THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION

Secret societies not only exist, they have played an important role in national and international events right up to this day.

   In considering the reach of modern secret societies, it is instructive to first look at America’s immediate past presidents and the people and events surrounding them.

   While many Americans popularly viewed President Bill Clinton as a youthful saxophone player with an eye for the ladies, most were unaware of his connection to three of the most notorious of modern secret societies: the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations (take particular notice of the initials CFR as they crop up incessantly in the study of U.S. policy decisions and world conflicts), and the Bilderbergers.

   The Trilateral Commission publishes its membership as well as position papers, but its inner workings are secret. The CFR also publishes a membership roll, but members are pledged to secrecy regarding its goals and operations. The Bilderberg group keeps both its agenda and membership a secret.

   Prominent members of the Clinton administration who belonged to the council included former CFR president Peter Tarnoff, Anthony Lake, Al Gore, Warren Christopher, Colin Powell, Les Aspin, James Woolsey, William Cohen, Samuel Lewis, Joan Edelman Spero, Timothy Wirth, Winston Lord, Lloyd Bentsen, Laura Tyson, and George Stephenopoulos. Former Trilateral members included Bruce Babbitt, Stephen W. Bosworth, William Cohen, Thomas Foley, Alan Greenspan, Donna Shalala, and Strobe Talbott.

   Publisher John F. McManus noted that in the fall of 1998, as impeachment loomed over him, Clinton hurried to New York to seek support from his CFR friends.

"Bill Clinton knows well that he serves as president because the members of the ’secret society’ to which he belongs chose him and expect him to carry out its plans," wrote McManus.

   Clinton was not the only recent president with connections to these groups.

President George Bush was a Trilateralist, a CFR member, and a brother in the mysterious Order of Skull and Bones. President Ronald Reagan, a former spokesman for General Electric, did not officially belong to these groups, but his administrations were packed with both current and former members as will be detailed later.

   President Jimmy Carter’s administration was so filled with members of the Trilateral Commission that conspiracy researchers had a field day. Even the Establishment media began to talk.

By the early 1970s, thanks to burgeoning communications technology, many Americans were becoming more aware of secretive organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations. Former CFR chairman David Rockefeller, apparently in an effort to deflect public attention from CFR activities, instigated the creation of a more public offshoot organization: the Trilateral Commission.

   Both the commission and its predecessor, the CFR, are held out by conspiracy researchers as the epitome of covert organizations which may be guiding public policy in directions opposite to those either in the best interest of or desired by the public.

   The concept of the Trilateral Commission was originally brought to Rockefeller by Zbigniew Brzezinski, then head of the Russian Studies Department at Columbia University. While at the Brookings Institution, Brzezinski had been researching the need for closer cooperation between the trilateral nations of Europe, North America, and Asia.

   In 1970, Brzezinski wrote in Foreign Affairs, a CFR publication,

"A new and broader approach is needed—creation of a community of the developed nations which can effectively address itself to the larger concerns confronting mankind. ... A council representing the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, with regular meetings of the heads of governments as well as some small standing machinery, would be a good start."

   Later that year, he published a book entitled Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era. Within those pages, Brzezinski spelled out his vision for the future.

   He prophetically foresaw a society "... that is shaped culturally, psychologically, socially, and economically by the impact of technology and electronics—particularly in the area of computers and communication."

   Brzezinski’s visions would raise the suspicions of those opposed to the consolidation of world political and economic power. Declaring "National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept," he predicted "movement toward a larger community by the developing nations . . . through a variety of indirect ties and already developing limitations on national sovereignty." He foresaw this larger community being funded by "a global taxation system."

   In explaining that a cooperative hub, such as the Trilateral Commission, might set the stage for future consolidation, he reasoned, "Though the objective of shaping a community of developed nations is less ambitious than the goal of world government, it is more attainable."

   Brzezinski’s hope for a global society did not exclude nations then under the rule of Marxism, which he described as "a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man’s universal vision" and "a victory of the external man over the inner, passive man, and a victory of reason over belief."

   Brzezinski’s plan for a commission of trilateral nations was first presented during a meeting of the ultra secret Bilderberg group in April 1972, in the small Belgian town of Knokke-Heist. Reception to Brzezinski’s proposal reportedly was enthusiastic. At that time international financiers were concerned over Nixon’s devaluation of the dollar, surcharges on imports, and budding detente with China, all of which were causing relations with Japan to deteriorate. In addition, energy problems were growing in response to price increases by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

   With the blessing of the Bilderbergers and the CFR, the Trilateral Commission began organizing on July 23-24, 1972, at the 3,500-acre Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, a subdivision of Tarrytown, New York. Participants in this private meeting included Rockefeller, Brzezinski, Brookings Institution director of foreign policy studies Henry Owen, McGeorge Bundy, Robert Bowie, C. Fred Bergsten, Bayless Manning, Karl Carstens, Guide Colonna di Paliano, Francois Duchene, Rene Foch, Max Kohnstamm, Kiichi Miyazawa, Saburo Ikita, and Tadashi Yamamoto. Apparently these founders were selected by Rockefeller and Brzezinski.

   The Trilateral Commission officially was founded on July 1, 1973, with David Rockefeller as chairman. Brzezinski was named founding North American director. North American members included Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, congressman John B. Anderson (another presidential candidate), and Time, Inc. editor-in-chief Hedley Donovan. Foreign founding members included the late Reginald Maudling, Lord Eric Roll, Economist editor Alistair Burnet, FIAT president Giovanni Agnelli, and French vice president of the Commission of European Communities Raymond Barre. The total exclusive membership remains about three hundred persons.

   According to the commission’s official yearly publication, Trialogue,

"The Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Western Europe, Japan, and North America to foster closer cooperation among these three regions on common problems."

Skeptical conspiracy authors saw "closer cooperation" as more like "collusion" of the multinational bankers and corporate elite with an eye toward one-world government.

   The Trilateral Commission has headquarters in New York, Paris, and Tokyo. An executive committee of thirty-five members administers the commission, which meets roughly every nine months rotating between the three regions.

   It is not surprising that the question of who funds this group has arisen. Commission spokesmen stress that the group does not receive any government funding. A report in 1978 showed that commission funding from mid-1976 to mid-1979 was $1,180,000, much of which came from tax-exempt foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which in 1977 alone put up $120,000. Donations also came from the Ford Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the German Marshall Fund and corporations such as Time, Bechtel, Exxon, General Motors, Wells-Fargo, and Texas Instruments.

   In addition to its newsletter, Trialogue, the commission has regularly issued a number of "Task Force Reports" or "Triangle Papers" which are publicly available. "For years, conspiracy-oriented newsletters of the Right and Left have been peddling Trilateral ’secrets’ which were obtained directly from the Commission!" snickered journalist and Trilateral Commission researcher Robert Eringer. It is obvious to most researchers that, as these papers are available to the public, they don’t contain any true inner "secrets."

   One such paper, entitled The Crisis of Democracy, was published by the commission in 1975. One of its authors, Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, avowed that America needed "a greater degree of moderation in democracy." He argued that democratic institutions were incapable of responding to crises such as the Three Mile Island nuclear accident or the Cuban refugee boatlift operation. The paper suggested that leaders with "expertise, seniority, experience and special talents" were needed to "override the claims of democracy."

   Just a few examples indicate that those espousing Trilateralist policies often end up implementing those same policies in the government. Three years after his paper was published, Huntington was named coordinator of security planning for Carter’s National Security Council. In this capacity, Huntington prepared Presidential Review Memorandum 32, which led to the 1979 presidential order creating the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a civilian organization with the power to take totalitarian control of government functions in the event of a national "emergency."

   Yale University economist Richard Cooper headed the commission’s task force on monetary policy, which recommended selling official gold reserves to private markets. Cooper became undersecretary of state for economic affairs, presiding as the International Monetary Fund sold a portion of its gold.

   Trilateralist John Sawhill authored an early commission report, Energy: Managing the Transition, which made recommendations on how to manage a movement to higher-cost energy. Carter appointed Sawhill deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. C. Fred Bergsten aided in the preparation of a commission report called The Reform of International Institutions, then went on to become assistant secretary of the treasury for international affairs.

   "Many of the original members of the Trilateral Commission are now in positions of power where they are able to implement policy recommendations of the Commission; recommendations that they, themselves, prepared on behalf of the Commission," noted journalist Eringer. "It is for this reason that the Commission has acquired a reputation for being the Shadow Government of the West."

   "The Trilateral Commission’s tentacles have reached so far afield in the political and economic sphere that it has been described by some as a cabal of powerful men out to control the world by creating a superna-tional community dominated by the multinational corporations," wrote researcher Laurie K. Strand in a piece entitled "Who’s in charge—Six Possible Contenders" for the People’s Almanac #3.

   Even U.S. News & World Report took note of the commission’s globalist agenda, reporting, "The Trilateralists make no bones about this: They recruit only people interested in promoting closer international cooperation. ..."

   Researchers Anthony C. Sutton and Patrick M. Wood in their book Trilateral Over Washington voiced suspicions of the group and offered this view of its inception.

"The Trilateral Commission was founded by the persistent maneuvering of David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Rockefeller, [then] chairman of the ultrapowerful Chase Manhattan Bank, a director of many major multinational corporations and ’endowment funds’ has long been a central figure in the mysterious Council on Foreign Relations. Brzezinski, a brilliant prognosticator of one-world idealism, has been a professor at Columbia University and the author of several books that have served as ’policy guidelines’ for the CFR. Brzezinski served as the (Trilateral) commission’s executive director from its inception in 1973 until late 1976 when he was appointed by President Carter as assistant to the president for national security affairs."

   It was Brzezinski who recruited Carter for the Trilateral Commission in 1973. In fact, during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, so much Trilateral material was made public that considerable debate ensued within the news media.

   Even the Establishment-oriented Washington Post pondered in early 1977,

"But here is the unsettling thing about the Trilateral Commission. The President-elect (Carter) is a member. So is Vice-President-elect Walter F. Mondale. So are the new secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, Cyrus R. Vance, Harold Brown and W. Michael Blumenthal. So is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is a former Trilateral director and Carter’s national security advisor, also a bunch of others who will make foreign policy for America in the next four years."

   Sutton and Wood commented,

"If you are trying to calculate the odds of three virtually unknown men (Carter, Mondale, and Brzezinski), out of over 60 (Trilateral) commissioners from the U.S., capturing the three most powerful positions in the land, don’t bother. Your calculations will be meaningless."

   Carter administration Trilateral also included Ambassadors Andrew Young, Gerard Smith, Richard Gardner, and Elliot Richardson, White House economic aide Henry Owen, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Director Paul Warnke of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Undersecretaries of State Richard Cooper for economic affairs and Lucy Benson for security assistance, Undersecretary of the Treasury Anthony Solomon, Robert Bowie of the CIA, and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke.

   Lest anyone think that the Trilateral Commission was simply some organ of the Democratic Party, U.S. News & World Report in 1978 listed prominent Republicans who were members. These included former Secretaries Henry Kissinger of State, William Coleman of Transportation, Carla Hills of Housing and Urban Development, Peter Peterson of Commerce, and Casper Weinberger of Health, Education, and Welfare.

   Also listed were ex-Energy administrator John Sawhill, ex-CIA Director and future President George Bush, ex-Deputy Secretaries of State Robert Ingersoll and Charles Robinson, ex-Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard, former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Russell E. Train, Ambassadors William Scanton to the United Nations and Anne Armstrong to Britain, and members of Congress John Anderson, William Brock, William Cohen, Barber Conable, John Danforth, and Robert Taft, Jr., and Marina Whitman, former member of the Council of Economic Advisors.

   Provoking additional concern among conspiracy researchers was President Carter’s selection of banker Paul Volcker to head America’s powerful central bank, the Federal Reserve. Reportedly appointed on instructions from David Rockefeller, Volcker had been the North American chairman of the Trilateral Commission as well as a member of those other secret groups, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderbergers. He was replaced as chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Reagan administration by current chairman Alan Greenspan, also a member of the Trilateral Commission, the CFR, and the Bilderbergers.

   It is easy to see why so many people believed that U.S. Government policy was being directed from these Rockefeller-dominated organizations.

   Despite having been written nearly twenty years ago, the words of Sutton and Wood ring true today for many average Americans concerned over the state of the nation and suspicious of a superelite trying to gain world control. They wrote,

"By Biblical standards, the United States most certainly deserves judgment—perversion runs amok, child abuse is common, greed and avarice are the passwords to success and morals have rotted. If we are about to be thrown into the pits of the dark ages, the most logical catalyst, or motivator on the horizon is the Trilateral Commission."

   Former senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater echoed the fears of many when he wrote,

"What the Trilaterals truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political government of the nation-states involved. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the world."

   Such criticism prompted David Rockefeller to defend the commission in a 1980 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

"Far from being a coterie of international conspirators with designs on covertly ruling the world, the Trilateral Commission is, in reality, a group of concerned citizens interested in fostering greater understanding and cooperation among international allies. ..."

   But some criticism came from within the Carter administration itself. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie charged that Brzezinski was making foreign policy rather than coordinating it. William Sullivan, who had been U.S. ambassador to Iran, accused Brzezinski of sabotaging U.S. efforts to ease relations with Iran following the departure of the Shah. "By November 1978, Brzezinski began to make his own policy and establish his own embassy in Iran," complained Sullivan.

   It was accusations such as these that prompted sudden concern in Washington over secret and semisecret organizations. Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman noted,

"Brzezinski has long spooked those who worry about the Trilateral Commission, that Rockefeller-inspired group of globally minded big shots from the major industrial powers. For countless Americans of both a rightward and a leftward persuasion, the commission, which tried to influence governments’ trade and diplomatic policies, is a worrisome conspiracy."

   Concern spilled over into veterans organizations. In 1980, the American Legion national convention passed Resolution 773, which called for a congressional investigation of the Trilateral Commission and its predecessor, the Council on Foreign Relations. The following year a similar resolution was approved by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

   Congressman Larry McDonald introduced these resolutions in the House of Representatives but nothing came of it. McDonald, who as national chairman of the John Birch Society was a vocal critic of these secret societies, died in the still-controversial downing of Korean Airlines 007 on September 1, 1983.

   During the 1980 presidential campaigns, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan went on the record blasting the nineteen Trilaterals in the Carter administration — including Carter himself, who wrote that his association with the commission was "a splendid learning opportunity"—and vowed to investigate the group if elected. While competing with George Bush for the nomination, Reagan lambasted Bush’s membership in both the Trilateral Commission and the CFR and pledged not to allow Bush a position in a Reagan government.

   Yet during the Republican national convention a strange series of events took place.

   While Reagan was a shoe-in as the presidential candidate, the vice presidency was the object of a contentious fight. In midweek, national media commentators suddenly began talking about a "dream ticket" to be composed of President Reagan and Vice President (and former president) Gerald Ford. Pressure began building for this concept, which would have created a shared presidency and, hence, divided power. It was even suggested that since Ford had been president he should choose half of the Reagan cabinet.

   Faced with the prospect of presiding over half a government, Reagan rushed to the convention floor late at night and announced,

"I know that I am breaking with precedent to come here tonight, and I assure you at this late hour I’m not going to give you my acceptance address tonight. . . . But in watching the television at the hotel and seeing the rumors that were going around and the gossip that was taking place here ... let me as simply as I can straighten out and bring this to a conclusion. It is true that a number of Republican leaders . . . felt that a proper ticket would have included the former president of the United States, Gerald Ford, as second place on the ticket. ... I then believed that because of all the talk and how something might be growing through the night that it was time for me to advance the schedule a little bit. ... I have asked and I am recommending to this convention that tomorrow when the session reconvenes that George Bush be nominated for vice president."

   Reagan never again uttered a word against the commission or the CFR. Following his election, Reagan’s fifty-nine-member transition team was composed of twenty-eight CFR members, ten members of the elite Bilderberg group, and at least ten Trilaterals. He even appointed prominent CFR members to three of the nation’s most sensitive offices: Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, and Secretary of the Treasury Donald Regan. Additionally, he named Bush’s campaign manager, James A. Baker III, who then served as his chief of staff. Baker is a fourth-generation member of a family long connected to Rockefeller oil interests.

   Then little more than two months after taking office, President Reagan was struck by an assassin’s bullet which, but for a quarter of an inch, would have propelled Bush into the Oval Office seven years before his time. Oddly enough, the brother of the would-be assassin, John W. Hinckley, had scheduled dinner with Bush’s son Neil the very night Reagan was shot. Hinckley’s Texas oilman father and George Bush were longtime friends. It should also be noted that Bush’s name—including his then little-publicized nickname "Poppy"—along with his address and phone number were found in the personal notebook of oil geologist George DeMohrenschildt, the last known close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald. The existence of a 1963 FBI report mentioning a "George Bush of the CIA" in connection with reactions of the U.S. Cuban community to the JFK assassination drew media attention during the 1992 election. Many researchers view these seemingly small, unconnected, and little-reported details as collectively pushing the notion of coincidence to the breaking point.

   The undeniable ties connecting America’s leadership to the CFR and the Trilateral Commission—along with the fact that globalist banker David Rockefeller was a leading luminary in both groups—has prompted much anxiety among conspiracy writers on both the Left and Right.

   "If the Council on Foreign Relations can be said to be a spawning ground for the concepts of one-world idealism, the Trilateral Commission is the ’task force’ assembled to assault the beachheads," wrote authors Sutton and Wood in 1979. "Already the commission has placed its members ... in the top posts the U.S. has to offer."

   Texe Marrs (no known relation to this author), president of Living Truth Publishers in Austin, Texas, has warned,

"The Trilateral Commission is a group with the goal of hastening the era of World Government and promoting an international economy controlled behind the scenes by the Secret Brotherhood (the Illuminati)."

The late senator Barry Goldwater was just as cautionary. In his 1979 book, With No Apologies, Gold-water warned,

"David Rockefeller’s newest international cabal [the Trilateral Commission] ... 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."

Such allegations resulted in a 1981 commentary by Washington Post writers normally disinterested in any conspiracy theory. They at last acknowledged the Trilateral presence by sarcastically writing,

"Remember those dreaded three-sided Trilateralists, the international conspirators headed by David Rockefeller who were going to take over the world? Jimmy Carter was one. George Bush used to be one too and it cost him dearly in his campaign last year against Ronald Reagan.

   "Well, guess who’s coming to the White House. Guess who invited them. Guess who will lead the delegation. Right. The Trilateralists are coming. President Reagan has asked them to come. They will be led by David Rockefeller. The Trilateralists have landed and the conspiracy theorists no doubt will be close behind," they sneered.

   Despite public denials, the Trilateral Commission certainly counts as a secret society as its meetings are not open to public scrutiny. And it most certainly represents an extension of the even more secretive Council on Foreign Relations, as all eight North American representatives to the founding meeting of the Trilateral Commission were CFR members.

   Globalism did not begin with the Trilateral Commission. The concept of a one-world community stretches back far beyond the twentieth century, but became concentrated in the granddaddy of the modern American secret societies—the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

   The council began as an outgrowth of a series of meetings conducted during World War I. In 1917 New York, Colonel Edward Mandell House, President Woodrow Wilson’s confidential adviser, had gathered about one hundred prominent men to discuss the postwar world. Dubbing themselves "the Inquiry," they made plans for a peace settlement which eventually evolved into Wilson’s famous "fourteen points," which he first presented to Congress on January 8, 1918. They were globalist in nature, calling for the removal of "all economic barriers" between nations, "equality of trade conditions," and the formation of "a general association of nations."

   Colonel House, who once described himself as a Marxist socialist but whose actions more reflected Fabian socialism, was the author of a 1912 book entitled Philip Dru - Administrator. In this work, House described a "conspiracy" within the United States with the goals of establishing a central bank, a graduated income tax, and the control of both political parries. Two years after the publication of his book, two, if not all three, of his Literary goals had been met in reality.

   By late 1918, stalemate on the Western Front and the entry of America into the war forced Germany and the Central Powers to accept Wilson’s terms for peace. The subsequent Paris Peace Conference of 1919 resulted in the harsh Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay heavy reparations to the Allies. This ruined the German economy, leading to depression and the eventual rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis.

   Attending the Paris peace conference were President Woodrow Wilson and his closest advisors, Colonel House, bankers Paul Warburg and Bernard Baruch, and almost two dozen members of "the Inquiry." The conference attendees embraced Wilson’s plan for peace, including the formation of a League of Nations. However, under American law, the covenant had to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, which failed to do so, apparently distrusting any supernational organization.

   Undaunted, Colonel House, along with both British and American peace conference delegates, met in Paris’s Majestic Hotel on May 30, 1919, and resolved to form an "Institute of International Affairs," with one branch in the United States and one in England. The English branch became the Royal Institute of International Affairs. This institute was to guide public opinion toward acceptance of one-world government or globalism.

   The U.S. branch was incorporated on July 21, 1921, as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It was built upon an existing, but lackluster, New York dinner club of the same name, which had been created in 1918 by prominent bankers and lawyers for discussions on trade and international finance. Article II of the new CFR’s bylaws stated that anyone revealing details of CFR meetings in contravention of the CFR’s rules could be dropped from membership, thus qualifying the CFR as a secret society.

   This secrecy has been assiduously protected by America’s major media. "Analysts of the Soviet press say the Council crops up more regularly in Pravda and Izvestia than it does in the New York Times," noted journalist J. Anthony Lucas in 1971.

   Since 1945, the CFR has been headquartered in the elegant Harold Pratt House in New York City. The building was donated by the Pratt family of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. The mansion, with its painted French doors, elegant tapestries, and fireplaces, presents a clublike atmosphere.

   Characterization of the CFR as an "old boys’ club" is enhanced by the fact that many members belong to other upper-crust Social Register groups such as the Century Association, the Links Club, the University Club, and Washington’s Metropolitan Club.

   In the CFR’s 1997 annual report, Board Chairman Peter G. Peterson acknowledged that there was a "kernel of truth" to the charge that the council was an organization of "New York liberal elite," but stated the CFR today is "reaching further into America" with an increasing number of members now living outside New York and Washington.

   The CFR’s invitation-only membership, originally limited to 1,600 participants, today numbers more than 3,300, representing the most influential leaders in finance, commerce, communications, and academia. Admission is a very discriminating and painful process: candidates have to be proposed by a member, seconded by another member, approved by a membership committee, screened by the professional staff, and finally approved by the board of directors.

   In an effort to adjust to the modern world, the Council extended its membership by the early 1970s to include a few blacks and more than a dozen women. To broaden its influence beyond the eastern seaboard, the CFR created Committees on Foreign Relations composed of local leaders in cities across the nation. More than thirty-seven such committees comprising about four thousand members existed by the early 1980s.

   Original CFR members included Colonel House, former New York senator and Secretary of State Elihu Root, syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann, John Foster Dulles and Christian Herter, who both later served a secretaries of state, and Dulles’s brother Allen, who later served as director of the CIA.

   Founding CFR president, millionaire John W. Davis, was financier J. P. Morgan’s personal attorney, while Vice President Paul Cravath also represented Morgan properties. The council’s first chairman was Russell Leffingwell, one of Morgan’s partners. Since most of the earliest CFR members had connections to Morgan in one way or another, it could be said that the council was heavily influenced by Morgan interests.

   Funding for the CFR came from bankers and financiers such as Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Bernard Baruch, Jacob Schiff, Otto Kahn, and Paul Warburg. Today, funding for the CFR comes from major corporations such as Xerox, General Motors, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Texaco, and others as well as the German Marshall Fund, McKnight Foundation, Billion Fund, Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Starr Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

   According to the Capital Research Center’s Guide to Nonprofit Advocacy and Policy Groups, CFR board members are associated with such influential organizations as the Committee for Economic Development, Institute for International Economics, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Business Enterprise Trust, the Urban Institute, the Business Roundtable, Council on Competitiveness, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Alliance for Business, Brookings Institution, Business-Higher Education Forum, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Hoover Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Wilderness Society, and the American Council for Capital Formation.

   The CFR played a key role in American policy during World War II, and journalist J. Anthony Lucas noted, "From 1945 well into the sixties, Council members were in the forefront of America’s globalist activism."

   In a 1997 mission statement, CFR officials, whose "ranks include nearly all past and present senior U.S. government officials who deal with international matters," stated the council is merely "a unique membership organization and think tank that educates members and staff to serve the nation with ideas for a better and safer world."

   Critics dispute this goal, noting that the CFR has had its hand in every major twentieth century conflict. Many writers view the CFR as a group of men set on world domination through multinational business, international treaties, and world government.

   Even insiders seem to have a hard time convincing their fellows that there is no attempt at conspiratorial control. Admiral Chester Ward, retired judge advocate general of the U.S. Navy and a longtime CFR member was quoted as saying, "CFR, as such, does not write the platforms of both political parties or select their respective presidential candidates, or control U.S. defense and foreign policies. But CFR members, as individuals, acting in concert with other individual CFR members, do."

   Journalist Lucas agreed, commenting that even if one rejects a "simple-minded" dictatorial view of the CFR,

"one must also recognize that influence flows as well through more intricate channels: the personal ties forged among men whose paths have crossed time and again in locker rooms, officers’ messes, faculty clubs, embassy conference rooms, garden parties, squash courts, and board rooms. If the Council has influence— and the evidence suggests that it does—then it is the influence its members bring to bear through such channels."

   Admiral Ward went on to explain that the one common objective of CFR members is "to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States... Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government," Ward added.

   He detailed CFR methods in a 1975 book coauthored with Phyllis Schlafly titled Kissinger on the Couch.

"Once the ruling members of the CFR have decided that the U.S. Government should adopt a particular policy, the very substantial research facilities of CFR are put to work to develop arguments, intellectual and emotional, to support the new policy, and to confound and discredit, intellectually and politically, any opposition," he explained.

   The public manifestation of the CFR is its publication Foreign Affairs, termed "informally, the voice of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment." Although council supporters claim "articles in Foreign Affairs do not reflect any consensus of beliefs. . . ," critics counter that the CFR signals members to its desired policies through such articles.

   Even the stodgy Encyclopaedia Britannica admitted, "Ideas put forward tentatively in this journal often, if well received by the Foreign Affairs community, appear later as U.S. government policy or legislation; prospective policies that fail this test usually disappear."

   Alvin Moscow, a sympathetic biographer of the Rockefeller family, wrote more to the point stating,

"So august has been the membership of the Council that it has been seen in some quarters as the heart of the eastern Establishment. When it comes to foreign affairs, it is the eastern Establishment. In fact, it is difficult to point to a single major policy in U.S. foreign affairs that has been established since [President] Wilson which was diametrically opposed to then current thinking in the Council on Foreign Relations." (emphasis in the original)

   The Council has two methods of communicating the thoughts and desires of its inner circle of leadership: regular luncheon or dinner meetings where prominent thinkers and leaders from around the world address council members and council study groups that periodically present position papers on subjects of interest.

   The Council also offers a Corporation Service, through which subscribing companies are provided twice-a-year dinner briefings by government officials such as the treasury secretary or CIA director. Noted author John Kenneth Galbraith, who resigned from the CFR in 1970 "out of boredom," called such off-the-record talks a "scandal." "Why should businessmen be briefed by Government officials on information not available to the public, especially since it can be financially advantageous?" he reasoned.

   Author G. Edward Griffin agreed that initially the CFR, as a front for the British Round Table group, was dominated by the J. P. Morgan family.

"The Morgan group gradually has been replaced by the Rockefeller consortium, and the roll call of participating businesses now reads like the Fortune 500," he wrote in 1994.

   One example of Rockefeller domination of the CFR came in the early 1970s when David Rockefeller went over the heads of a nominating committee and offered the editorship of Foreign Affairs to William Bundy, a former CIA official instrumental in prosecuting the Vietnam War.

   Demonstrating how every U.S. government administration since the Council’s inception has been packed with CFR members, conservative journalist and CFR researcher James Perloff noted, "The historical record speaks even more loudly. . . . Through 1988, 14 secretaries of state, 14 treasury secretaries, 11 defense secretaries and scores of other federal department heads have been CFR members."

   Nearly every CIA director since Allen Dulles has been a CFR member, including Richard Helms, William Colby, George Bush, William Webster, James Woolsey, John Deutsch, and William Casey.

"Many of the council’s members have a personal financial interest in foreign relations," noted researcher Laurie Strand, "because it is their property and investments that are guarded by the State Department and the military [and the CIA]."

   Many researchers have alleged that the CIA, in fact, serves as a security force, not only for corporate America, but for friends, relatives, and fraternity brothers of the CFR. This may be a two-way street. According to a former executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA Victor Marchetti along with former State Department analyst John D. Marks,

"The influential but private Council, composed of several hundred of the country’s top political, military, business, and academic leaders, has long been the CIA’s principal ’constituency’ in the American public. When the agency has needed prominent citizens to front for its proprietary companies or for other special assistance, it has often turned to Council members."

   CFR members who take government positions tend to bring in fellow members. When CFR member Henry Stimson came to Washington as secretary of war in 1940, he brought with him fellow member John J. McCloy as assistant secretary for personnel. McCloy, in turn, did his part over the years to bring more CFR members to government. "Whenever we needed a new man [for a government position], we just thumbed through the roll of council members and put through a call to New York," once commented McCloy, a former CFR chairman, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, mentor to David Rockefeller, and himself foreign policy adviser to six U.S. presidents.

   Another example of the influence of the CFR can be seen in the meteoric rise of Henry Kissinger. In 1955, Kissinger was merely another unknown academic who attended a meeting at the Marine Corps School at Quantico, Virginia, hosted by then presidential foreign affairs assistant Nelson Rockefeller. This meeting was the start of a lengthy friendship between the two culminating in a $50,000 outright gift to Kissinger from Rockefeller. Kissinger soon was introduced to David Rockefeller and other prominent CFR members. Through the CFR, Kissinger obtained funding and entree to ranking officials of the Atomic Energy Commission, the three branches of the military, the CIA, and the State Department. He used this access to produce a best-selling book entitled Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, in which he argued that a nuclear war might be "winnable." By the time of Nixon’s administration, Kissinger was secretary of state, and he remains a formidable force in world affairs.

   According to published reports, the Clinton administration was top-heavy with more than one hundred CFR members helping to begin the Clinton years. CFR members were named ambassadors to Spain, Great Britain, Australia, Chile, Syria, South Africa, Russia, Romania, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Italy, India, France, Czech Republic, Poland, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Currently, more than a dozen members of both the House and Senate are CFR members.

Author Robert Anton Wilson commented, "If the CFR had millions of members like, say, the Presbyterian Church, this list might not mean much. But the CFR only has 3,200 members."

   Because of its Wall Street/banking origins and its inherent secrecy, the Council on Foreign Relations came under strident attack by conservative writers. This public attention led to the creation of the less secretive Trilateral Commission.

   Public awareness of the pervasive CFR presence in government became so widespread that the late Gary Allen, whose book on globalist organizations, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, sold more than five million copies despite being ignored by the Establishment media, commented just before the 1972 national elections,

"There really was not a dime’s worth of difference [between presidential candidates]. Voters were given the choice between CFR world government advocate Nixon and CFR world government advocate Humphrey. Only the rhetoric was changed to fool the public."

   In a call to action, Allen echoed the admonition of many researchers who are suspicious of the CFR’s motives when he wrote, "Democrats and Republicans must break the Insider control of their respective parties. The CFR-types and their flunkies and social climbing opportunist supporters must be invited to leave or else the Patriots must leave." Many conspiracy researchers today see a parallel situation in the 2000 election, shaping up to be a contest between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, both of whom have long-standing business and family ties to Wall Street and CFR members.

   Author Perloff warned from a Christian perspective that a monumental battle is shaping up between the Kingdom of Christ and,

"an evil, one-world government: the kingdom of the Antichrist... Many notables of the American Establishment have given themselves over to one side in this conflict, and it is not the side the ancient scriptures recommend. . . . Whether or not they are conspirators, whether they are conscious or not of the ultimate consequences of their actions, their powerful influence has helped move the world toward apocalyptic events."

   Clearly the CFR has exerted a powerful influence, if not outright control, over U.S. policies for nearly the past century. But for almost fifty years, this influence has been shared with another closely connected secretive group—the Bilderbergers.

The Bilderbergers are a group of powerful men and women—many of them European royalty—who meet in secret each year to discuss the issues of the day. Many suspicious researchers claim they conspire to manufacture and manage world events.

   Despite the fact that many highly regarded American media members meet with the Bilderbergers, little or nothing gets reported on the group or its activities, leading writers to claim censorship and news management.

   As with the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers often carry cross-membership in two or more of these three groups.

   British author David Icke presented a story from Dr. Kitty Little which gives fascinating insight into the long-range planning of one secret group. Dr. Little, who worked for Britain’s Ministry of Aircraft Production during World War II and later the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, recounted how she attended the meeting of a Labour Party "study group" at Oxford University in 1940.

   The speaker that evening was a young man who claimed to be part of a "Marxist takeover" plot. The speaker said he was a member of a nameless group (it had no name to make it harder to prove its existence) that aimed to engineer Marxist control in Britain, Europe, and parts of Africa. He explained that since Britons distrusted extremists, group members would pose as moderates, which would allow them to dismiss critics as right-wingers. The speaker added that he had been selected to head the group’s political section and that he expected to be named prime minister of the United Kingdom some day.

   The speaker was Harold Wilson, who indeed became prime minister during the 1960s and ’70s.

   Wilson was referring to the group which has come to be known as the Bilderbergers. It still has no official name, but it has been identified with the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, where it was first discovered by the public in 1954. Its meeting in February 1957 on Saint Simons Island near Jekyll Island, Georgia, was the first on U.S. soil.

   Wilson has not been the only head of state to mingle with the Bilderbergers. In 1991, then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was honored as a Bilderberg guest. The next year he ran for and won the presidency of the United States. After his election, Clinton made no mention of the Bilderberg meetings, but, according to The Spotlight (a Washington tabloid that has covered Bilderberg conferences for years), Hillary Clinton attended in 1997, becoming the first American first lady to do so. Thereafter, talk steadily grew concerning her future role in politics.

   The official creation of this highly secret organization came about in the early 1950s following unofficial meetings between members of Europe’s elite in the 1940s. They included European foreign ministers, Holland’s Prince Bernhard, and Polish socialist Dr. Joseph Hieronim Retinger, a founder of the European Movement after World War II. Retinger became known as the "father of the Bilderbergers."

   Retinger was brought to America by Averell Harriman (CFR), then U.S. ambassador to England, where he visited prominent citizens such as David and Nelson Rockefeller, John Foster Dulles, and then CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith. Previously, Retinger had formed the American Committee on a United Europe along with future CIA Director and CFR member Allen Dulles, then CFR Director George Franklin, CIA official Thomas Braden, and William Donovan, former chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA. Donovan began his intelligence career as an operative of J. P. Morgan Jr., and was known as an "Anglophile," a supporter of close British-American relations. Retinger continued his participation in Bilderberg meetings until his death in 1960. Another CIA-connected person who helped create the Bilderbergers was Life magazine publisher C. D. Jackson, who served under President Eisenhower as "special consultant for psychological warfare."

   From these associations came the idea of holding regular meetings of prominent businessmen, politicians, bankers, educators, media owners and managers, and military leaders from around the world. The Bilderbergers also are closely tied to Europe’s nobility, including the British royal family. According to several sources, meetings are often attended by royalty from Sweden, Holland, and Spain.

   The primary impetus for the Bilderberger meetings came from Dutch Prince Bernhard, whose full name and title was Bernhard Julius Coert Karel Godfried Pieter, Prince of the Netherlands and Prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld.

   Bernhard was a former member of the Nazi Scbutzstaffel (SS) and an employee of Germany’s I.G. Farben in Paris. In 1937 he married Princess Juliana of the Netherlands and became a major shareholder and officer in Dutch Shell Oil, along with Britain’s Lord Victor Rothschild.

   After the Germans invaded Holland, the royal couple moved to London. It was here, after the war, that Rothschild and Retinger encouraged Prince Bernhard to create the Bilderberger group. The prince personally chaired the group until 1976, when he resigned following revelations that he had accepted large payoffs from Lockheed to promote the sale of its aircraft in Holland.

   Since 1991 the Bilderberg chairmanship has been held by Britain’s Lord Peter Carrington, former cabinet minister, secretary-general of NATO, and president of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a sister organization to the CFR. Carrington has been linked to the Rothschild banking empire by both business connections and marriage.

   Americans with famous names who have attended Bilderberger meetings include CFR members George Ball, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Christian Herter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Douglas Dillon, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Walter Reuther, Jacob Javits, Robert McNamara, Walter Bedell Smith, and General Lyman Lemi-nitzer. Other noteworthy attendees have included J. William Fulbright, Henry Ford II, Georges-Jean Pompidou, Giscard d’Estaing, Helmut Schmidt, and France’s Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

   "In fact, the Bilderbergers are a sort of unofficial CFR, expanded to an international scale," stated author Neal Wilgus.

   Author and former intelligence officer Dr. John Coleman claimed "The Bilderberger Conference is a creation of [Britain’s] MI6 under the direction of the Royal Institute of International Affairs." Considering the U.S. intelligence connections, it also can be legitimately argued that the Bilderberg conferences have been at least partially organized and sponsored by the CIA.

   According to "Strictly Confidential" minutes of the first Bilderberg conference,

"Insufficient attention has so far been paid to long-term planning, and to evolving an international order which would look beyond the present-day crisis [the Cold War]. When the time is ripe our present concepts of world affairs should be extended to the whole world."

   Investigative reporter James P. Tucker, who has doggedly tracked the Bilderbergers for years, wrote,

"The Bilderberg agenda is much the same as lliat of its brother group, The Trilateral Commission. . . . The two groups have an interlocking leadership and a common vision of the world. David Rockefeller founded the Trilateral but shares power in the older Bilderberg group with the Rothschilds of Britain and Europe."

   The Bilderbergers usually meet once a year at plush resorts around the globe, and their activities are cloaked in total secrecy despite the attendance by top-level American media members. Although the group claims to merely hold informal discussions on world affairs, there is evidence that its recommendations often become official policy.

   The concept of a unified Europe under centralized control—a goal of the medieval Knights Templar—appears well along the way to becoming a reality thanks to the Bilderbergers. George McGhee, a Bilderberger and former U.S. ambassador to West Germany, acknowledged that "the Treaty of Rome, which brought the [European] Common Market into being, was nurtured at Bilderberg meetings."

   Jack Sheinkman, chairman of Amalgamated Bank and a Bilderberger member, stated in 1996,

"In some cases discussions do have an impact and become policy. The idea of a common European currency was discussed several years back before it became policy. We had a discussion about the U.S. establishing formal relations with China before Nixon actually did it."

   Sheinkman may be one of those Bilderberger members who do not understand the true goals of the group’s elite leadership. According to Icke,

"The Bilderberg Elite, like Carrington and those on the steering committee, coordinate the regular attenders of Bilderberg meetings—who know the real game plan—and those invited on a rare or one-time basis— who may not know the true agenda of the organization, but can be fed the party line that world institutions are the way to peace and prosperity."

   And what is this "true agenda" ? It may have been revealed when Prince Bernhard stated, "It is difficult to reeducate the people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supernational body. ..."

   The 1998 meeting of the Bilderbergers was conducted on May 14-18 in the palatial Turnberry Hotel near Glasgow, Scotland. As usual, there was little or no reporting on this event by America’s mainstream media.

   Unlike their American counterparts, some members of Scotland’s news media found their voice. Under the headline "Whole world in their hands," Jim McBeth of The Scolsmiin described (he light security surrounding the meeting, commenting, "Anyone approaching the hotel who did not have a stake in controlling the planet was turned back."

   McBeth described the Bilderberg guest list as,

"an international who’s who of the wealthy, influential and powerful. . . Once a year, the 120 men and women credited with putting Bill Clinton into the Oval Office and ousting Lady [Margaret] Thatcher from No. 10 [Downing Street], meet to discuss world events and, some claim, manipulate them," he added.

At least one reporter, Campbell Thomas with the Scottish Daily Mail, was arrested by security officers, handcuffed, and held for eight hours for daring to approach the Bilderberg meeting.

   It was reported that one of the decisions of the 1998 Bilderberg meeting was to encourage British prime minister Tony Blair to press harder for Britain’s entry into the growing European union, a step viewed with suspicion by his predecessor Margaret Thatcher. Blair may have gone further in this plan to reduce Britain’s independence, as his plan to dissolve the House of Lords was successful later in 1998. While the Lords were viewed by many as unenlightened idlers, others saw the wealthy, but patriotic, Lords as a bulwark against the erosion of English sovereignty by supporters of the "New World Order."

   Unlike their American brethren, the Canadian media actually reported news of the 1996 Bilderberg meeting near Toronto with such headlines as " [Canadian prime minister Jean] Chretien to Speak at Secret World Meeting," "[Canadian publisher Conrad] Black Plays Host to World Leaders," and "World Domination or a Round of Golf?"

   When asked to comment about the lack of reporting by journalist William F. Buckley who attended the Bilderberg meeting in Canada, a secretary commented, "I don’t think that is the nature of the meeting, is it?" Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal, another attendee, explained, "The rules of the conference, which we all adhere to, are that we don’t talk about what is said. It is all off the record. The fact that I attended is no secret."

   Perhaps these reporters don’t talk about what they learn at these secret meetings, but it is clear that their association shapes their editorial positions. Media critics have long charged that the differences in editorial positions of America’s major news outlets are negligible.

   "If the Bilderberg Group is not a conspiracy of some sort, it is con-iliu led in such a way as to give a remarkably good imitation of one," wrote journalist C. Gordon Tether of London’s Financial Times in 1975. About a year later, following ongoing arguments over censorship, Tether was fired by Financial Times editor Max Henry "Fredy" Fisher, a member of the Trilateral Commission.

   An obvious connecting link between the CFR, Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderbergers is the Rockefeller family, particularly the youngest son, David.

   Several wealthy and well-known businessmen constituted what amounted to an "American royalty" in the early part of the twentieth century: steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, banker Andrew Mellon, and transportation moguls Cornelius Vanderbilt and Edward Harriman.

   But none approached the lasting power or international ties of the Rockefellers and Morgans.

John Davison Rockefeller continues to be the most recognized (and perhaps most despised) rich man in the world even though he’s been dead since 1937. During the past century, no one family in America has assembled such power and influence as the Rockefellers, thanks to their wealth and close ties to England.

   Years ago the Rockefeller name continually cropped up in any discussion of secret societies, but today’s mass media rarely speak of the Rockefeller role in world events. But at one time the name of John D. Rockefeller was on everyone’s lips and his finances were known to all.

   An 1897 edition of a rural Texas newspaper reported,

"John D. Rockefeller sleeps eight and one-half hours every night, retiring at 10:30 and rising at 7. Every morning when he gets up he is $17,705 richer than he was when he went to bed. He sits down to breakfast at 8 o’clock and leaves the table at 8:30, and in that short half hour his wealth has grown $1,041.50. On Sunday he goes to church, and in the two hours he is away from home his riches have grown $4,166. His nightly amusement is playing the violin. Every evening when he picks up the instrument he is $50,000 richer than he was when he laid it down the previous night. These little facts give some idea of the relentless growth of this man’s fortune."

   One insight into the forging of John D.’s business philosophy might be gained by an anecdote told by Nelson Rockefeller. It seems when John D. was a small child his father, William "Big Kill" Rockefeller, who sold cancer "cures" from a medicine wagon, taught him to leap into his arms from a tall chair. One time his father held his arms out to catch him but pulled them away as little John jumped. The fallen son was told sternly, "Remember, never trust anyone completely, not even me."

   At the start of the American Civil War, Rockefeller was a young agricultural commodities broker in Cleveland, Ohio. He quickly recognized the potential of the fledgling petroleum industry there, and in 1863 he and some associates built a refinery. In 1870 he incorporated Standard Oil Company of Ohio.

   "The National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in congressional hearings as one of three Rothschild [the dominant European banking family] banks in the United States, provided John D. Rockefeller with the money to begin his monopolization of the oil refinery business, resulting in the formation of Standard Oil," noted a recent investigative video entitled, "The Money Masters."

   Rockefeller, who was quoted as saying "Competition is a sin," ruthlessly eliminated competitors by either mergering or buying them out. Failing that, he cut prices until his competitors were forced to sell. He also managed lucrative railroad rebate agreements, which ensured him a near monopoly on the transportation of oil. Standard Oil—the direct ancestor of Exxon—prospered enormously, and by 1880 Rockefeller owned or controlled 95 percent of all oil produced in the United States.

   Trouble for Rockefeller began in 1902 with the publication of a series of articles by Ida Tarbell, the daughter of a Pennsylvania oil producer run out of business by Rockefeller. Based on five years of research, Tarbell’s series was published in McClure’s Magazine and entitled "The History of Standard Oil Company." One reviewer proclaimed her work a "fearless unmasking of moral criminality masquerading under the robes of respectability and Christianity."

   Tarbell’s expose resulted in government and court actions, which appeared to break up Standard’s oil monopoly. However, as early as 1882 Rockefeller had moved to mask his business dealings by creating the first great American corporation: Standard Oil Trust. "The trust embraced a maze of legal structures, making its workings virtually impervious to public investigation and understanding," explained The New Encyclopedia Britannica.

   Such maneuvering continued in 1892 when the Ohio Supreme Court ordered the trust dissolved. Instead, Rockefeller simply moved Standard’s headquarters to New York City. In 1899 all assets and interests were transferred to a new creation, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

   In 1906 the U.S. government charged Standard Oil with violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Although apologists argued that Standard was simply caught in an emotional tidal wave of public discontent over the excesses of big business, the U.S. Supreme Court on May 15, 1911, couched its decision in these clear terms: "Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th."

   Eight of the companies formed after the dissolution retained "Standard Oil" in their names, but even these were soon altered to present the image of diversity. Standard Oil Company of New York first merged with the trust company Vacuum Oil to form Socony-Vacuum, which in 1966 became Mobil Oil Corporation. Standard Oil of Indiana joined with Standard Oil of Nebraska and Standard Oil of Kansas and by 1985 had become Amoco Corporation. In 1984 the combination of Standard Oil of California and Standard Oil of Kentucky had become Chevron Corporation, while the old Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1972 became Exxon Corporation. Other former Standard companies include Atlantic Richfield, Buck-eye Pipe Line, Pennzoil, and Union Tank Car Company.

   Ironically, the breakup of Standard only increased the wealth of Rockefeller, who now owned one fourth share of the thirty-three different oil companies created by the breakup of Standard. Shortly after the turn of the century, Rockefeller became America’s first billionaire.

   Continued Rockefeller control was confirmed in the late 1930s by the only study of true ownership in America’s largest corporations ever made by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The study, The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Nonfinancial Corporations, was published in 1940. It concluded that Rockefeller holdings, while seemingly small—most were under 20 percent of outstanding stocks— nevertheless when compared to the remaining widely dispersed ownership were considered sufficient "to give the Rockefeller family control over the corporations."

   Once again, interlocking directorships allowed the Rockefellers and others to maintain control over the oil industry.

"All of the eight largest oil companies were interlocked in 1972 through large commercial banks with at least one other member of the top group," wrote Dr. John M. Blair, former assistant chief economist for the Federal Trade Commission. "

"Exxon had four such interlocks—with Mobil, Standard of Ind., Texaco, and ARCO. Mobil had three—with Exxon, Shell, and Texaco—as did Standard of Indiana—with Exxon, Texaco, and ARCO—as well as Texaco—with Exxon, Mobil, and Standard of Ind.—and Shell with Mobil. Whenever all of the six [largest] commercial banks—exclusive of Bank of America and Western Bancorporation—hold their board meetings, directors of the top eight—excluding Gulf and SoCal—meet with directors of, on the average, 3.2 of their largest competitors."

   Ironically, by the turn of the new century, the old Standard monopoly was being reformed by the anticipated merging of two of the world’s oil giants: Exxon and Mobil. This $75 billion "megadeal" was quickly called "Rockefeller’s revenge." At this writing the consolidation of oil companies has continued with announced plans for British Petroleum PLC to acquire Amoco.

   By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller and his only son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., had not only built up an amazing oil empire but had established such institutions as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (established 1901), the General Education Board (1903), the University of Chicago (1889), the Rockefeller Foundation (1913), the Lincoln School (1917), where the Rockefeller children began their educations, and Rockefeller University in New York City.

   The Rockefellers also were greatly interested in the eugenics movement, a program of scientifically applied genetic selection to maintain and improve "ideal" human characteristics, including birth and population control. This idea grew from the writings of the Victorian scientist Sir Francis Galton, who after study reached the conclusion that prominent members of British society were such because they had "eminent" parents, thus combining Darwin’s concepts of "survival of the fittest" with the class-conscious question "who’s your daddy?"

   If this sounds like a Nazi experiment run wild, consider that in the late nineteenth century, the United States joined fourteen other nations in passing some type of eugenics legislation. Thirty states had laws providing for the sterilization of mental patients and imbeciles. At least sixty thousand such "defectives" were legally sterilized.

   Of course, to determine who was dirtying the gene pool requires extensive population statistics. So in 1910 the Eugenics Records Office was established as ë branch of the Galton National Laboratory in London, endowed by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, wife of railroad magnate Edward Harriman and mother of diplomat Averell Harriman. Mrs. Harriman in 1912 sold her substantial shares of New York’s Guaranty Trust bank to J. P. Morgan, thus assuring his control over that institution.

   After 1900, the Harrimans—the family that gave the Prescott Bush family its start—along with the Rockefellers funded more than $11 million to create a eugenics research laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, as well as eugenics studies at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell. The first International Congress of Eugenics was convened in London in 1912, with Winston Churchill as a director. Obviously, the concept of "bloodlines" was highly significant to these people.

   In 1932 when the Congress met in New York, it was the Hamburg-Amerika Shipping Line, controlled by Harriman associates George Walker and Prescott Bush, that brought prominent Germans to the meeting. One was Dr. Ernst Rudin of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography in Berlin. Rudin was unanimously elected president of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies for his work in founding the German Society for Race Hygiene, a forerunner of Hitler’s racial institutes.

   Eugenics work, under more politically correct names, continues right up to today. General William H. Draper Jr. was a "Supporting Member" of the International Eugenics Congress in 1932 and, despite or because of his ties to the Harriman and Bush families, was named head of the Economic Division of the U.S. Control Commission in Germany at the end of hostilities. According to authors Tarpley and Chaikin,

"General Draper (in later years) founded ’Population Crisis Committee’ and the ’Draper Fund,’ joining with the Rockefeller and Du Pont families to promote eugenics as ’population control.’ The administration of President Lyndon Johnson, advised by General Draper on the subject, began financing birth control in the tropical countries through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

   "General Draper was George Bush’s guru on the population question. . . . Draper’s son and heir, William H. Draper III, was co-chairman for finance—chief of fundraising—of the Bush-for-President national campaign organization in 1980."

The younger Draper went on to work with population control activities of the United Nations.

   Rudin’s eugenics work was to a large part funded by Rockefeller money. "These wealthy American families, like their counterpart’s in Britain, feel themselves to be racially superior and they wish to protect their racial superiority," commented author Icke.

   Nepotism proved a connecting link in these family chains. According to biographer Alvin Moscow, "Starting in the year 1917 and continuing over the next five years, the elder Rockefeller handed over his fortune to his only son and heir with no strings attached."

   John Jr., while dealing primarily with philanthropic activities, nevertheless followed his father’s mode of business practices, particularly in his opposition to unions. This stance softened, at least publicly, following the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 in which Colorado militia members fired on strikers at the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, killing forty persons.

   Rockefeller Jr. helped create the United Service Organization (USO) for soldiers during World War II and supervised the building of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. After the war, it was Rockefeller who donated land in Manhattan for the headquarters of the United Nations.

   Rockefeller Jr. sired one daughter, Abby, who died of cancer in 1976 at age seventy-two, and five sons—John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David.

   The eldest, John III, became chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation and guided millions of dollars to international agencies such as the India International Centre and the International House of Japan. His personal money went to his fabulous Oriental art collection and the creation of the Population Council, a center concerned with overpopulation and family planning. He died in 1978, but his son, John "Jay" Davison Rockefeller, carried on the family’s political interest by serving as governor of West Virginia.

   Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller also carved out a career in politics. Prior to World War II he journeyed to Venezuela, where he discovered the culture of South America, as well as the lucrative oil business. Because of his knowledge of the area, President and fellow New Yorker Franklin D. Roosevelt set Rockefeller on his government vocation by appointing him coordinator for inter-American affairs. Rockefeller also served as a four-term governor of New York state following various posts in the family oil and banking businesses.

   In 1953 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) was established, and Rockefeller was named undersecretary upon the recommendation of Secretary Oveta Culp lobby. Rockefeller was able to push through many social programs as detailed by author Alvin Moscow, who wrote,

"Oveta Gulp Hobby was out front as the Secretary; Nelson worked behind the scenes, finding key personnel to head various programs, promulgating research and studies, putting together new programs and then trying to steer those new programs through the Eisenhower administration and through a sometimes skeptical Congress."

Eisenhower even appointed Rockefeller special assistant for foreign affairs, the same office his close friend Henry Kissinger held under President Nixon.

   He continually sought the Republican presidential nomination, but his plans were thwarted by Nixon in both 1960 and 1968 and by Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964. Rockefeller eventually was appointed vice president of the United States in 1974 by President Gerald R. Ford, himself an appointee of President Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign over the Watergate scandal. Rockefeller died at age seventy in 1979 under controversial circumstances involving a young female staff assistant.

   Laurance Spelman Rockefeller became the most business-oriented of the brothers and enjoyed a successful career as a venture capitalist. Developing an early interest in aviation, he invested in Eastern Airlines in 1938 along with famed aviator Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and turned the airline into one of the world’s largest. Rockefeller also invested heavily in the dreams of a young Scotsman named James McDonnell Jr., who went on to launch what became McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft Corp. He entered the realm of environmentalism and became chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality, president of the American Conservation Association, and chairman of the New York Zoological Society.

   Winthrop Rockefeller was considered the maverick of the Rockefeller clan. Dropping out of Yale in 1934, he made his way to Texas where he worked as an oil field roustabout. During World War II, he served as a combat infantryman in the Pacific theater earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with two Oak Leaf Clusters. Returning home, he developed a taste for drinking, women, and New York cafe society. But in 1953, tiring of this lifestyle, he suddenly moved to Arkansas where he was voted "Arkansas Man of the Year" in 1956. His famous name allowed him to gain the office of governor in 1967. It was then that a young Arkansas Democrat, Rhodes scholar, and DeMoley member named Hill Clinton may have gained the attention of Rockefeller. Winthrop, too, died of cancer in 1973, just two months before his sixty-first birthday.

   David Rockefeller was the youngest of the five Rockefeller brothers and the one who became the most powerful, if not the most prominent. After earning a B.S. degree from Harvard, he entered the London School of Economics, a school largely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust Fund, and the widow of J. P. Morgan partner Williard Straight. Here he came into contact with the teachings of Ruskin and other socialists, including Harold Laski. Educated at Oxford, Laski early on advocated political pluralism but later turned to Marxism and became a luminary in Britain’s Socialist Party. He once wrote that the state is "the fundamental instrument of society."

   Returning to the States, David Rockefeller exhibited his deep feelings for England in a letter to the New York Times in April 1941 in which he stated, "We should stand by the British Empire to the limit and at any cost. ..." Just before the outbreak of war, he obtained a doctorate degree from the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Unused Resources and Economic Waste." Perhaps articulating the driving ambition of the Rockefeller brothers, he wrote, "Of all forms of waste, however, that which is most abhorrent is idleness. There is a moral stigma attached to unnecessary and involuntary idleness which is deeply imbedded in our conscience."

   During the war, he entered the U.S. Army as a private but was soon working in North Africa and France with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner to the CIA. This experience, along with his schooling in England, strengthened a lifelong concern with foreign affairs. It was most probably during this time that Rockefeller developed high-level intelligence contacts which later brought him insider knowledge of many top-secret operations.

   By 1948 David Rockefeller was chairman of the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Institute. The president of the institute was Dr. Detlev Wulf Bronk, a biophysicist specializing in the human nervous system. According to the controversial MJ-12 documents, Bronk not only was a member of MJ-12—reportedly a supersecret group in charge of the UFO issue—but leader of the team that autopsied "extraterrestrial biological entities" recovered from a crashed disk near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947.

   After the war, Rockefeller joined the staff of Chase National Bank of New York, where his uncle, Winthrop Aldrich, was chairman of the board and president. Chase traced its history back to central bank advocate Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of the Manhattan Company begun in 1799, and by 1921 it had become the second largest national bank in the United States. In 1955 Rockefeller played a major role in the merger of Chase with the Bank of Manhattan Company, which resulted in Chase Manhattan Bank. In 1969 the bank became part of Chase Manhattan Corp. in line with the trend of establishing holding companies to avoid banking laws prohibiting certain activities, such as the acquisition of finance companies. That same year David Rockefeller became the company’s board chairman and chief executive officer, thanks primarily to his preeminence in international banking.

   His connections to the world of international politics as well as intelligence were improved when his uncle Aldrich retired as chairman of the bank in 1953 to become U.S. Ambassador to the Court of Saint James (England). Aldrich was succeeded by John J. McCloy, a former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. McCloy, who has been called the "architect of the postwar American intelligence establishment," served as assistant secretary of war from April 1941 to November 1945, president of the World Bank from 1947 to 1949, and U.S. Governor and High Commissioner for Germany from 1949 to 1952. McCloy also served on the Warren Commission, helping mediate disagreements with members who were troubled by the controversial "single bullet" theory of JFK’s assassination. According to author Alvin Moscow, David Rockefeller soon became "the undisputed protégé of McCloy."

   David Rockefeller had already joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 1941 before war came, and by 1950 had been elected vice president.

   His interest in foreign affairs could not have been entirely altruistic, since it has been estimated that the multinational banks, with Chase leading the way, loaned more than $50 billion to developing nations between 1957 and 1977. Even sympathetic biographer Moscow admitted,