22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
Source:
August Review.com, January 30, 2009
Title: “Obama: Trilateral Commission Endgame”
Author: Patrick Wood
Student Researcher: Sarah Maddox
Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips
Sonoma State University
Barack Obama appointed eleven members of the Trilateral Commission
to top-level and key positions in his administration within his first
ten days in office. This represents a very narrow source of international
leadership inside the Obama administration, with a core agenda that
is not necessarily in support of working people in the United States.
Obama was groomed for the presidency by key members of the Trilateral
Commission. Most notably, Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral
Commission with David Rockefeller in 1973, has been Obama’s principal
foreign policy advisor.
According to official Trilateral Commission membership lists, there
are only eighty-seven members from the United States (the other 337
members are from other countries). Thus, within two weeks of his inauguration,
Obama’s appointments encompassed more than 12 percent of Commission’s
entire US membership.
Trilateral appointees include:
* Secretary of Treasury, Tim Geithner
* Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice
* National Security Advisor, Gen. James L. Jones
* Deputy National Security Advisor, Thomas Donilon
* Chairman, Economic Recovery Committee, Paul Volker
* Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair
* Assistant Secretary of State, Asia & Pacific, Kurt M. Campbell
* Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg
* State Department, Special Envoy, Richard Haass
* State Department, Special Envoy, Dennis Ross
* State Department, Special Envoy, Richard Holbrooke
There are many other links in the Obama administration to the Trilateral
Commission. For instance, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is married
to Commission member William Jefferson Clinton.
Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner’s informal group of advisors
include E. Gerald Corrigan, Paul Volker, Alan Greenspan, and Peter G.
Peterson, all members. Geithner’s first job after college was with
Trilateralist Henry Kissinger at Kissinger Associates.
Trilateralist Brent Scowcroft has been an unofficial advisor to Obama
and was mentor to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And Robert Zoelick,
current president of the World Bank appointed during the G.W. Bush administration,
is a member.
According to the Trilateral Commissions’ website, the Commission
was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, Europe (European Union
countries), and North America (United States and Canada) to foster closer
cooperation among these core democratic industrialized areas of the
world with shared leadership responsibilities in the wider international
system. The website says, “The membership of the Trilateral Commission
is composed of about 400 distinguished leaders in business, media, academia,
public service (excluding current national Cabinet Ministers), labor
unions, and other non-governmental organizations from the three regions.
The regional chairmen, deputy chairmen, and directors constitute the
leadership of the Trilateral Commission, along with an Executive Committee
including about 40 other members.”
Since 1973, the Trilateral Commission has met regularly in plenary sessions
to discuss policy position papers developed by its members. Policies
are debated in order to achieve consensuses. Respective members return
to their own countries to implement policies consistent with those consensuses.
The original stated purpose of the Trilateral Commission was to create
a “New International Economic Order.” Its current statement
has morphed into fostering a “closer cooperation among these core
democratic industrialized areas of the world with shared leadership
responsibilities in the wider international system.”
Since the Carter administration, Trilateralists have held these very
influential positions: Six of the last eight World Bank Presidents;
Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States (except for Obama
and Biden); over half of all US Secretaries of State; and three quarters
of the Secretaries of Defense.
Two strong convictions guide the Commission’s agenda for the 2009-2012
triennium. First, the Trilateral Commission is to remain as important
as ever in maintaining wealthy countries’ shared leadership in
the wider international system. Second, the Commission will “widen
its framework to reflect broader changes in the world.” Thus, the
Japan Group has become a Pacific Asian Group, which includes Chinese
and Indian members, and Mexican members have been added to the North
American Group. The European Group continues to widen in line with the
enlargement of the EU.
Update by Patrick Wood
The concept of “undue influence” comes to mind when considering
the number of Trilateral Commission members in the Obama administration.
They control the areas of our most urgent national needs: financial
and economic crisis, national security, and foreign policy.
The conflict of interest is glaring. With 75 percent of the Trilateral
membership consisting of non-US individuals, what influence does this
super-majority have on the remaining 25 percent?
For example, when Chrysler entered bankruptcy under the oversight and
control of the Obama administration, it was quickly decided that the
Italian carmaker Fiat would take over Chrysler. The deal’s point
man, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is a member of the Trilateral
Commission. Would you be surprised to know that the chairman of Fiat,
Luca di Montezemolo, is also a fellow member?
Congress should have halted this deal the moment it was suggested.
Many European members of the Trilateral Commission are also top leaders
of the European Union. What political and economic sway do they have
through their American counterparts?
If asked, the vast majority of Americans would say that America’s
business is its own, and should be closed to foreign meddlers with non-American
agendas.
But, the vast majority of Americans have no idea who or what the Trilateral
Commission is, much less the power they have usurped since 1976, when
Jimmy Carter became the first Trilateral member to be elected president
(Project Censored Story #1, 1976).
In light of today’s unprecedented financial crisis, they would
be abhorred if they actually read Zbigniew Brzezinski’s (co-founder
of the Commission with David Rockefeller) statement from his 1971 book,
Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, which
states that, “The nation-state as a fundamental unit of man’s
organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International
banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms
that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”
Yet, this is exactly what is happening. The global banks and corporations
are running circles around the nation state, including the United States.
They have no regard for due process, Congress, or the will of the people.
Why have the American people been kept in the dark about a subject
so great that it shakes our country to its very core?
The answer is simple: The top leadership of the media is also saturated
with members of the Trilateral Commission who are able to selectively
suppress the stories that are covered. They include:
• David Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic Media Company
• Karen Elliot House, former Senior Vice President, Dow Jones &
Company, and Publisher, the Wall Street Journal
• Richard Plepler, Co-president, HBO
• Charlie Rose, PBS
• Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek
• Mortimer Zuckerman, Chairman, US News & World Reports
There are many other top-level media connections due to corporate directorships
and stock ownership.
For more information, this writer’s original 1978 book, Trilaterals
Over Washington, is available in electronic form at no charge at http://www.AugustReview.com.
This site also has many papers analyzing various aspects of the Trilateral
Commission’s hegemony in the United States and elsewhere, since
it’s founding in 1973.