An annual unofficial forum created in 1954 to develop dialogue between Europe and North America. The agenda, initially aimed at preventing a new world war, is now defined as strengthening consensus regarding free-market Western capitalism and its interests throughout the world. Participants include political figures, businessmen, experts in industry and finance, and representatives of academia and the media, numbering from 120 to 150 people. Participants have the right to use information obtained at the conference but not to disclose to whom specifically it belongs.
Conspiracy theory. For fourteen years Daniel Estulin studied the large-scale influence of the Bilderberg Group on business and finance, global politics, war and peace, and its control over world money and resources. His book "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group" was published in 2005, and then, with new additions, came out in 2009.
He stated that in 1954 "the most powerful people in the world held a joint meeting for the first time" in Oosterbeek, in Holland, and "discussed the future of the world," agreeing to keep the meeting secret. They called themselves the Bilderberg Group, membership in which reflected who's who among the world's powerful elites, for the most part from America, Canada and Western Europe.
The Bilderberg Club (group, conference) (English: Bilderberg group) is an unofficial annual conference consisting of approximately 130 participants, most of whom are influential people in the spheres of politics, business or banking. Admission to the conference is by personal invitation only.
The direct initiators of the creation of the club, whose first meeting took place in May 1954 in the Dutch city of Oosterbeek at the Hotel Bilderberg, were the US special services. Back in the late 40s, in order to preserve American control over the European elite, organizations such as the European Movement, the American Committee for a United Europe, European Youth, and a number of others appeared on the CIA payroll.
Since, however, the methods of direct US interference in European affairs aroused a certain dissatisfaction among the public, it was decided to ensure control over Europe through TNCs, with the help of pro-American representatives of the Western European elite. It was for these purposes that the "Alliance" was created, later called the Bilderberg Group, planned as a "think club" for representatives of the ruling circles and largest corporations of the NATO member countries.
The chairman of the club became Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, husband of Queen Juliana, in the recent past an SS officer who had served Hitler, and in the early 50s the principal shareholder of the Rothschilds' oil company Royal Dutch Shell.
Among the 80 people present at the founding meeting of the Bilderberg Club, the main role was played by D. Rockefeller, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation G. Heinz, the president of the Carnegie Foundation D. Johnson; the steering committee created at the same time included representatives of the Rothschilds, Schroder's bank, the newspaper "New York Times," the London Royal Institute of International Affairs and the CIA of the USA. The actual leaders of the Bilderberg Group were Baron Edmond Rothschild and Laurence Rockefeller, who selected the members of the club.
One of the main goals outlined immediately after the formation of the group was the creation of a European superstate with its own central bank and a single currency, under the "natural" control of the USA. The ultimate goal of the Bilderbergers' activity was formulated as the creation of a transnational government.
The Bilderberg Club is built on the principle of a Masonic lodge; its structure includes three circles.
The "outer circle" is quite broad and unites up to 80% of the participants in the meetings. Members of this circle know only part of the real strategy and true goals of the organization. The second circle, a far more closed one, is the Steering Committee, consisting of 35 people who are familiar with the group's tasks to approximately 90%.
The narrowest circle is the Advisory Committee, consisting of approximately ten people who know thoroughly the true goals and strategy of the organization and possess all authority over the group's affairs in the period between its annual meetings. As the Italian magazine "Europeo" wrote in 1975, "despite the diversity of its composition, on the whole the Bilderbergers are a kind of supergovernment, reshaping the governments of Western countries to its own pattern."
At present, the permanent participants of the club are Edmond de Rothschild, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, Richard Holbrooke, Etienne Davignon, Henry Heinz, Romano Prodi and some others. It is believed that the club's membership unites 383 people, a third of whom are Americans — representatives of the apparatus of the US President, the State Department, the largest corporations, banks and business circles.
The main part of the financial resources coming from TNCs and Western secret services, at the expense of which the activities of the Bilderberg Club are carried out, arrives mainly through shell companies and banks located in the Bahamas, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The names of those who finance the club cannot be precisely established. It is known only that astronomical sums are spent on financing the activities of the Bilderberg Group.
Club members gather once a year for 4 days, as a rule, in May — June in various cities, either in castles or in expensive hotels under conditions of complete secrecy. Each meeting, in which about 120 people participate, takes place with a renewed composition. All discussions are held behind closed doors; only "their own" journalists are admitted. No information gets out: at the Bilderbergers' meetings it is forbidden to write anything down; it is forbidden to make statements for the press and to disclose the discussions taking place at these meetings.
Leading media magnates either are present at the club's meetings or send their representatives and are perfectly informed about the agenda of the meetings (for example, the "New York Times," the "Financial Times"), yet they never tell about this on the pages of their publications.
Known are the words of D. Rockefeller, spoken in 1993, when he thanked the editors of the largest Western media for having kept silent for almost forty years: "It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the whole world if it had been made public in those years. But the world is more complex and is ready to move toward world government. The supranational supreme authority of the intellectual elite and the bankers of the world is undoubtedly more preferable than the national self-determination practiced in past centuries. Thus, we are obliged to keep the press in ignorance regarding our convictions, which constitute the historical future of our century."
However, it is impossible to conceal the activity of the Bilderberg Group, and periodically information escapes to the outside from one or another member of the club or people involved in its activity.
One of the first serious studies devoted to the Bilderbergers was the book by the former agent of Western special services L. Gonzalez Mata, published in 1979.1 Quite recently, David Rothkopf's book "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making" and the two-volume study by the historians Pierre and Danielle de Villemarest and William Wolf, "Facts and Events Hidden from the Public," have come out.2 At present, the activity of the Bilderberg Club is actively monitored by independent researchers, the Englishman Tony Gosling, the creator of the website www.bilderberg.org with detailed information about the club's activities, and the American Jim Tucker, editor of the conservative newspaper American Free Press, who receives information from people who regularly attend the club's meetings as helpers and assistants but are not its members. Tucker's reports are published on the websites www.prisonplanet.com/articles/ and www.nouvelordremondial.cc/cat/bilderberg-group/.
At its meetings, the Bilderberg Group adopts strategic decisions on key issues of financial, military and social policy, bypassing the government bodies of the world's leading countries. As the British economist Will Hutton said, at each meeting of the club "consensus is the backdrop against which political decisions are taken throughout the world." Thus, it was precisely at the meeting of the Bilderbergers in Sweden in 1973, which brought together representatives of the largest oil companies, that a specially devised scenario for raising world oil prices was approved and a plan for controlling global oil-dollar flows was set out3.
At the gatherings of the Bilderberg Club, future US presidents and British prime ministers are "selected" (confirmed by the participation of Bill Clinton in the Bilderberg conferences in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993).
For half a century, not a single agenda or subject of discussion became public knowledge or was covered in the press. Several invited representatives of the "fourth estate," like their bosses, undertook to keep everything secret. Nevertheless, Estulin undertook a journey of investigation that became the work of his life. He stated:
"Slowly, step by step, I penetrated the layers of the secretariat close to the Bilderberg Group, but I could not have done this without the help of 'renegades' inside and outside the group itself."
Whatever goals the group pursued at the outset, today it is a "shadow world government... threatening to take away from us the right to determine our own destiny, creating a disturbing reality" that brings very great harm to public welfare. In brief, the Bilderberg Group wants to eradicate the personal sovereignty of nations and replace it with an all-powerful global government to which corporations and armed forces will be subordinate.
"Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals communicate closely, where messages from father-mentors guarantee that everything is going as it should, and where people start wars, remake markets, and where Europe (and America too) can say what it will never say publicly."
In their early history, the Bilderbergers decided to "create a 'target Aristocracy' between Europe and the United States (in order to achieve consensus in the affairs of governing the world)" in the sphere of politics, economics, and general strategy. NATO is an indispensable attribute of their plans – it is the provision of endless war and nuclear blackmail, used as needed. Then their plans include the continued plundering of the planet, the achievement of incredible power and wealth, and the crushing of all competitors in order to keep all of it for themselves.
Along with military superiority, control over world money is of critical importance for absolute power, and this was understood in the 19th century by the Rothschild family. As the family patriarch Amschel Rothschild once declared: "Give me control over a state's money, and I will not care who in that state writes the laws."
The Bilderbergers represent the most exclusive club in the world. No one can simply buy membership in it. Only the Group's Steering Committee has the right to decide whom to invite to the club, and in any case candidates must be supporters of the government of the One World Order, a government consisting of the most powerful elites.
In accordance with the rules of the Steering Committee:
"Invited guests must arrive alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands, companions. Personal assistants (meaning the security service and bodyguards under the protection of the CIA or other secret services) may not be present at the conference and must eat in a separate room. Guests are also unequivocally forbidden to give interviews to journalists," or to disclose anything that happened during the meeting.
The host government of the meeting provides full security in order to keep outsiders away. A third of the club's participants are political figures. The rest are from the spheres of industry, finance, scientific workers, representatives of the communications sphere and the sphere of employment and labor (apparently this refers to trade union leaders — translator's note).
The meeting procedure, in accordance with the Chatham House Rules, allows those present to express their point of view freely in a relaxing atmosphere of knowing that nothing of what is said will be disclosed to the public. The meetings "always take place in an atmosphere of candor, but this does not mean that agreement is always achieved."
Membership consists of approximately eighty (of the world's most powerful) annually present participants, and from time to time, other persons who were invited only because they are experts in the areas under discussion. These are the most valuable and sought-after specialists, and those who were invited for the first time are also selected on the principle of their possible future usefulness.
Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was invited to the club in 1991. "There David Rockefeller told him why the North American Free Trade Agreement... was a priority for Bilderberg, and therefore he was needed by the group to support the agreement. The following year Bill Clinton was elected president," and on the first of January NAFTA came into force. A number of other examples are analogous and show that they were selected for membership in powerful governments, and for other key positions.
Bilderberg's goals. The group's main goal is the creation of a "One World Government (global corporation) with a single global market, whose security will be ensured by a global world army, and financial regulation by a single (world) Central Bank using a single world currency." Their "wish list" includes:
- "a single international identification with adherence to universal values";
- centralized control over the world public by means of "mind control," in other words, by means of control over world public opinion;
- a New World Order without any middle class at all, only "rulers and servants," and of course, no democracy;
- "zero population growth," no welfare and progress, only ever-increasing power and influence for the rulers;
- production crises and endless wars;
- absolute control over education in order to program public consciousness and the distribution of people into preassigned roles;
- "centralization of control over domestic and foreign policy," everyone under a single standard;
- the use of the UN as a de facto world government, taxing the "citizens of the world";
- the expansion of globalization through NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the WTO;
- the promotion of NATO as the world's armed forces;
- the introduction of a universal legal system and
- a global "prosperous state, where obedient slaves will be in demand, and nonconformists will be destroyed."
Bilderberg's secret partners. In the US, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) dominates. One of its founders was Edward Mandell House, an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson and, as rumor had it, the actual head of state at that time from 1913 to 1921.
Under his supervision, the Federal Reserve Act, passed in December 1913, gave bankers the right to print money, and the sixteenth amendment was ratified in February, creating a federal income tax that made it possible to service the government's foreign debt.
From the very beginning, the CFR was devoted to the idea of "one world government based on a centralized global financial system…" Today the CFR has thousands of influential members (including figures from media corporations), but it avoids coverage of its activities, especially given its goals.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the Council "the main organization for the American Establishment." The Council meets in secret and allows only what it considers the public needs to know to be published. The Council's members are Americans only.
The Trilateral Commission (to be discussed below) is an organization similar to the CFR, "which together promote global political bigwigs." The Commission was founded by David Rockefeller; he is also the leader of the Bilderberg Club and honorary chairman of the CFR, an organization he continues to finance and support.
Former and current members of the organization, reflecting its power:
- the last two presidential candidates from both parties;
- leading senators and congressmen;
- key members of the "fourth estate" and their executives and
- senior officials of the FBI, CIA, NSA, the establishment in the Department of Defense, and in other major government structures, including state, commercial, judicial and treasury.
For its part, "the CFR acts as a kind of employment bureau for the federal government under the management of either Democrats or Republicans." Whoever occupies the White House, "the power and goals of the CFR" have remained unchanged since its founding in 1921.
The CFR advocates the idea of a supergovernment to which America and other countries must sacrifice their sovereignty. CFR founder Paul Warburg was a member of Roosevelt's "brain trust." In 1950, his son, James, stated before the Senate of the Council on Foreign Relations: "We shall have world government, whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent."
Later, in 1992, at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group, Henry Kissinger stated:
"Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. And this will be even more true if they are told that there was an external threat, real or propagandized, threatening our existence." And then people all over the world will beg world leaders to deliver them from this scourge… people will readily give up personal rights in exchange for guarantees that a world government will preserve their well-being.
The CFR planned the New World Order even before 1942, and "the UN began to be created by a group of CFR members called the Informal Group of the Main Goal." They drafted a plan for the initial UN, presenting it to Franklin Roosevelt, who the next day brought it before the public. When the UN was founded in 1945, among the American delegates there were about forty CFR members.
According to Professor William Domhoff, author of the book "Who Rules America," "a small group of twenty-five people worked in the CFR, who together constituted the leaders of six categories of conspirators (industrial, financial, ideological, military, professional specialists – lawyers, doctors, etc., and labor union leaders) for detailed discussion of topics on the arena of international relations."
Domhoff adds:
The Council on Foreign Relations, although not funded by the state, cooperated with the government so closely that it was difficult to distinguish actions of the CFR sanctioned by the government from their independent actions. "The most important means in the CFR came from leading corporations and major founders." Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford were the three founders, and they held key positions in the organization.
In the US, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) dominates. One of its founders was Edward Mandell House, an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson and, as rumor had it, the actual head of state at that time from 1913 to 1921.
Under his supervision, the Federal Reserve Act, passed in December 1913, gave bankers the right to print money, and the sixteenth amendment was ratified in February, creating a federal income tax that made it possible to service the government's foreign debt.
From the very beginning, the CFR was devoted to the idea of "one world government based on a centralized global financial system…" Today the CFR has thousands of influential members (including figures from media corporations), but it avoids coverage of its activities, especially given its goals.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the Council "the main organization for the American Establishment." The Council meets in secret and allows only what it considers the public needs to know to be published. The Council's members are Americans only.
The Trilateral Commission (to be discussed below) is an organization similar to the CFR, "which together promote global political bigwigs." The Commission was founded by David Rockefeller; he is also the leader of the Bilderberg Club and honorary chairman of the CFR, an organization he continues to finance and support.
Former and current members of the organization, reflecting its power:
- the last two presidential candidates from both parties;
- leading senators and congressmen;
- key members of the "fourth estate" and their executives and
- senior officials of the FBI, CIA, NSA, the establishment in the Department of Defense, and in other major government structures, including state, commercial, judicial and treasury.
For its part, "the CFR acts as a kind of employment bureau for the federal government under the management of either Democrats or Republicans." Whoever occupies the White House, "the power and goals of the CFR" have remained unchanged since its founding in 1921.
The CFR advocates the idea of a supergovernment to which America and other countries must sacrifice their sovereignty. CFR founder Paul Warburg was a member of Roosevelt's "brain trust." In 1950, his son, James, stated before the Senate of the Council on Foreign Relations: "We shall have world government, whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent."
Later, in 1992, at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group, Henry Kissinger stated:
"Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. And this will be even more true if they are told that there was an external threat, real or propagandized, threatening our existence." And then people all over the world will beg world leaders to deliver them from this scourge… people will readily give up personal rights in exchange for guarantees that a world government will preserve their well-being.
The CFR planned the New World Order even before 1942, and "the UN began to be created by a group of CFR members called the Informal Group of the Main Goal." They drafted a plan for the initial UN, presenting it to Franklin Roosevelt, who the next day brought it before the public. When the UN was founded in 1945, among the American delegates there were about forty CFR members.
According to Professor William Domhoff, author of the book "Who Rules America," "a small group of twenty-five people worked in the CFR, who together constituted the leaders of six categories of conspirators (industrial, financial, ideological, military, professional specialists – lawyers, doctors, etc., and labor union leaders) for detailed discussion of topics on the arena of international relations."
Domhoff adds:
The Council on Foreign Relations, although not funded by the state, cooperated with the government so closely that it was difficult to distinguish actions of the CFR sanctioned by the government from their independent actions. "The most important means in the CFR came from leading corporations and major founders." Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford were the three founders, and they held key positions in the organization.
The main media partners. Former president of "CBS News" Richard Salant (1961-1964 and 1966-1979) explained the main role of the media: "Our job is not to give people what they want, but to decide what they want to get."
CBS and other media giants control everything we watch, hear and read – through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, films, and a huge part of the internet. Media bosses and some of the journalists attend meetings in Bilderberg – on the condition that they will not write about anything.
The Rockefeller family has incredible power at its disposal, even though the family patriarch David turns 94 on June 12, and he will certainly soon step down as leader. Be that as it may, over the years "the Rockefellers (under David's management) achieved enormous influence over media resources. With the achievement of this influence, the family gained an impact on public opinion. Keeping a finger on the pulse of public opinion, they gained deep influence over politics. With this politics of sophisticated corruption, they gained control over the nation," and now they lay claim to total world domination.
The Bilderbergers-Rockefellers' plan is to "make their views so attractive (camouflaging them) that they become the public position, and through this to exert pressure on world leaders to subordinate them to the "desires of the Masters of the Universe." The "free world press" is their instrument for disseminating "agreed-upon propaganda."
Control of the CFR cabinet. "The National Security Act of 1947 established the position of Secretary of Security." Since then, 14 Secretaries of the Ministry of Security have been members of the CFR.
Since 1940, every minister, with the exception of James Byrnes, has been a member of the CFR and/or the Trilateral Commission.
Over the past 80 years, "virtually every key adviser on national security or on US international relations has been a member of the CFR."
Almost all top generals and admirals have been members of the CFR.
Many presidential candidates were/are members of the CFR, including Herbert Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter (he is also a charter member of the Trilateral Commission), George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, John Kerry and John McCain.
A certain number of CIA directors were/are members of the CFR. These are Richard Helms, James Schlesinger, William Casey, William Webster, Robert Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutch, George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and Leon Panetta.
Many secretaries of the treasury were/are members of the CFR. These are Douglas Dillon, George Shultz, William Simon, James Baker, Nicholas Brady, Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, and Tim Geithner.
When presidents nominate candidates to the Supreme Court, a "special secret CFR team" or advisers vet them for acceptability. The president in fact (apparently, of the acceptability checks — translator's note) issues an order of appointment, including candidates for positions in the Upper and Lower chambers of the Court.
Who benefits?
The Bilderberg Club is definitely not an executive council. The British economist Will Hutton may have come close to the truth when he said that the consensus reached at each club meeting 'is the backdrop against which political decisions are made throughout the world.' What the Bilderberg Club decides may be implemented later at the 'Group of Eight' meeting, as well as by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
But regardless of all this, for numerous serious critics in Europe and the US, the Bilderberg Club is anything from a Zionist conspiracy to a secret sect suffering from delusions of grandeur. The Serbs accused the Bilderberg Club, and not without some grounds, of unleashing the Balkan War of 1999 and the fall of Slobodan Milosevic: after all, the US needed to gain control over the very important routes of the Balkan pipelines. It is believed that the 2002 Bilderberg Club meeting — although not without disagreements — cemented the invasion and conquest of Iraq. In his original book 'A Century of War: Anglo-American oil politics and the New World War,' F. William Engdahl recounts in detail what happened at the 1973 Bilderberg Club meeting in Sweden. The American representative laid out a scenario of an inevitable 400% increase in oil prices by the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) countries. The Bilderberg Club did not prevent the oil shock; instead it planned how to dispose of the mega-profits — Henry Kissinger called it 'the recycling of petrodollar flows.' At that Bilderberg Club meeting all the influential figures were present — the major oil companies and leading banks.
