Trilateral Commission
The Trilateral Commission (TLC) is an international NGO aimed at fostering closer cooperation between Japan, Western Europe and North America. TLC was founded by Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller in 1973, after discussions at the 1972 Bilderberg. David Guyatt reports that it could be "said to be the Bilderberg group dressed in another frock"[1]. TLC is often mentioned together with the Bilderberg group and the Council On Foreign Relations.[2]
In 1974, concerned that democracy wasn't working, the TLC commissioned Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington and Joji Watanuki to produce a report on the Governability of Democracies. Published in 1975, their report entitled "Crisis of Democracy"[3] revealed the TLC's true concern: not that democracy was failing, but that it was working too well, allowing ordinary citizens to make demands that threatened elite control.[4]
Contents
The Rockefeller Influence
- Full article:
Rockefeller family
- Full article:
The members are not elected, they are chosen. The Chairman of the Executive Committee, the committee that chooses members, was for many years deep politician David Rockefeller (died 2017), who was also founder and Chairman of the overall Trilateral Commission. The entire structure reflects the Rockefeller choices, not impartial or democratically representative choices.
As for membership, the Trilateral Commission notably brings together the Administrators of power rather than the Holders. Politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats, media executives, trade unionists come and go in the Trilateral meetings — they are transient administrators and implementors of an agenda that is set elsewhere.[citation needed]
Continued relevance
In 1977 President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale were Trilaterals. 18 of its members were in the Carter administration, out of 77 in the US.[5]
In 1993 President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were Trilaterals, as were 20 of their cabinet members.
Within ten days of assuming power, Barack Obama had appointed eleven members of the Trilateral Commission to top-level and key positions in his administration, some 12% of the TLC's entire US membership.[6]
Epstein
How did Jeffrey Epstein, a college dropout from Brooklyn with no formal financial qualifications, become a member of one of the world’s most exclusive policy forums?
The conventional explanation is that he donated his way in. This is too convenient, and it does not survive scrutiny.
The Trilateral Commission is strictly invitation-only. According to its own documentation, membership is determined by “economic weight and political influence.” The US group receives only five to ten openings per year, selected from “a list of candidates many times larger than the number of openings.” Members include former prime ministers, central bank chiefs, Fortune 500 executives, and senior diplomats. Britannica describes them as “influential politicians; banking and business executives; media, civic, and intellectual leaders.”
Jeffrey Epstein was none of these things. He was a college dropout whose only documented billionaire client was Leslie Wexner. He had no verifiable business model justifying his wealth. The suggestion that he simply wrote a cheque and received membership insults the intelligence of anyone familiar with how elite institutions actually function.
Fortunately, we do not need to speculate. Epstein explained it himself.
| David Rockefeller recruited Jeffrey Epstein |
In an interview with Steve Bannon, Epstein described precisely how he gained entry to the network. The account is worth quoting at length because it reveals not merely how one man was admitted, but how the entire recruitment system operates.
Epstein recounted being invited onto the board of Rockefeller University in the late 1980s: “There was a money manager who said Rockefeller needs someone with financial expertise because the university is growing… I met with Nancy Kissinger and a bunch of other people, and David Rockefeller and I got along very well.”
Bannon pressed him: “How did a schmuck like you get on the board of Rockefeller? What year was that?… That’s one of the most prestigious research places in the world. How did a guy like you get on the board, a blueblood, internationally known… Nobel Prize winners all over the place? How do they pick a guy like you, a trader from, or basically some guy from Bear Stearns?”
Epstein’s answer was revealing. He explained that “up until the mid 80s or sort of early mid 70s, the most important thing was your name. If you were a Rockefeller, you were already considered to be brilliant. If you were a head of General Motors, it was your reputation. It was who you knew, who your family was.” But then came calculators, and then computers, and suddenly “the most important parts of business were really now going to calculations.”
Institutions like Rockefeller “needed someone to say, look, we are entering a different world with numbers.”
In other words: Epstein was recruited because he was useful.
What happened next is even more significant. In Epstein’s telling, David Rockefeller began to explain “world politics” to him. And then came the invitation.
“He formed something called the Trilateral Commission,” Epstein told Bannon. “The Trilateral Commission is some spooky stuff. People said it was something the people that the Illuminati and there’s some mystery about it, people that ran the world…”
Epstein then recounted Rockefeller’s explanation of the Commission’s purpose: “David said most countries, the politicians get elected for four years or eight years, separate from the royal families in England or in the Middle East. Someone’s there for four years and then they’re not there anymore. The most important people to have stability and consistency would be businessmen. So he formed this Trilateral Commission of businessmen and politicians from three major continents.”
Here, in Epstein’s own words, is the Commission’s operating philosophy: elected politicians are temporary; businessmen provide continuity; therefore businessmen should coordinate policy across national boundaries.
Rockefeller then asked the young Epstein: “Would you like to be on the Trilateral Commission?”
Epstein was, by his own account, thirty to thirty-two years old. “I looked at the list of people and that was Bill Clinton, former President of the United States. Paul Volcker, every great leader in America, the Asians, the Japanese, and with a very long description of the history.”
When asked to provide a biography for the Commission’s records, Epstein wrote: “Jeffrey Epstein, comma, just a good kid.”
“Which I thought was funny,” he told Bannon. “Nobody else did.”
This account demolishes the “donation” narrative. Epstein did not buy his way in. He was personally recruited by David Rockefeller because he possessed skills the network required.[7][8]
Only 18 places for Italians
In a 2014 interview, Carlo Secchi, the President of the Italian branch of the Commission, explained that "We try to bring together the best and it happens that the best are also called to lead Italy. After Romano Prodi there was an interruption, but then Mario Monti, illustrious European regent, followed, and let's not forget Enrico Letta and Marta Dassù. As you can understand they come fishing to us, then sometimes they come back. There are only 18 places for Italians. Even if our club has expanded to China and India, as well as America, Europe and Japan...We seek to facilitate the dialogue between economics and politics in order to match the interest between institutions and money." at the question "It is not very democratic", he replied "The planet needs reform, and reforms is made together."[9]
EIR
A 1985 Executive Intelligence Review analysis pointed to its coordinating influence in banking and insurance:
The Commission is not a "secret society ," nor is there need for "mystification"; its' members are well-known: and some of their activities are not hidden from the public eye, even if we can be sure, 95%-plus of what really matters passes through sanctified and "secure" private communication channels. But indeed, the Commission is a "conspiracy," in the sense of providing a critical vehicle for the political, financial, and "think-tank" representatives and servants of the leading feudalist families of Western Europe to coordinate policies along identifiable and coherent lines. The members of the European branch of the Commission, as individuals and as representatives of institutons, control the flow of billions of dollars on the world financial markets. Ensconced in key positions in banking, insurance, and the news media, they serve as a vehicle for the oligarchical families of Europe to wage war against the nation-state.[10]
Members
The membership list here contains the members from 1978[11], 1993,[12] the 2020 member list published by the Trilateral Commission itself,[13][14], 2022[15] and some miscellaneous known members. With some coming and some going (around ten added and ten going each year), the known membership is somewhat complete, but will still have gaps. Some are added from 2003, 2011[16][17] Nicola Sturgeon attended a Trilateral meeting.[18][19]
In 2023, Declassified revealed that while he was Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer served on the Trilateral Commission alongside two former heads of the CIA without telling Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — who would have blocked it.[20]
Failed Call for Investigation
In 1980, congressman Larry McDonald introduced American Legion National Convention Resolution 773 to the House of Representatives calling for a comprehensive congressional investigation into the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, but nothing came of it.[21] McDonald was killed in 1983 aboard Korean Air Lines Flight 007. EIR interviewed James Lee Clingan in 1986;[22] he introduced a similar resolution in the Indiana House and acknowledged the resolution from the American Legion, which by his account was decided upon in 1981.[23]
Related Quotations
| Page | Quote | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Will Hutton | “Along with the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Conference, this (the World Economic Forum) is one of the key meetings of the year. No policy is made here; it is all talk, some of it banal and platitudinous. But the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide” | Will Hutton |
| Paul Volcker | “In 1952, straight from the London School of Economics, Volcker joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an economist. He stayed for five years, until 1957, at which time Volcker moved from Liberty Street to become an economist for Chase Manhattan Bank, where he stayed for four years, until 1961. In 1961, Volcker went to the Treasury Department in Washington, thus completing the first round of his three stop "revolving door." Appointed as Deputy Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs, he held that job just long enough to learn the ropes in Washington, and returned to New York, to Chase Manhattan Bank, as Vice President in charge of Planning. After three years in that post, Volcker left in 1969 to become Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs at the U. S. Treasury Department. After five years, Volcker completed the second round of his "revolving door" with an appointment as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Volcker is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Friends of the London School of Economics. If Paul Volcker was a solitary phenomenon, we could make no case for Trilateral control of the Federal Reserve System. In fact, the Volcker phenomenon is one of a dozen parallel situations.” | Paul Volcker Antony Sutton |
Known members
561 of the 1610 of the members already have pages here:
| Member | Description |
|---|---|
| David Abshire | Spooky US diplomat with connections to "Iran-Contra" |
| Ann-Kristin Achleitner | Director of Lazard Ltd and Lazard Group since April 2021. Married to Bilderberg Steering Committee Paul Achleitner |
| Josef Ackermann | Chairman of Deutsche Bank, G30, Bilderberg Steering Committee |
| Alexandre Adler | French neoconservative academic and media pundit. |
| Gianni Agnelli | Italian industrialist, 37 Bilderbergs |
| Umberto Agnelli | Italian agnelli family magnate with multiple deep state connections including the Bilderberg Steering committee. |
| Krister Ahlström | Finnish businessman. Attended 1994 Bilderberg meeting as President and CEO of the family consortium Ahlström. |
| Esko Aho | Attended the 1994 Bilderberg as Prime Minister of Finland |
| Ebtesam Al-Ketbi | |
| Michel Albert | French economist, 1969 Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission Member |
| Madeleine Albright | Ruthless politician, acquired and beloved by everyone named Clinton in the 1990s. Hero of Kosovo. Most powerful woman of all time according to ISGP's superclass index. When asked about half a million dead Iraqi children because of the sanctions she enforced, she replied "We think the price is worth it." |
| Paul Allaire | Bilderberg Steering Committee member and board of the Council on Foreign Relations who headed Rank Xerox |
| Graham Allison | Attended the Bilderberg in 2007 after a 33 year break. First attended, as a speaker, in 1970, aged 30. Multiple deep state connections. |
| Edmond Alphandéry | French politician and businessman |
| Roger Altman | US Banker, Bilderberg Steering Committee |
| Otto Wolff von Amerongen | Bilderberg Advisory Committee member, deep politician |
| Bodil Nyboe Andersen | Danish central banker who pushed for introduction of the euro. Daughter of Bilderberger Poul Nyboe Andersen and attended 3 Bilderberg meetings herself. Trilateral Commission. |
| Poul Nyboe Andersen | Danish economist and politician. Member of the Trilateral Commission. His daughter is former national bank director Bodil Nyboe Andersen. |
| Magdalena Andersson | Attended the 2016 Bilderberg as Swedish finance minister. Supporter of the Great Reset who was briefly Prime Minister of Sweden. |
| Dwayne Andreas | Large political donor to both major US parties. |
| Stelios Argyros | Greek businessman who attended the 1993 Bilderberg as Chairman of the Board and President of the Federation of Greek Industries |
| Michael Armacost | President of the Brookings Institution, Acting US Secretary of State for 5 days in 1989 |
| Anne Armstrong | United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom |
| Teruo Asada | Japanese businessman |
| André Azoulay | A senior adviser to King Mohammed VI and King Hassan II of Morocco. Zionist operative. Father of Bilderberger Audrey Azoulay. |
| Bruce Babbitt | Governor of Arizona selected to become United States secretary of the interior from 1993 to 2001, under President Bill Clinton. Owed big gambling debts to the mafia. |
| Zoë Baird | Spookily connected US lawyer |
| George Ball | US deep politician who attended all 40 Bilderberg meetings up to his death, he helped make key decisions about post-WW2 Europe. |
| Francisco Balsemão | >30 Bilderbergs, Bilderberg Steering committee, Prime Minister of Portugal |
| Chandrajit Banerjee | Indian businessman with a heavy WEF meeting habit |
| Patricia Barbizet | French businesswoman and deep state operative who has been the right arm of billionaire François Pinault for over 30 years. Both a Young Leader and a board member of the French-American Foundation, she was President of Le Siècle 2017-2019, member of Institut Aspen France, the Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg steering committee. |
| Estela Barbot | Portuguese executive who is heavily involved in the Trilateral Commission and its Portuguese subgroup the Forum Portugal Global. She is a member of the The Club of Rome and attended Bilderberg for the first time in 2019. |
| Raymond Barre | French PM, single Bilderberger |
| Charlene Barshefsky | |
| Piero Bassetti | Italian politician who attended Bilderberg/1966 as an up-and-coming politician and Bilderberg/1983 as President of the Union of Italian Chambers of Commerce. |
| Riley P. Bechtel | Us billionaire of the Bechtel family |
| Michel Belanger | Canadian businessman and banker. Trilateral, 1968 and 1989 Bilderbergs |
| Erik Belfrage | Swedish diplomat and banker. Wallenberg associate. Attended the 2005 Bilderberg |
| Marek Belka | Former Prime Minister of Poland, visited 4 Jackson Hole meetings from 2010 to 2015 |
| Dick Benschop | Attended the 2000 Bilderberg as Dutch State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Tafelronde/Chair, Trilateral Commission, Shell CEO, Schiphol Airport Director |
| C. Fred Bergsten | Brookings Institution, Jackson Hole, CFR, 5 Bilderbergs ... |
| Susan Berresford | President of the Ford Foundation |
| Nicolas Beytout | Quad Bilderberg French editor/journalist |
| Karan Bhatia | Deep state connected lawyer |
| Kurt Biedenkopf | West German politician "parachuted" into the former East Germany to lead the state of Saxony. |
| Laurent Bigorgne | French deep state operative. Attended the 2015 Bilderberg |
| Carl Bildt | Swedish deep state actor, serial Bilderberger and visitor to the MSC. Active in an impressive number of deep state related commissions & conferences. |
| Kurt Birrenbach | German CDU politician who attended 7 Bilderberg meetings between 1960 and 1972, then first president of the transatlantic deep state network German Council on Foreign Relations |
| Manfred Bischoff | MSC regular |
| Ritt Bjerregaard | Double Bilderberg Danish politician. Georgetown Leadership Seminar, Trilateral Commission.. |
| ... further results | |
Sponsor
| Event | Description |
|---|---|
| Hewlett Foundation | Huge foundation setting the agenda by funding lots of deep state projects. |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:CFR Membership 1993 | membership list | 4 November 2008 | FREE | |
| Document:Five questions for new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer about his UK and US national security establishment links | Article | 5 June 2020 | Matt Kennard | Keir Starmer did not become leader to help Labour win, but to restore establishment control over the party and vanquish the heretics that dared defy its agenda. For the forces he truly represents, the project has been a smashing success. |
References
- ↑ Document:The Spoils of War
- ↑ "Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, Trilateral Commission And The CFR"
- ↑ "Crisis of Democracy"
- ↑ "Trilaterals over Washington: Peter Mandelson ‘Prince of Darkness’ US Ambassador"
- ↑ https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-rX5fip-M-6wHSstt/Tri+Laterals+Over+America+by+Antony+C.+Sutton_djvu.txt - page 2
- ↑ http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/22-obamas-trilateral-commission-team/
- ↑ "From Rockefeller to Starmer: Mapping the Trilateral Network in the Epstein Files"
- ↑ https://singjupost.com/jeffrey-epsteins-interview-with-steve-bannon/
- ↑ https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2014/02/25/trilateral-il-presidente-italiano-dopo-prodi-monti-e-letta-ora-al-governo-abbiamo-la-guidi/893575/
- ↑ https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1985/eirv12n39-19851004/eirv12n39-19851004.pdf
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20180131225108/https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/trilateral-commission-members-1978.pdf
- ↑ https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-rX5fip-M-6wHSstt/Tri+Laterals+Over+America+by+Antony+C.+Sutton_djvu.txt
- ↑ http://trilateral.org/download/files/TC-MEMBERSHIP-LIST-JANUARY-2020.pdf
- ↑ https://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/cfr_members.htm
- ↑ https://www.trilateral.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/EUROPEAN-MEMBERSHIP-LIST-2022-MASTER-June-2022.pdf
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110702113028/http://www.trilateral.org/download/file/TC_%20list_%206-11_%20rev_%20(2).pdf
- ↑ https://solidaridad.net/lista-completa-de-los-miembros-de-la-comision-trilateral-febrero-de-2003-248/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20200630012916/http://trilateral.org/download/files/annual_meeting/41st%20Trilateral%20Commission%20Europe%20Conference%20Summary.pdf
- ↑ https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:f6e9ddb9-2a4a-4350-a783-86264838bf61 January 2025
- ↑ "Keir Starmer served on the Trilateral Commission alongside two former heads of the CIA without telling Jeremy Corbyn—who would have blocked it"
- ↑ Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids url=http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119974.pdf%7Cisbn=978-0-06-093184-1}} (page 30.)
- ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/64328019/james-leroy-clingan saved at Archive.org saved at Archive.is
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20180202075855/http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1986/eirv13n02-19860110/eirv13n02-19860110_067-james_lee_clingan.pdf