The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor
Executive Intelligence Review
November 1994
The'1001 Club': a nature trust
by Scott Thompson
p. 17 & 18
Membership in the "1001 Club," founded in 1971 by Prince
Bernhard of The Netherlands, consort to Queen Juliana of
the House of Orange, is restricted to 1,001 persons at any
given time and is by invitation only. All members pay a
$10,000 initiation fee which goes toward a $10 million trust
to bankroll World Wildlife Fund operations. The club donated
an office building in Gland, Switzerland, which currently
houses the international headquarters of the WWF
and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Initial members were handpicked by Prince Bernhard and
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Membership includes representatives
of the royal houses of Europe, officials of British
Crown corporations, and prominent figures in international
organized crime. Below is a sample of current and past members
with brief biographical data.
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Born in 1912,
Bernhard is cousin-in-law of Kaiser Wilhelm's sister, Princess
Victoria of Hohenzollern. In 1934, at the University
of Berlin, Bernhard was recruited to Nazi intelligence and
eventually assigned to IG Farben (the chemical giant which
maintained business links to Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries
throughout the war and produced Zyklon-B gas for
the gas chambers). Because of his Nazi links, Bernhard's
marriage to Queen Juliana of the House of Orange created a
scandal in the Netherlands.
Bernhard founded the Bilderberg Society in 1953. Bilderberg
sponsors annual secret meeting of North American
and European "one world" elites. Bernhard co-founded the
WWF in 1961. In 1976, he was caught taking a $1.1 million
bribe from Lockheed Corp. He resigned as head of Bilderberg,
and from the WWF-International and 1001 Club. But
he remains a dominant behind-the-scenes figure in all three.
Prince Henrik. President of WWF-Denmark.
Prince Juan Carlos. Founder and president of honor of
WWF-Spain. He later became King Juan Carlos.
Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. Given the title of His Highness
by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957 when editor of Paris Review,
a publication co-founded by John Train (see box p. 19).
Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis (deceased).
Self-proclaimed "head of Venetian intelligence" and heir to
one of the most powerful "princely families" of the Holy
Roman Empire. The family has extensive land holdings in
Bavaria, Portugal, Italy, and Brazil, derived from its role as
postmaster of the Hapsburg Empire. His father, Max, founded
Hitler's Allgemeine SS and headquartered it at the family's
Regensburg Castle in Bavaria.
Bertolt Beitz. Director of the Alfred Krupp von Bohlen
und Halbach Foundation. Beitz ran a successful takeover of
Krupp Industries in 1953.
Conrad Black. Chairman and CEO of the Hollinger
Corp., a media conglomerate with major newspapers in Britain,
Canada, the United States, Israel, and Australia. Originally
called Argus Corp., a postwar restructuring of the wartime
British intelligence front company War Supplies, Ltd.,
Hollinger is the leading press organ of the House of Windsor
and recently led the propaganda campaign against U.S. President
Bill Clinton.
Baron Aubrey Buxton of Alsa. Life Peer. Vice president
of the World Wildlife Fund-U.K. under Prince Philip.
The Buxton family has run Barclays Bank.
Peter Cadbury. Chairman, Preston Publications Ltd.;
chairman, George Cadbury Trust. Family's chocolate interests
dominate the economies of West Africa.
Dr. Luc Hoffman. Vice president of WWF-International
and of the IUCN (1966-69); director of Hoffman-LaRoche,
the Swiss pharmaceutical firm.
Alexander King. Co-founder in 1968 of the Club of
Rome with Aurelio Peccei. Responsible for the club's book
Limits to Growth, which led a revival of the malthusian argument
for drastic reduction of world population.
Jonkheer John H. Loudon. Knighthoods from the British
and Dutch royal families. Bemhard's handpicked successor
in 1977 to become international president of the World
Wide Fund for Nature. Former CEO of the Royal Dutch Shell
Group; chairman of Shell Oil Co. until 1976.
Sir Peter Scott. Knight of the British Empire (deceased).
Chairman, World Wide Fund for Nature since its inception
as the WWF-I in 1961; chairman, Survival Service Commission
of the IUCN since 1963; founder of the Wildfowl Trust
at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire in 1964.
TABLE 1 | |
1001 Club membership | |
(by country) | |
Country | Number of members 1001 Club* |
U.S.A. | 156 |
U.K. | 129 |
Netherlands | 101 |
Canada | 64 |
Switzerland | 61 |
South Africa | 59 |
Germany | 53 |
France | 34 |
Other (42 countries) | 344 |
* As of 1987 membership roster |
Maurice Strong. Vice president WWF-I until 1975.
First executive director of the U.N. Environment Program
until 1975, having previously served for two years as secretary
general of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment.
Chairman, Bureau of the IUCN. Undersecretary general,
United Nations (1985-87). Was charged by the secretary
general to run the U.N.-sponsored Earth Summit held in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992. Appointed by the Canadian
government as chairman, Petro-Canada (1976-78); currently
chairman of Ontario Hydro.
Gustavo Cisneros. Venezuelan billionaire and Rockefeller
family hanger-on, linked to drug money-laundering
circles. In early-1994, the family's Banco Latino collapsed
and was seized by the Venezuelan government. Brother Ricardo
Cisneros, a director of Banco Latino, is a fugitive from
justice. Ran BIOMA, a leading Venezuelan "environmentalist
group" shut down after caught faking dolphin killings.
D.K. Ludwig (deceased). Businessman who made a fortune
destroying the Amazon rainforests and later helped organized
crime syndicate boss Meyer Lansky to establish his
drug money-laundering empire in the Bahamas.
Fred Meuser. The bagman for the $1.1 million bribe to
Prince Bernhard from Lockheed Corp.
Tibor Rosenbaum (deceased). First Mossad logistics
chief. His Geneva-based Banque du Credit International was
identified by Life magazine in 1967 as a money laundry for
Meyer Lansky. Together with 1001 member Maj. Louis
Mortimer Bloomfield (deceased), Rosenbaum's network
financed Permindex, the corporate entity which New Orleans
District Attorney Jim Garrison charged was a vehicle for
the Kennedy assassination. French intelligence established
that Permindex laundered $200,000 through BCI, to finance
several aborted assassination attempts against Charles de
Gaulle.
Robert Vesco, international fugitive, alleged "American
Connection" to the Medellin Cartel. Initially sponsored by
the Swiss branch of the Rothschild family to take over the
Lansky-affiliated Investors Overseas Service (IOS). Last
known address: Havana, Cuba.
Anton Rupert, co-founder of the 1001 Club and chairman
of the WWF-South Africa. Rupert is owner of Rembrandt
tobacco interests and a protege of World War II chief
of British MI-6 Sir Stewart Menzies.
Sir Kenneth Kleinwort, owner of Kleinwort Benson,
one of Britain's oldest banks.
Henry Keswick, chairman of Jardine Matheson, the
British trading company created by Lord Palmerston to service
the Far East opium trade during the 19th-century. Brother
John Keswick is chairman of Hambros Bank, a backer of
WWF, and a director of the Bank of England.
Edmond Safra, chairman of Safra Bank, one-time owner
of American Express Bank, and target of U.S. and Swiss
government investigations as a drug money launderer.
Sir Francis de Guingand, former head of British Military
Intelligence, now residing in South Africa.
p. 43
In Nigeria, the point man for the World Wide Fund for
Nature is Chief Salay L. Edu. Chief Edu and his son Aboyamo
are members of the 1001 Club. The Edus are from the
Ibo tribe of southeastern Nigeria, whose attempt to secede
from Nigeria in 1967 led to the Biafran war.