Chapter 11

Shadow Institutions — Bilderberg, CFR, Trilateral Commission & the BIS

The private organizations where the world's most powerful people meet behind closed doors — documented through leaked attendee lists, founding charters, and their own publications.

Veritas Worldwide · March 2026 · 1921–Present

Carroll Quigley was a professor of history at Georgetown University, a mentor to Bill Clinton, and one of the most respected academic historians of the twentieth century. What he documented in his 1966 book Tragedy and Hope would reshape the understanding of how global power operates.

Quigley was a professor of history at Georgetown University, a mentor to Bill Clinton, and one of the most respected academic historians of the twentieth century. In 1966, he published a 1,300‐page book called Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. In it, he described, in explicit detail, the network of international bankers who had controlled the governments of the Western world for more than a century. He was not a critic of this network. He was an admirer. He believed the public should know about it — and he believed the network's goals were, on balance, beneficial. [1] Quigley wrote: "There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network be cause I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records." [1] "The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole." CARROLL QUIGLEY, TRAGEDY AND HOPE, 1966 — GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR AND MENTOR TO BILL CLINTON The Harold Pratt House at 58 East 68th Street in Manhattan — headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1945. The CFR was founded in 1921 by the same banking network that created the Federal Reserve. Its members have included virtually every Secretary of State, Treasury Secretary, and CIA Director since WWII. (CFR)