Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
A German member of the 1974 Bilderberg, meeting in France, stated matters quite clearly. “Half a dozen knowledgeable people had managed, in effect, to set the world’s monetary system working again, and it was important to try to knit together our networks of personal contacts. We had to resist institutionalism, bureaucratic red tape and the creation of new procedures and committees. Official bodies should be put in the position of ratifying what had been jointly prepared in advance.”7
It is indeed intriguing when a prestigious collection of internationally powerful men lock themselves away for a weekend to talk about world problems. Since the late 1950’s the Bilderberg Group have been the subject of a variety of theories. The radical-right wing views Bilderberg as an integral part of the international Zionist-Communist conspiracy and, at the other end of the political spectrum, the radical-left perceive Bilderberg to be a branch of the Rockefeller-Rothschild grand design to rule the world.
The existence of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy to rule the world by way of ‘New World Order’ whose eventual goal is one world government goes back to the Illuminati, a secret fraternity formed in Bavaria in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, based on the philosophical ideals of Plato. John Ruskin, a secret disciple of the Illuminate and a professor of Art and Philosophy at Oxford University revived these ideals in his teachings. Cecil Rhodes, a student and devoted fan of Ruskin, exploited the diamond and gold fields of South Africa. With the financial support from Lord Rothschild he was able to monopolise the diamond mines of South Africa as de Beers Consolidated Mines. Cecil Rhodes, along with other disciples of Ruskin, founded the Round Table Group, also known as the Cliveden Set. In 1919 the Round Table groups of the United States and Britain emerged out from under a cloak of secrecy and officially became the (American) Council on Foreign Relations and (British) Royal Institute of International Affairs, otherwise known as Chatham House. Bilderberg evolved directly from the Illuminati and the Council on Foreign Relations and Royal Institute of International Affairs relationship. As the Financial Times reported on the 6th May 1975, “If the Bilderberg Group is not a conspiracy of some sort, it is conducted in such a way as to give a remarkably good imitation of one.” 8.
Conspiracy or not, the Bilderberg Group is nonetheless a fascinating example of invisible influence in action. It’s almost completely secretive character is neither incidental nor superficial but integral to its functioning. It is essential their discussions are kept out of the public sphere. The Bilderberg Group was formed 1954 to serve as a forum for lobbying at the highest political level to ensure that consensual policies were adopted by the West in general, and signatories to the NATO alliance in particular. Implicit within the structure of this group, with its published claim to having no formal organisation; no membership, no charter, no elected officer, is its unaccountable, autocratic nature. However, the very fact it has a Chairman, currently xxxxx, a steering committee and annual conferences surely means it has a formal organisation. All doors to the seats of power are open to the Bilderberg and the possible significance of this group may be gleaned from the status of its participants; the membership comprises of those individuals who would, on most definitions, be regarded as members of the ruling class in Western Europe and North America in particular. They represent the elite and wealthy establishment of every Western nation and include bankers, industrialists and prominent intellectuals in academia and journalism, leading politicians and the most important figures in most of the largest international corporations.
Bilderberg’s name comes from the group’s first meeting at the Hotel de Bilderberg of Oosterbeek, Holland, in May 1954. Prince Bernard of the Netherlands remained Bilderberg chairman until he was implicated in the Lockheed (9 ) bribery scandal in 1976. The handling of the embarrassing Bernard revelations was a private affair, like all of Bilderberg’s operations. The 1976 meeting scheduled for April 22-25 in Hot Springs, Virginia was cancelled to avoid undue publicity and Bernard resigned his position in August 1976. In April 1977 the annual gatherings resumed, continuing through to the present.
Top executives from the world’s leading corporations meet with top national political figures at Bilderberg meetings to consider jointly the immediate and long-term problems facing the West. Bilderberg itself is not an executive agency; however, when Bilderberg participants reach a form of consensus about what is to be done they have at their disposal powerful national and transnational instruments for bringing about what is it they want to achieve. Bilderberg is not the only means of Western collective management of the world order; it is part of an increasingly impenetrable system of transnational co-ordination. The foreign policies of nation states, particularly economic and monetary policies, have always been a highly elitist matter. Policy options are proposed, reviewed, and executed within the context of a broad bi-partisan consensus, painstakingly managed by very small circles of public and private elites and, wherever possible, executive agreements between governments are used to avoid the democratic process altogether. Nonetheless, in the long run, orchestration of affirmative public opinion on foreign policy matters is often necessary for the effective pursuit of foreign policy objectives.
The case of the Vietnam War, broad sectors of the public democratically challenged the ruling class policy. Bodies, such as the United States Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the British Royal Institute for International Affairs and transnational counterparts like Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission play a crucial role in formulating policy directions, mediating between the economic interests of private capital and the requirement of a general interest on the part of the capitalist class as a whole. These institutions propagate the resulting policy positions throughout their network of authoritative channels; university publications, public officials’ forums, etc., setting the limits of respectable foreign policy debate.
Europe, a region whose shape has been greatly altered by each of the two World Wars, has long been a concern of the United States ruling class. In the 1920’s United States leaders pushed for a ‘United States of Europe’, a stable entity which would be far more appropriate for a managed world economy. But, a unified Europe never materialised and neither did a smoothly functioning international economic system.
Intra-capitalist rivalries and beggar-thy-neighbour economic policies marked the 1920’s and led into the global depression of the 1930’s. The withdrawal of United States loans to Germany in 1928 for the purpose of speculating with these funds on the booming New York Stock exchange was a factor in the German economic slump and the rise of Hitler. Even after Munich, future Bilderberg members were appeasers of Hitler and of his fascist supporters in their own countries. Moreover, United States firms such as Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon) continued to co-operate with Nazi Germany through German firms such as I G Farben even after the Council on Foreign Relations and the Roosevelt Administration had decided upon war with Hitler.
The 1930’s demonstrated the need for multinational management of world capitalism. This vision was brought to fruition in the 1940’s. As the ‘arsenal of democracy’, the United States had supplied war material to the Allies, including the Soviet Union, under a scheme called lend-lease. This allowed the transfer of material without immediate payment, but fostered enormous indebtedness. In 1945, the United States abruptly cut off lend-lease to both the Soviet Union and Britain leaving them in precarious straits and affording the United States additional leverage in architecting the post-war world.
The central feature of United States policy toward Europe was its perception of Europe as a unified economy and polity and Germany was reorganised to be of primary importance. The decision to divide Germany into East and West was taken by future Bilderbergers. De-Nazification was forgotten in the push to expand the western zone of Germany as the core of the European economy. The German Federal Republic came into being in 1949, with Bonn as the capital.
Once European reconstruction was seen as urgent for the solidifying of the West, steps followed quickly. In June 1947, United States Secretary of State, General George C Marshall, announced that if the European countries jointly produced one plan for European recovery the United States would finance it. By providing Europe with the wherewithal to buy goods and services from the United States, the foundation for the United States of Europe would be established and the risk of post-war depression in the United States would be forestalled. The so-called Marshall Plan was approved by Congress in 1948, with $17 billion in aid for European recovery.
The Marshall Plan pushed for rapid removal of economic controls and promoted political, economic, and military integration of Europe. The Organisation of European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) prepared the joint plan submitted to General Marshall and co-ordinated intergovernmental assessment of national economic policies. The OEEC was transformed into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1961, with the United States and Canada included as fully participating members. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), a common market in coal, iron and steel, was formed in 1950, removing a major historic reason, disputes over industrial resources, for French-German warfare. The ECSC was supplemented by the broader European Economic Community (EEC) known as the “Common Market.” The EEC, established with the Rome Treaty in 1957, was designed to eliminate market barriers and unify trade and farm policies, creating one large free-trade zone. The Common Market’s six original member nations, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, were joined by Britain, Denmark and Ireland in 1972. In May 1979, Greece was elected as the tenth member, effective as of January 1981. Spain and Portugal followed.
Post-war strategic alliances were also being strengthened. The Truman Doctrine had been enunciated by President Truman in March 1947; the United States would provide assistance for combating internal or external Communist threats anywhere in the world. Quickly, the United States replaced Britain in aiding Greece and Turkey. This was the start of a chain of military alliances, the most important of which is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). NATO requires its thirteen European members to jointly assess their military requirements with Canada and the United States. It is the core of Western military planning; together with the Marshall Plan, NATO served as the basis for the making of Atlantic Europe; the Europe closely integrated in the Atlantic Alliance with the United States. Joseph Retinger and other Bilderberg founders became the unofficial political arm of Atlantic Europe, as we will see.
The Bilderberg Group had its inception in the brilliant mind of Dr Jospeh Retinger. Retinger was an extraordinary character who flitted through Europe talking on intimate terms with Prime Ministers, labour leaders, industrial magnates, revolutionaries and intellectuals; the non Communist rulers and aspiring rulers of the free nations of Europe. Born in Krahow, in Austrian Poland, Retinger’s parents were landed gentry. When he went to the Sorbonne in Paris in 1906, at the age of eighteen, Retinger talked his way into the heart of the city's literary and artistic life, and was friends with such people as André Gide, Giraudoux, François Mauriac, Maurice Ravel, and the raffish Marquis Boni de Castellane10. When he moved to England, Herbert Asquith11 and his wife, the outspoken Margot, and Lord Balfour12 took him into their circle, and his most intimate friend was the fellow Pole, Joseph Conrad13.
Retinger had what C. D. Jackson14, a special assistant to the United States President, calls "a built-in instinct for intrigue," and a passionate love for Poland. During World War I his machinations for a free Poland made him uniquely unpopular. The Central Powers put a price on his head, the Allies banned him from all their countries, and the United States threw him into jail.
In World War II Retinger was closely associated with General Sikorsky, head of the Polish Government in Exile, as liaison man with the other exiled Governments. In 1944 General Sir Colin Gubbins of the super-secret Special Operations Executive arranged for him to be parachuted into Poland with several million dollars for the Polish Resistance. At the age of fifty-six, Retinger jumped at night into a field in enemy territory and accomplished his mission. However, his legs became paralysed, probably as a result of the jump, and he had to be spirited out of Poland on a stretcher.
From that time until his death in 1960 Dr Retinger devoted his life to his one impassioned, idealistic purpose of uniting and strengthening the Western world against the danger from the East. Jackson said, "He was a sort of Eminence grise of Europe, a Talleyrand without portfolio." Certainly he had almost as many adventures as Ian Fleming's famous secret-service operative James Bond.
C.D. Jackson, who often clashed with him, also said Retinger was "a very difficult, very opinionated man who would not take no for an answer and often achieved his purpose by very devious means. But nevertheless he was fearless and determined; a tremendously gallant guy." Retinger had a Jesuitical conviction that the end justified the means and a Borgian aptitude for intrigue. Though his name is virtually unknown except to the initiates, he made more history in his secret way than many a man who moved to the sound of trumpets and the howl of motor-cycle sirens15.
According to the official publication of the European Centre of Culture, "Retinger was the key figure in most of the great European union. The League of European Economic Cooperation, from which evolved the Common Market, the European Movement, and the European Centre of Culture would not have seen the light without him. The Congress of Europe at The Hague was his doing, and the Council of Europe grew out of that."16 Being, above al, a realist, Retinger understood that even a united Europe could not stand by itself without America. In 1952 he became deeply concerned about the rising tide of anti Americanism in practically every country of Western Europe. It was not confined to Communist influenced or left-wing circles, but was equally prevalent among conservatives and liberals. The United States was disliked, feared, and sneered at with a unanimity that was remarkable among the peoples of Europe. This feeling threatened the solidarity of the Western world's defences against Communism.
Retinger evolved a brilliant plan for coping with this situation but he needed powerful assistance to put it into effect. He requested his friend Dr Paul Rijkens17 to get him an appointment with Prince Bernhard. Bernard was equally concerned about the rising tide of anti-Americanism in Europe.
Retinger’s plan for bringing about better understanding between the touchy, suspicious Europeans and Americans consisted of two parts. The first was to get the leaders of opinion in the most important European countries to make an appraisal of where the Americans were wrong, apart from being rich, powerful, generous, and rather stupid, and what they could do to put things right. The second was to present this frank critique to leaders of American opinion and give them an opportunity to answer the indictment at a completely private meeting of top-level people from both continents. Bernhard was all for it, but an unusual instinct for caution made him require a second opinion.
Reinforced by the approval Van Zeeland, the Prime Minister of Belgium, Prince Bernhard and Retinger went to work. The plan was to get two people from each country who would give the conservative and liberal slant. Then Bernhard, using his personal prestige and royal leverage, persuaded, with the help of Retinger, who knew practically all of them, most of those selected to co-operate.
It was an impressive list. Van Zeeland wrote a paper for Belgium, Hugh Gaitskell and Lord Portal spoke for Great Britain, Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi for Italy, Foreign Minister Ole Bjørn Kraft of Denmark for Scandinavia; Guy Mollet, the former Socialist Prime Minister and Conservative Prime Minister Pinay for France, and Max Brauer, Otto Wolff von Amerongen, and Dr Müller for West Germany. Prince Bernhard himself handled the complaints of Holland, with the help of leading Dutch politicians and industrialists.
When all the reports came in Bernhard and Retinger found that many people of different countries and different parties gave the same reasons for disliking Americans, although there were, of course, some people with special grouses of their own. Bernhard, Retinger, and Rijkens synthesized the answers into a single report covering the main criticisms which Bernhard sent confidentially to some of his American friends with the proposal that they organise an answer.
The election of 1952 was in full swing in the United States, and political brickbats were flying. Nobody had any time for Prince Bernhard. Averell Harriman18 said, "I won't touch it. It's dynamite." Eisenhower said, "Great! I'd like to use it in the campaign," to which Prince Bernhard replied, "Good God, NO!" The matter had be postponed until after the election. Bernhard went to the United States where he met with a number of American politicians and, after several more rebuffs, he went to his Bedell Smith19, who was then head of the C.I.A.. Smith said, "Why the hell didn't you come to me in the first place?" 20
When Smith was appointed Under-Secretary of State for newly elected President Eisenhower, he was engulfed in the business of putting a new administration together. He finally turned the matter over to C. D. Jackson. Jackson got in touch with John S. Coleman, President of the Burroughs Corporation of Detroit, who was a member of the newly formed Committee for a National Trade Policy under the presidency of Senator Robert Taft's brother, Charles Taft. This committee undertook to draft an American reply. Other famous Americans were invited. Most of the administration officials ducked nervously so the American delegation was rather weighted towards industry but it included such eminent Americans such as Joseph E. Johnson21 of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, Dean Rusk22, then head of the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as David Rockefeller23 and H.J. Heinz II 24.
Joseph Retinger painted a portrait of the first Bilderberg participants, “…Any citizen of a country that believes in defending Western ethical and cultural values and who himself shares these ideals, is eligible to be invited to Bilderberg meetings…” but, “…the success of the meetings depends primarily on the level of the participants.”25 Invitations to the first meeting were only sent to important and generally respected people “…who through their special knowledge or experience, their personal contacts and their influence in national and international circles can help to further the aims set by Bilderberg.” Retinger curiously omits specific mention of bankers, who are among Bilderberg’s most influential participants. Needless to say, when Retinger speaks of the “general opinion” he means only elite opinion. Retinger’s long-time secretary, John Pomian 26 observed, “…During the first three or four years the all important selection of participants was a delicate and difficult task. This was particularly so as regards politicians. It was not easy to persuade the top office holders to come...Retinger displayed great skill and an uncanny ability to pick out people who in a few years time were to accede to the very highest offices in their respective countries...today there are very few figures among governments on both sides of the Atlantic who have not attended at least one of these meetings...” Indeed, the list includes His Royal Highness, Prince Philip who attended the Bilderberg Group annual meetings on several occasions, including the meeting at St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1967.
Bilderbergers have played key roles in the development of the European Movement, the unsuccessful European Defence Community, and various organisations - ECSC, EEC, and Euratom, the European Atomic Energy Commission - subsumed under the European Community. These supranational quasi-technical bodies have real powers of executive action which extend well beyond national political processes. When the European Coal and Steel Community came into being in 1952, Jean Monnet became its “High Authority.” Max Kohnstamm, private secretary to Prince Bernhard’s mother-in-law, Queen Wilhemina, until 1948, and then head of the German Bureau of the Dutch Foreign Office and Dutch representative in the Schuman Plan (ECSC) negotiations, became “Secretary to High Authority” under Monnet. Monnet resigned from the ECSC in 1955 to push for further unification through his Action Committee for a United States of Europe (ACUnited StatesE). Kohnstamm became the vice-president of ACUnited StatesE which had extensive overlaps with Bilderberg. In 1973 Kohnstamm became the first European chairman of the Trilateral Commission, until his resignation at the end of 1975. George Berthoin is another important Bilderberger. He went from the prefecture of Alsace-Lorraine, France to become Monnet’s private secretary at the ECSC, 1951-55. Then he left to represent the ECSC and later the European Community in London. Berthoin has replaced Kohnstamm as European chairman of the Trilateral Commission. Officials of the European Community have attended all Bilderberg meetings. A few of these officials include: Walter Hallstein, first EEC president and former German Foreign Affairs Minister; Jean Ray, first president of the unified European Communities; and Rolf Dahrendorf, former Commissioner for External Affairs. Similarly, officials from the OECD, NATO, the IMF, World Bank, and GATT regularly attend.
It should come as no surprise, when asked by Prince Bernhard’s biographer for an example of a Bilderberg accomplishment, steering committee member, George McGhee, past chairman of policy planning council in the State Department and then under-secretary of state for political affairs in the Kennedy Administration, replied: “I believe you could say the Treaty of Rome which brought the Common Market into being, was nurtured at these meetings.”
From the early 1960’s the OECD, Japan joined in 1964, developed into an official forum in which the West worked out global economic issues before taking their common positions to negotiations and forums where Third World and socialist-bloc countries would be represented. Thorkil Kristensen, first OECD secretary general participated in Bilderberg meetings. With Bilderberg guidance, the OECD has solidified its role as the rich nations club; the Trilateral Commission has put forth recommendations for further enhancing the OECD’s role. The European and United States authors of ‘The Reform of International Institutions’, the 1976 trilateral report in which the OECD is discussed, are Bilderbergers: George Berthoin and Fred Bergsten, former United States assistant secretary of the treasury for international affairs..
While some the participants of Bilderberg Group meetings have known each other for decades, efforts are made to deepen and broaden contacts among Bilderbergers. There is “…the unwritten rule that anybody who has ever been to a Bilderberg Conference should be able to feel that he can, in a private capacity, call on any former member he has met.” Moreover one sees “at lease twenty percent new faces at each meeting” which “makes possible an expanding continuation of association,” undoubtedly easing the difficulties of collective management of Western institutions in times of crisis. Informal discussions may well be more significant than formal discussions. “…To establish closer contact between participants, it is considered of the utmost importance to have a hotel in a secluded location...at the exclusive disposal of the participants….” The need for a secluded hotel is usually easily met by each national group that organises a conference, there being plenty of hotel-owning Bilderbergers. The 1974 meeting was held at Edmond de Rothschild’s Mont d’Arbois Hotel, Megeve, France.
Bilderberg works through a consensus process rather than through formal resolutions and voting. Bilderbergers are in positions of such executive power that if a consensus is reached and acted upon, the advanced capitalist West is likely to act more or less as a unit. Where there is no such consensus, the real interests at stake, and the constantly repeated injunction not to act divisively can produce a similar cohesive effect. At the 1974 Bilderberg conference in France - six months after the October War and the oil price rise - a British keynote speaker gave “…credit for the constructive handling of such a wide range of economic and monetary problems...to the emergence of transnational forces, i.e., effective relationships among individuals and organisations in the private and public sectors...” ‘ The board of trade unions, business and the financial sector”.
The economic restructuring must be understood in the context of tri-lateral consensus and success required pragmatic solutions on a global scale. The business and financial community through its interlocking directorships of corporations and banks, have terminal collection points in every nation. The quantum involved is astronomical and the analysis of portfolio holders extensive. This was to become the largest coordinated movement of money in history.