The Trilateral Commission, a secretive association of the world's most powerful private citizens, met behind closed doors in Washington over the weekend with top Bush administration officials, discussing the rise of China, global currency conflicts and the pending referendum before nations of the European Union.
As usual, the press was not allowed in any of the meetings, which included speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, World Bank President-designate Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
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Members include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, Kennedy administration Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a national security adviser in the Carter administration.
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The Trilateral Commission's annual meetings, held in Warsaw in 2004, Seoul in 2003, Washington in 2002 and London in 2001, have inspired conspiracy theories of powerful puppeteers who secretly pull the strings of world powers as they seek to establish a new world order.
The theories are based partly on fact. Mr. Brzezinski once asserted that the commission came up with the idea to create the Group of Seven industrial nations. The commission boasts three U.S. presidents once among its ranks: Bill Clinton, George Bush and Jimmy Carter, who joined in 1973 and moved into the White House three years later.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050418-112650-9501r.htm