

Bill Gates

WASHINGTON – Some of the richest men and women in the world met secretly recently in New York to conspire on using their vast wealth to bring the world's population growth under control.

The meeting included some of the biggest names in the "billionaires club," according to the London Times – Bill Gates, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffett, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.

The meeting at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and president of Rockefeller University, was the inspiration of Gates and took place three weeks ago.

"The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires' aides were told they were at 'security briefings,'" the Times reported today.

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Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, speculated that the secrecy surrounding the meeting may have been due to concern that "they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal."

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According to the Times, the billionaires were each given 15 minutes to present their favorite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an "umbrella cause" that could harness their interests. Taking their cue from Gates, the report said, they agreed population control was the No. 1 issue.

In February, Gates, 53, outlined an ambitious plan to cap global population at 8.3 billion – about one billion fewer than currently projected.

Patricia Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said the billionaires would continue to meet over the next few months.

A guest at the meeting told the Times population growth would be addressed as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.

"This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers," said the guest. "They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming."

As to secrecy, the guest said, "They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government."

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