Trilateral Commission

The Trilateral Commission is a private organization of business, political, labor and academic figures from North America, Western Europe and Japan (later the Asia Pacific), with regional offices and a published series of task force reports.

Formation

In March 1972, speaking before Chase Bank investment forums in Montreal, London, Brussels and Paris, David Rockefeller called for "an international commission for peace and prosperity composed of private citizens drawn from the NATO countries and Japan to examine such vital fields as international trade and investment; environmental problems; control of crime and drugs; population control; and assistance to developing nations." On a flight to the Bilderberg Group meeting in Belgium in April 1972 he spoke with Zbigniew Brzezinski, then director of the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia University, who had argued in Between Two Ages (1970) for a council linking the United States, Western Europe and Japan. At the April 1972 Bilderberg meeting Rockefeller urged the Bilderberg Executive Committee to take a trilateral approach and to invite Japanese participation; the proposal was again rejected, and he pursued it in consultations with Brzezinski, George S. Franklin (his Harvard roommate and executive director of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1953 to 1971) and colleagues in Europe and Japan.¹

A meeting at Pocantico Hills, New York, on July 23 and 24, 1972 was attended by C. Fred Bersten, Robert R. Bowie, Brzezinski, McGeorge Bundy, Karl Carstens, Guido Colonna di Paliano, Francois Duchene, Rene Folk, Franklin, Max Kohnstamm, Bayless Manning, Kiichi Miyazawa, Kinhide Mushakoji, Saburo Okita, Henry Owen, Rockefeller and Tadashi Yamamoto (names as spelled in the finding aid that records it), and the participants agreed to take steps to establish the Commission. In the fall of 1972 and early 1973 the regions designated their chairmen, Brzezinski was selected as director, and financial support was obtained from several sources, including the Kettering Foundation and the Ford Foundation, to supplement the initial seed money provided by Rockefeller. The Commission was established for three years and has been renewed for successive three-year terms, the thirteenth ending in 2012. The finding aid's note on the Pocantico meeting cites a document titled The Trilateral Commission: A Proposal, dated March 15, 1973, in the records of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.¹

The first three international meetings, all of the executive committee, were held in Tokyo in October 1973, Brussels in June 1974 and Washington, D.C., in December 1974; the first plenary meeting was held in Tokyo and Kyoto in May 1975. In 1977 the Commission replaced its central director with a coordinator, George Franklin, chosen by the executive committee.¹

A press guidance sheet in the Ron Nessen Papers at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, prepared for the executive committee's meeting with Gerald Ford on December 11, 1974, describes the Commission as "a private organization" created "in the spring of 1972 on the basis of a proposal by David Rockefeller to 'bring the best brains in the world to bear on the problems of the future.'" It gives the purposes as enhancing cooperation among the three regions, analyzing major issues and developing practicable proposals; the membership as "about 180"; the regional chairmen as Gerard C. Smith (North America), Takeshi Watanabe (Japan) and Kohnstamm (Western Europe); and the director as Brzezinski of Columbia. Task force reports to that date covered political cooperation, monetary reform, aid cooperation between industrialized and OPEC countries, energy and multilateral trade negotiations.²

Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times wrote on January 24, 1977 that the Commission was "created by David Rockefeller in 1972 as an attempt to work out a common negotiating position among Western Europe, Japan and the United States vis-a-vis the rest of the world," and that "At first Rockefeller didn't get much of a response." Scheer quoted the Commission's executive secretary, Franklin, as saying that the plan came together when Rockefeller put it to the Bilderberg meeting, where W. Michael Blumenthal had said that "some kind of private group" might "do more about it." Scheer wrote that Rockefeller "provided the initial funding for the commission and Brzezinski was on the payroll as director." Brzezinski told Scheer: "Henry Kissinger worked closely but also for Nelson Rockefeller. I worked closely but with David Rockefeller. I didn't work for David Rockefeller. I consider him to be a very close friend ... but he is not my employer, nor was he ever my employer." Scheer wrote that Brzezinski had been director for three years and had first met Jimmy Carter there.³

The statement of purposes issued by the executive committee in October 1973, as quoted in a Library of Congress reference sheet, says that the Commission "will seek to promote among Japanese, West Europeans and North Americans the habit of working together on problems of mutual concern."⁴ The Commission's organization leaflet gives July 1973 as the date of its inauguration, and quotes Theo Sommer of Die Zeit on "a sort of European-Japanese-American Establishment."⁴ The 1975 report The Crisis of Democracy describes the body as formed in 1973 "by private citizens of Western Europe, Japan, and North America to foster closer cooperation among these three regions on common problems."⁵

Meeting with President Ford, December 1974

The White House photograph log for December 11, 1974 records a meeting in the Cabinet Room between Ford and executive committee members of the Commission, with the names logged as Ford, Bonner, Harold Brown, Pepin, Rockefeller, Roth, Elliot Richardson, Gerald Smith, Brzezinski, Franklin, Haggerty, Reischauer, Scranton, Warnke, Woodcock, Wood, Bowie, Hockin, Coleman, Max Kohnstam, Umberto Columbo and Cesare Merlini, "et al."⁶ A Henry A. Kissinger chronology for December 1974 (HAK Chrons), as reproduced in the Central Intelligence Agency's reading room collection, lists a "Talker for Pres. from HAK" for the meeting with the executive committee members on Wednesday, December 11, in the Cabinet Room.⁷ The Commission's own records place its third international executive committee meeting in Washington in December 1974.¹

The Crisis of Democracy

The Commission's Task Force on the Governability of Democracies was set up in the spring of 1974 and reported in the spring of 1975. The report, by Michel Crozier (Western Europe), Samuel P. Huntington (United States) and Joji Watanuki (Japan), was discussed at the Commission's meeting in Kyoto on May 30 and 31, 1975 and published by New York University Press under copyright of the Trilateral Commission as The Crisis of Democracy. Brzezinski's introductory note, as director, lists four joint meetings: Palo Alto on April 20 and 21, 1974, where the rapporteurs and Brzezinski drew up the outline; London on November 11 and 12, 1974; New York on February 22 and 23, 1975, with experts from the three regions; and the Kyoto plenary on May 31, 1975. Those consulted included Bowie, Brzezinski, James Cornford, Franklin, Representative Donald M. Fraser, Karl Kaiser, Seymour Martin Lipset, John Meisel, Erwin Scheuch, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Gerard Smith (North American chairman), Yasumasa Tanaka and Tadashi Yamamoto (Japanese secretary).⁵

In the chapter on the United States, Huntington wrote that "For twenty years after World War II presidents operated with the cooperation of a series of informal governing coalitions," that Truman made a point of bringing "a substantial number of nonpartisan soldiers, Republican bankers, and Wall Street lawyers into his administration," and that "Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers. By the mid-1960s, the sources of power in society had diversified tremendously, and this was no longer possible." He named the national media as "the most notable new source of national power in 1970, as compared to 1950."⁸

In the concluding section Huntington wrote that "some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy," that "Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy," and that "the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups."⁹

Scheer wrote that the report claims "we have too much democracy and, in particular, too much press freedom," that it "has proved an embarrassment to the commission," that Brzezinski, who had selected his former coauthor to write it, "tends to disown it" now, and that Carter "went out of his way to express disagreement."³

Members in the Carter administration

Scheer's article lists, besides Carter and Brzezinski, the following Commission members in the new government: Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Secretary of the Treasury Blumenthal, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, assistant secretaries Lucy Wilson Benson, Anthony Lake, Richard Cooper and Richard Holbrooke, and Ambassador Richard Gardner. He wrote that Carter "took the Trilateral Commission seriously and never missed a meeting," that for Brzezinski the Commission "gave him a visible platform that did not hurt his career development," and that "the Trilateral Commission has been more successful as an establishment placement service than as a source of new policy ideas, which was its original stated purpose." Brzezinski described himself to Scheer as "a transmission belt ... between people like you, who are the elite's supported and appointed critics, and those who actually exercise power and wield it." Executive committee member William Roth told Scheer that the published output was not what mattered, but that "They provide an occasion for influential people to meet, to get to know each other and to hammer out some common positions," and Franklin said that one of the main purposes of such groups was to find out who the "good guys" are. Carter wrote in Why Not the Best that "Membership on this commission has provided me with a splendid learning opportunity."³

Michael A. Calabrese wrote in The Harvard Crimson (the article's web address carries the date January 12, 1976, while its text refers to a President-elect and Vice President-elect, which indicates January 1977) that Carter, Mondale, Vance, Brzezinski, Brown and Blumenthal were "among the 60 original American members" of the Commission. Calabrese quoted Carter's media adviser Gerald Rafshoon as saying that Carter's selection to the Commission "was one of the most fortunate accidents of the early campaign and critical to his building support where it counted," and quoted Professor Edwin O. Reischauer as recalling Carter as an enthusiastic member who attended the regular meetings and sat in on executive committee sessions. Calabrese wrote that J. Paul Austin, chairman of the Coca-Cola Company, "originally sponsored Carter in the Trilateral and later served as his campaign finance chairman."¹⁰

U.S. News & World Report stated on April 7, 1980 that Carter had been in the organization before his election "as were nearly 20 present or former top members of his administration," that the former Trilateralists included Mondale, Vance, Brown and Brzezinski, "the entire foreign-policy and national-security team," and that John B. Anderson and George H.W. Bush were present or former members. Bush, who "resigned from the organization in 1978," was quoted as saying that "to suggest that those that belong to the commission . . . are involved in a conspiracy is absurd." Reagan adviser Caspar Weinberger was described as a member who said that the Commission "is performing a very valuable service." The article added that members who join the executive branch "must resign, but they often rejoin when their official service ends." It reported that the full commission had met in London on March 23 to 25, 1980, with a dinner with Prince Philip, a reception with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and speeches by James Callaghan and Lord Carrington.¹¹

The Commission's own roster as of July 1, 1981 lists under "Former Members in Public Service" William Brock (U.S. Trade Representative), Arthur F. Burns (Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany), Bush (Vice President), Michael J. L. Kirby (Canadian Secretary to the Cabinet), Paul Volcker (Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board) and Weinberger (Secretary of Defense).¹²

Funding

U.S. News reported in 1980 that the North American share of the current three-year budget came to 1.67 million dollars: 644,000 from foundations, 530,000 from corporations, 220,000 from individuals and 84,000 from investment income. It named 180,000 dollars from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 100,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and 150,000 from David Rockefeller's personal funds, and stated that "There is no government money involved."¹¹

The Commission's list of "Current and Former Major Financial Supporters in the United States (since the founding of The Trilateral Commission in 1973)," as of March 31, 1980, carries the statement that it "has received no financial support from the United States government." The foundations listed are the William H. Donner Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Sumitomo Fund for Policy Research Studies. The corporations are BankAmerica Foundation, Bechtel Foundation, Bechtel Power Corporation, Boeing, Cargill, Carter Hawley Hale Stores, Caterpillar Tractor, CBS, the Coca-Cola Company, Control Data, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Crown Zellerbach Foundation, Cummins Engine Foundation, Deere and Company, Exxon, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Electric, General Foods, General Mills Foundation, General Motors, W. R. Grace, Honeywell, IBM, Johnson's Wax Fund, Levi Strauss Foundation, NCR Foundation, Procter and Gamble, Quaker Oats, Scott Paper, Sears Roebuck, Standard Oil of California, Texas Instruments Foundation, Time Incorporated, Wells Fargo Bank, Weyerhaeuser and Xerox. The individuals are George S. Franklin, Patrick E. Haggerty, David Packard and David Rockefeller.¹²

Membership rosters

The U.S. News article gave the membership in April 1980 as 275 and stated that the 76 U.S. members included 8 congressmen, 3 state and local officials, 17 businessmen, 13 academicians, 7 bankers and financiers, 10 officials of nonprofit organizations, 7 lawyers, 4 trade-union officials, 3 journalists or media executives and 1 representative of agricultural interests.¹¹ The Commission's organization leaflet, reprinted in the same packet, gives the membership as about 290 individuals from the three regions, with an executive committee made up of the regional chairmen and deputy chairmen and twenty-eight others (twelve from Japan, eight from the United States, one from Canada and thirteen from the European Community and Norway).⁴ The North American members of that committee as of March 1, 1980 were Robert W. Bonner (Canada), William T. Coleman Jr., Franklin, Robert S. Ingersoll, Kissinger, Bruce K. MacLaury, Charles W. Robinson, William M. Roth and William W. Scranton, with Rockefeller as North American chairman and Mitchell Sharp as deputy chairman.¹²

The roster of July 1, 1981 names Georges Berthoin (European chairman), Watanabe (Japanese chairman) and Rockefeller (North American chairman), with Franklin as coordinator and Charles B. Heck as North American secretary. The North American list includes Bowie, described as a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Winston Lord, president of the Council on Foreign Relations; Thomas L. Hughes, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Bruce K. MacLaury, president of the Brookings Institution; Martha R. Wallace, executive director of the Henry Luce Foundation; Joseph Kraft, columnist; Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the Brookings Institution, a former counselor of the State Department; Robert S. McNamara; Alan Greenspan; Lane Kirkland; Robert V. Roosa of Brown Brothers Harriman; Richardson; Paul C. Warnke; and Kissinger.¹² Of the twenty-four directors of the Council on Foreign Relations listed in its report for 1984 to 1985, seven (Brown, Graham Allison, Warren Christopher, Kirkland, Greenspan, Juanita Kreps and Marina Whitman) appear in this roster.¹³ Franklin, Hughes and Kraft are also among those present at the Council's January 8, 1968 discussion of covert action with Richard Bissell.¹⁴

Records

The Commission donated its North American records to the Rockefeller Archive Center in March 2003. The collection runs to about 217 cubic feet, and the Archive Center's finding aid, prepared by Robert Battaly in April 2011, states that material is open for research on January 1 of the sixteenth year after the date of the most recent item in each folder. Microfilm copies of the Zbigniew Brzezinski Files, the Gerard C. Smith Files and the early correspondence for 1972 to 1975 are at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. The finding aid records that initial membership consisted of approximately 190 members, that membership is by invitation decided by the executive committee on recommendations from members and staff, and that members who accept executive-branch positions must forfeit their membership. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund records at the Archive Center include Commission grant files for 1972 to 1983 (boxes 997 to 999).¹

Filings and the 2024 list

The Trilateral Commission (North America) files Form 990 under employer identification number 23-7309933, with a ruling date of August 1976. The returns summarized by ProPublica show revenue of 863,577 dollars and assets of 1,362,612 dollars for the year to June 2011, and revenue of 1,008,521 dollars, expenses of 1,271,483 and assets of 2,214,585 for the year to June 2023; compensation of current officers is shown as 334,825 dollars for 2017, 80,000 for 2020 and 2021, and 110,000 for 2022 and 2023.¹⁵ The return for the year ended June 30, 2023 reports contributions of 967,119 dollars, 22 voting members of the governing body and 2 employees. It lists Meghan O'Sullivan as chair; Richard Fontaine as executive director, paid 110,000 dollars for 10 hours a week; and as North American trustees B. Marc Allen, Catherine Bertini, Herminio Blanco Mendoza, Esther Brimmer, Michael Chertoff, Paula J. Dobriansky, Wendy Dobson, Richard Falkenrath, Diana Farrell, David Gergen, Jane Harman, Carla A. Hills, Karen Elliott House, Kissinger, Monique Leroux, Joseph S. Nye Jr., David Rubenstein, Luis Rubio, Jeffrey Simpson, James B. Steinberg and Frances F. Townsend. The donor schedule is redacted in the public copy.¹⁴

The list of September 6, 2024 names Axel Weber as European chair, O'Sullivan as North American chair and Fontaine as North American executive director, and lists David Rockefeller and Kissinger as founders in memoriam. Its North American group includes Michael Bloomberg, Ian Bremmer, Bruce Andrews of Intel, Michael Beckerman of TikTok and Marc Allen of Boeing, and it lists as "recent former members in public service" Anthony Blinken (Secretary of State), Jake Sullivan (National Security Advisor), Lael Brainard (Director, National Economic Council), R. Nicholas Burns (Ambassador to China), Mark Brzezinski (Ambassador to Poland), Ajay Banga (President of the World Bank), Douglas Beck (Director, Defense Innovation Unit), Joseph Kennedy III (Special Envoy to Northern Ireland for Economic Affairs), David Lipton (First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund), Scott Nathan (Chief Executive Officer, International Development Finance Corporation), Richard Verma (Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources) and Wes Moore (Governor of Maryland). Five fellows of the Council on Foreign Relations appear in the North American group (Robert Blackwill, Esther Brimmer, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, Richard Falkenrath and Ken Juster), and five directors named in the Council's return for the year to June 2023 (Rubenstein, James Manyika, O'Sullivan, Townsend and Daniel H. Yergin) are in the same group.¹⁶¹⁷

Jeffrey Epstein

The two undated biographical statements in the Department of Justice's Epstein Library that describe Jeffrey Epstein as "a former member of the Trilateral Commission and a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations" are EFTA00725190 and EFTA00725191. In an email of February 22, 2017 to a recipient whose name is withheld, Epstein wrote of Ehud Barak that he "is the most knowledgeable of all the players I have known. - including my stint on the Trilateral Commission." No Commission membership roll appears in the documents examined.¹⁸¹⁹