Trilateral Commission

Three continents, one management layer, its critics say, above every government.

Founded 1973 by David Rockefeller with Brzezinski as architect, to coordinate North America, Europe, and Japan; its early membership included an obscure Georgia governor who was president within four years, with twenty-six commission alumni in his administration — a sequence Goldwater documented indignantly in 'With No Apologies.' The commission publishes its rosters; its 1975 report 'The Crisis of Democracy' (arguing the West suffered an 'excess of democracy') supplied the theory's favorite quotation in the members' own words. Connects Bilderberg, the CFR, and Brzezinski's chessboard literature.