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| Verdict magazine, October 1976 |
As waves
of nationalism wash over the Western Alliance, particularly in Europe with
Britain’s Brexit and new election twists in Austria and Italy, the Bilderberg
Group has become waterlogged.
Understand: There is no assembly on
this earth more responsible for the formulation of a united Europe—albeit from
behind the scenes—than this formidable body of movers and shakers, captains and
kings.
Indeed, if there is any single
grouping of people that epitomizes the views, goals and reach of globalists, it
is Bilderberg.
The Bilderberg Group is meeting this
weekend for its annual pow-wow, in Montreux, Switzerland on the shore of Lake
Lemann. As is customary, Bilderberg will book out a whole luxury hotel and
closet itself from media reportage to engage in three days of lofty discussion on
the most important issues facing the world.
They have much to groan about as
they tackle their most pressing issue: nationalistic fervor and the potential disintegration
of its proudest achievement, European Union.
As the late George McGhee, former
U.S ambassador to Germany once said, “The Treaty of Rome, which brought the
Common Market into being, was nurtured at Bilderberg meetings.”
McGhee would know. He attended a Bilderberg meeting—Garmisch, Germany, September 1955—when, according to the confidential record of that meeting, “It was generally recognized that it is our common responsibility to arrive in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market.”
What, you may ask, is Bilderberg?
I asked this very question around
Washington D.C. in 1975 when I was a university student.
Nobody knew.
When I wrote foreign embassies to
inquire about a group their own political leaders and captains of finance and industry
had attended, they wrote back with dumbfounded notes of puzzlement.
People thought I was nuts.
Yet Bilderberg had been meeting
secretly since the mid-1950s with the specific objective of strongly influencing
the foreign policies and economic platforms of Western European countries and
the United States.
After months walking a labyrinth, I
tracked down a charity in New York City called American Friends of Bilderberg. I visited the low-profile if elegantly-appointed
office of Murden & Company (the cover) and received a cordial reception.
This was where Bilderberg’s Steering Committee, in coordination with a European
Steering Committee, based in The Hague, would decide agendas and participant invitation
lists for Bilderberg meetings.
I got an A on the term paper I wrote
for my International Politics course at American University. More important
than a good grade, the thrill of the search incentivized me to pursue a career
in journalism.
An obscure British magazine reshaped my term paper into a lengthy feature story.
But even those who read it
questioned whether the existence of such a group was for real or fantasy.
Until April 1977.
That is when the Bilderberg Group
next met, in Torquay, on the Devonshire coast in southern England.
I had forecast this event in my magazine
piece, identifying the luxury Imperial Hotel as its venue.
This marked the end of Bilderberg’s
anonymity.
Because, sitting in the Imperial’s
lobby, a smattering of Fleet Street reporters, all in possession of my story,
were taking bets amongst themselves on whether or not the so-called Bilderbergers would actually
manifest themselves.
And suddenly, like gnomes, there
they were, as the lobby began filling with the likes of Henry Kissinger, NATO
Secretary-General Joseph Luns, Fiat’s Giovanni Agnelli—and German Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt—leaving seasoned reporters with mouths agape.
I was there myself watching as a white
Range Rover deposited a rumpled David Rockefeller.
Mr. Rockefeller was shocked to see
reporters and photographers milling around. And they were just as shocked to
see him.
Bilderberg was for real. And secret
no longer.
I, a rookie of 22, was the only
reporter among several newspaper luminaries who knew anything about the secretive group. I got wined, dined, grilled—and
for the first time in its 22-year history, Bilderberg got reported by the
mainstream media.
This is what I was able to tell
them:
Bilderberg was rooted in a 1946
address by Joseph Retinger (a political philosopher and Polish patriot) to the Royal Institute of
International Affairs in London. His topic: the threat posed to Europe by the
Soviet Union. This speech spawned the idea of a European Movement.
Utilizing his high-level contacts as
an eminence gris, Mr. Retinger harnessed
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to figurehead his project. Realizing the
need for American support, they together recruited super-banker David
Rockefeller and CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith— and the CIA secretly
channeled more than $3 million to Mr. Retinger for moving his movement forward.
In May 1954, at Hotel de Bilderberg
(from which the group took its name), 80 of the most influential men from
Western Europe and the United States spent three days bonding.
They arrived at this conclusion,
stated in the confidential minutes of that event:
“When the time is ripe, our present concepts of world affairs should be extended to the whole world.”
“When the time is ripe, our present concepts of world affairs should be extended to the whole world.”
Their main concept: a unified
Europe.
And they succeeded.
The European Movement turned into
the Common Market; the EEC turned into European Union; and, simultaneously, an
Atlantic Alliance flourished.
Until the advent of Donald Trump and
Brexit.
And now, as a result, Bilderberg is
in disarray.
It is interesting for me to note,
after 44 years’ observing Bilderberg evolve, that President Trump’s senior
adviser (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner was invited by Bilderberg to attend their
2018 meeting in Turin, Italy and again this year—a summons probably instigated
by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has never missed a meeting
and is planning, at the ripened age of 96, to attend this weekend’s conference.
What it says to me is that the
globalists are striving to groom Mr. Kushner as their key lobbyist inside the White
House.
And thus, the intrigue continues.
