Bilderberg is a highly secretive, international think tank and some say, policy forming group which has been meeting annually since May of 1954. Many respected economists have been linked to it, including Joseph Retinger, Kevin Trudeau and Paul Van Zeeland. [1]

Overview

The name came from the group's first meeting place at the Hotel de Bilderberg, in the small Dutch town of Oosterbeek. Bilderberg was founded by Joseph Retinger, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland and is comprised of representatives from North America and Western Europe. Since 1954, The secret meetings have included most of the top ruling class players from Western Europe and America. Until he was implicated in the Lockheed bribery scandal in 1976, Prince Bernhard served as chairman. Now, Bilderberg is a symbol of world management by Atlanticist elites. Some observers feel that it borders on the conspiratorial, while others are primarily interested in its implications for power structure research. [2] Bilderberg participants from the U.S. are almost always members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Since 1973, Japanese elites have been brought into the fold through a third overlapping group, the Trilateral Commission." [3]

According to Richard J. Aldrich, a political lecturer at Nottingham University, Bilderberg is an "informal secretive transatlantic council of key decision makers, developed between 1952 and 1954... It brought leading European and American personalities together once a year for informal discussions of their differences..." The formation of the American branch was entrusted to General Dwight D. Eisenhower's psychological warfare co-ordinator, C.D. Jackson and the first meeting was funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Thereafter, much of its funding came from the Ford Foundation. Annual meetings covered a wide range of subjects.

However, it is clear that the 1957 Treaty of Rome [4] was nurtured by the Bilderberg discussions of the previous year. [5], [6] Mr. Aldrich is the author of The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence. [7]

Founding & history

Founding member Dr. Joseph Retinger, (economist, political philosopher and communist Poland's Charge d'Affaires) was a major proponent of a united Europe. Other founding members were Prince Bernhard, Colin Gubbins (former director of the British Special Operations Executive) and General Walter Bedell Smith, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and CIA Director. Gen. Bedell later became an Under Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration. Their first meeting was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Holland from May 29-31, in 1954. Under the direction of Alastair Buchan, the Chairman of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the governing council was made up of:

Lord Victor Rothschild and Laurance Rockefeller hand picked 100 of the world's elite with the purpose of "regionalizing Europe", according to Giovanni Agnelli, head of the Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Fiat), the 6th largest car maker in the world and the largest car maker in Italy:

"European integration is our goal and where the politicians have failed, we industrialists hope to succeed."

According to Alden Hatch's biography of Prince Bernhard, the group gave birth to what is now the European Union (EU), with the ultimate goal of a one world government. [8] Charles Douglas Jackson, Vice President of Time magazine, delegate to the United Nations (UN), Special Assistant to the President and later publisher of Life Magazine, was spokesperson for the American delegation, led by David Rockefeller. The Bilderberg Group holds annual meetings in locations all over the world. The meetings have been hosted by some of Europe's wealthiest and most connected families, including the Rothschilds and Sweden's powerful Wallenberg family in 1962 and 1973. The Wallenberg's hold a large stake in the pharmaceutical giant, AstraZeneca. [9] Bilderbergers have a heavy cross-membership with the CFR, the English Speaking Union, the Pilgrim Society, the Round Table, and the Trilateral Commission. The meetings were originally chaired by German born Prince Bernhard, husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Queen Juliana was reported to be the richest woman in the world as a result of her partnership with Baron Victor Rothschild in the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Co. She also held stock in Exxon. [10] However, he was forced to resign in August of 1976 over his involvement in the Lockheed Aircraft bribery scandal as well as his extramarital affairs. According to Prince Bernhard:

"Here comes our greatest difficulty. For the governments of the free nations are elected by the people, and if they do something the people don't like they are thrown out. It is difficult to reeducate the people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supernational body..."

Walter Scheel of Germany succeeded him and then Britain's Lord Carrington. Bilderberg policy is carried out by a 35 member Bilderberg Steering Committee, including an inner circle "Advisory Committee". Steering Committee members have included:

All American members of the Steering Committee are also members of the CFR. There are approximately 120 invitees to the Bilderberg meetings, about two thirds are European and the rest are North American. Approximately one third come from the government and political sector while the remaining two thirds are represent finance, industry, labor, education and the media. The meetings are sealed off from the public and the press, with the exception of a brief press conference at the conclusion of each meeting on the general topics covered. Resorts and hotels where the meetings are held are cleared of residents and visitors and surrounded by soldiers, armed guards, Secret Service, state and local police. Conference areas are scanned for bugging devices prior to every meeting.

See also persons who have attended Bilderberg meetings.[11]

Globalization

European Parliament in Brussels. - November 11, 2009

The group decided that it would invite 100 of the world's most powerful people in Europe and North America to meet once a year for two days at a different five-star resort. The group stresses secrecy:

"What's said at a Bilderberg conference stays at a Bilderberg conference."

Several high-profile journalists have been invited over the years, with the understanding not to report on the proceedings. "Break the rule and you're not invited back." Skeptics argue that members can spend their private time hatching plans to control world politics and economics, ensuring the wealthy and powerful maintain their powerful grip on an enslaved population that keeps the machinery running. Some have argued that Bilderbergers have withheld cancer cures so as not to anger the global pharmaceutical industry. (It is worth noting that the Rockefeller empire, in tandem with Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), owns over half of the pharmaceutical interests in the United States.) It is the largest drug manufacturing combine in the world. See also Rockefeller Foundation. They've also kept technology out of the public domain that would allow cars to travel 75 kilometres on a litre of gas in the interest of "big oil". James Tucker, an American libertarian and journalist, has been a critic of the Bilderberg group for decades. A few days before the 2006 meeting, he wrote:

"When meeting last year in Rottach-Egern, Germany, Bilderberg called for dramatic increases in the price of oil. Oil prices started climbing immediately from $40 a barrel to $70."

According to Mr. Tucker, the group uses its influence to organize wars to overthrow "unfriendly" leaders. The Bilderbergers have also been accused of backing campaigns of politicians friendly to big business interests. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton spoke at a Bilderberg conference a year before his election victory, as did British Prime Minister Tony Blair. According to the current chairman, Belgian politician and businessman Etienne Davignon, the steering committee that organizes the annual meetings is "excellent at spotting talent." It would seem so. Former prime ministers Paul Martin, Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau, all attended Bilderberg conferences. Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended the 2003 Bilderberg conference in Versailles, France, while he was Opposition leader. However, the Bilderbergers were not pleased with Harper because of the Kyoto Protocol, which they were backing. The group also pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTA). See also David Rockefeller.

According to Mr. Tucker, they also "turned NATO into the UN's standing army. It's a step on the road to creating world government." [12]

Inside Bilderberg

Interview with Daniel Estulin. - Snowshoe Documentaries - October 19, 2007

The Bilderbergers had been spooking the world since 1954, though their ghost-like founders have been in operation much longer. One of the most aggressive Bilderberg leaders is David Rockefeller, scion of the billionaire Rockefeller clan and shadowy presence behind hundreds of think tanks and grants. He is the leading man behind the Bilderberg gatherings of European Royalty, international CEO’s and high level bureaucrats that pull the strings of various governments, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and European Central banks. Since 1992, Daniel Estulin has managed to find the location of yearly Bilderberg meetings as they were announced, always just one week ahead of time. Meetings are held in a small town outside a major city, cloak and daggered with armed security guards. The meetings are designed to make attendees feel "free enough” to utter their innermost thoughts. Uninvited, Mr. Estulin arrives days in advance to bond with hotel and security staff while giving them a history of the group. There are also those who know the history and seek him out, eager to reveal the “innermost thoughts” of Bilderburgers. [13] According to his reports on the 2007 Bilderberg activities in Istanbul, Turkey:

“From now on, the only sure thing is that supply will continue to diminish and prices will continue to increase. In these conditions world conflict is a physical certainty. End of oil means end of world’s financial system, something which has already been acknowledged by Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, two full time members of the Bilderberger inner circle. Goldman Sachs oil report, (another full time member of the Bilderberger elite) published on March 30, 2005 increased the oil price range for the year 2005-6 from $55-$80 per barrel to $55-$105. During the 2006 meeting, Bilderbergers have confirmed that their short range price estimate for oil for the 2007-08 continues to hover around US $105-150/barrel. ...No wonder Jose Barroso, President of the European Commission, announced several months ago during the unveiling of the new European energy policy that the time has come for a ‘post-industrial age.’ To bring the world into the post-industrial age, you first need to destroy the world's economic base and create another Great Depression. When people are poor, they don't spend money, they don't travel, and they don't consume.”

On mid-eastern oil:

“ ...the United States needs to control the region, not only for its oil reserves but, most importantly to help it sustain world economic hegemony. Under this strategic design, regional states will be turned to weak domains of sectarian sheikhs with little or no sovereignty and, by implications, a pathetic agenda of their economic development. Regional chaos favours the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, which in turn reinforces the process of political and social disintegration supported by the Bilderbergers.”

Mr. Estulin’s Bilderberg 2007: Welcome to the Lunatic Fringe included a list of objectives for the year and a complete list of attendees.[14]

The Logan Act

This super-powerful world organization runs out of an 18m2 (194 square feet) office, staffed by one person. It uses one one telephone line and a single fax number. There is no web page or name plate on the door. The independent press have never been allowed access and no statements have ever been released on the attendees' conclusions. No Bilderberg meeting agenda has ever been made public. "It is the epitome of low-profile dark ops, a shadow government hidden in a doorway." According to critics and close observers, it's agenda is to weaken all world leadership but their own. It is also, according to a U.S. law called the Logan Act, [15] illegal:

"A US law, called the Logan Act, states explicitly that it is against the law for federal officials to attend secret meetings with private citizens to develop public policies. Although Bilderberg 2005 was missing one of its luminaries, US State Department official John Bolton who was testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the American government was well represented in Rottach-Egern by Alan Hubbard, assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council; William Luti, deputy under secretary of defense; James Wolfensohn, outgoing president of the World Bank and Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of state, an ideologue of the Iraq War and incoming president of the World Bank. By attending Bilderberg 2005 meeting, these people are breaking federal laws of the United States.”[16]

See also Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005 by Daniel Estulin in Counterpunch. [17]

Bilderberg & the media

Secret Societies - History Channel - 2008

Hilaire du Berrier was the publisher of the Monte Carlo-based Hilaire du Berrier Reports. Mr. Du Berrier closely followed and chronicled the activities of Bilderberg and its overlapping groups, for over four decades. In a September of 1991 issue of the Hilaire du Berrier Report (also reported elsewhere in the French press), David Rockefeller addressed media facilitators at the 1991 annual Bilderberg meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany. In his talk, Mr. Rockefeller, a member of the Bilderbergers, former Director on the CFR (1949-1985) and co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, thanked them (most of whom are also members of one or more of these groups) for their "discretion":

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. ...It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated now and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries.” [18], [19], [20]

Media blackout

There is a virtual media blackout on Bilderberg meetings. For example, not a single corporate media source covered the 56th Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia in June of 2008. According to Kurt Nimo of Infowars:

According to Parascope:

“Critics have suggested that the media have been slow to investigate and report on the Bilderberg because many corporate news executives and journalists are members of the Group. Like all other Bilderberg attendees, these individuals have agreed to remain silent about the meetings, in spite of their responsibilities as high-ranking members of the national and international media…. Although underground information activists have managed to pierce the local media bubbles and gather useful information about the Bilderberg’s meetings, scrutiny of the Group in the establishment press is still verboten.”[22]

Harassment of journalists

While British reporter Jon Ronson was reporting on the Bilderberg meeting in June of 1999, he found himself "chased by mysterious men in dark glasses through Portugal":

"When I phoned the British embassy and asked them to explain to the powerful secret society that had set their goons on me that I was essentially a humorous journalist out of my depth, I wasn't being funny. I was being genuinely desperate."

British reporter Charles Skelton had similar experiences after The Guardian, one of Britain's leading newspapers, sent him to the May of 2009 Bilderberg conference in Greece:

"Only out of sheer desperation did I try to arrest one of the goons following me and then follow my flimsy leads up the Greek police ladder, finally catching one of the goons wet-handed in the lavatory of the department of government security. And only then did I know the extent of Bilderberg's paranoia: they had set the state police on me. ...So who is the paranoid one? Me, hiding in stairwells, watching the pavement behind me in shop windows, staying in the open for safety? Or Bilderberg, with its two F-16s, circling helicopters, machine guns, navy commandos and policy of repeatedly detaining and harassing a handful of journalists? Who's the nutter? Me or Baron Mandelson? Me or Paul Volker, the head of Obama's economic advisory board? Me or the president of Coca-Cola?"

Safety in numbers

"... There is another reason why Ronson was hounded round Portugal, why I was chased round Greece, and why on Sunday the Romanian journalist Paul Dorneanu was strip-searched by goons in Vouliagmeni, held for four hours and forced to purge his camera of images (for the crime of trying to film the delegates leaving). And it is this: they can harass and detain us only because so few of us are there. ...I have learned this from the random searches, detentions, angry security goon proddings and thumped police desks without number that I've had to suffer on account of Bilderberg: I have spent the week living in a nightmare possible future and many different terrible pasts. I have had the very tiniest glimpse into a world of spot checks and unchecked security powers. " [23]

For the entire Guardian series by Charlie Skelton, see also Charlie Skelton's Bilderberg files. [24]

Bilderberg Conferences (subsection)

See also Bilderberg Conferences.

Support & funding

The American Friends of Bilderbergs is an IRS approved charitable organization that has received regular contributions from corporations such as Exxon, Arco and IBM. Their meetings are funded by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. [25]

Members

American Friends of Bilderberg

The U.S. group is directed by Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Paul Arthur Allaire and Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke.

International steering committee

The international steering committee includes Conrad Black, publisher of the London Telegraph and Jerusalem Post and newspapers throughout the U.S. and Canada; Vernon Eulion Jordan, Jr., George J. Mitchell, Kissinger and Rockefeller. [26]

Permanent U.S. members

Permanent U.S. members of the Bilderberg include George W. Ball, Gabriel Hauge, Richard C. Holbrooke, Winston Lord, Bill Moyers and Paul Wolfowitz. The permanent Bilderberg Secretariat is located at 1 Smidswater, the Hague, the Netherlands. Another address is sometimes reported at 2301 Da Leiden, the Netherlands.[27]

Charles W. Muller

American Friends of Bilderbergs, Inc.

477 Madison Ave., 6th Floor

New York, NY 10022



Phone: +1 (212) 879 0545



Articles & sources

Sourcewatch articles

References

External articles

External resources

Documents which reference meetings