The Bilderberg Group is named after the hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, where it met in the early years of its existence after its creation in 1954. Officially it has no name, but then officially it doesn’t exist.
In reality it is composed of more than 100 of the global power elite - international financiers, multinational bosses, and political leaders and European royalty, including Prince Charles, Queen Sophia of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The two leading power brokers are the American Rockefeller family and European Rothschilds.
Each year they meet for four days at a secret location in Europe or the United States. The 2003 gathering took place between ay 15 and 18 at the luxurious and historic Trianon Palace at Versailles, but it was barely mentioned in the press. This is because top media figures are either members or on the guest list. The publisher of the Washington Post attends every meeting and the news chiefs of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and TV networks have also taken part on the understanding that discussions are off the record. As French broadcaster Thierry de Segonzac put it, “The Bilderbergers are too powerful and omnipresent to be exposed."
The meetings were chaired by former Nazi SS officer Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands until his resignation in 1976 following his involvement in the Lockheed Scandal. The current chair is Lord Peter Carrington, a former British government cabinet minister and secretary general of NATO, who is connected to the Rothschild family through marriage.
Reporter Emma Jane Kirby has described the Bilderberger Group as, “an extremely influential lobbying group with a good deal of political clout on both sides of the Atlantic."
This is hugely understating their influence. A unified Europe, the Treaty of Rome, the single European currency, the ending of the Cold War, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Brady Plan (President Reagan’s pledge to provide $50 billion to Third World and Communist countries), and the ousting of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of Britain because she resisted the European super state are just a few of the ideas that materialized at Bilderberger meetings.
Like its related groups the Trilateral Commission and the CFR, the Bilderberger aim is a one-world government and to promote the idea that national sovereignty is antiquated and regressive. Author Neal Wilgus has described them as a “sort of unofficial CFR, expanded to an international scale." Many critics believe they have the clout to mastermind world events and engineer policies and international projects that increase their wealth and power. If power is what they seek, then one group of politicians would be easier to bribe, corrupt and influence than those of several countries. These high priests of globalization benefit greatly from internationalism since it inevitably leads to large-scale, publicly funded projects that can be used to increase the Bilderbergers' wealth and power (for example sending billions in financial aid to the former Soviet Union and then extracting natural resources at rock-bottom prices; disastrous International Monetary Fund policies that deliberately keep Third World Countries crippled and powerless).
Each year, in addition to the core membership, a few ambitious new faces are invited, selected when they seem in a promising political position, dropped when they cease to be of use. Douglas Wilder, the first black United States governor was invited when his political career looked set to go stratospheric, but in 1984 when he failed to gain more than 1% of the vote in the Democratic presidential primary, he was removed from the guest list. However, the Bilderbergers struck lucky in 1991 when they invited the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, into their fold at their confab in Baden Baden, Germany. A year later he was elected president.
It is alleged that the Bilderbergers have had every president since the early 1970s in their pocket. Gerald Ford was a Bilderberger; Jimmy Carter and his vice president Walter Mondale were members of the Trilateral Commission. During the 1980 primaries Ronald Reagan said he would have nothing to do with the Trilaterals, but later appointed Trilateralist George Bush his vice president. His son George W. Bush is not connected to these groups, but several in his administration are Bilderberger attendees.
Former British intelligence officer Dr. John Coleman claims that the conference is sanctioned by Britain’s MI6 with authority from the Royal Institute of International Affairs (of which Lord Carrington is president). In America, the CIA provides intelligence and security for the meetings. This isn’t surprising since the framework of the CIA - the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was built by none other than John J. McCloy, a former Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Chairman of the Rockefeller Chase Manhattan Bank.
The fact that the police arrest and charge card-carrying journalists who attempt to expose them is clear evidence that Bilderberger meetings are more than a private event. The organization and security cordon surrounding them makes White House security look like the Home Guard. In Versailles the security perimeter was unprecedented and local residents had their movements restricted by Bilderberger security and the French military, although no one was given a satisfactory explanation, and nothing appeared in the press.
A member of the European Commission and Bilderberger attendee, Mario Monti, recently played down the conferences saying, “The participants attend meetings in a private capacity and the statements which they make are not binding on the [European] Commission; no resolutions are passed, no votes are taken and no political communiques are issued."
The reality is that the Bilderbergers' off-record briefings are way above democracy and the law.