hickenlooper   (politician)
Born	Gordon Llewellyn Allott 1896-07-21 Blockton, Iowa, U.S.
Died	1971-09-04 (Age 75) Shelter Island, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Iowa State University, University of Iowa
Children	2
Spouse	Verna Bensch
Party	Republican
Attended the 1963 Bilderberg as Chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Introduced the Hickenlooper Amendment.  Chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee In office January 3, 1962 - January 3, 1969  United States Senator from Iowa In office January 3, 1945 - January 3, 1969  Governor of Iowa In office January 14, 1943 - January 11, 1945  Lieutenant Governor of Iowa In office January 12, 1939 - January 14, 1943

Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper was an American attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Iowa. He was Governor of Iowa from 1943 to 1945. In 1944, he won election to the first of four terms in the United States Senate, where he served until 1969.

He was the author of the Hickenlooper Amendment, which started the total embargo of Cuba. The amendment made it almost impossible for foreign governments (democratic, communist or any other) to make a decision to force through sales or nationalization of US corporate property, with threats of being locked out of the international trade and finance system. The amendment secured multinational interests, especially in Latin-America.

Background

Hickenlooper was born in Blockton in Taylor County in southwestern Iowa, an only child of a farming couple, Margaret (Blakemore) and Nathan Hickenlooper. He attended Iowa State University, then Iowa State College in Ames, but his education was interrupted by his service in the United States Army during World War I. In April 1917, Hickenlooper enrolled in the officers' training camp at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to France as a battalion orientation officer.

After military service, Hickenlooper early in 1919 returned to the United States. In June 1919, he received his bachelor's degree in industrial science from Iowa State. He then enrolled at the University of Iowa College of Law, earning a Bachelor of Laws in 1922.

U.S. Senate

In 1944, Hickenlooper unseated the Democrat Guy M. Gillette in the U.S. Senate election. As a senator from 1945 to 1969, Hickenlooper was among the most conservative and isolationist members of his party. He became the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, serving alongside longtime Democratic chairman J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. In 1967, near the end of his Senate tenure, Hickenlooper and Fulbright were instrumental in the drafting of the Consular Treaty, the first such international agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Hickenlooper was a co-author of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which initiated the development of atomic power for peaceful uses. He also chaired the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee. In this capacity, Hickenlooper questioned the whereabouts of missing uranium from an AEC laboratory in Illinois and urged the removal of AEC chairman David Lilienthal, who claimed no knowledge of the incident. Though the AEC committee declined by a 9 to 8 vote to remove Lilienthal, he nevertheless resigned some six months later, having claimed that his career had been ruined by the mystery of the missing uranium.

In 1958, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Hickenlooper as a U.S. representative to the United Nations General Assembly. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson named him to a congressional team to oversee the elections in the Republic of South Vietnam.

Hickenlooper in time became one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate, having served from 1962 to 1969 as the Republican Policy Committee chairman. In this position, he developed an intense intraparty rivalry with fellow Midwesterner Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, the Senate Republican leader from 1959 to 1969. Hickenlooper voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, as well as the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and did not vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1968 or the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hickenlooper said that his opposition to civil rights legislation was based on a fear that such laws would lead to "bureaucrats snooping into every area of American life."

The next year, Hickenlooper, following Dirksen's leadership, voted with other Northerners in support of the Immigration Act of 1965 thus ending the National Origins Formula of the quota system established in 1921 by emergency.

Hickenlooper's grand-nephew is former Governor of Colorado and current US senator John Hickenlooper.

Hickenlooper Amendment

The proposed Hickenlooper Amendment, a rider to the 1962 foreign aid bill, restricted aid not only to communist countries, but to any country that nationalized U.S. corporate property without full compensation (as defined by the US). The amendment was specifically aimed at Cuba, led by Fidel Castro, which had expropriated US-owned and -controlled sugar plantations and refineries, hotels (owned by the mafia) and other businesses, some of them after ceasing operations in Cuba. The amendment instructed the president to "establish and maintain a total embargo upon all trade between the United States and Cuba."

The amendment followed the seizure of three US oil companies in Cuba and Argentina. It was also in response to a ruling of the US Supreme Court, which, in effect, denied the right of an American sugar company to contest the seizure of its holdings by the Cuban government in US courts.

The act was defused, but not repealed in 1973.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1963	29 March 1963	31 March 1963	France Cannes Hotel Martinez	The 12th Bilderberg meeting and the second one in France.

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