By Robert Eringer
February 21, 2009 12:00 AM
With spring nearly upon us, the Trilateral Commission will soon blossom into its annual conference -- scheduled for Tokyo, the weekend of April 24-26. This networking elite of politicians, bankers, industrialists and intellectuals from North America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea strives to shape foreign and economic policies of nations from behind the scenes. Who are these Commissioners -- and who commissioned them?
The notion of a tri-sphere concept, combining movers and shakers from three geographic regions, was first broached at a Bilderberg conference.
So what is Bilderberg -- and from where does it derive its authority?
It is an elite group of self-appointed global manipulators -- from North America and Europe -- who have met privately since 1954 to quietly influence governments.
Bilderberger banking bigwig David Rockefeller tapped Zbigniew Brzezinski to attend the April 1972 Bilderberg meeting in Knokke, Belgium, having taken a fancy to "Tripartite Studies" produced by the then-obscure Colombia University professor.
Appearing before Bilderbergers, Dr. Brzezinski made a pitch for inviting the Japanese into their secretive coterie on the basis that Japan had morphed into an economic powerhouse entitling it to play with the big boys. (South Korea joined that "sphere" much later.)
But the burghers of Bilderberg declined to integrate the Japanese into their own forum, a bilateral success for 22 years (by then) that had succeeded in fashioning a new order in Europe -- the Common Market and European unity. Instead, attendees sanctioned a new league and, thus, the Trilateral Commission was born.
Mr. Rockefeller and Zbiggy launched themselves through Europe and Japan on a recruiting drive.
Their "planning group" convened on July 23rd and 24th at Pocantico Hills, a Rockefeller estate overlooking the Hudson River. Mr. Rockefeller underwrote the expense from his own (deep) pocket, having discovered, decades earlier, that investing in high-level networking paid huge dividends.
With approval from "the highest political and financial circles" (an internal Commission memo), the trio selected chairmen and directors to represent each sphere of the tri.
The Commission quickly became a springboard for the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Mr. Carter, as governor of Georgia, had caught Mr. Rockefeller's eye as a potential president and, consequently, Zbiggy and Mr. Rockefeller lunched Jimmy in October 1972 at the Connaught Hotel in London, where they signed him on the spot to be a Commissioner. Jimmy also became David and Zbiggy's presidential candidate -- and the Commission bestowed him the power elite support (influence and money) he needed to "arise from nowhere."
The Trilateral Commission was not nowhere -- just nowhere (back then) to be found in the newspapers.
So Jimmy the peanut farmer got elected president in 1976, and Zbig became his national security adviser, the job he had coveted from the outset. Other Commissioners in the Carter Administration included Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Defense Secretary Harold Brown and Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal -- 18 in all, from 54 original members from the American sphere.
Together, this elitist clique messed things up real good: Soaring inflation, interest rates at 20 percent, and the world chessboard a horrible mess. President Carter's poor judgment caused confusion among our allies, laughter in the Soviet Union, and led, ultimately, to the hostage crisis in Iran.
"It completely justified our belief," a former senior CIA official told The Investigator, "that left to its own devices, the power elite is fully capable of causing another world war, not unlike their predecessors last century."
The CIA descended into decline, having had to endure Stansfield Turner as its director.
Said our CIA source: "Admiral Turner was more concerned about intelligence officers abroad engaging in extra-marital affairs than Iran imploding from within. He apparently mistook our agency for a missionary group."
As if things were not bad enough, Trilateral Commissioners David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger pushed President Carter into allowing the ailing Shah of Iran into the United States, a political miscalculation that precipitated the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and the resulting hostage crisis that sealed the fate of Jimmy Carter's one-term presidency.
Mr. Rockefeller quietly bailed from the monster he'd created, putting his money behind another horse from the Commission stable: George Bush, a privileged East-coast preppie who had moved to Texas to prove his manhood in the oil biz.
But Mr. Bush lost to Ronald Reagan -- partly because the former California governor took a few jibes at "Trilateral Commission elitists" during his campaign to woo voters away from Mr. Bush in New Hampshire, where Commission membership had been whipped into a major issue just before its decisive primary.
Having enjoyed 15 minutes of fame during Jimmy Carter's presidency, the Commission then shriveled into just another think-tank opportunity for young men and women wishing entry to an international "Old Boy" network.
But now they're back!
Many of President Obama's picks for premier positions in his administration are Trilateral Commissioners (read: Beltway Establishment insiders). These include:
• Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner;
• National Security Adviser James Jones;
• Deputy National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon;
• Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair;
• State Department special envoys Richard Holbrooke. Dennis Ross, and Richard Haas;
• Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice;
• Lawrence Summers, Director of the National Economic Council;
• Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg;
• Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell;
• Paul Volcker, chairman of the Economic Recovery Committee.
(Gee, maybe President Obama will break Jimmy Carter's record?)
Ten days ago Adm. Blair clearly demonstrated how the "Old Boy" network functions: He tapped fellow Commissioner John Deutch to sit upon a spy satellite advisory panel.
Mr. Deutch, you may recall, was CIA director under Bill Clinton. "The worst director in CIA history," a former senior agency official told the The Investigator. You may also remember this: Soon after Mr. Deutch's departure from that job in 1996, he was discovered to have grossly mishandled government secrets. Mr. Deutch, it transpired, had downloaded 74 top secret documents onto four computers used at his home by other family members and connected by modem to the Internet -- on which Mr. Deutch also accessed Russian porn sites through his AOL account.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigated and produced a report to Congress stating: "Despite this knowledge (the risk of keeping secrets on un-encrypted computers), Deutch processed a large volume of highly classified information on these unclassified computers, taking no steps to restrict access to the information and thereby placing national security information at risk."
A senior CIA official privy to the classified version of the Senate Committee's report put it more bluntly for The Investigator: "Deutch allowed the Russians access to our biggest secrets."
Mr. Deutch was stripped of his security clearances. (They have now been restored.)
Anyone else would have been investigated for espionage. But an Old Boy like Mr. Deutch? Janet Reno's Justice Department worked out a gentle plea bargain. But while Mr. Deutch was in the midst of pleading guilty to a mere misdemeanor, brazen Bill, on the last day of his presidency, pardoned him, thereby vanquishing even a mild slap on the wrist for his fellow Commissioner. (Did we mention William Jefferson Clinton was a member of the Trilateral Commission when elected president in 1992?)
So excuse our suspicions about this so-called "power elite." Not because they're in charge again, but because they don't know what the heck they're doing. Conspiracy theorists yearn to believe these uber networkers rule the world. Truth is, our Beltway Establishment -- Democratic or Republican -- couldn't organize a binge in a brewery. These are the folks responsible, through negligence and profit taking, for where we are today -- ripped off by banksters and Wall Street, and Madoffs who made off.
"Obama for Change"? Maybe President Rhetoric meant spare change.
The opinions in the column are Robert Eringer's and not necessarily those of the Santa Barbara News Press. Readers may write Robert Eringer c/o the News Press. P.O. Box 1359, Santa Barbara 93102-1359.
