Marrs: When Lyndon Johnson took office and began to take Viet Nam as his top priority, he was surrounded by what was known as his “wise men” and almost every one of them to a man were members of the Council on Foreign Relations and were pushing for that globalist agenda and their agenda which included our control over southeast Asia.

Narrator: In 1973, the Chairman of the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations is David Rockefeller. He brings together some of its most powerful members with elite private citizens from North America, Western Europe, and Japan to form a new 180 member group. It is called the Trilateral Commission.

Marrs: Most Americans really first became aware of these secret societies with the Jimmy Carter administration because Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer/Governor of Georgia was brought into the Trilateral Commission back in 1972. And within 4 years, he’s groomed, and runs, and wins as President of the United States. I once had the opportunity to interview his Budget Director, Bert Lance, and I asked him, you know, “What’s the deal about the Trilateral Commission?” And he simply smiled and he said, “I was the only member of the Cabinet who was not a member and now I’m out.”

Narrator: Further proof of the group’s influence, according to Marrs, comes in 1980, when Ronald Reagan, who is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations or the Trilateral Commission, runs for President.

Marrs: He pledged in New Hampshire, that if elected, he would investigate these secret societies. He also said that he would never accept the secret society member George Bush as a member of his administration. So he rushes into the national convention late at night, very unprecedented, and says “I choose George Bush as my running mate.” So George Bush, the secret society man, is now in the catbird’s seat. And then just a month or two after Reagan took office, he’s shot, and if it wasn’t for about that much [indicates about ½”] it would have hit his heart and George Bush would have been in years earlier.

Narrator: And when George Bush does become President, his State of the Union address in 1991 contains a 3 word phrase that confirms for conspiracy advocates his secret globalist agenda.

[Bush speech clip] "What is at stake is more than one small country. It is a big idea. A New World Order."

Icke: George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton. When you look at their administrations, apparently different, they are all not just awash, they are drowning in members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. So no matter what the name of the party in power, the coordinating body remains the same.

Pipes: These are groups of people who indeed have influence and in some cases are powerful. But they’re not meeting with the goal that they’re going to act in a unified way and in a clandestine way to seize power- that’s just a complete misreading.

Narrator: But the specter of a secret agenda is raised by the fact that although these groups publish membership lists, agenda notes, and have their own magazines or papers, meetings are officially off the record.

Icke: To do it openly would get a big backlash from people, “Hey, this is a global Fascist state- we’re not having this!”, so it has to be done quietly behind the scenes and brought about in stepping stones.

Pipes: There’s a distinction between informal discussion and a plot. The goal of the Council on Foreign Relations and Bilderbergers is to foster informal discussion, to allow people to have the freedom to say what they’re thinking and not be accountable for it. That’s very different from a plot, where everyone’s getting together and making plans to do something evil. And unfortunately conspiracy theorists don’t see that distinction.

Narrator: To become a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, you must be nominated in writing by one member, seconded by two other individuals, and approved by the Membership Committee and the