Rogues' gallery of EU founders: the emerging European superstate, now moving forward under the EU, is the result of a deliberate scheme put into motion many years ago by powerful planners and plotters.

Few Americans realize how closely linked are the onrushing developments transforming Europe into a regional superstate and the campaign underway here to create a similar hemispheric entity for the Western Hemisphere. Europeans have only recently begun awakening to the fact that the decades-old politico-economic convergence process behind the European Union (EU) seriously threatens their freedom. Belatedly, they have started to react.

The "European project" is a euphemism for the plan to gradually enlarge the EU until it includes all European nations (including Russia and Turkey) while increasing EU jurisdiction over more and more areas now reserved to the nation-states. On the immediate horizon is the merger artists' proposed European Constitution, completed on June 18, and designed to lock Europe into the EU trap. If carried to completion, as envisioned by the EU founders, this project would utterly destroy the national sovereignty and independence of its member states. It would destroy all representative government in Europe and concentrate absolute legislative, executive and judicial power in the hands of an administrative elite.

Obviously, it would have been far better for the peoples of Europe never to have ventured into the trap in the first place. And therein lies the lesson for Americans. Very few Europeans saw or understood the warning signs and cleverly disguised snares during the period of the 1940s through the '80s, as myriad Lilliputian threads were being transformed into steel cables. It has only been in the past decade or so that the enormity and severity of the trap have begun to be apparent. We will have no excuse if we follow the same path.

Yet, that is what we are doing, via NAFTA and the proposed CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) and FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas). The same world-government-promoting organizations that were propelling the "European project"--the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the British Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) and the international Bilderberg Group (BG)--are the major forces working behind the scenes to merge North and South America into a centralized regional government patterned after the EU. In fact, our previous article "A NAFTA/FTAA Rogues' Gallery" (see our April 5 issue and stoptheftaa.org) included a profile of an American Insider who played a key role in establishing the Common Market/EU more than half a century ago, and is playing a central role in the current NAFTA/CAFTA/FTAA deception: David Rockefeller.

Mr. Rockefeller, now 89 years of age, was 30 years old at the end of World War II. He had graduated from Harvard in 1936, then gone on to study economics at the Fabian Socialist Society's London School of Economics and the University of Chicago. Following the war, David Rockefeller was appointed secretary of the CFR "study group" that put together what became known as the Marshall Plan. He would later become chairman of the CFR, a founding member of the Bilderbergers (where he is now the "senior statesman"), and founder of the Trilateral Commission, the Council of the Americas, the Forum of the Americas and the Americas Society--all leading engines in the drive for hemispheric convergence.

Joseph Retinger, one of the major architects of the Common Market/EU (see profile below), noted in his diary:

   In November 1946, I had a very long
   talk with Mr. Averell Harriman,
   American Ambassador in London....
   Averell Harriman was my sponsor
   and arranged my visit [to the U.S.]....
   At the time (the end of 1946) I found
   in America a unanimous approval for
   our ideas among financiers, businessmen
   and politicians. Mr. Leffingwell,
   senior partner in J.P. Morgan's, Nelson
   and David Rockefeller, Alfred
   Sloan, Chairman of the Dodge Motor
   Company ... George Franklin, and
   especially my old friend, Adolf Berle
   Jr., were all in favor, and Berle agreed
   to lead the American Section. John
   Foster Dulles also agreed to help us....
   Later on, whenever we needed any
   assistance for the European Movement,
   Dulles was among those in
   America who helped us most.

All of the individuals mentioned above were leading CFR Insiders. They and their CFR colleagues and European counterparts were the real movers behind the "movement" that was portrayed in the CFR-dominated U.S. media as a popular, grass-roots effort to unite Europe. In the past few years, official European and U.S. documents have been released showing that the organized European Movement was almost entirely bankrolled with U.S. funds, courtesy of the (unaware) American taxpayers, much of it illegally funneled through CIA fronts. While these revelations have received some coverage in Europe, they have been almost totally ignored by the American press.

The following profiles provide important information largely unknown (and difficult to uncover) by the general public regarding some of the key individuals and events involved in the founding period of what is known today as the EU. What becomes strikingly obvious, once the facts are laid on the table, is that the EU engineers have employed massive deception, lies and propaganda to foist a hidden, criminal agenda on the unsuspecting peoples of Europe and America. That hidden agenda is now moving into a new phase that aims at replicating the EU program in this hemisphere. By understanding the tactics that have been used by these merger forces in Europe, Americans will be better equipped to understand, oppose and expose those same forces pushing the same hidden agenda here today.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965). As Britain's prime minister during World War II, Winston Churchill was promoted to Homeric stature by the major media. His irascible, dominating personality and famous wartime orations made him Europe's towering political personality in the immediate postwar era. Churchill started his political career as a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900, before going over to the Liberal Party in 1904. He served in various Cabinet positions in Liberal Governments before switching back to the Conservative Party in 1925.

Despite his Conservative Party label, he flirted openly with anarchists and Fabian Socialists, expressed admiration for the early fascist regimes of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and was an ardent advocate of the Welfare State. Above all, Churchill was a zealous internationalist. In 1930, his essay entitled "The United States of Europe" was published in the Saturday Evening Post as an early volley in support of European supra-nationalism. During the war, in a March 22, 1943 broadcast, he called for creating a Council of Europe to govern "under a world institution embodying or representing the United Nations."

On September 19, 1946, Churchill made his famous speech in Zurich, in which he declared: "We must build a kind of United States of Europe." He then helped found the United Europe Movement (UEM), a British organization, along with his son-in-law Duncan Sandys and Lord Layton, a leader in the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Churchill was the chairman, with Sandys operating as executive chairman. At the 1948 Hague Congress of Europe, Churchill, as "President of Honor," delivered the opening address, in the presence of Princess (later Queen) Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

In October 1948, the UEM joined with other continental organizations to form the European Movement and Churchill was named one of the Presidents of Honor, along with France's Leon Blum, Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak and Italy's Alcide De Gasperi. Churchill was a major figure at subsequent conferences and the leading proponent of a European Army. His prominence in the Conservative Party not only helped immensely to undermine Tory opposition to the surrender of British sovereignty, but also helped provide a more moderate image for the European Movement, which was dominated by socialists. He remained active in the movement throughout his life, and one of the three European Parliament buildings is named in his honor.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1911-). As founder and titular head of the ultimate Insiders club, the Bilderberg Group, His Royal Highness Prince Bernhard enjoyed, for many years, a degree of global influence matched by very few individuals, royal or otherwise. German by birth, Bernhard is the elder son of Prince Bernhard von Lippe and Baroness Armgard ron Sierstorpff-Cramm. In the 1930s, as Hitler rose to power, Bernhard's younger brother publicly supported the Nazis, while Bernhard himself trained as a fighter pilot and was commissioned an officer in the German Reiter SS Corps. He then went on to become an officer in I.G. Farben, the huge German corporation that was an industrial centerpiece of Hitler's regime.

Dutch-German relations were already very strained when, on January 7, 1937, Bernhard married Princess Juliana, the future Queen of the Netherlands. Bernhard's private meeting with Hitler in Berlin shortly before that and his entertaining of SS officers at the Dutch royal palace did not endear him to the Dutch people. When the Germans invaded Holland, Bernhard fled to England and joined the Royal Air Force, but was still viewed with suspicion by the Dutch and the Allied Command. After the war, American and British Insiders began his public rehabilitation. He was appointed to the boards of literally hundreds of corporations and foundations, where he became familiar with the heads of business, finance, philanthropy, government and academia. In 1961 he founded the World Wildlife Fund, one of the world's largest and wealthiest environmentalist groups, which gave him tremendous political influence among environmental NGOs and at the UN. In 1952, he was approached by Joseph Retinger (see below) with the proposal to start a select group that could hold private meetings on the future of Europe and Atlantic relations. Thus the Bilderberg Group (BG) was born, so named because its first meeting, in 1954, was held at the Hotel Bilderberg in Holland.

Around a hundred of the world's top movers and shakers are invited to the annual BG meetings, which are always held under a strict veil of secrecy and very tight security. From the beginning, BG attendance has been top-heavy with Insiders from the CFR and RIIA, and, especially in its early years, with those who were exercising power over Europe's reconstruction under the Marshall Plan.

Attendees at the founding Bilderberg meeting, for example, included: David Rockefeller, global banker and later chairman of the CFR; Dean Rusk, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and later U.S. Secretary of State; Joseph E. Johnson, president of the Carnegie Endowment; C.D. Jackson, head of Time, Inc.; Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, former head of the OSS, precursor to the CIA; and Lord Dennis Healey, Labor Party leftist and later British Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Although the European Movement was already launched by the time the BG conferences began, the Bilder-bergers have played a key role in every advance of European supranationalism, from the European Coal and Steel Community to the Common Market to the EU. Ernst H. van der Beugel, honorary secretary-general of the BG and vice president of the Dutch affiliate of the CFR, matter-of-factly explains in his 1966 book, From Marshall Aid to Atlantic Partnership, how his Bilderberg-CFR friends in the U.S. government utilized their offices and U.S. funding to strong-arm of bribe European leaders who resisted the European Movement.

Joseph Retinger (1888-1960). Virtually unknown to the European and American public, Joseph Retinger is, nonetheless, recognized and praised by EU Insiders as one of the key founding fathers of the European Movement. He is one of those mysterious figures in history who--without political office or social or economic standing--operates behind the scenes and exercises an influence vastly disproportionate to his apparent circumstances. A penniless, Polish socialist and stateless exile without any visible means of support, Retinger bounced back and forth between Europe, Mexico and the U.S. during the 1920s and 30s. During World War II and the postwar period, he was constantly traveling between England, Russia, the Middle East and Central Europe. He was an emissary of and adviser to President Calles of Mexico, as well as confidant to, interpreter for and representative of General Sikorski, leader of the Polish government in exile in England.

Among the world movers and shakers whom Retinger counted as friends and benefactors were U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, ambassador and business tycoon Averell Harriman, British newspaper publisher and Astor family heir David Astor, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and New Deal Brain Trust adviser Adolf Berle. He also exerted an extraordinary influence over Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands; it was Retinger who recruited the prince to launch the secretive, super-elite Bilderberg Group. In Prince Bernhard's foreword to John Pomian's authorized biography, Joseph Retinger: Memoirs of an Eminence Grise, Bernhard writes that with regard to the Bilderbergers, Retinger "was, in point of fact, the prime mover."

A lecture by Retinger to the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House on May 7, 1946 is credited with jump-starting the organized European Movement, of which Retinger was made the first secretary-general. Retinger served as the backstage director and gatekeeper of the critically important Congress of Europe in May 1948 at The Hague. He was primarily responsible for drawing up the list of the 800 dignitaries attending the Congress, which included 18 ex-prime ministers and 28 ex-foreign ministers. No doubt, due in large measure to his influence and careful selection, he could write of the Congress in his diary: "Everybody realized that insistence on national independence and the preservation of national sovereignty were outdated." Retinger also wrote that when Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi was hesitant about joining the movement, he won him over by quipping, "Come, let us now join forces and conspire together." Whether spoken in jest or not, Retinger proved himself the arch-conspirator, successfully shepherding the treasonous unification scheme from one stage to the next.

The Congress gave birth to the Council of Europe, which held its first session in Strasbourg in August of 1949. "The Council of Europe was conceived," wrote Pomian, Retinger's longtime companion and biographer, "as an institutional first step which might in time lead to some kind of supranational Government of Europe." However, Retinger and his company of one-worlders did not advertise this objective. In fact, as the peoples of Europe became more suspicious of appeals for "pooling sovereignty" in a centralized European State, the leaders of the European Movement denied that this was their objective.

Jean Monnet (1888-1979). Jean Omar Gabriel Monnet, son of a brandy merchant from Cognac, made a small fortune shipping war materiel during World War I and then began his political ascent at the Versailles Peace Conference. At Versailles, the Frenchman connected with British members of the RIIA and their American counterparts who would return to the U.S. to form the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1919, at the age of 31, he was named secretary-general of the newly formed League of Nations.

Monnet, a lifelong socialist, was, along with Joseph Retinger, one of the top behind-the-scenes managers of the 1948 Congress of Europe at The Hague. At the same time, 1947-48, Monnet was working closely with U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall to design what came to be known as the "Marshall Plan," the scheme that pumped over ten billion American dollars into the political coffers of Monnet and his fellow one-world socialists in Europe.

As head of France's General Planning Commission, Monnet was the real author of what came to be known as the 1950 "Schuman Plan," to create the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), fore-runner of the Common Market. Merry and Serge Bromberger write in their admiring biography of Monnet that the ECSC scheme was "an idea of revolutionary daring" aimed at the gradual creation of a "superstate." They note that Monnet and his fellow Insiders planned for national governments (often led by their fellow one-world agents) to make "a whole series of concessions in regard to their sovereign rights until, having been finally stripped, they committed hara-kiri by accepting the merger."

Once the ECSC was established, Monnet was named the first president of this powerful cartel that controlled the production of energy and steel for much of continental Europe. In 1955 he founded the Action Committee for a United States of Europe, one of the major forces pushing and directing European convergence. Monnet's Action Committee brain trust drew up the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which created the European Common Market. And it was Monnet, operating through U.S. diplomatic machinery, who notified American internationalists whenever pressure was needed flora the U.S. government to put European politicians in line behind the merger betrayal.

Robert Schuman (1886-1963). One of the EU's "Founding Fathers," Robert Schuman was born in Luxembourg but grew up in France. In 1919 he was first elected as a deputy to the French Parliament, where he served for twenty years. Following World War II, Schuman served as France's prime minister, foreign minister and finance minister. From 1955-1961 he was president of the European Movement, and from 1958-1960 president of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

As previously mentioned, the European Movement and its many affiliates were almost completely financed with funds provided by the CIA, the Marshall Plan, and private Insider sources such as the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. Once Jean Monnet's Action Committee had drawn up the plan for the European Coal and Steel Community, he approached Schuman to sponsor it. Schuman did, and the ECSC was launched as the "Schuman Plan" for Europe. The Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg, the Robert Schuman Center in Florence, the Robert Schuman Institute in Budapest, the Robert Schuman Journalism Award and other monuments attest to the valuable services this European globalist performed for those who seek to submerge Europe in a regional superstate, as one building block in a one-world government.

Paul-Henri Spaak (1899-1972). Known as "Mr. Socialist," Paul-Henri Spaak was elected to parliament as a member of Belgium's socialist Labour Party in 1932 and later served several times as Belgium's foreign minister and four times as prime minister. He presided over the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe and the General Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community in the early days of both institutions.

In 1945, he gained international prominence as the first elected chairman of the UN General Assembly. In 1948, he accompanied Winston Churchill, Duncan Sandys, and Joseph Retinger on a trip to America to secure U.S. funding for the European Movement. Their effort resulted in the formation of the American Committee for a United Europe, headed by CFR leaders William Donovan (former OSS director) and Allen Dulles (future CIA director).

In 1955 Spaak chaired the preparatory committee of the Messina Conference of European leaders, where he was principal author of what came to be known as the "Spaak Report," credited with setting the stage for the Monnet-Schuman Plan and the Common Market. In 1956 he was chosen as secretary-general of NATO. Spaak's influence was instrumental in the choice of Brussels as the headquarters for both NATO and the EU.