The Global Elite: Who are they?

 August Review

Introduction

There are two common mis­con­cep­tions held by those who are crit­ical of globalism.

The first error is that there is a very small group of people who secretly run the world with all-powerful and unre­strained dic­ta­to­rial powers. The second error is that there is a large amor­phous and secret orga­ni­za­tion that runs the world. In both cases, the use of the word “they” becomes the cul­prit for all our trou­bles, who­ever “they” might be. If taxes go up, it is “they” that did it. If the stock market goes down, “they” are to blame. Of course, nobody really knows who “they” are so a few fig­ure­heads (people or orga­ni­za­tions) are often made out to be the scapegoats.

Depending on a person’s pol­i­tics and phi­los­ophy, the scape­goats could be the U.S. Pres­i­dent, the ACLU, the Ford Foun­da­tion, or Vladimir Putin. The point is, the real power struc­ture is not cor­rectly defined, and thus escapes exposure.

These mis­con­cep­tions are under­stand­able because when things are wrong, we all have a dri­ving need to know who to blame! In some cases, elitist slight-of-hand ini­ti­ates and then per­pet­u­ates false assumptions.

This writer has never been accused of charging that all large cor­po­ra­tions are guilty of ini­ti­ating and per­pet­u­ating glob­al­iza­tion. There are many busi­nesses, including banks, who are led by moral, eth­ical and good-hearted busi­nessmen or busi­ness­women. Just because a com­pany might touch glob­alism does not mean it and its man­age­ment or employees are evil.

Every bit of thirty-five years of research indi­cates that there is a rel­a­tively small yet diverse group of global players who have been the plan­ners and insti­ga­tors behind glob­al­iza­tion for many decades. The pri­mary dri­ving force that moves this “clique” is greed; the sec­ondary force is the lust for power. In the case of the aca­d­e­mics who are key to glob­alism, a third force is pro­fes­sional recog­ni­tion and accep­tance (a subtle form of egoism and power.)

It is also impor­tant to under­stand that core glob­al­ists have full under­standing of their goals, plans and actions. They are not dimwitted, igno­rant, mis­in­formed or naive.

The global elite march in three essen­tial columns: Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical and Aca­d­emic. For the sake of clarity, these names will be used herein to refer to these three groups.

In gen­eral, the goals for glob­alism are cre­ated by Cor­po­rate. Aca­d­emic then pro­vides studies and white papers that jus­tify Corporate’s goals. Polit­ical sells Academic’s argu­ments to the public and if nec­es­sary, changes laws to accom­mo­date and facil­i­tate Cor­po­rate in get­ting what it wants.

An impor­tant ancil­lary player in glob­alism is the media, which we will call Press in this report. Press is nec­es­sary to filter Cor­po­rate, Aca­d­emic and Political’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the public. Press is not a fourth column, how­ever, because it’s pur­pose is merely reflec­tive. How­ever, we will see that Press is dom­i­nated by mem­bers of Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical and Aca­d­emic who sit on the var­ious boards of direc­tors of major Press organizations.

This report will attempt to iden­tify and label the core players in the glob­al­iza­tion process. The intent is to show the makeup and pat­tern of the core, not to list every person in it. Nev­er­the­less, many people will be named and their asso­ci­a­tions and con­nec­tions revealed. This is done for two reasons.

First, it will equip the reader be able to accu­rately iden­tify other core players as they are brought into focus. Sec­ondly, the reader will be able to pass over minor players who may sound like “big fish” but in fact are only pedestrians.

Orga­ni­za­tional Memberships

The old saying, “Birds of a feather, flock together” is appro­priate for the per­pe­tra­tors of glob­alism. Soci­o­log­i­cally speaking, they are like any other people group with like inter­ests: they nat­u­rally tend to form soci­eties that will help them achieve their common inter­ests. A side-benefit of fel­low­ship is mutual sup­port and encour­age­ment. Once formed, such groups tend to be self-perpetuating, at least as long as common inter­ests remain.

In modern his­tory, the pin­nacle of global dri­vers has been the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. Founded in 1973 by David Rock­e­feller and Zbig­niew Brzezinski, this group is cred­ited with being the founder of the New Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Order that has given rise to the glob­al­iza­tion we see today.

The Council on For­eign Relations

Prior to the founding of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, the Council on For­eign Rela­tions (CFR) was the most sig­nif­i­cant body of global-minded elit­ists in the United States. As far back as 1959, the CFR was explicit about a need for world government:

“The U.S. must strive to build a new inter­na­tional order… including states labeling them­selves as ‘socialist’… to main­tain and grad­u­ally increase the authority of the United Nations.”

The site for the United Nations head­quar­ters in New York was orig­i­nally donated by the Rock­e­feller family, and the CFR world archi­tects worked for many years to use the U.N. as a means to develop an image of world order. Indeed, the CFR mem­ber­ship roster has been, and still is a Who’s Who of the elitist eastern establishment.

The first problem with the CFR is that it became too large and too diverse to act as a “cut­ting edge” in global policy cre­ation. The second problem is that it’s mem­ber­ship was lim­ited to north America: What group could effect global changes without a global membership?

The CFR con­tinues to be sig­nif­i­cant in the sense that politi­cians often look to its mem­ber­ship when searching for people to fill var­ious appoint­ments in gov­ern­ment. It also con­tinues to be a policy mill through its offi­cial organ, For­eign Affairs.

While there are a sev­eral core global elit­ists in the ranks of the CFR, they rep­re­sent a very small per­centage of the total mem­ber­ship. Con­versely, there are many CFR mem­bers who are only lightly involved with glob­alism. For this reason, we do not count the CFR as being cen­tral to glob­al­iza­tion today.

The Tri­lat­eral Commission 

David Rock­e­feller rec­og­nized the short­com­ings of the CFR when he founded the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion in 1973 with Zbig­niew Brzezinski. Rock­e­feller rep­re­sented Cor­po­rate and Brzezinski rep­re­sented Academic.

Together, they chose approx­i­mately 300 mem­bers from north America, Europe and Japan, whom they viewed as being their “birds of a feather.” These mem­bers were at the pin­nacle of their pro­fes­sion, whether Cor­po­rate, Aca­d­emic, Polit­ical or Press. It is a tes­ti­mony to the influ­ence of Rock­e­feller and Brzezinski that they could get this many people to say “Yes” when they were tapped for membership.

Out of the 54 orig­inal U.S. mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Jimmy Carter was fronted to win the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 1976. Once inau­gu­rated, Carter brought no less than 18 fellow mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion into top-level cab­inet and gov­ern­ment agencies.

Per­haps no one has described the Tri­lat­eral oper­a­tion as suc­cinctly as vet­eran reporter Jere­miah Novak in the Chris­tian Sci­ence Mon­itor (Feb­ruary 7, 1977):

“Today a new crop of econ­o­mists, working in an orga­ni­za­tion known as the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, is on the verge of cre­ating a new inter­na­tional eco­nomic system, one designed by men as bril­liant as Keynes and White. Their names are not well known, but these modern thinkers are as impor­tant to our age as Keynes and White were to theirs.

“More­over, these econ­o­mists, like their World War II coun­ter­parts, are working closely with high gov­ern­ment offi­cials, in this case Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter and Vice Pres­i­dent Walter Mon­dale. And what is now being dis­cussed at the highest levels of gov­ern­ment, in both the United States and abroad, is the cre­ation of a new world eco­nomic system – a system that will affect jobs in America and else­where, the prices con­sumers pay, and the freedom of indi­vid­uals, cor­po­ra­tions, and nations to enter into a truly plan­e­tary eco­nomic system. Indeed, many observers see the advent of the Carter admin­is­tra­tion and what is now being called the “Tri­lat­eral” cab­inet as the har­binger of this new era.”¹

The per­ni­cious influ­ence of the Com­mis­sion and its dom­i­nance of the U.S. Exec­u­tive branch remains unchal­lenged to this day. 

Ronald Reagan was not a member of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, but his Vice Pres­i­dent, George H. W. Bush, was a member. The Commission’s influ­ence was safely per­pet­u­ated into the Reagan years.

The 1988 elec­tion of George H.W. Bush to the pres­i­dency fur­ther con­sol­i­dated Tri­lat­eral influ­ence in the U.S.

In 1992, Tri­lat­eral member William Jef­ferson Clinton fol­lowed in the pres­i­dency and con­tributed greatly to the cause of globalization.

In 2000, George W. Bush assumed the pres­i­dency. While it can be demon­strated that Bush is closely aligned with and totally ded­i­cated to Tri­lat­eral goals, he is not a member of the Com­mis­sion. How­ever, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney is a member of the Commission.

Obvi­ously, Corporate’s part­ner­ships with Polit­ical, Aca­d­emic and Press has been very suc­cessful. 

The Orig­inal Mem­ber­ship: 1973 – 1978

A short look at the first U.S. mem­ber­ship list is instruc­tive. We have taken lib­erty to orga­nize the names according to broad func­tions, which is not fully ade­quate to explain the inter­re­la­tion­ships. As one exam­ines the biogra­phies of these indi­vid­uals, one sees a “revolving door” phe­nom­enon where people rotate in and out of gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, think-tanks, etc., on a reg­ular basis. This is one sev­eral tests used to iden­tify a member of the true core of global elite.

Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion Mem­ber­ship, 1973²

Banking Related
Ernest C. Arbuckle	Chairman, Wells Fargo Bank
George W. Ball	Senior Partner, Lehman Brothers
Alden W. Clausen	Pres­i­dent, Bank of America
Archibald K. Davis	Chairman, Wachovia Bank and Trust Company
*Peter G. Peterson	Chairman, Lehman Brothers
*David Rock­e­feller	Chairman, Chase Man­hattan Bank
Robert V. Roosa	Partner, Brown Brothers Har­riman & Company
Bruce K. MacLaury	Pres­i­dent, Fed­eral Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
John H. Perkins	Pres­i­dent, Con­ti­nental Illi­nois National Bank and Trust Company
Press Related
Doris Anderson	Editor, Chante­laine Magazine
Emmett Dedmon	Vice-President and Edi­to­rial Director, Field Enter­prises, Inc.
Hedley Donovan	Editor-in-Chief, Time, Inc.
Carl T. Rowan	Colum­nist
Arthur R. Taylor	Pres­i­dent, Columbia Broad­casting System, Inc.
Labor Related
*I. W. Abel, President	United Steel­workers of America
Leonard Wood­cock	Pres­i­dent, United Auto­mo­bile Workers
Lane Kirk­land	Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO
Senate/Congress
John B. Anderson	House of Representatives
Lawton Chiles	United States Senate
Barber B. Conable, Jr.	House of Representatives
John C. Culver	United States Senate
Wilbur D. Mills	House of Representatives
Walter F. Mondale	United States Senate
William V. Roth, Jr.	United States Senate
Robert Taft Jr.	United States Senate
Other Polit­ical
James E. Carter, Jr.	Gov­ernor of Georgia
Daniel J. Evans	Gov­ernor of Washington
*William W. Scranton	Former Gov­ernor of Pennsylvania
Cor­po­rate
J. Paul Austin	Chairman, The Coca-Cola Company
W. Michael Blumenthal	Chairman, Bendix Corporation
*Patrick E. Haggerty	Chairman, Texas Instruments
William A. Hewitt	Chairman, Deere and Company
Edgar F. Kaiser	Chairman, Kaiser Indus­tries Corporation
Lee L. Morgan	Pres­i­dent, Cater­pillar Tractor Company
David Packard	Chairman, Hewlett-Packard Company
Charles W. Robinson	Pres­i­dent, Mar­cona Corporation
Arthur M. Wood	Chairman, Sears, Roe­buck & Company
William M. Roth	Roth Prop­er­ties
Aca­d­emic
David M. Abshire	Chairman, George­town Uni­ver­sity Center for Strategic and Inter­na­tional Studies
Graham Allison	Pro­fessor of Pol­i­tics, Har­vard University
Robert R. Bowie	Clarence Dillon Pro­fessor of Inter­na­tional Affairs, Har­vard University
*Harold Brown	Pres­i­dent, Cal­i­fornia Insti­tute of Technology
Richard N. Cooper	Provost and Frank Altschul Pro­fessor of Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics, Yale University
Paul W. McCracken	Edmund Ezra Day Pro­fessor of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion, Uni­ver­sity of Michigan
Marina von N. Whitman	Dis­tin­guished Public Ser­vice Pro­fessor of Eco­nomics, Uni­ver­sity of Pittsburgh
Car­roll L. Wilson	Pro­fessor of Man­age­ment, Alfred P. Sloan School of Man­age­ment, MIT
Edwin O. Reischauer	Uni­ver­sity Pro­fessor, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity; former U.S. Ambas­sador to Japan
Law Firms
Warren Christo­pher	Partner, O’Melveny and Myers
William T. Coleman, Jr.	Senior Partner, Dil­worth, Paxson, Kalish, Levy & Coleman
Lloyd N. Cutler	Partner, Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering
*Gerard C. Smith	Counsel, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering
Cyrus R. Vance	Partner, Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett
*Paul C. Warnke	Partner, Clif­ford, Warnke, Glass, McIl­wain & Finney
Asso­ci­a­tions
Lucy Wilson Benson	Pres­i­dent, League of Women Voters of the United States
Ken­neth D. Naden	Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives
Think-Tanks
Thomas L. Hughes	Pres­i­dent, Carnegie Endow­ment for Inter­na­tional Peace
Henry D. Owen	Director, For­eign Policy Studies Pro­gram, the Brook­ings Institution
Mis­cel­la­neous
Anthony Solomon	Con­sul­tant

* Indi­cates member of Exec­u­tive Committee 

Rock­e­feller and Brzezinski’s strategy was nefar­ious, yet brilliant. 

The elec­tion of demo­crat James Earl “I will never lie to you” Carter was assured by deliv­ering the mostly demo­c­ratic labor vote. This was accom­plished by adding to the inner core: Leonard Wood­cock (UAW), I.W. Abel (United Steel­workers) and Lane Kirk­land (AFL-CIO). 

By 1977, three more labor leaders were added to the mem­ber­ship: Glenn E. Watts (Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Workers of America), Martin J. Ward (pres­i­dent of United Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­neymen and Appren­tices), and Sol Chaikin, pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Ladies Gar­ment Workers Union. 

Leonard Wood­cock served as Chief Envoy to China under Carter, and was largely respon­sible for solid­i­fying eco­nomic and polit­ical ties with Com­mu­nist China. [Editor’s note: Any reader who is or was a member of one of these unions will instantly have flashes of insight as to the enduring duplicity of labor man­age­ment — you were effec­tively “sold down the river” starting 1973 and con­tin­uing into the present.] 

Those com­mis­sioners who Carter brought into his admin­is­tra­tion (the ini­tial “steering com­mittee”, if you will) were Walter Mon­dale (Vice Pres­i­dent), Zbig­niew Brzezinski (National Secu­rity Advisor), Cyrus Vance (Sec­re­tary of State), Harold Brown (Sec­re­tary of Defense) and W. Michael Blu­men­thal (Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury,) among others.

As the Wash­ington Post phrased it:

“Tri­lat­er­al­ists are not three-sided people. They are mem­bers of a pri­vate, though not secret, inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion put together by the wealthy banker, David Rock­e­feller, to stim­u­late the estab­lish­ment dia­logue between Western Europe, Japan and the United States. 

“But here is the unset­tling thing about the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. The President-elect 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.”³

Before Carter’s term was com­pleted, no less than 18 mem­bers (thirty per­cent of the U.S. Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship) of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion served in his admin­is­tra­tion. Coin­ci­dence? Hardly!

This article pur­posely leaves out dis­cus­sion of the non-U.S. mem­ber­ship of the Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship, which will be saved for another day. Suf­fice it to say that the Euro­pean and Japanese con­tin­gents were just as pow­erful and effec­tive in their respec­tive home coun­tries. Approx­i­mately one-third of the mem­ber­ship came from Europe and the other third from Japan. The joint mem­ber­ship met annu­ally (no press allowed) to for­mu­late policy and action plans for their respec­tive regions. Many, if not most, of their poli­cies were pub­lished in the Commission’s quar­terly journal, Trialogue.

The most damning argu­ment ever launched against the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is the uncon­sti­tu­tional influ­ence of other gov­ern­ments and forces upon the U.S. For instance, Com­mis­sion mem­bers are not elected nor rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion of the U.S., yet they effec­tively dom­i­nated the Exec­u­tive Branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. When the Com­mis­sion resolved poli­cies (behind closed-doors) with non-U.S. mem­bers, who were a mere one-third minority, could it be said that for­eign influ­ences effec­tively con­trolled U.S. policy?

These con­cerns were never addressed by Con­gress or the Judi­ciary. The Exec­u­tive branch would have nothing to address because it has been con­tin­u­ously dom­i­nated by Com­mis­sion mem­bers — who repeat­edly assured us that there was no such con­flict of interest. Of course, the answer to these ques­tions are self-evident: U.S. inter­ests, eco­nomic and polit­ical, have been subverted.

The eco­nomic sub­ver­sion of the U.S. was studied in The August Review’s America Plun­dered by the Global Elite and was likened to the plun­dering of a nation, the likes of which have not been seen in modern history.

Cur­rent Tri­lat­eral Membership

The fol­lowing list of north Amer­ican mem­bers is not exhaus­tive. These are selected because of their high vis­i­bility in posi­tions within Cor­po­rate, Polit­ical or Eco­nomic and Press. A future install­ment of The August Review will examine the entire mem­ber­ship list more care­fully and com­pletely. The pur­pose here is to show that the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has grown, rather than declined, in strength over the years.

Keep in mind that there is no enroll­ment or appli­ca­tion process to belong to the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion. One is invited to join in a manner sim­ilar to a col­lege stu­dent being “tapped” for mem­ber­ship in a fra­ter­nity. Thus, the process is highly selec­tive and dis­crete. Can­di­dates are thor­oughly screened before invi­ta­tion is deliv­ered. For this reason, one can be rel­a­tively sure that anyone who is or who has ever been a member of the Com­mis­sion is in the core of the global elite. There are likely a few mem­bers who are not truly a part of the core, but for the sake of aggre­gate analysis, this is not an impor­tant issue. 

U.S. Mem­bers who have been sub­se­quently added to the Com­mis­sion over the years include, in part, the fol­lowing list.

Addi­tional Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion Mem­ber­ship through 2005⁴

Banking Related
Paul Wol­fowitz	Pres­i­dent, World Bank
Paul A. Volker	Former Chairman, Wolfen­sohn & Co., Inc., New York; Fred­erick H. Schultz Pro­fessor Emer­itus, Inter­na­tional Eco­nomic Policy, Princeton Uni­ver­sity; former Chairman, Board of Gov­er­nors, U.S. Fed­eral Reserve System; Hon­orary North Amer­ican Chairman and former North Amer­ican Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Commission
Alan Greenspan	Chairman of the Fed­eral Reserve, Board of Direc­tors of Bank for Inter­na­tional Settlements
Geof­frey T. Boisi	former Vice Chairman, JPMorgan Chase, New York, NY
E. Gerald Corrigan	Man­aging Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co., New York, NY; former Pres­i­dent, Fed­eral Reserve Bank of New York
Jamie Dimon	Pres­i­dent and Chief Oper­ating Officer, JPMorgan Chase, New York, NY
Roger W. Fer­guson, Jr.	Vice Chairman, Board of Gov­er­nors, Fed­eral Reserve System, Wash­ington, DC
Stanley Fis­cher	Gov­ernor of the Bank of Israel, Jerusalem; former Pres­i­dent, Cit­i­group Inter­na­tional and Vice Chairman, Cit­group, New York, NY; former First Deputy Man­aging Director, Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund
Richard W. Fisher	Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Fed­eral Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas, TX; former U.S. Deputy Trade Representative
Michael Klein	Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Global Banking, Cit­i­group Inc.; Vice Chairman, Citibank Inter­na­tional PLC; New York, NY
*Sir Deryck C. Maughan	former Vice Chairman, Cit­i­group, New York, NY
Jay Mazur	Pres­i­dent Emer­itus, UNITE (Union of Needle­trades, Indus­trial and Tex­tile Employees); Vice Chairman, Amal­ga­mated Bank of New York; and Pres­i­dent, ILGWU’s 21st Cen­tury Her­itage Foun­da­tion, New York, NY
Hugh L. McColl, Jr.	Chairman, McColl Brothers Lock­wood, Char­lotte, NC; former Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Bank of America Corporation
Robert S. McNamara	Life­time Trustee, Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Wash­ington, DC; former Pres­i­dent, World Bank; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense; former Pres­i­dent, Ford Motor Company.
Ken­neth Rogoff	Pro­fessor of Eco­nomics and Director, Center for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; former Chief Econ­o­mist and Director, Research Depart­ment, Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, Wash­ington, DC
John Thain	Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, New York Stock Exchange, Inc.; former Pres­i­dent and Co-Chief Oper­ating Officer, Goldman Sachs & Co., New York, NY
Lawrence H. Summers	Pres­i­dent, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of  the Treasury
Press Related
David G. Bradley	Chairman, Atlantic Media Com­pany, Wash­ington, DC
David Gergen	Pro­fessor of Public Ser­vice, John F. Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; Editor-at-Large, U.S. News and World Report
Donald E. Graham	Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, The Wash­ington Post Com­pany, Wash­ington, DC
Karen Elliott House	Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Dow Jones & Com­pany, and Pub­lisher, The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY
Gerald M. Levin	Chief Exec­u­tive Officer Emer­itus, AOL Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY
Fareed Zakaria	Editor, Newsweek Inter­na­tional, New York, NY
Mor­timer B. Zuckerman	Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, U.S. News &  World Report, New York, NY
Labor Related
Sandra Feldman	Pres­i­dent Emer­itus, Amer­ican Fed­er­a­tion of Teachers, Wash­ington, DC
John J. Sweeney	Pres­i­dent, AFL-CIO, Wash­ington, DC
Intel­li­gence Related
John M. Deutch	Insti­tute Pro­fessor, Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nology, Cam­bridge, MA; former Director of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence; former U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of Defense
Henry A. Kissinger	Chairman, Kissinger Asso­ciates, Inc., New York, NY; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of State; former U.S. Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for National Secu­rity Affairs
James B. Steinberg	Vice Pres­i­dent and Director of the For­eign Policy Studies Pro­gram, The Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Deputy National Secu­rity Advisor
William H. Webster	Senior Partner, Mil­bank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Director of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence; former Director, U.S. Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion; former Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
Susan Rice	Senior Fellow, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, Wash­ington, DC; former Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for African Affairs; former Spe­cial Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Secu­rity Council
Senate/Congress
Richard A. Gephardt	former Member (D-MO), U.S. House of Representatives
Jim Leach	Member (R-IA), U.S. House of Representatives
Charles B. Rangel	Member (D-NY), U.S. House of Representatives
John D. Rock­e­feller IV	Member (D-WV), U.S. Senate
Dianne Fein­stein	Member (D-CA), U.S. Senate
*Thomas S. Foley	Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Ambas­sador to Japan; former Speaker of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (D-WA); North Amer­ican Chairman, Tri­lat­eral Commission
Other Polit­ical
George H. W. Bush	Pres­i­dent of the United States
William Jef­ferson Clinton	Pres­i­dent of the United States
Richard B. Cheney	Vice Pres­i­dent of the United States
Paula J. Dobriansky	U.S. Under Sec­re­tary of State for Global Affairs
Robert B. Zoellick	Former U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State, U.S. Trade Representative
Madeleine K. Albright	Prin­cipal, The Albright Group LLC, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of State
C. Fred Bergsten	Director, Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury for Inter­na­tional Affairs
William T. Coleman, Jr.	Senior Partner and the Senior Coun­selor, O’Melveny & Myers, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Transportation
Lynn Davis	Senior Polit­ical Sci­en­tist, The RAND Cor­po­ra­tion, Arlington, VA; former U.S. Under Sec­re­tary of State for Arms Con­trol and Inter­na­tional Security
Richard N. Haass	Pres­i­dent, Council on For­eign Rela­tions, New York, NY; former Director, Policy Plan­ning, U. S. Depart­ment of State; former Director of For­eign Policy Studies, The Brook­ings Institution
*Carla A. Hills	Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Hills & Com­pany, Inter­na­tional Con­sul­tants, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive; former U.S. Sec­re­tary of Housing and Urban Development
Richard Hol­brooke	Vice Chairman, Perseus LLC, New York, NY; Coun­selor, Council on For­eign Rela­tions; former U.S. Ambas­sador to the United Nations; former Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston Cor­po­ra­tion; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean and Cana­dian Affairs; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; and former U.S. Ambas­sador to Germany
Win­ston Lord	Co-Chairman of Over­seeers and former Co-Chairman of the Board, Inter­na­tional Rescue Com­mittee, New York, NY; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; former U.S. Ambas­sador to China
*Joseph S. Nye, Jr.	Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice Pro­fessor at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, John F. Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, Cam­bridge, MA; former Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense for Inter­na­tional Secu­rity Affairs
Richard N. Perle	Res­i­dent Fellow, Amer­ican Enter­prise Insti­tute, Wash­ington, DC; member and former Chairman, Defense Policy Board, U.S. Depart­ment of Defense; former U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense for Inter­na­tional Secu­rity Policy
Thomas R. Pickering	Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, The Boeing Com­pany, Arlington, VA; former U.S. Under Sec­re­tary of State for Polit­ical Affairs; former U.S. Ambas­sador to the Russian Fed­er­a­tion, India, Israel, El Sal­vador, Nigeria, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the United Nations
Strobe Tal­bott	Pres­i­dent, The Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, Wash­ington, DC; former U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State
Mis­cel­la­neous
Ernesto Zedillo	Director, Yale Center for the Study of Glob­al­iza­tion, Yale Uni­ver­sity, New Haven, CT; former Pres­i­dent of Mexico [Ed . Note: not an Amer­ican citizen]
David J. O’Reilly	Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Chevron Cor­po­ra­tion, San Ramon, CA

* Indi­cates member of Exec­u­tive Com­mittee

The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same

The occu­pa­tional makeup of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has obvi­ously changed over time, but that only rep­re­sents the maturing of the glob­al­iza­tion process. What was needed in 1973 is not what is needed today. Still, there are some con­sis­ten­cies that are easily observed.

The most obvious con­sis­tency (and expan­sion) is the very large rep­re­sen­ta­tion by the banking cartel: two chairmen and two board mem­bers of of the Fed­eral Reserve System, two pres­i­dents of the World Bank, director of the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, and chairmen/CEO’s of sev­eral promi­nent global banks. This does not take into account any link­ages from Com­mis­sion mem­bers who are also direc­tors of com­mer­cial and invest­ment banks. Finan­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tion is not inci­dental because money is the life-blood of glob­alism. The August Review’s cov­erage in Global Banking: The Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments detailed the apex and makeup of global banking.

Through mem­ber­ship, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion dom­i­nates the exec­u­tive branch of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, the Fed­eral Reserve System, and is closely aligned with the Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments, which con­trols the world’s cur­ren­cies and money supply. This is seen even without ana­lyzing the remaining two-thirds of Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship that resides out­side of the U.S.

The Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics (IIE) 

The IIE is an example of a key orga­ni­za­tion in which one might iden­tify other core mem­bers of the global elite. Founded in 1981, IIE is a small policy-wonk orga­ni­za­tion with only 60 employees and an annual budget of $7 mil­lion. According to its own web site,

“The Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nomics is a pri­vate, non­profit, non­par­tisan research insti­tu­tion devoted to the study of inter­na­tional eco­nomic policy. Since 1981 the Insti­tute has pro­vided timely, objec­tive analysis and con­crete solu­tions to key inter­na­tional eco­nomic problems.

“The Insti­tute attempts to antic­i­pate emerging issues and to be ready with prac­tical ideas to inform and shape public debate. Its audi­ence includes gov­ern­ment offi­cials and leg­is­la­tors, busi­ness and labor leaders, man­age­ment and staff at inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions, university-based scholars and their stu­dents, other research insti­tu­tions and non­govern­mental orga­ni­za­tions, the media, and the public at large. It addresses these groups both in the United States and around the world.“⁵
This would be easily over­looked unless you examine IIE’s board of direc­tors. Tri­lat­er­alist Peter G. Peterson is chairman of the board. Anthony M. Solomon is hon­orary chairman of the exec­u­tive com­mittee. Solomon is the former chairman of War­burg (USA) Inc., former pres­i­dent and CEO of the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of New York and former Under Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury for Mon­e­tary Affairs. Solomon was listed only as “Con­sul­tant” on the 1973 Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship list.⁶

There are 12 other Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion mem­bers (including David Rock­e­feller) on IIE’s board of direc­tors! Having estab­lished Tri­lat­eral influ­ence (if not total dom­i­na­tion), con­sider the fol­lowing non-Commission IIE board mem­bers who might well be can­di­dates for inclu­sion in the core of the global elite:

• Chen Yuan – Gov­ernor, China Devel­op­ment Bank; former
• Deputy Gov­ernor, Peo­ples Bank of China.

• Jacob A. Frenkel – Former gov­ernor of the Bank of Israel and former IMF eco­nomic coun­selor and director of research.

• Mau­rice R. Green­berg – Chairman, Amer­ican Inter­na­tional Group.

• David O’Reilly – Chairman and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer, Chevron­Texaco Corporation.

• James W. Owens – Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar.
• Lawrence H. Sum­mers - Pres­i­dent, Har­vard Uni­ver­sity; former Sec­re­tary of the Treasury.

These are just a few of the non-Trilateral board mem­bers, and are reviewed only to show the process by which one might iden­tify addi­tional global elite core members.

There are other orga­ni­za­tions like IIE that could stand sim­ilar analysis of pur­pose, lead­er­ship and directorship.

Con­clu­sion

As was declared in the begin­ning of this analysis, the stam­pede to glob­alism is con­ducted by a small group of indi­vid­uals with aspi­ra­tions for global dom­i­nance. It should be noted again that there are mem­bers of the global “core” who are not mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Commission.

In gen­eral, they are driven by lust for money and power. They have clearly made an end-run around the Amer­ican people in order to achieve per­sonal goals that, in many cases, are dia­met­ri­cally opposed to U.S. inter­ests. If the Amer­ican people fully under­stood the mag­ni­tude of the decep­tion and power-grab, they would imme­di­ately and totally repu­diate these indi­vid­uals and their self-serving global schemes.

In 1971, Zbig­niew Brzezinski wrote in Between Two Ages:The Tech­netronic Era, 

“…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.”⁷

Brzezinski could not have been more clear than this. Of the few people who paid atten­tion to Brzezinski pre­vi­ously, only one person needed to receive his mes­sage fully: David Rock­e­feller, chairman of Chase Man­hattan Bank and con­sum­mate glob­alist. When they teamed up to start the Tri­lat­eral Com­mi­sison in 1973, the rest, as we say, “became history.”

So, how can one deter­mine if an indi­vidual is a member of the core of the global elite? There is a good chance that such a person will be:

•  closely aligned with and accepted by many of the people already iden­ti­fied as core;
•  often family-related to other core mem­bers (i.e., the Bush family, Rock­e­feller family, etc.);
•  part of the “revolving-door” that switches them in and out of impor­tant and crit­ical posi­tions in gov­ern­ment, acad­emia and business;
•  a member (director or high-level exec­u­tive) of an orga­ni­za­tion iden­ti­fied as a core com­pany, such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Cit­i­group, Cater­pillar Tractor, etc.;
•  edu­cated at a pres­ti­gious and global-minded university;
•  belong to one or more orga­ni­za­tions that are dom­i­nated by people already iden­ti­fied as core.

This list is not com­pre­hen­sive, nor is it meant to be some sim­plistic litmus test. It is impor­tant to realize that many names being bandied about are NOT part of the core of the global elite, but rather become decoys that shift the focus away from the real elite core. Dis­cre­tion, common sense and study is required to under­stand the dif­fer­ence between the two. 

Foot­notes

1. Novak, Jere­miah, Chris­tian Sci­ence Mon­itor (Feb­ruary 7, 1977)
2. The Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, Mem­ber­ship List, www.trilateral.org
3. Wash­ington Post, Jan­uary 16, 1977
4. op. cit.
5. About Us, http://www.iie.com/institute/aboutiie.cfm
6. Board of Direc­tors, http://www.iie.com/institute/board.cfm
7. Brzezinski, Zbig­niew, Between Two Ages: The Tech­netronic Era, (Pen­guin Books , 1971)