The Bilderberg Council
A Secretive Group of Powerful Elites Meets Annually
If someone wanted to create and organization to excite the imagination of conspiracy theorists they would create The Bilderberg Council.
Bilderbergers Are Top People from Business, Government, and Academe
In his diaries, the former leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrat Party, Paddy Ashdown wrote that the Bilderberg Council was “described to me as ‘fifty people who run the world and twenty hangers on.’ ”
Ashdown attended the group’s 2000 gathering in Spain and found himself in the company of “Henry Kissinger, Lord Carrington (former Secretary General of NATO), The King and Queen of Spain, The Queen of Holland, Phillipe Gonzalez the prime minister of Spain, Wilfried Martens the Prime Minister of Belgium, Dr. Franz Vranitzky the Chancellor of Austria…”
Others known to have attended Bilderberg conferences include, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, university professors, directors of economics think tanks, and the chief executives of just about every major corporation including Shell, Nokia, H.J. Heinz, Barclay’s Bank, IBM, and many, many others. It’s the world’s A-team of international powerbrokers.
Bilderberg Annual Meetings Held in Secret
The group holds an annual conference over a long weekend in the northern hemisphere's spring, most recently in Greece (2009). Before that, the meetings were held in the United States (2008), Turkey (2007), Canada (2006), and Germany (2005).
There’s nothing sinister about the Bilderberg Council according to its members. It’s a chance for members to discuss world affairs off-the-record and away from the glare of publicity; in this way they can be frank and open.
Questions about Bilderberg Group’s Purpose
Many outsiders are not so sure the Bilderberg Council is as innocent as its members claim. Jim Tucker has been following the group for more than 30 years and he’s doubtful. Mr. Tucker was a reporter for the right-wing weekly The Spotlight, which was published by the now-defunct Liberty Lobby in Washington.
In 2005, Tucker wrote “Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary”, a book chronicling his long investigation of the group.
Interviewed in the British magazine Punch in 1998, Tucker said: “They want you to believe they are simply improving international relations. But, they are controlling the world and making decisions that influence all of us with absolutely no democratic control on what they do.”
Bilderberg Gatherings Surrounded by Secrecy
Bilderberg meetings are generally held in remote locations making it easier to throw a security cordon around its members. What goes on in the meetings is completely secret.
The media make attempts at covering the meetings but almost always without success.
Jonathan Duffy of the BBC News Online reported on these carefully guarded functions on June 3, 2004. He wrote that phone callers are never able to get past a recorded message to “leave a message after the tone.”
Duffy reported that “What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.
“Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted.”
Bilderberg Conspiracy Theories Range from Benign to Malignant
There are lots of people who figure that such secrecy must mean the Bilderbergers are up to something they don’t want the world at large to know about.
Websites on the Bilderberg Council range from those of thoughtful critics to outrageous conspiracy theorists. Some critics accuse the group of manipulating global finances and establishing rigid and binding monetary rates around the world. Others say it selects political figures the Bilderberg decrees should become rulers, and targets those it wants removed from power. Some even believe the Bilderbergers decide which countries will wage war on others.
Jonathan Duffy at the BBC wrote that, “In Yugoslavia, leading Serbs have blamed Bilderberg for triggering the war which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the London nail-bomber David Copeland, and Osama Bin Laden are all said to have bought into the theory that Bilderberg pulls the strings with which national governments dance.”
One of the people who helped form the group was Dennis Healy, who went on to become Britain’s finance minister. When faced with the claim that the Bilderberg Council is a shadowy manipulator of world events Lord Healy’s response was “Crap…It’s simply a place for discussion.”
Hotel De Bilderberg where the Meetings Started.
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