There is a strong and growing undercurrent across America of surreptitious government plans to reduce the population.

By some, the plots are seen everywhere from contraception, abortion, flu outbreaks, "chem-trails," and  vaccinations, to genetic-modification, health-care reform, sterilization programs, and manipulation of agriculture.

The task is differentiating the paranoid from legitimate concerns, but this much can be known: for decades, low-key and even secret elements of elite Western society have been planning myriad ways of diminishing the number of humans populating a "stressed" planet.

That is documented most starkly in an eye-opening book called Seeds of Destruction, which details an incredible memorandum issued as a top secret federal policy proposal under President Richard Nixon in April of 1974 and entitled "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests." Known also as National Security Study Memorandum 200, or "NSSM 200," it was made official U.S. policy under President Gerald Ford.

The memo -- which was kept secret for fifteen years (until organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church forced its declassification) -- was commissioned by Nixon on the recommendation of John D. Rockefeller III -- whose family long had been intimately connected to the population-reduction cause, as well as establishment of elite secret organizations. It was written by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger -- who had extremely strong ties to the Rockefellers going back to the 1950s.

He was also to implement its strategy. Some say the results are rising all around us.

As author F. William Engdahl points out, the policy of the Rockefeller elite consisted of adopting a "world population plan of action" for drastic global population reduction policies in order to preserve resources and maintain order.

Put another way, the goal -- which became a Rockefeller obsession -- was that certain elements of society, especially those with great wealth, be genetically nurtured while poor and less "desirable" elements should be reduced, an idea known as "eugenics" and popular in Nazi Germany. In fact, the greatest force behind the memorandum, as well as many projects connected to its goals, the Rockefeller Foundation, also funded notorious German eugenics programs until 1939, charges Engdahl.

"John D. Rockefeller III was appointed by President Nixon in July 1969 to head the Commission on Population Control," he writes. "Among his recommendations were the establishment of sex education programs in all schools, population education so that the public appreciated the supposed crisis, and the repeal of all laws that hindered contraceptive means to minors and adults. It proposed making voluntary sterilization easier and liberalizing state laws against abortion. Abortion had been regarded as a major vehicle for fertility control by the Rockefeller circles for decades, hindered by strong opposition from church and other groups.

"A fierce resistance from the Catholic Church, from every Communist country except Romania, as well as from Latin American and Asian nations, convinced leading U.S. policy circles that covert means were needed to implement their project," he informs us in this shocking book -- and then sets about meticulously documenting the way the Rockefellers have orchestrated a number of international trends pointed in the direction of control. It is not an hysterical book. It is one filled with historical facts not generally known. Engdahl is a Princeton graduate who researches history and economic issues.

Why the scope and implications of this memo as well as Rockefeller involvement in eugenics have never created an international sensation is mysterious, for their policies and studies have had a profound influence on every president since that time and in many ways can be seen as the fountainhead for catchphrases such as "freedom of choice," "sex education," and "sustainable development" -- listing as it did the "right of the individual couple to determine freely and responsibly their number and spacing of children and to have information, education, and means to do so."

The goals and implementation of the memorandum are connected to organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group -- all linked to Kissinger and founded at least in part by his bosses, the Rockefellers, whose interest in limiting world populations dates back to its patriarchs in the late 1800s.

Kissinger argued that the world population should be reduced by 500 million by the year 2000 and that the food supply should be controlled by the United States, writes the author. The memo outlined a strategy of promoting fertility control under the rubric of "family planning" and hiding it in foreign aide programs.

"The secret Kissinger plan was implemented immediately," says Engdahl in his book, which deeply documents and focuses on the global purveyance of genetically-modified food. "The thirteen priority countries for population reduction were to undergo drastic changes in their affairs over the following thirty years. Most would not even be aware of what was happening.

"The Brazilian government [for example] was shocked to find that an estimated 44 percent of all Brazilian women aged between 14 and 55 had been permanently sterilized. Most of the older women had been sterilized when the program began in the mid-1970s."

Those sterilizations -- carried out by organizations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Family Health International -- were all under the direction of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The thirteen priority countries: India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Egypt, Mexico, Ethiopia, and Colombia, as well as Brazil.

It is shocking to realize how many high-ranking U.S. officials have come from the Rockefeller Foundation or other Rockefeller-linked organizations and the extent to which such hidden elements in America sought to reduce global population, fearing that a large population would consume valuable natural resources and upset the balance of power (and their wealth).

Instead, the Rockefellers, and others of their ilk, says Engdahl, sought to create a new order in a less populous world. Rockefeller programs have been connected to research leading to everything from the intrauterine device to the abortion pill RU-486.

From its inception, argue some, the Rockefeller Foundation was intent on reducing "inferior" breeds and as far back as the 1920s funded the American Eugenics Society and Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which today is the country's largest abortion-provider.

Could men have really plotted something so nefarious? Would they actually seek to so actively cause human deaths -- or at least, prevent births? And if so, is it then less farfetched to worry about genetically-modified food and something like a flu bug or bio-warfare agent being unleashed, one day, on the unknowing masses -- fears stoked last spring when the swine-flu was found to have strange DNA components?

Perhaps. We will explore that a bit more soon. There are always flu bugs. Their DNA shifts naturally. But the history of powerful men thinking along the lines of "culling the herd" and the Rockefellers' profound interest in genetic and viral research makes  one wonder if such past policies may be what is behind the recent undercurrent of subconscious fear -- picked up intuitively by those who are afraid of everything from forced euthanasia in health-care policies to man-made viruses (or fear the vaccinations used to treat viruses).

Fears are running rampant -- perhaps, out of control.  There is absolutely no reason to believe that any group has engineered swine flu as part of the memorandum or any such policy. One has to be cautious not to fall into the "everything-is-a-conspiracy" mindset. But the fear is more understandable in light of certain researchers who have been connected with the Rockefellers.

"One of the more prominent members of the American Eugenics Society in the early 1920s was Dr. Paul Bowman Popenoe, a U.S. Army venereal disease specialist from World War One, who wrote a textbook entitled Applied Eugenics," writes Engdahl. "In sum, Popenoe said, 'The first method which presents itself is execution... Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated.' He went on to eloquently advocate the 'destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or by bacteria or by bodily deficiency."

[Next: have viruses been intentionally released?]

[see also: Michael H. Brown retreat Minnesota and Retreat in New Jersey]

[Those interested in book can e-mail here]

    E-mail this link directly