WASHINGTON – Raising more suspicions about plans for the future integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, a high-level, top-secret meeting of the North American Forum took place this month in Banff – with topics ranging from "A Vision for North America," "Opportunities for Security Cooperation" and "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration."

While the conference took place a week ago, only now are documents about participants and agenda items leaking out.

Despite "confirmed" participants including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey, former Immigration and Naturalization Services Director Doris Meissner, North American Union guru Robert Pastor, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Energy Secretary and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and top officials of both Mexico and Canada, there has been no press coverage of the event. The only media member scheduled to appear at the event, according to documents obtained by WND, was the Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady.

The event was organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Canada West Foundation, an Alberta think-tank that promotes closer economic integration with the United States.

The Canadian event is just the latest of a series of meetings, policy papers and directives that have citizens, officials and members of the media wondering whether these efforts represent some sort of coordinated effort to implement a "merger" some have characterized as "NAFTA on steroids."

Nevertheless, opposition is mounting. And it's not just coming from the tinfoil hat brigade.

Perhaps the most blistering criticism came earlier this summer from Lou Dobbs of CNN – a frequent critic of President Bush's immigration policies.

"A regional prosperity and security program?" he asked rhetorically in a recent cablecast. "This is absolute ignorance. And the fact that we are – we reported this, we should point out, when it was signed. But, as we watch this thing progress, these working groups are continuing. They're intensifying. What in the world are these people thinking about? You know, I was asked the other day about whether or not I really thought the American people had the stomach to stand up and stop this nonsense, this direction from a group of elites, an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value. And I hope, I pray that I'm right when I said yes. But this is – I mean, this is beyond belief."

What has Dobbs and a few other vocal critics bugged began in earnest March 31, 2005, when the elected leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada agreed to advance the agenda of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

No one seems quite certain what that agenda is because of the vagueness of the official declarations. But among the things the leaders of the three countries agreed to work toward were borders that would allow for easier and faster moving of goods and people between the countries.

Coming as the announcement did in the midst of a raging national debate in the U.S. over borders seen as far to open already, more than a few jaws dropped.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. and the chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus as well as author of the new book, "In Mortal Danger," may be the only elected official to challenge openly the plans for the new superstate.

Responding to a WorldNetDaily report, Tancredo is demanding the Bush administration fully disclose the activities of the government office implementing the trilateral agreement that has no authorization from Congress.

Tancredo wants to know the membership of the Security and Prosperity Partnership groups along with their various trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements reached with counterparts in Mexico and Canada.

Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen, welcomed Tancredo's efforts.

"It's time for the Bush administration to come clean," Gilchrist said. "If President Bush's agenda is to establish a new North American union government to supersede the sovereignty of the United States, then the president has an obligation to tell this to the American people directly. The American public has a right to know."

Geri Word, who heads the SPP office, told WND the work had not been disclosed because, "We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public."

WND can find no specific congressional legislation authorizing the SPP working groups nor any congressional committees taking charge of oversight.

Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form.

Phyllis Schlafly, the woman best known for nearly single-handedly leading the opposition that killed the Equal Rights Amendment, sees a sinister and sweeping agenda behind the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

"Is the real push behind guest-worker proposals the Bush goal to expand NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which he signed at Waco, Texas, last year and reaffirmed at Cancun, Mexico, this year?" she asks. "Bush is a globalist at heart and wants to carry out his father's oft-repeated ambition of a 'new world order.'"

She accuses the president and others behind the effort of wanting to obliterate U.S. borders in an effort to increase the Mexican population transfer and lower wages for the benefit of U.S. corporate interests.

"Bush meant what he said, at Waco, Texas, in March 2005, when he announced his plan to convert the United States into a 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' by erasing our borders with Canada and Mexico," she said. "Bush's guest-worker proposal would turn the United States into a boardinghouse for the world's poor, enable employers to import an unlimited number of 'willing workers' at foreign wage levels, and wipe out what's left of the U.S. middle class. Bush lives in a house well protected by a fence and security guards and he associates with rich people who live in gated communities. Yet, for five years, he has refused to protect the property and children of ordinary Arizona citizens from trespassers and criminals."

That's unusually harsh criticism of a Republican president from one of Ronald Reagan's most loyal supporters.

At least one of the nation's daily newspapers has officially weighed in opposition to the mysterious plans for closer cooperation in security, commerce and immigration between the three North American nations.

Recently, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review questioned the unchallenged momentum toward merger.

"Will Americans trade their dead presidents for Ameros?" the newspaper asked in an editorial last month.

The paper chided efforts at replacing the U.S. and Canadian dollars and Mexican peso with "the amero" – a knockoff of the euro – along with the building of "a looming NAFTA-like superstate." Citing the meeting between the three national leaders at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in March 2005, the editorial warned: "Canadians, Mexicans and Americans who value the sovereignty of their respective countries should be concerned."

The Tribune Review editorial saw synergy between the plans of the national leaders and the ambitious agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations – seen by many as a kind of secretive, shadow government of the elite. The CFR issued a bold report in the spring of 2005, shortly after the joint announcements in Waco by Bush and his counterparts.

"The Council on Foreign Relations published a report in May – "Building a North American Community" – calling for, among other things, redefining the borders of the three nations, creating a super-regional governance board and the North American Paramilitary Group to ensure that Congress does not interfere with whatever the trilateral union feels like doing," said the paper. "Must the Bush administration happily sacrifice every shred of American sovereignty for the greater good of the New World Order?"

In fact, the CFR report is a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter."

Some see it as the blueprint for merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It calls for "a common economic space ... for all people in the region, a space in which trade, capital and people flow freely."

The CFR's strategy calls specifically for "a more open border for the movement of goods and people." It calls for laying "the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America." It calls for efforts to "harmonize visa and asylum regulations." It calls for efforts to "harmonize entry screening."

In "Building a North American Community," the report states that Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin "committed their governments" to this goal March 23, 2005, at that meeting in Waco, Texas.

Alan Burkhart, who describes himself as a free-lance political writer, cross-country trucker "and proud citizen of one of the reddest of the Red States – Mississippi," is another critic seething over these plans that seem to have a life of their own – with little or no real public debate.

"As time passes, American corporations will find it unnecessary to move their facilities out of the country," writes Burkhart. "Our already stagnant wages will be just as low as those of Mexico. The cultures of three great nations will be diluted. Our currency will be replaced with the 'Amero.' And, we'll be one giant step closer to the U.N.'s perverse dream of a one-world government."

The Amero is not a new concept. It was first proposed by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, in a monograph titled "The Case for the Amero" in 1999.

In June, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America made one of its most visible and public moves since it was first announced last year. In Washington, June 15, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba and Canadian Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier joined North American business leaders to launch the North American Competitiveness Council. It was a major development that showed the March 2005 meeting was no fluke – and that the plans announced by the three national leaders then were continuing to take shape. The NACC was first announced by Bush, Harper and Fox.

Made up of 10 high-level business leaders from each country, the NACC will meet annually with senior North American government officials "to provide recommendations and help set priorities for promoting regional competitiveness in the global economy."

Officially, the council has the mandate to advise the governments on improving trade in key sectors such as automobiles, transportation, manufacturing and services. The three countries do more than $800 billion in trilateral trade.

Gutierrez said the Bush administration is determined to develop a "border pass" on schedule despite worries about its implementation. The new land pass is to be in effect for Canadians, Americans and Mexicans by Jan. 1, 2008.

The U.S. executives involved in the NACC include: United Parcel Service Inc. Chairman Michael Eskew; Frederick Smith, chairman of FedEx Corp.; Lou Schorsh, chief executive of Mittal Steel USA; Joseph Gilmour, president of New York Life Insurance Co.; William Clay Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Co.; Rick Wagoner, chairman of General Motors Corp.; Raymond Gilmartin, CEO of Merck & Co. Inc.; David O'Reilly, chief executive of Chevron Corp.; Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of General Electric Co.; Lee Scott, president of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.; Robert Stevens, chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp.; Michael Haverty, chairman of Kansas City Southern; Douglas Conant, president of Campbell's Soup Co. and James Kilt, vice-chairman of Gillette Inc.

The concerns about the direction such powerful men could lead Americans without their knowledge is only heightened when interlocking networks are discovered. For instance, one of the components envisioned for this future "North American Union" is a superhighway running from Mexico, through the U.S. and into Canada. It is being promoted by the North American SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO, a non-profit group "dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America."

The president of NASCO is George Blackwood, who earlier launched the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership. In fact, NAITCP later morphed into NASCO. A NAIPC summit meeting in 2004, attended by senior Mexican government officials, heard from Robert Pastor, an American University professor who wrote "Toward a North American Community," a book promoting the development of a North American union as a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Evidence of increasing international trade truck traffic on Interstate 35 through Minnesota raises concerns that NAFTA Superhighway traffic contributed to last week's collapse of the freeway bridge in Minneapolis.

President George W. Bush, aboard Marine One, takes an aerial survey of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Saturday, Aug. 4, 2007

WND has unearthed a Federal Highway Administration report dating back to 1998 that warned increasing NAFTA truck traffic was expected to create a safety concern with bridges in states along the I-35 NAFTA Superhighway, including Minnesota.

The study concluded that, "The I-35 Corridor's multimodal transportation hubs – where air, rail, river, and truck cargo converge – make I-35 ideally positioned to be a major route for what is expected to be increasing levels of international trade activity."

The study warned that, "Over the next few decades, about 65 percent of I-35 will require major upgrades, however the entire route will have a continued need for rehabilitating pavements, resurfacing sections of the highway, and providing replacements of some bridge decks. Bridge substructures and superstructures will also need to be maintained, requiring repairs to maintain the integrity of the bridges."

The FHWA study was conducted in conjunction with the Departments of Transportation in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota, and assessed I-35 from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn.

A comprehensive study of freight traffic conducted by the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA, shows conclusively a large percentage of the freight carried through Minnesota is carried by truck.

FHWA data show that in 2002, a total of 280.7 million tons of freight moved through Minnesota, 86 percent of which was carried by truck.

The trend line shows dramatic increases projected, with freight traffic through Minnesota expected to double by 2035, to a total of 551.5 million tons, of which 88 percent will be carried by truck.

The bridge collapsed at rush hour, with an estimated 100-150 trucks and trains on the structure in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Officials in Minnesota had been warned since 1990 that the bridge was "structurally deficient" and severely fatigued from the increasing volume of traffic the bridge, which spans the Mississippi River along Interstate 35, was receiving.

North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. (NASCO), a Dallas-based trade association, also designates I-35 as a NAFTA Superhighway.

NASCO's website states, "There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35."

The original 2005 NASCO website opened with a graphic map of I-35 that highlighted in yellow the continental nature of the I-35 NAFTA Superhighway, illustrating clearly the highway's links into Mexico and Canada.

NASCO's original map highlighted the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada

WND has previously reported the Minnesota Department of Transportation joined NASCO as a member in 2006, after a heavy lobbying campaign launched by NASCO executive director Tiffany Melvin.

As fully documented on the Texas Department of Transportation website, the department plans to build a new Trans-Texas Corridor parallel to Interstate 35, and NASCO has yet to repudiate these new superhighway construction plans.

The debate whether or not to build a new TTC-like NAFTA Superhighway parallel to I-35 or to repair and rebuild I-35 to accommodate NAFTA and other global trade traffic required by 2025 and beyond, including projections of international truck and train freight travel, is now being debated by the states north of I-35.

As WND has reported, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett has repudiated his signing in 2004 of a document described as "The Declaration of North American Integration."

Cornett told WND he was opposed to the creation of a North American Union or the extension of TTC-35 into Oklahoma, "if the whole point is to make it cheaper to transport containers from China coming through Mexican ports."

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com