| By Patrick Wood [Editor’s note: For ease of reading, all members of the Trilateral Commission appear inbold type]
{sidebar id=1} According to each issue of the official Trilateral Commission quarterly magazine Trialogue:
Further, Trialogue and other official writings made clear their stated goal of creating a “New International Economic Order.” President George H.W. Bush later talked openly about creating a “New World Order”, which has since become a synonymous phrase. This paper attempts to tell the rest of the story, according to official and unofficial Commission sources and other available documents. The Trilateral Commission was founded by the persistent maneuvering of David Rockefellerand Zbigniew Brzezinski. Rockefeller was chairman of the ultra-powerful Chase Manhattan Bank, a director of many major multinational corporations and “endowment funds” and had long been a central figure in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Brzezinski, a brilliant prognosticator of one-world idealism, was a professor at Columbia University and the author of several books that have served as “policy guidelines” for the Trilateral Commission. Brzezinski served as the Commission’s first executive director from its inception in 1973 until late 1976 when he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The initial Commission membership was approximately three hundred, with roughly one hundred each from Europe, Japan and North America. Membership was also roughly divided between academics, politicians and corporate magnates; these included international bankers, leaders of prominent labor unions and corporate directors of media giants. The word commission was puzzling since it is usually associated with instrumentalities set up by governments. It seemed out of place with a so-called private group unless we could determine that it really was an arm of a government – an unseen government, different from the visible government in Washington. European and Japanese involvement indicated a world government rather than a national government. We hoped that the concept of a sub-rosa world government was just wishful thinking on the part of the Trilateral Commissioners. The facts, however, lined up quite pessimistically. If the Council on Foreign Relations could be said to be a spawning ground for the concepts of one-world idealism, then the Trilateral Commission was the “task force” assembled to assault the beachheads. Already the Commission had placed its members in the top posts the U.S. had to offer.
Carter’s running mate, Walter Mondale, was also a member of the Commission. (If you are trying to calculate the odds of three virtually unknown men, out of over sixty Commissioners from the U.S., capturing the three most powerful positions in the land, don’t bother. Your calculations will be meaningless.) On January 7, 1977 Time Magazine, whose editor-in-chief, Hedley Donovan was a powerful Trilateral, named President Carter “Man of the Year.” The sixteen-page article in that issue not only failed to mention Carter’s connection with the Commission but also stated the following:
Is this portrait of Carter as a political innocent simply inaccurate or is it deliberately misleading? By December 25, 1976 – two weeks before the Time article appeared - Carterhad already chosen his cabinet. Three of his cabinet members – Cyrus Vance, Michael Blumenthal, and Harold Brown – were Trilateral Commissioners; and the other non-Commission members were not unsympathetic to Commission objectives and operations. In addition, Carter had appointed another fourteen Trilateral Commissioners to top government posts, including:
As of 25 December 1976, therefore, there were nineteen Trilaterals, including Carter andMondale, holding tremendous political power. These presidential appointees represented almost one-third of the Trilateral Commission members from the United States. The odds of that happening “by chance” are beyond calculation! Nevertheless, was there even the slightest evidence to indicate anything other than collusion? Hardly! Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the qualifications of a 1976 presidential winner in 1973:
On 23 May 1976 journalist Leslie H. Gelb wrote in the not-so-conservative New York Times,“(Brzezinski) was the first guy in the Community to pay attention to Carter, to take him seriously. He spent time with Carter, talked to him, sent him books and articles, educated him.”5 Richard Gardner (also of Columbia University) joined into the “educational” task, and as Gelb noted, between the two of them they had Carter virtually to themselves. Gelb continued: “While the Community as a whole was looking elsewhere, to Senators Kennedy and Mondale…it paid off. Brzezinski, with Gardner, is now the leading man on Carter’sforeign policy task force.”6 Although Richard Gardner was of considerable academic influence, it should be clear thatBrzezinski was the “guiding light” of foreign policy in the Carter administration. Along with Commissioner Vance and a host of other Commissioners in the State Department,Brzezinski had more than continued the policies of befriending our enemies and alienating our friends. Since early 1977 we had witnessed a massive push to attain “normalized” relations with Communist China, Cuba, the USSR, Eastern European nations, Angola, etc. Conversely, we had withdrawn at least some support from Nationalist China, South Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), etc. It was not just a trend – it was an epidemic. Thus, if it could be said that Brzezinski had, at least in part, contributed to current U.S. foreign and domestic policy, then we should briefly analyze exactly what he was espousing. Needed: A More Just and Equitable World Order The Trilateral Commission held their annual plenary meeting in Tokyo, Japan, in January 1977. Carter and Brzezinski obviously could not attend as they were still in the process of reorganizing the White House. They did, however, address personal letters to the meeting, which were reprinted in Trialogue, the official magazine of the Commission:
Brzezinski’s letter, in a similar vein, follows:
The key phrase in both letters was “more just and equitable world order.” Did this emphasis indicate that something was wrong with our present world order, that is, with national structures? Yes, according to Brzezinski, and since the present “framework” was inadequate to handle world problems, it must be done away with and supplanted with a world government. In September 1974 Brzezinski was asked in an interview by the Brazilian newspaper Vega.“How would you define this new world order?” Brzezinski answered:
When asked if Congress would have an expanded or diminished role in the new system,Brzezinski declared “…the reality of our times is that a modern society such as the U.S. needs a central coordinating and renovating organ which cannot be made up of six hundred people.”10 Brzezinski developed background for the need for a new system in his book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (1969). He wrote that mankind has moved through three great stages of evolution, and was in the middle of the fourth and final stage. The first stage he described as “religious,” combining a heavenly “universalism provided by the acceptance of the idea that man’s destiny is essentially in God’s hands” with an earthly “narrowness derived from massive ignorance, illiteracy, and a vision confined to the immediate environment.” The second stage was nationalism, stressing Christian equality before the law, which “marked another giant step in the progressive redefinition of man’s nature and place in our world.” The third stage was Marxism, which, said Brzezinski, “represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man’s universal vision.” The fourth and final stage wasBrzezinski’s Technetronic Era, or the ideal of rational humanism on a global scale – the result of American-Communist evolutionary transformations.11 In considering our structure of governance, Brzezinski stated:
One of the most important “frameworks” in the world, and especially to Americans, was the United States Constitution. It was this document that outlined the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. Was our sovereignty really “fiction”? Was the U.S. vision no longer compatible with reality? Brzezinski further stated:
In Brzezinski’s Technetronic Era then, the “nation-state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”14 Brzezinski’s philosophy clearly pointed forward to Richard Gardner’s Hard Road to World Order that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1974, where Gardner stated,
That former approach which had produced few successes during the 1950’s and 1960’s was being traded for a velvet sledge-hammer: It would make little noise, but would still drive the spikes of globalization deep into the hearts of many different countries around the world, including the United States. Indeed, the Trilateral Commission was the chosen vehicle that finally got the necessary traction to actually create their New World Order. Understanding the philosophy of the Trilateral Commission was and is the only way we can reconcile the myriad of apparent contradictions in the information filtered through to us in the national press. For instance, how was it that the Marxist regime in Angola derived the great bulk of its foreign exchange from the offshore oil operations of Gulf Oil Corporation? Why did Andrew Young insist that “Communism has never been a threat to Blacks in Africa”? Why did the U.S. funnel billions in technological aid to the Soviet Union and Communist China? Why did the U.S. apparently help its enemies while chastising its friends? A similar and perplexing question is asked by millions of Americans today: Why do we spend trillions on the “War on Terror” around the world and yet ignore the Mexican/U.S. border and the tens of thousands of illegal aliens who freely enter the U.S. each and every month? These questions, and hundreds of others like them, cannot be explained in any other way: the U.S. Executive Branch (and related agencies) was not anti-Marxist or anti-Communist – it was and is, in fact, pro- Marxist. Those ideals which led to the heinous abuses of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mussolini were now being accepted as necessary inevitabilities by our elected and appointed leaders. This hardly suggests the Great American Dream. It is very doubtful that Americans would agree with Brzezinski or the Trilateral Commission. It is the American public who is paying the price, suffering the consequences, but not understanding the true nature of the situation.
“The Trilateral Commission is international and is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power – political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical.”16 Unfortunately, few heard and even fewer understood. Follow the Money, Follow the Power What was the economic nature of the driving force within the Trilateral Commission? It was the giant multinational corporations – those with Trilateral representation – which consistently benefited from Trilateral policy and actions. Polished academics such asBrzezinski, Gardner, Allison, McCracken, Henry Owen etc., served only to give “philosophical” justification to the exploitation of the world. Don’t underestimate their power or the distance they had already come by 1976. Their economic base was already established. Giants like Coca-Cola, IBM, CBS, Caterpillar Tractor, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, Deere & Company, Exxon, and others virtually dwarf whatever remains of American businesses. The market value of IBM’s stock alone, for instance, was greater than the value of all the stocks on the American Stock Exchange. Chase Manhattan Bank had some fifty thousand branches or correspondent banks throughout the world. What reached our eyes and ears was highly regulated by CBS, the New York Times, Time magazine, etc. The most important thing of all is to remember that the political coup de grace preceded the economic coup de grace. The domination of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government provided all the necessary political leverage needed to skew U.S. and global economic policies to their own benefit. By 1977, the Trilateral Commission had notably become expert at using crises (and creating them in some instances) to manage countries toward the New World Order; yet, they found menacing backlashes from those very crises. In the end, the biggest crisis of all was that of the American way of life. Americans never counted on such powerful and influential groups working against the Constitution and freedom, either inadvertently or purposefully, and even now, the principles that helped to build this great country are all but reduced to the sound of meaningless babblings. Trilateral Entrenchment: 1980-2007
From left: Peter Sutherland, Sadako Ogata,Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Volcker, David Rockefeller. (25th Anniversary, New York, Dec. 1, 1998. Source: Trilateral Commission) It would have been damaging enough if the Trilateral domination of the Carteradministration was merely a one-time anomaly; but it was not!Subsequent presidential elections broughtGeorge H.W. Bush (under Reagan), William Jefferson Clinton, Albert Gore and Richard Cheney (under G. W. Bush) to power. Thus, every Administration since Carter has had top-level Trilateral Commission representation through the President or Vice-president, or both! It is important to note that Trilateral domination has transcended political parties: they dominated both the Republican and Democrat parties with equal aplomb. In addition, the Administration before Carter was very friendly and useful to Trilateral doctrine as well: President Gerald Ford took the reins after President Richard Nixon resigned, and then appointed Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President. Neither Ford nor Rockefeller were members of the Trilateral Commission, but Nelson was David Rockefeller’s brother and that says enough. According to Nelson Rockefeller’s memoirs, he originally introduced then-governor Jimmy Carter to David and Brzezinski. How has the Trilateral Commission effected their goal of creating a New World Order or a New International Economic Order? They seated their own members at the top of the institutions of global trade, global banking and foreign policy. For instance, the World Bank is one of the most critical mechanisms in the engine of globalization.17 Since the founding of the Trilateral Commission in 1973, there have been only seven World Bank presidents, all of whom were appointed by the President. Of these seven, six were pulled from the ranks of the Trilateral Commission!
Another good evidence of domination is the position of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), which is critically involved in negotiating the many international trade treaties and agreements that have been necessary to create the New International Economic Order. Since 1977, there have been ten USTR’s appointed by the President. Eight have been members of the Trilateral Commission!
This is not to say that Clayton Yeuter and Rob Portman were not friendly to Trilateral goals, because they clearly were. The Secretary of State cabinet position has seen its share of Trilaterals as well: Henry Kissinger (Nixon, Ford), Cyrus Vance (Carter), Alexander Haig (Reagan), George Shultz(Reagan), Lawrence Eagleburger (G.H.W. Bush), Warren Christopher (Clinton) andMadeleine Albright (Clinton) There were some Acting Secretaries of State that are also noteworthy: Philip Habib (Carter), Michael Armacost (G.H.W. Bush), Arnold Kantor(Clinton), Richard Cooper (Clinton). Lastly, it should be noted that the Federal Reserve has likewise been dominated by Trilaterals: Arthur Burns (1970-1978), Paul Volker (1979-1987), Alan Greenspan (1987-2006). While the Federal Reserve is a privately-owned corporation, the President “chooses” the Chairman to a perpetual appointment. The current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is not a member of the Trilateral Commission, but he clearly is following the same globalist policies as his predecessors. The point raised here is that Trilateral domination over the U.S. Executive Branch has not only continued and but has been strengthened from 1976 to the present. The pattern has been deliberate and persistent: Appoint members of the Trilateral Commission to critical positions of power so that they can carry out Trilateral policies. The question is and has always been, do these policies originate in consensus meetings of the Trilateral Commission where two-thirds of the members are not U.S. citizens? The answer is all too obvious. Trilateral-friendly defenders attempt to sweep criticism aside by suggesting that membership in the Trilateral Commission is incidental, and that it only demonstrates the otherwise high quality of appointees. Are we to believe that in a country of 300 million people only these 100 or so are qualified to hold such critical positions? Again, the answer is all too obvious. Where Does the Council on Foreign Relations Fit? While virtually all Trilateral Commission members from North America have also been members of the CFR, the reverse is certainly not true. It is easy to over-criticize the CFR because most of its members seem to fill the balance of government positions not already filled by Trilaterals. The power structure of the Council is seen in the makeup of its board of directors: No less than 44 percent (12 out of 27) are members of the Commission! If director participation reflected only the general membership of the CFR, then only 3-4 percent of the board would be Trilaterals.18 Further, the president of the CFR is Richard N. Haass, a very prominent Trilateral member who also served as Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State from 2001-2003. Trilateral influence can easily be seen in policy papers produced by the CFR in support of Trilateral goals.For instance, the 2005 CFR task force report on the Future of North America was perhapsthe major Trilateral policy statement on the intended creation of the North American Union. Vice-chair of the task force was Dr. Robert A. Pastor, who has emerged as the “Father of the North American Union” and has been directly involved in Trilateral operations since the 1970’s. While the CFR claimed that the task force was “independent,” careful inspection of those appointed reveal that three Trilaterals were carefully chosen to oversee the Trilateral position, one each from Mexico, Canada and the United States:Luis Rubio, Wendy K. Dobson and Carla A. Hills, respectively.19 Hills has been widely hailed as the principal architect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that was negotiated under President George H.W. Bush in 1992. The bottom line is that the Council on Foreign Relations, thoroughly dominated by Trilaterals, serves the interests of the Trilateral Commission, not the other way around!
The content of this paper thus far suggests ties between the Trilateral Commission and the United States. This is not intended to mean that Trilaterals are not active in other countries as well. Recalling the early years of the Commission, David Rockefeller wrote in 1998, “Back in the early Seventies, the hope for a more united EUROPE was already full-blown – thanks in many ways to the individual energies previously spent by so many of the Trilateral Commission’s earliest members.” [Capitals in original]20 Thus, since 1973 and in parallel with their U.S. hegemony, the European members of the Trilateral Commission were busy creating the European Union. In fact, the EU’s Constitution was authored by Commission member Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 2002-2003, when he was President of the Convention on the Future of Europe. [For more on the EU, see European Union: Dictatorship Rising? and The Globalization Strategy: America and Europe in the Crucible] The steps that led to the creation of the European Union are unsurprisingly similar to the steps being taken to create the North American Union today. As with the EU, lies, deceit and confusion are the principal tools used to keep an unsuspecting citizenry in the dark while they forge ahead without mandate, accountability or oversight. [See The Globalization Strategy: America and Europe in the Crucible and Toward a North American Union] Conclusion It is clear that the Executive Branch of the U.S. was literally hijacked in 1976 by members of the Trilateral Commission, upon the election of President Jimmy Carter and Vice-President Walter Mondale. This near-absolute domination, especially in the areas of trade, banking, economics and foreign policy, has continued unchallenged and unabated to the present. Windfall profits have accrued to interests associated with the Trilateral Commission, but The philosophical underpinnings of the Trilateral Commission are pro-Marxist and pro-socialist. They are solidly set against the concept of the nation-state and in particular, the Constitution of the United States. Thus, national sovereignty must be diminished and then abolished altogether in order to make way for the New World Order that will be governed by an unelected global elite with their self-created legal framework. If you are having negative sentiment against Trilateral-style globalization, you are not alone. A 2007 Financial Times/Harris poll revealed that less than 20 percent of people in six industrialized countries (including the U.S.) believe that globalization is good for their country while over 50 percent are outright negative towards it.21 (See Global Backlash Against Globalization?) While citizens around the world are feeling the pain of globalization, few understand why it is happening and hence, they have no effective strategy to counter it. The American public has never, ever conceived that such forces would align themselves so successfully against freedom and liberty. Yet, the evidence is clear: Steerage of America has long since fallen into the hands of an actively hostile enemy that intends to remove all vestiges of the very things that made us the greatest nation in the history of mankind. |
President James Earl Carter, the country politician who promised, “I will never lie to you,” was chosen to join the Commission byBrzezinski in 1973. It was Brzezinski, in fact, who first identified Carter as presidential timber, and subsequently educated him in economics, foreign policy, and the ins-and-outs of world politics. Upon Carter’selection, Brzezinski was appointed assistant to the president for national security matters. Commonly, he was called the head of the National Security Council because he answered only to the president – some said Brzezinski held the second most powerful position in the U.S.
This nature however, was not unknown or unknowable. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) issued a clear and precise warning in his 1979 book, With No Apologies:
Trilateral Globalization in EuropeObama’s Trilateral Commission Team
Source:
August Review.com, January 30, 2009
Title: “Obama: Trilateral Commission Endgame”
Author: Patrick Wood
Student Researcher: Sarah Maddox
Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips
Sonoma State University
Barack Obama appointed eleven members of the Trilateral Commission to top-level and key positions in his administration within his first ten days in office. This represents a very narrow source of international leadership inside the Obama administration, with a core agenda that is not necessarily in support of working people in the United States.
Obama was groomed for the presidency by key members of the Trilateral Commission. Most notably, Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller in 1973, has been Obama’s principal foreign policy advisor.
According to official Trilateral Commission membership lists, there are only eighty-seven members from the United States (the other 337 members are from other countries). Thus, within two weeks of his inauguration, Obama’s appointments encompassed more than 12 percent of Commission’s entire US membership.
Trilateral appointees include:
* Secretary of Treasury, Tim Geithner
* Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice
* National Security Advisor, Gen. James L. Jones
* Deputy National Security Advisor, Thomas Donilon
* Chairman, Economic Recovery Committee, Paul Volker
* Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair
* Assistant Secretary of State, Asia & Pacific, Kurt M. Campbell
* Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg
* State Department, Special Envoy, Richard Haass
* State Department, Special Envoy, Dennis Ross
* State Department, Special Envoy, Richard Holbrooke
There are many other links in the Obama administration to the Trilateral Commission. For instance, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is married to Commission member William Jefferson Clinton.
Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner’s informal group of advisors include E. Gerald Corrigan, Paul Volker, Alan Greenspan, and Peter G. Peterson, all members. Geithner’s first job after college was with Trilateralist Henry Kissinger at Kissinger Associates.
Trilateralist Brent Scowcroft has been an unofficial advisor to Obama and was mentor to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And Robert Zoelick, current president of the World Bank appointed during the G.W. Bush administration, is a member.
According to the Trilateral Commissions’ website, the Commission was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, Europe (European Union countries), and North America (United States and Canada) to foster closer cooperation among these core democratic industrialized areas of the world with shared leadership responsibilities in the wider international system. The website says, “The membership of the Trilateral Commission is composed of about 400 distinguished leaders in business, media, academia, public service (excluding current national Cabinet Ministers), labor unions, and other non-governmental organizations from the three regions. The regional chairmen, deputy chairmen, and directors constitute the leadership of the Trilateral Commission, along with an Executive Committee including about 40 other members.”
Since 1973, the Trilateral Commission has met regularly in plenary sessions to discuss policy position papers developed by its members. Policies are debated in order to achieve consensuses. Respective members return to their own countries to implement policies consistent with those consensuses. The original stated purpose of the Trilateral Commission was to create a “New International Economic Order.” Its current statement has morphed into fostering a “closer cooperation among these core democratic industrialized areas of the world with shared leadership responsibilities in the wider international system.”
Since the Carter administration, Trilateralists have held these very influential positions: Six of the last eight World Bank Presidents; Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States (except for Obama and Biden); over half of all US Secretaries of State; and three quarters of the Secretaries of Defense.
Two strong convictions guide the Commission’s agenda for the 2009-2012 triennium. First, the Trilateral Commission is to remain as important as ever in maintaining wealthy countries’ shared leadership in the wider international system. Second, the Commission will “widen its framework to reflect broader changes in the world.” Thus, the Japan Group has become a Pacific Asian Group, which includes Chinese and Indian members, and Mexican members have been added to the North American Group. The European Group continues to widen in line with the enlargement of the EU.
Update by Patrick Wood
The concept of “undue influence” comes to mind when considering the number of Trilateral Commission members in the Obama administration. They control the areas of our most urgent national needs: financial and economic crisis, national security, and foreign policy.
The conflict of interest is glaring. With 75 percent of the Trilateral membership consisting of non-US individuals, what influence does this super-majority have on the remaining 25 percent?
For example, when Chrysler entered bankruptcy under the oversight and control of the Obama administration, it was quickly decided that the Italian carmaker Fiat would take over Chrysler. The deal’s point man, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is a member of the Trilateral Commission. Would you be surprised to know that the chairman of Fiat, Luca di Montezemolo, is also a fellow member?
Congress should have halted this deal the moment it was suggested.
Many European members of the Trilateral Commission are also top leaders of the European Union. What political and economic sway do they have through their American counterparts?
If asked, the vast majority of Americans would say that America’s business is its own, and should be closed to foreign meddlers with non-American agendas.
But, the vast majority of Americans have no idea who or what the Trilateral Commission is, much less the power they have usurped since 1976, when Jimmy Carter became the first Trilateral member to be elected president (Project Censored Story #1, 1976).
In light of today’s unprecedented financial crisis, they would be abhorred if they actually read Zbigniew Brzezinski’s (co-founder of the Commission with David Rockefeller) statement from his 1971 book, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, which states that, “The nation-state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”
Yet, this is exactly what is happening. The global banks and corporations are running circles around the nation state, including the United States. They have no regard for due process, Congress, or the will of the people.
Why have the American people been kept in the dark about a subject so great that it shakes our country to its very core?
The answer is simple: The top leadership of the media is also saturated with members of the Trilateral Commission who are able to selectively suppress the stories that are covered. They include:
• David Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic Media Company
• Karen Elliot House, former Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Company, and Publisher, the Wall Street Journal
• Richard Plepler, Co-president, HBO
• Charlie Rose, PBS
• Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek
• Mortimer Zuckerman, Chairman, US News & World Reports
There are many other top-level media connections due to corporate directorships and stock ownership.
For more information, this writer’s original 1978 book, Trilaterals Over Washington, is available in electronic form at no charge at http://www.AugustReview.com. This site also has many papers analyzing various aspects of the Trilateral Commission’s hegemony in the United States and elsewhere, since it’s founding in 1973.
