The Bilderberg
"Blackout"The press corps' noncoverage of that weekend conference in Chantilly, Va.
Posted Monday, June 9, 2008, at 8:32 PM ET
About this time each year, the Bilderberg group convenes a weekend conference in a hotel or resort somewhere in North America or Europe in which 120 or so billionaires, bankers, politicians, industrialists, scholars, government officials, influentials from labor and education, and journalists assemble to discuss world affairs in private.
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StumbleUponThis year, the 56th Bilderberg meeting took place over the weekend at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Va., seven miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. As in previous years, Bilderberg critics are berating the mainstream press for observing a "blackout" of a group they believe directs a secret, shadow government.
The critics claim that Bilderberg grooms future American presidents and future British prime ministers, pointing to Bill Clinton's attendance in 1991 and Tony Blair's in 1993. Time magazine reported in 2004 that John Edwards impressed attendees at the Bilderberg session in Italy, after which John Kerry asked him to join his presidential ticket.
According to the 1980 book Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was enthusiastic about sending staffers to Bilderberg, President John F. Kennedy drew heavily from Bilderberg alumni—Dean Rusk, George W. Ball, George McGhee, Walter Rostow, Arthur Dean, and Paul Nitze—to staff his administration, and many Carter administration officials had attended the retreat.
According to a list published by one critic, the attendees of Bilderberg 2008 include Henry Kissinger, Ben S. Bernanke, David Rockefeller, Vin Weber, Henry Kravis, Robert B. Zoellick, Donald Graham, Vernon Jordan, Charlie Rose, and their equals from Europe. Protestors staked out the elite at the hotel's entrance and recorded "surveillance" videos inside and outside the minimum-security facility before the event commenced.
About this much the Bilderberg critics are right: The mainstream media ignored Bilderberg 2008. According to Nexis, Wonkette and Raw Story noted the event and the critics' objections on the Web. A simple Web search produces Bilderberg detractors Alex Jones and Jim Tucker sounding their alarms.
And about this, too, the Bilderberg critics are right: The meeting of 120 prominent world figures probably constitutes some kind of news. Yet to be fair to the mainstream press, it's tough to report from a private gathering locked down tight by professional security.
Bilderberg organizers expect participants to keep the weekend's discussions off-the-record, stating in a press release this year that "the privacy of the meetings has no purpose other than to allow participants to speak their minds openly and freely." Bilderberg isn't the only international group that asks participants to zip their lips. The United Kingdom's Chatham House enshrined such a rule back in 1927, and similar requirements apply at some Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Strategy Group meetings, just to name a few. Private groups meet in almost every town in the world for confidential chats. It's the way of the world. Bilderberger gab does occasionally leak, as with John Edwards' 2004 talk, but the poshes and powerful generally zip their lips.
What do you suppose would result if, say, the Washington Post had assigned a reporter to Chantilly's luminary jamboree? The Associated Press sent a reporter to cover the 1978 Bilderberger session in Princeton, N.J., but all he filed was a scene piece describing "men in gray suits and sunglasses" chasing him away from the "off limits" grounds of the Henry Chauncey Conference Center. From that dispatch (by Steve Hindy):
Kissinger casually strolled around a small manmade pond Saturday, coming within a few feet of the road leading into the complex.
He circled the pond twice, first with a gray-haired pipe-smoking man and then with a younger man. Kissinger appeared grave and attentive while the men talked of things like "range limitations."
Kissinger looked annoyed and declined comment when approached by a reporter.
One of two Secret Service agents trailing the former secretary nodded sympathetically saying, "You've got to give it your best shot."
And yet the "mainstream press" can hardly be accused of blacking out Bilderberg. The New York Times has mentioned Bilderberg a couple dozen times since 1981, according to Nexis, including in a 2004 piece titled "A Secret Conference Thought To Rule the Word." Other pieces in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe refer to the group. Just last month, Anne-Marie Slaughter mentioned the Bilderbergers in her Post review of a new book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.
Of course, Bilderberg critics don't want to read mentions in the press. They want to see confirmation of their theories that the group operates in a sinister, behind-the-scenes fashion to exploit the powerless and throttle liberty.
How, exactly, are reporters supposed to do that when the critics rarely provide falsifiable evidence of Bilderberg malevolence? Would a shadow government, should it exist, really convene annually at a hotel to hash out the world's fate? Would it really issue a press release about its latest meeting? Would it routinely assume the security risks of inviting new blood in? (Couldn't the notorious Bilderberger Conrad Black negotiate his way out of prison by exposing the group? Or is Bilderberg so powerful that it controls the federal prison system, too?) It largely limits its attendees to North Americans and Europeans. Are the Japanese, Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, Australians, South Koreans, and Singaporean so timid that they stand aside and let the Bilderbergers have their way with the world without making a peep?
That's not to say the critics' inquiries never produce anything of value. I enjoy reading the documentary material they dig up and can only encourage them to dig deeper. Just last month, Barack Obama tapped a prominent Bilderberger, James A. Johnson, to vet possible vice presidential candidates. Johnson provided similar veep vetting for the Democratic Party in 2004—which, as noted above, resulted in the selection of a Bilderberg attendee. The AP also reports that Johnson helped Walter Mondale pick a veep nominee in 1984.
Who is Jim Johnson? He's the former head of Fannie Mae, a power on Wall Street, and a regular Bilderberg attendee. As recently as 2006, Johnson has been the treasurer of the nonprofit American Friends of Bilderberg Inc., according to the group's Form 990 on file at Guidestar.org. According to the fractured jargon of the filing, American Friends of Bilderberg is in the business of "Organizing & sponsoring conferences which study & discuss significant problems of the Western Alliance. Collaborating on the Bilderberg meetings held in Europe & North America." The group spent $112,533 in 2006.
Still, the fact that an active Democratic supporter has performed return duty as a veep vetter stops several stations short of arriving at a shadow government. It does, however, indicate that Johnson's political influence may be underscrutinized by the press and that his career is deserving of extra study and attention. A May 24 Wall Street Journal story, "Power Broker Helps Obama Search for Running Mate," does just that. Although it makes no mention of Johnson's Bilderberg connection, it drops a gentle dig that associates Johnson's Fannie Mae service with the home-loan crisis.
Without a doubt, Bilderberg ends up stimulating speculations that it's a nefarious organization. In an earlier generation, some theorists regarded the Council on Foreign Relations as a similar shadow government for its furtive ways. But as the CFR opened up in recent decades, holding many sessions on the record, it has become as threatening as the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Maybe there's a lesson in there for the Bilderbergers. Letting the press in for a closer look at what goes on would go a long way to reduce the shouting while preserving the group's right to think out loud. Or maybe all the heavy security and skulking about is a deliberate marketing ploy by Bilderberg to differentiate its yacht cruise from the ocean voyage that is Davos.
*******
I expect mail. Lots of mail. Maybe enough to break my inbox. Send to . (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co. Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the word Bilderberg in the subject head of an e-mail message and send it to .
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Remarks from the Fray:
Our society is claimed to be in some sense a democracy. If the people who have attained power in same can sit around and cook up our future for us every year, and our news media doesn't even mention each year that they're doing it, then that suggests rather strongly what we actually live in -- an oligarchy. Apparently editors know this, and humbly refrain from bothering their betters.
Just a yearly mention of the fact of this meeting, together with a list of the attendees, would remind us that something's going on in those rarefied realms that we the people perhaps should know about. Just such a mention, alone, might also give us the ability to infer other interesting information, like who the masters have lined up to rule us next. The fact of reporters' being hustled away by security would also have enlightening implications.
And finally, don't you suppose that our once-marvelously inquisitive reporters could occasionally go further and even find out what was actually discussed there? Wouldn't you like to know? Don't most of us know enough history to be aware that when the rulers have total secrecy in which to confer they are more likely to make decisions that the plebs wouldn't like? My goodness! Forewarned we might even be able to organize politically and defeat some of those dispositions.
But, apparently appropriately in this writer's view, editors are happy not to run the risk of fomenting any such dangerous knowledge or disruptions. I expect nothing less. Ever since we started to see special boxes being constructed in our stadia for the nobles, I've known that the old nonsense about democracy has been dying, and the new reality has been a secret open to the people if they want to see it, and they don't. Best to just trust the masters.
--dianasatyr
(To reply, click here.)
The Bilderberger group is what it is-a bunch of wealthy people who are from the western world who want to remain wealthy and remain in positions of power secured by wealth rather than politics. Rich people have done this for centuries and have long understood the benefits of networking among their own.
The so called "shadow government" is a bit of a stretch. I doubt highly that these men gather together to seal the fate of Mulder and Skully as many people would indicate. The value of their meetings has much more to do with the day to day networking they will do later by phone, email, and most importantly money. These people are beyond personal wealth. They are looking ahead 50 or more years to see about where to invest and plan-and in that way, this is about Wall Street and about global plans to spend money-who and on what.
For example, if Kissinger is telling Rockefeller that he thinks there will be a war in the middle east in five years, Rockefeller makes sure the factories he has are positioned to make tanks and planes-he has engineers designing them for desert combat and he has plans of who in the US government would be directing the spending which of course goes to his factories. It is of course a bet of sorts-Rockefeller cannot guarantee that war and the profits to follow can he?
They are about money and it all ties them together really. The Bilderbergers are not really interested in culture or personalities or religions unless they play a role in the fortunes of the club members-so their influence remains largely on the investment world and the corporate world.
To have a reporter there makes sense-especially to tell us who is in the club. But I wouldn't expect a report on the crystal ball reading which goes on there. This is a gathering of people who can and do influence world events-of people who play the game from 50,000 feet above it all. But it is also internally competitive and in many ways is like Survivor: Wall Street-let the backstabbing begin!
--The Real RML
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The question is pretty simple: what do 120 or so very wealthy and powerful people do all day? Pursue the expansion and retention of their wealth and power, of course. Duh.
So what happens when 120 billionaires, media moguls, bankers, industrialists, spooks, and politicians and civil servants met in private, and what do they talk about in their secret conversations when they meet in private?
Golf? Sure. But exclusively golf? Hardly.
So, it's not a conspiracy then? So what is it? Why, it is merely 120 very powerful people discussing their mutual interests and how to promote them. In secret. You know, so they can be frank. In case one of them wants to say something, you know, frankly.
Oh. I feel better knowing it is not a conspiracy.
It can hardly be called democratic though, now can it? Quite the contrary, in fact. Anti-democratic in fact. Secret exclusive access to politicians and civil servants, away from the, um, rest of the republic.
It's just an opportunity for the wealthy and powerful elite to get together and compare frank thoughts on wealth and power, in, you know, secrecy. Away from the unfrank eyes and ears of the unpowerful unwashed. Or their pesky media.
Oh. That's all? I feel much better now.
--Sarvis
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Seriously, based on the comments for this article, you'd think that the second your net worth tops $1B or you are inaugurated into public office, you suddenly cede your soul to Satan and become this megalomaniacal, money hungry, power grabbing, dictatorial autocrat.
Isn't it possible that people who've been fortunate enough to build up a huge pile of assets (or even, yes, inherit them) might still have a conscience? And isn't it possible that people who've entered into public office have done so with the intention of enriching their own communities and those around the world? And isn't it indeed likely that people in these positions might every now and then enjoy chatting with and bouncing ideas off of their peers?
Why is it the assumption that having money or power automatically breeds an insatiable desire for more of both? Not every CEO is Monty Burns, nor is every world leader Kim Jong-il.
--finkyboy
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(6/10)