Trilateral Commission
David Rockefeller founded a private club, a committee, if you will, a cartel.
This is David Rockefeller. In 1973, he founded a private club, a committee, if you will, a cartel.
Source: https://www.trilateral.org/about
The Trilateral Commission describes itself as above nations and international bureaucracies and beyond the brief tenure of most elected governments.
A useful level of meetings and exchanges of views has come into being, a sort of European, Japanese, American establishment.
Problems can be attacked there in ways that are beyond the narrow scope of nation-state interests and transcend the time horizons of legislative sessions. That is their own characterization of themselves.
Primary source — their own brochure, reproduced verbatim in the 1981 Congressional Research Service packet IP0092: https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/19810501_IP0092_2d3ea09e2c6068af730f41d315f4ea490bc91878.pdf
At least 26% of that founding budget came directly from David Rockefeller.
Same document, budget table: $150,000 Rockefeller personally + $180,000 Rockefeller Brothers Fund + $100,000 Rockefeller Foundation = $430,000 of a $1.67m North American budget.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/19810501_IP0092_2d3ea09e2c6068af730f41d315f4ea490bc91878.pdf
The same document lists the commission’s topic areas: social and political implications of inflation, financial aspects of the oil crisis, prospects for peace in the Middle East, illicit corporate payments, macroeconomic policy coordination, nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, trade problems, China.
Same document, page listing stated subject areas.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/19810501_IP0092_2d3ea09e2c6068af730f41d315f4ea490bc91878.pdf
The 1981 membership list includes Henry Kissinger, the most documented war criminal never prosecuted in American history.
Membership: same CRS document above.
War crimes record — NSA declassified files: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile-cold-war-henry-kissinger-indonesia-southern-cone-vietnam/2023-11-29/henry
East Timor specifically: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/download/272/272
Cambodia bombing: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/05/henry-kissinger-at-100-still-a-war-criminal
Harold Brown. Brown ran the Pentagon for the Carter administration.
https://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-View/Article/571287/harold-brown
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser. This man armed the Taliban, Afghan mujahideen groups, to draw the Soviet Union into a never-ending war.
https://dgibbs.arizona.edu/content/brzezinski-interview-2
He was asked whether he regretted arming the Taliban. He said, what is most important in world history, the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire, some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe?
Brzezinski’s own words, 1998 Le Nouvel Observateur interview, reproduced in full:
https://www.marxists.org/history/afghanistan/archive/brzezinski/1998interview.htm
Gerard Smith was the first chairman of the Trilateral Commission’s North American section. He wrote the treaty that decided how many nuclear weapons America and Russia were allowed to have.
Smith as SALT I chief negotiator: https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2019-11-17/fifty-years-ago-first-strategic-arms-limitation-talks-began
Smith as first North American chair: CRS packet above + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_C._Smith
He also ran the process that decided which other countries were allowed to develop nuclear technology at all.
Smith as Ambassador at Large for Non-Proliferation Matters: https://1997-2001.state.gov/about/state/history/officers/acda.html
Paul Warnke ran the US government’s arms reduction agency while simultaneously running a private law firm whose clients included foreign governments and arms manufacturers.
Warnke at ACDA: https://1997-2001.state.gov/about/state/history/officers/acda.html
Senate confirmation vote and law firm conflict detail: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1210214/paul-warnke
Robert McNamara ran the Vietnam War. He was the Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 and then the president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/3/9/mac-the-knife-growing-up-ive
He later admitted on camera in Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, “We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in one night. If we lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as criminals.”
Full transcript, Errol Morris, The Fog of War, 2003:
https://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html
Alan Greenspan chaired the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, appointed by four consecutive presidents. He was the primary architect of the financial deregulation in the 90s and 2000s. He blocked attempts to regulate derivatives markets. He actively opposed oversight of subprime lending. He appeared before Congress in 2003 to defend derivatives as useful vehicles for risk transfer.
Federal Reserve History biography: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/people/alan-greenspan
Congressional testimony and “flaw in his ideology” quote: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09greenspan.html
When the 2008 financial crash arrived he appeared before a congressional inquiry and said the Federal Reserve bore no responsibility.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/greenspan-defends-feds-role-in-run-up-to-crisis
George Bush Senior was also on the commission when he joined. He was the CIA director, and this was during the Church Committee’s investigations into CIA domestic surveillance.
CIA official history on Bush as DCI: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/bush-as-director-of-central-intelligence
CRS membership list confirms his presence and 1978 resignation:
https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/19810501_IP0092_2d3ea09e2c6068af730f41d315f4ea490bc91878.pdf
He resigned from the Trilateral Commission in 1978, two years before Reagan’s presidential run. He said publicly that membership in it was not evidence of conspiracy. Then he was Reagan’s running mate, became vice president and then president, and then after he left office, he rejoined the committee.
Same CRS document. Bush’s public statement on record in multiple contemporaneous news sources; his later rejoining documented in Wikipedia’s Trilateral Commission member list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Trilateral_Commission
Jeffrey Epstein was also a member.
2002 reference describing Epstein as an “enthusiastic member”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission (citing the 2002 edition of Trilateralism and World Politics)
Epstein’s own words in DOJ-released footage: https://play.anghami.com/episode/1262571512
NYT on Epstein’s donations to the Commission: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/magazine/jeffrey-epstein-money-scams-investigation.html
David Petraeus is a convicted criminal sitting on the Trilateral Commission. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified material.
DOJ plea agreement: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-director-central-intelligence-agency-david-petraeus-sentenced
NYT on the eight binders and Paula Broadwell: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/petraeus-plea-deal-over-giving-classified-data-to-lover.html
He went straight from there to KKR.
KKR’s own biography page: https://www.kkr.com/about/our-people/david-h-petraeus
Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, manages over 14 trillion in assets, more than the GDP of every country on Earth except the United States and China.
BlackRock Q1 2025 AUM filing: https://ir.blackrock.com/governance/board-of-directors/default.aspx
Fink on current Trilateral membership list: https://www.scribd.com/document/898187901/Tc-Membership-List-Apr28-2025
David Rubenstein is the co-founder of the Carlyle Group, which manages $426 billion in assets and built its business model explicitly on war. Rubenstein himself describes the strategy plainly. They recruit former heads of state, cabinet ministers, and CIA officials.
Carlyle Group AUM and strategy, Rubenstein’s own description in interviews:
https://www.kkr.com — cross-reference with: https://www.trilateral.org/about/members-fellows (membership confirmed)
Rubenstein’s own statements on the model are in his published interviews and his memoir How to Lead (2020); the Carlyle-government-revolving-door record is documented here: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/carlyle-group/summary?id=D000000245