It was Zbigniew Brzezinski, then-head of Russian Studies at Columbia University, who conceived Trilateralism, based on three spheres: North America, Europe, and Japan.
The notion of a Trilateral Commission was actually hatched at a Bilderberg Conference.
David Rockefeller, unofficial chairman-of-the-board of the Power Elite, took a fancy to Zbig's Tripartite Studies, and he wangled an invitation for this unpronounceable wannabe to attend Bilderberg's 1972 confab in Knokke, Belgium.
There, Zbiggy made his pitch for inviting the Japs into the Western power elite on the basis that Japan had become an economnic powerhouse and had acquired a new wealth to be reckoned with.
The good burghers of Bilderberg decided against integrating the Japs into their own forum, a bilateral success for almost twenty years by then.
Instead, the attendees sanctioned a whole new organization: The Trilateral Commission.
Rockefeller, Zbiggy, and George Franklin traveled to Europe, then Japan, recruiting members from banking, industrial, and political circles.
(Franklin was a long-time Rockefeller crony; had even been secretary of the American Committee for a Unified Europe. Small world.)
By summer, a Trilateral Planning Group was ready for its first rendezvous.
It took place at the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills overlooking the Hudson River, on July 23rd and 24th. The usual suspects were rounded up to attend.
Rockefeller was paying for this out of his own pocket. He always found that investing in high-level networking paid huge dividends.
With approval from "the highest political and financial circles" (Trilateral Commission memo), the trio selected appropriately-credentialed chairmen to represent each sphere.
The Trilateral Commission was a disaster.
Here's why:
It was a springboard for the presidency and administration of Jimmy Carter.
Carter was one of those future leaders who caught the eye of Rockefeller.
Zbiggy and the Rock lunched Carter at the Connaught Hotel in London in October 1972 and signed him up as a Trilateral Commissioner.
Soon after, the Georgia governor became Rockefeller and Zbiggy's candidate for president, and the Trilateral Commission gave him the power-elite support he needed to "arise from nowhere."
The Trilateral Commission was not nowhere. Just nowhere to be found in the newspapers.
Carter became president; Zbiggy, his National Security Adviser, the job he had postured for himself from the beginning.
Carter's vice president, Walter Mondale, was a Trilateral Commissioner, as were Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, and Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal.
Game, set, match.
Together, Carter's crowd screwed things up real good. Soaring inflation, interest rates at 20 percent; the world chess board, a horrible mess.
Carter likened governance and statecraft to church-work. Statecraft is many things. Church-work is not one of them.
Carter's waffling and poor judgment caused confusion among our allies, laughter in the Soviet Union, and led, ultimately, to the hostage crisis in Teheran.
It confirmed that, left to their own devices, the Power Elite is fully capable of causing another world war, like their predecessors much earlier in the century.
Another effect of the Carter presidency was CIA having to endure Admiral Stansfield Turner as its director.
"The Admiral," as he liked to be called, was more concerned by intelligence officers abroad engaging in extra-marital affairs than Iran imploding from within. He apparently mistook CIA for a missionary group.
A Power Elite disaster, for everyone.
Rockefeller quietly bailed, and put his money behind another horse from the Trilateral stable: George Bush, a privileged preppie who had moved to Texas to prove his manhood in the oil business.
Enter Ronald Reagan to turn things around.
Reagan wasn't one to sit through conferences held by Bilderberg and Trilateral. Too damn boring.
No, Reagan was all about the Big Picture, not the system's nuts and bolts.
Reagan even took a few jabs at Trilateral "elitists" during his campaign to woo voters away from Bush in New Hampshire, where Trilateral membership had become an issue, thanks to conspiracy theorists.
For his Power Elite outings, the log-chopper Reagan preferred...