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Bilderberg: Past and Present

By: Joël van der Reijden | Date: Sep. 25, 2022 | Last update: July 13, 2024 | Membership list | 1954-2022 lists | NGO Study Center | EARLY DRAFT WITH LIMITED SOURCES

"To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. ... We felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing. ... We make a point of getting along younger politicians who are obviously rising... Your new understanding of the world [through Bilderberg] will certainly help your career."

Former defense and finance minister Denis Healey, in 2001. 1 Healey co-founded Bilderberg, visited over 1954-1992, and was part of the group's steering committee.


Contents



"The multinational corporation is ahead of, and in conflict with existing political organizations represented by the nation states."

October 18, 1967, annual 1954-1993 Bilderberg visitor and Lehman Brothers partner George Ball at the Annual Dinner of the British National Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce. 2 Also at Bilderberg, Ball was looking to decouple multinationals from national laws and put them under the authority of a supranational body similar to the United Nations.



"The political [protectionist] boundaries of nation-states are too narrow and constricted to define the scope and sweep of modern business. ... The new globalists [are] operating with this kind of global vision [and] see the entire world as a market."

1972, William I. Spencer, president of the First National City Corporation (Citicorp), to the American Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt, West Germany. 3 The chair and CEO of Citicorp from 1967 to 1984 was Bilderberg veteran and CFR director Walter Wriston.



"A multinational corporation, no matter how large, is essentially helpless in the hands of a nation-state, no matter how small. ... Politicians have been engaged in fragmenting the world, while the multinational corporations have been viewing the planet as one marketplace. ... The transfer of men, money, and ideas is necessary if we are to raise the world's living standards."

Walter Wriston, the chair and CEO of Citicorp from 1967 to 1984 who visited Bilderberg in 1962, 1964 and 1988 and was a director of the CFR 1981-1987. 4



"IKEDA: Since a whole range of other problems, including natural resources, energy, environmental pollution, food supplies, epidemics, and information now demand cooperation on a worldwide scale, I feel that global government must come into being...

PECCEI: [For our] survival, we must purge and purify our minds of the myth of sovereignty, which is a political and philosophical leftover from a dead past. [But] I do not think [that] global government would be a good way to bring peace. ... For the moment, the constitution of such a super government is quite unthinkable anyway [and there would be] difficulty of organizing and making it function democratically. We should not pursue the chimera of a central world government at all costs. ... We should take a hint from the world of Nature [where] a multitude of large and small systems exists and interlocks ... and dynamic equilibria are maintained among them by mutual checks and balances. These are the ways of life."

1984, Aurelio Peccei and Daisaku Ikeda, 'Before it is Too Late: A Dialogue', pp. 100, 102, 112. Peccei, a subordinate of Bilderberg and Trilateral veteran Gianni Agnelli of Fiat, visited Bilderberg in 1963, 1967 and 1968, setting up the Club of Rome in 1968. Daisaku Ikeda was president of the Soka Gakkai cult - popular in Hollywood - was was a honorary member of the Club of Rome.



"It appears that young people throughout the world are going on strike and not having children [except in Africa]. ...

"[So] there will be 500 million working-age sub-Saharan Africans with a secondary or higher education [but] in Europe that will fall below 300 million... [This] will lead to the continued movement of people across borders for generations to come. I would argue this is a good thing...

"Vicious hate crimes have scarred societies from Norway to France, where this Spring a serial killer targeted both Muslims and Jews... Landlords refuse to rent houses to people of color. Immigrants are subjected to psychological and physical abuse. Employment is denied based on faith or ethnic origin. Police engage in racial profiling."

June 15, 2012, Sir Peter Sutherland speech at the 50th International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, Ireland, as the UN Special Representative for International Migration 2006-2017. 5

However, did he speak in this capacity? Or more as the head of Goldman Sachs, BP and the WTO? Or as a Bilderberg steering committee member, the European chair of the Trilateral Commission, and the vice chair of the European Round Table of Industrialists?



"I'm increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days [host laughing hysterically], with what I see other white males say. But it just shows, with very few exceptions, like [Dick Cheney's daughter] Liz Cheney there are so few Republicans in Congress who value truth, honesty, and integrity. And so they'll continue to gaslight the country, the way Donald Trump did. ...

"Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of "high crimes & misdemeanors". It was nothing short of "treasonous". Not only were Trump's comments "imbecilic", he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???""

March 1, 2021 media apperance 6 and earlier tweet 7 by John O. Brennan, the CIA director over 2013-2017 who visited Bilderberg in June 2017 as a new senior advisor for Kissinger Associates.



"In Lord Roll's version, the notion that [fellow banker and Bilderberger Hermann] Abs had served the Nazi interest was dismissed as mere left-wing propaganda. [However] Abs was known to have taken part in board meetings of a poison-gas manufacturer, IG Farben, at which the use of slave labour had been discussed, and that he had been sentenced in absentia by a Zagreb court to a term of 15 years' imprisonment for war crimes."

December 24, 1994, The Economist, 'The art of the obituary'. Roll was a long-time Bilderberg steering committee member and Warburg chairman. Abs dominated post-war German banking and industry, as chair of Deutsche Bank and director of dozens of other corporations. Otto Wolff von Amerongen, who attended almost all Bilderberg meetings over March 1955 to 2001; and Kurt Birrenbach, a Bilderberg regular over 1963-1972, similarly had deep Nazi ties. This element is not discussed in this article for the time being.



Intro

Bilderberg barely needs an introduction, as it is the most famous international "secret society" in existence: an annual transatlantic conference between businessmen, politicians and a variety of experts that was founded in 1954.

Of course, Bilderberg's fame is in name only, because despite having a website since the summer of 2010 8 and people having heard "conspiracy theories" and conspiracy disinformation about its influence, nobody REALLY knows how the group's power works or who presently is part of the steering committee. That information is seldom, if ever, discussed or analyzed outside of annual news reports on the conference, and certainly does not find its way into schoolbooks of any kind. Everyone is just expected to ignore and dismiss "rumors" of the group's influence, which is a very peculiar situation, of course.

Just by looking at some of the quotes above, it should be clear that members of Bilderberg already in the 1960s declared war on the whole concept of the "nation-state", and have been seeking to replace these at all costs with supranational structures that prevent individual governments - and their citizens/workers - from interfering in the unlimited expansion of multinationals across the globe. One would think that is worth discussing, especially looking at the success these multinationals seem to be having.

Third place in "pervasiveness"

Looking at ISGP's Superclass Index of the most connected elite NGO participants around the world, it is possible to determine that certain think tanks and conferences are particularly often represented among the top 60 individuals in 2017 (really 59), the year that David Rockefeller died. The list:

  1. Council on Foreign Relations: 98% (58/59) official historical membership, with 100% (+1 person) involvement.

  2. Trilateral Commission: 64% (38/59) official historical membership, with 65% (+1 person) known involvement.

  3. Bilderberg: 61% (36/59) have visited at least once.

  4. Atlantic Council: 51% (30/59) official historical membership, with 63% (+7 persons) known involvement.

  5. Bretton Woods Committee: 54% (32/59) official historical membership.
A more dated in terms of latest NGO additions, but still good oversight of the top superclass members at the time of David Rockefeller's death in 2017.

Considering the Trilateral Commission involves multi-year membership at the very least and today is close to five times larger with all the same corporate interests represented, it may be a good thing that Bilderberg is listed ever so slightly below that group. Still, it should immediately be clear that Bilderberg remains a very, very significant group among (north) transatlanic elites, to the present day.

Funding: multinationals

A tendency at ISGP has developed to very quickly look into the financing of any NGO. It's interesting that Bilderberg's financing to this day is very hush-hush, in contrast to hundreds of NGOs founded before and especially after it, many of whom cannot really be said to be less important than Bilderberg. Think, for instance, of the CFR, the Munich Security Conference or Davos. All of them openly list their donors. In that sense, Bilderberg's secrecy surrounding who is financing it, is like a relic from the past, similar why it waited until 2010 to have an official website.

We can of course deduce who the financiers are just by looking at the corporations the most often represented at the Bilderberg conferences. Financing of all the hundreds of globalist think tanks and conferences around the world also tend to have roughly the same sources anyway: multinational banks and corporations, the same that are represented in Bilderberg. However, officially, we don't know who finances Bilderberg. A few sources with regard to funding that have been found are listed in Appendix A: Donors.

From "political dialogue" to big business lobby

Maybe what needs to be discussed first is that there exists an "old" and "new" Bilderberg, something that only became clear to this author after manually structurizing the backgrounds of historic Bilderberg visitors.

Bilderberg's first 10-13 years corresponds a bit with the version that is being sold to the public to this day, namely that Bilderberg consists of roughly equal parts businessmen, politicians and "experts". In the early period, about 50% of the meetings consisted of politicians, with 15-20% being "experts". Big business, while centered around Bilderberg's core, was not particularly dominant at meetings, standing between 25 and 30%. Big media hovered between 4 and 5%, going as low as 1% in 1964.

Starting in the late 1960s, however, and coincidentally from about the moment the whole concept of the "nation-state" started getting attacked repeatedly by Bilderbergers, there was a very drastic reduction in politicians and diplomats being invited to the group, as well as semi-autonomous experts on European integration. These were replaced by a much bigger percentage of corporate leaders, essentially turning Bilderberg into a rather crude big business lobby.

This "privatization" phenomenon gradually became worse until the turn of the century, with just 20% of Bilderberg visitors still involving politicians and diplomats, compared to 49% represenating big business. After that, there seems to have been a bit of a correction, but politicians and intellectuals never came close again to outweighing corporate executives at Bilderberg meetings.

Another thing that changed over the decades is that university and semi-autonomous experts were replaced by representatives and heads of big business-funded think tanks. Obviously, experts on European integration as George Ball, Paul Nitze (main expertise: overstating Soviet military capabilities), Joseph Retinger and Max Kohnstamm were not particularly "independent" from big business, but certainly alongside (other) "founding fathers" of the European Union as Alcide de Gasperi and Altiero Spinelli, did carry a bit of a different energy than, let's say, a mix of leaders of NGOs as:

  • the various international institutes of international affairs;
  • the "new left" Ford Foundation;
  • the "new left" Carnegie Endowment;
  • the Brookings Institution;
  • the Munich Security Conference;
  • the World Economic Forum in Davos;
  • the Trilateral Commission;
  • the Peterson Institute for International Economics;
  • the neoconservative Hudson Institute;
  • the neoconservative Hoover Institution;
  • the National Bureau of Economic Research.

It is exactly these NGOs that started to dominate the Bilderberg landscape in term of "experts" being brought in.

The impression one gets is that the Rockefeller group of big business determined that they did not have enough control over a group they founded, managed, and financed. So they got rid of all the "annoying" politicians - politicians such as the ones opposing the inclusion of Japan or the founding of the Trilateral Commission from about 1970 on. The latter group, founded in 1973, actually immediately hovered around 50% big business, once more indicating that what happened was a deliberate move, and it involved actions taken by David Rockefeller's big business clique.


HISTORY

Almost the first of its kind - but the ICC is older

A first thing that needs to be mentioned in this section is that Bilderberg is more unique than this author initially anticipated. Despite having organized the names and members of about 2,000 important globalist NGOs over almost two decades, careful analysis still shows that Bilderberg stands out. Why? Because it was the first of its kind. It was the first annual, elite-funded, transatlantic conference.

Well, maybe. The "annual" part may still go, as does part of its purpose. But right when the author was about to draw the above full conclusion, through his own NGO index, he stumbled across the International Chamber of Commerce. Because it was so obscure, yet fascinating, the author subsequently spent about four months researching the International Chamber of Commerce, eventually producing a lengthy article on it. With Rockefeller and Morgan men as key founders, biennial (once every two years) transatlantic conferences, additional "governing council" meetings, big business visitors, a love for fascism, and a general purpose of always trying to overcome any kind of trade restriction, the International Chamber of Commerce represented transatlantic "steamboat globalism" at its finest. Conferences that were organized, included:

  1. 1919: Atlantic City (founding).
  2. 1920: Paris (founding).
  3. 1921: London.
  4. 1923: Rome, hosted by new dictator Mussolini.
  5. 1925: Brussels.
  6. 1927: Stockholm.
  7. 1929: Amsterdam.
  8. 1931: Washington D.C.
  9. 1933: Vienna.
  10. 1935: Paris.
  11. 1937: Berlin, hosted by Adolf Hitler.
  12. Etc.

Hence, there is no escaping the conclusion that transatlantic globalism and even "global globalism" started with the International Chamber of Commerce. It beat Bilderberg by a solid 34 years; and Davos and the Trilateral Commission, with whom it might be better compared due to the inclusion of Japan and other areas of the world, with over half a century.

At that point we're still ignoring the more loosely organized international congresses of the Chambers of Commerce that were held between 1906 and 1914. The last conference in Paris, right before World War I, brought together "some two thousand delegates." 9 To this day these delegates are unknown, so there's not much to write there, but the International Chamber was founded by the Rockefeller, Morgan, Harriman, General Electric and allied interests to make sure that big business would be represented more effectively and more lasting in international trade negotiations than with the less organized pre-war conferences.

Similar to the League of Nations, the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Chamber had its roots at the 1919 Versailles Conference. Morgan, already identified by U.S. congress as the leader of America's ""money trust", a community of Wall Street bankers and financiers that exerted powerful control over the nation's finances" 10, with Morgan still being more influential than the Rockefellers, was the dominant financial interest on the American side at Versailles. The same would go for the reparations committees of the interwar years.

Meanwhile, bankers in Europe and the United States also started organizing the Stable Money League, officially founded in 1921. America's National Industrial Conference Board started organizing a "foreign correspondents" board in 1928 that saw more than a bit of overlap with the International Chamber. More international and transatlantic groups were founded, all of them dominated by bankers, businessmen and a handful of allied politicians: from the 1930-founded Bank for International Settlements to the 1935-founded Association for the Constitution in the United States of a French Information Office, which counted the leading involvement of Marshall Petain, soon the head of pro-Nazi Vichy France.

A "businessman's peace"

It's this pre-World War II network of bankers, businessmen and allied politicians that Bilderberg was founded on. That's not just general speculation. We can quite easily demonstrate that:

Click for a PDF
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  1. The "foreign correspondents" board of the National Industrial Conference Board (The Conference Board) included future Bilderbergers or their immediate business interests, often even a century later. Known examples are the Wallenberg family and their Enskilda Bank; Societe Generale de Belgique, the Midland Bank, Nestle, Pirelli, Siemens, and remnants of Vereinigte Stahwerke: the Thyssen and Krupp corporations that in 1999 merged to form ThyssenKrupp AG.

    The corporations Mitsui and Mitsubishi, the two "foreign correspondents" from Japan in 1928 and the two biggest "zaibatsu" of Japan, would become founding members of the Trilateral Commission in 1973. Mitsubishi and Mitsui through Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, still have representation in the Trilateral Commission into the 2020s.

    To eleborate, one wouldn't expect there to be a lot of conspiracy going on behind a corporation as Nestle, but, as can increasingly be seen in ISGP's NGO Index, this too is a company that very often shows up in the financing of globalist NGOs. Nestle was repeatedly and formally represented at Bilderberg in the 1980s and 1990s by chairmen Paul R. Jolles and Helmut O. Maucher. Coincidentally, at the time of this writing, the author has a 2007 Trilateral Commission membership list open. The company was represented there too at the time by Baron Paul De Keersmaeker. These examples come from from very limited information provided in brief, formal biographies in the membership lists themselves. It's very likely that other directors of the company have also visited Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission. Predictably, Nestle is also involved in Davos. 11

    2. Screenshots from a founding 1954 Bilderberg list.
  2. The founding membership list of Bilderberg included International Chamber of Commerce veterans as Des Moines newspaper publisher Gardner Cowles; close David Rockefeller ally Jack Heinz (II); psychological warfare expert and Time-Life executive C. D. Jackson; Morgan banker Nelson Dean Jay; Alberto Pirelli of the Pirelli tire company; businessman James Zellerbach; and George Nebolsine, a partner in the Pilgrims Society-tied Coudert Brothers law firm.

    David Rockefeller's family was deeply involved in the founding and running of the International Chamber, and is known to have attended International Chamber meetings at a later stage.

  3. As already detailed in ISGP's CFR article, 14 out of 15 founding Bilderberg members from the United States already were members of the CFR at that point, with the fifteenth joining the CFR a few months after the founding of Bilderberg. David Rockefeller was the only CFR director at that point.

  4. Bilderberg might well be the last significant occasion in which both the Rockefellers and Morgans cooperated in the founding of a major globalist-oriented social club, think tank, or conference. The House of Morgan was the dominant financial and political interest in the United States from the late 1800s until the 1930s, after which the Eastern Establishment more exclusively became centered around the Rockefellers.

    Despite not being a CFR director, ICC veteran and founding Bilderberg member Nelson Dean Jay should not be overlooked. He was head of J.P. Morgan & Co.'s Paris branch from 1920 to 1941, and again, after World War II, from 1945 to 1955, when the bank here had become known as Morgan & Cie., Inc.. He had been a director J.P. Morgan & Co., Inc. in the United States since 1945-, and a member of the CFR from 1942-.

Similarly, we could look at Bilderberg not just as a successor, extension, or evolution of already existing "internationalist" organizations, but also as an evolution of bankers and corporate CEOs meeting each other in obscurity, sometimes in secrecy, and on a one-to-one basis throughout the first half of the 20th century. We could give examples of this as well:

  1. Hermann Abs of Deutsche Bank and I.G. Farben, served as an advisor to post-World War II German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and was invited to Bilderberg in 1958, 1961 and 1966. He is also known to have visited the International Chamber in 1957 and 1966, and to have been invited to become chairman of the second Davos conference in 1971.

    What we know about him is that he "simply was an industrialist and banker". However, that generally abstract impression we have of various elitists, never does justice to their full set of personal national and international connections. Abs really made that clear in one of his (obscure) interviews when he talked about being a former "stagiaire [intern] with Guaranty Trust", employed by the Rothschilds in Vienna; to be friends with the Wallenbergs in Sweden and Sir Sigmund Warburg in London; knowing the Kleinworts, Frank Tiarks II, Sir Brand of Lazards; having knowledge of the Cecil Rhodes saga while visiting Rhodesia; working with Lord Swinton in Venezuela; and meeting Churchill in 1953. 12

  2. Founding Bilderberg member Alberto Pirello is a similarly fascinating example. Ok, he was a "leading industrialist of his era and got invited to Bilderberg, so what?" Well, let's provide a bit more of an indepth biography.

    Pirelli was part of the Conference Board's "foreign correspondents" board from 1928 on and a president of the International Chamber of Commerce from 1928 to 1932 13, Pirelli was involved in war reparations negotiations for Mussolini's Italy and Germany throughout the 1920s and 1930s, alongside Morgan partners and a variety of other international businessmen and their henchmen. 14 He was very close allies with the Morgan bank in particular, also in aiding Mussolini's fascist regime 15; and in 1934 founded an Italian branch of the CFR and RIIA: the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI). 16 Originally supported by Mussolini, ISPI is still flourishing even a century later, with much of Italy's biggest corporations respresented. Meanwhile, Pirelli's brother held positions at the Morgan-dominated Versailles Peace Conference and the subsequent League of Nations.

These are just two examples. And even well into the age of broadband internet and the massive online library of Google Books, details like the above very often still are completely impossible to find. Why? Because they are seldom written about in a complete sense, even in official biographies; and only by happenstance get mentioned in news articles. "Oh, me and my wife play cards with so and so, at the house of this or that banker, every Wednesday night. So and so is visiting as well." These details are incredibly important in understanding covert power, but they tend to get lost in history.

Institutes of International Affairs: Bilderberg and Trilateral tied them together

The Pirelli biography provided in the previous section brings to light another very important aspect in relation to both Bilderberg and elite networks: the institutes of international affairs. Not the CFR and RIIA, but all the other ones.

[This section is being overhauled and expanded.]

Bilderberg: still unique among U.S.-E.U. relations

As just discussed at length, Bilderberg takes a unique place in history by being the first of its kind. However, even today, with so many other globalist conferences being organized year-round, Bilderberg still is not an NGO that should be marginalized.

In contrast to closely-overlapping groups as the Trilateral Commission (1973-), the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (1971-) and the Munich Security Conferences (1962-), Bilderberg has remained quite strictly transatlantic. It did not go "global". In that, Bilderberg kept a focus on working with the United States in building the European Union, streamling various political and economic policies, and coordinating NATO's strategic defense network, mainly to protect against Russia and increasingly China.

This role Bilderberg continues to fulfill extremely well. It has been the most elite conference of this kind, all throughout the group's history from 1954 until today. Are there many other U.S.-connected NGOs active within the European Union and working on maintaining ties with the United States? Actually, yes. But Bilderberg has always been larger and more versatile.

It also were Bilderberg members, starting in the 1980s, who spawned this huge network of Europe-centered think tanks that basically completely control the processes of the European Union. We will have to put any discussion of this network into an appendix, because it would get boring and distracting very quickly. These are the think tanks in question:

  1. American European Community Association (1981-).
  2. The European Round Table of Industrialists (1983-).
  3. European Institute (1989-).
  4. Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility Europe / CSR Europe (1995-).
  5. Notre Europe / renamed to the Jacques Delors Institute (1996-).
  6. Centre for European Reform (1996-).
  7. European Policy Centre (1996-).
  8. Friends of Europe (1999-).
  9. Open Society Foundations (1979-, but not significant in the E.U. until about 2000).
  10. Business for a New Europe (2006-).
  11. European Council on Foreign Relations (2007-)
  12. Munich Security Conferences (1962-, but obscure early history and increasingly more influential since the 1980s at least).

The U.S.-backed NGO network Bilderberg emerged from

If we go back to Bilderberg's origins in 1954, we find that Bilderberg itself grew out of a network of older elite NGOs, in particular those tied to Joseph Retinger, the official founder of Bilderberg. The NGOs in question can be found below. They are important to discuss in order to get a good sense of what Bilderberg was - and is - about.

  • The European League for Economic Cooperation (1946-): This group was set up by later Bilderberg co-founders Joseph Retinger and Paul van Zeeland, with Count Rene Boël presiding over it from 1951 to 1981. Boël visited Bilderberg in 1960 and was married into the Solvay chemical fortune, represented by others at Bilderberg.

  • The European Movement (1948-): Future Bilderberg founder Joseph Retinger was a key founder and founding secretary general of the European Movement, until 1950. Early Bilderberg visitors Paul-Henri Spaak, Maurice Faure and Walter Hallstein were presidents of the European Movement over the 1950-1974 period. Italian prime minister Alcide De Gasperi, part of the initial Bilderberg meeting with Faure and considered one of Europe's "founding fathers", was among the early honorary presidents of the European Movement. The earlier-mentioned Count Rene Boël served as founding treasurer. The second treasurer was Theo Lefevre 17, a visitor of Bilderberg in 1967.

    The connection continued in later years through Georges Berthoin, president of the European Movement for 1978-1981. Berthoin visited Bilderberg three times in this period. On top of that he was a founding member of the Trilateral Commission in 1973 and European chairman of this group for 1976-1992, while he presided over the European Movement.

  • The American Committee on United Europe (1948-): The ACUE was the CIA-tied vehicle that was the primary financier of the European Movement. Board member John McCloy, David Rockefeller's family-appointed mentor at the CFR and Chase Manhattan Bank, visited Bilderberg in the 1950s and 1960s, with David being the primary unofficial overseer of the conference from 1954 to 2013.

    ACUE board member Walter Bedell Smith played a logistical role in the founding of Bilderberg while serving as CIA director and under secretary of state in the early 1950s. Board member Allen Dulles, CIA director 1953-1961 and a very close friend of David Rockefeller, always was very much interested in Bilderberg and even was extended an invitation to participate himself. Dulles never attended though. However, he received briefings on the proceedings from leading members, while his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, was generally represented at Bilderberg by long-time visitor Arthur Dean. Of course, the Rockefeller Foundation co-financed the ACUE.

  • The Action Committee for the United States of Europe (1955-): ACUSE was founded by "Europe's founder" Jean Monnet. Monnet himself never attended Bilderberg, but co-founder Guy Mollet was part of 5 meetings until 1963, after having canceled the initial Bilderberg meeting due to illness. Monnet was also represented in Bilderberg by its founding vice president and secretary general Max Kohnstamm, a decades-long Bilderberg visitor and founding European chair of the Trilateral Commission in 1973. ACUSE members Edward Heath and Francois Duchene also filtered into a handful of Bilderberg meetings in the 1960s and 1970s. It took 49 years for ACUSE member Valery Giscard d'Estaing, but also was invited to Bilderberg.

  • The Per Jacobsson Foundation (1963-): This is an interesting foundation to mention, because among its founding "sponsors" was "Europe's founder" Jean Monnet along with Bilderberg regulars as David Rockefeller, Gabriel Hauge, Marcus Wallenberg (chair), once again immediately demonstrating that "Europe's founders" were beholden to big business. Paul Volcker and Jacob Wallenberg, and Marcus Wallenberg, Jr. were among the later trustees of the foundation.

Origins: E.U. worries about McCarthyism

Bilderberg was founded in 1954, after a few years of rising tensions between the United States and Europe. At the level of public opinion, Europeans complained that Americans, through the Marshall Aid, were trying to tell them how to live, with Americans complaining in turn that Europeans were ungrateful for the Marshall Plan aid they received.

More importantly, and certainly also at a higher level, disagreements arose on how western nations should deal with communism. Due to Christian conservatism - more or less the anti-thesis to "Godless", anti-capitalist communism - being so dominant in the United States, it has always been quite easy for any establishment to whip the American public into an anti-"communosocialist" frenzy. The situation was, and still is, very different in Europe, where "socialism" has never been a dirty word and countries as France and Italy even had very strong communist parties - something the CIA would be countering in all its might throughout the Cold War through infiltration, covert financing of propaganda, and even by setting up secret Stay-Behind/Gladio armies.

Certainly when Senator Joseph McCarthy appeared on the scene in 1950 and then in 1953 sent two aides of his - future Trump family lawyer Roy Cohn and David Schine - to Europe to basically denounce left-wing European politicians as "communist subversives", friction between the political establishments of the United States and Europe came to a head. It appears that even many ranking European politicians at the time did not know that the United States was in the process of developing a liberal-globalist "Rockefeller Republican" wing - as personified by newly-elected president Dwight Eisenhower and the existence of the Council on Foreign Relations - and a "Commie-eating", anti-liberal establishment, Christian Conservative wing represented at that time by Senator Joseph McCarthy, soon followed by Senator Barry Goldwater and groups as the American Security Council.

An intellectual with the name Joseph Retinger, a key founder in 1948 of the CIA-backed European Movement, was among those in Europe expressing worries about the rise of McCarthyism and generally the more militant form of anti-communism coming from the United States. Retinger brought these worries to his elite friends, most notably Paul Rijkens of Unilever and his friend Prince Bernhard, who allowed him to gather the thoughts of his political friends from across Europe, combine them in a paper, which would then be brought to the attention of Bernhard's American friends. Bernhard had many friends:

  • Incoming president General Dwight Eisenhower.
  • Incoming CIA director Allen Dulles, also a brother of incoming secretary of state John Foster Dulles.
  • CIA director Walter Bedell Smith.

Due to the American elections and then the presidential transition being in full progress over 1952 and early 1953, it took some time for Retinger's ideas to gain traction. But eventually Retinger, through Bernhard's American contacts, received the green light to organize a confidential, privately-funded conference for leaders of both continents to work out their differences. The CFR played a key role in organizing the American side of the first Bilderberg conference. Retinger would serve as secretary-general of the group from 1954 until his death in 1960. Bernhard would serve as chairman until the Lockheed affair of 1976. Even after the scandal, his family would continue to visit.

As surviving records show, the first Bilderberg meeting resulted in a lot of heated questions from Europeans about the McCarthy phenomenon. The interesting thing is that McCarthyites put the American visitors of Bilderberg - Republican or Democract - under the exact same magnifying glass. As said, subsequently this Christian conservative group came to dominate emerging groups as the (high-level, CIA- and DOD-dominated) American Security Council and (low-level, anti-Eastern Establishment) John Birch Society. The State Department in general was seen by conservatives as "subvervise", with McCarthy even labeling then-secretary of state Dean Acheson a "commmunist". Acheson was a Skull & Bones alumni, CFR and Pilgrims Society member, and would visit Bilderberg in 1958, 1964 and 1968.

CFR member and Bilderberg co-founder C.D. Jackson, a psychological warfare expert who had become an employee of Henry Luce (of the National Committee for a Free Europe), was able to placate most of the initial European visitors by explaining the situation in terms as:

"We are certain to get this kind of supercharged, emotional freak from time to time [within the Republican party]. ... Whether McCarthy dies by an assassin's bullet or is eliminated in the normal American way of getting rid of boils on the body politic, I prophesy that by the time we hold our next meeting he will be gone from the American scene."

Clearly the founding CFR clique of Bilderberg, with David Rockefeller as its most elite member, was not particularly fond of Senator McCarthy either. It's an interesting comment in light of the later John F. Kennedy assassination, the elite CIA ties to it, and the central role of C.D. Jackson's Time-Life in keeping the Zapruder film under wraps for many years. It could well be a coincidence though.

Reading the summary paper for the first Bilderberg conference, we actually don't find much about McCarthyism, even though the subject reportedly dominated the conference. Almost everything is about developing a common, global strategy against communism. We see subjects involving:

  • How to nullify communist propaganda coming from Russia.
  • To what extent left-wing activism should be tolerated in order to keep the communists at bay.
  • Discussions on the ties between poverty and communist sympathies.
  • The causes and solutions to strong communist sentiment in France and Italy.
  • How to best decolonize the Third World without fostering communist sympathies.

These topics do make sense, because nothing scares multinational banks and corporations - which fund Bilderberg - more than an overly leftist, or even communist, insurrection. That's, for example, why so many of these banks and corporations funded Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and domestic fascism in the years before World War II, as discussed in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article. It is also why corporations as Reader's Digest and General Motors distributed Ludwig von Mises' neoliberal tract The Road to Serfdom (1945), blaming Hitler's genocidal policies on "the left". In the post-war years, the book came to serve as the bible of the Rockefeller-backed Chicago School, the favorite "right-wing solution" of this family.

Retinger insignificant as founder

Before we analyze how Bilderberg evolved over the decades, let's first take a look at Bilderberg's official founding story. There still is quite a bit of confusion to be found here.

Joseph Retinger is generally touted as Bilderberg's 1954 "founder". This certainly is the case when Bilderberg co-founders Prince Bernhard and David Rockefeller discussed the early history of their group, something that is quite well captured in a mini-documentary on Bilderberg on Dutch television first broadcasted on January 6, 2004. In it, Prince Bernhard is asked if one needed to be powerful to be invited to Bilderberg, back when Prince Bernhard was involved. He responds:

"After the idea of Retinger and [thinking hard] enfin, whoever else was there, you had to have... [thinking some more] influence in one way or another. ... No, absolutely totally not [is there a plot to take over the world]. [laughing hysterically] [It's just] a discussion group with which you can disagree..." 18

One is inclined to think Bernhard was about to say, "and David Rockefeller", but he never does so. With this answer, one gets the impression that the group followed Retinger's directives, and kept following his leadership after Retinger's death in 1960. In the same short documentary, Retinger's former secretary, John Pomian, was interviewed, who explained that Retinger recruited Bernhard to become the "figurehead" of Bilderberg. Next we are told that Retinger invited a "young banker" named David Rockefeller, who in that same period, in his 2003 biography 'Memoirs', also described Retinger as this all-powerful mastermind behind Bilderberg:

"Trilateral, like Bilderberg, is a much more benign organization than the conspiracy theorists have depicted. ...

"Bilderberg [was founded] at the urging of Joseph Retinger. ... He persuaded Bernhard to convene a group of prominent individuals to discuss ... the tense relations within the Atlantic community. I was one of eleven American invited...

"I was surprised to have been invited in the first place and even more taken aback when Retinger asked me to prepare a background paper [to debate] Hugh Gaitskell... I was a bit intimidated... My paper predicted steady economic growth [and with that] the paper undoubtedly helped establish my credibility [within Bilderberg]." 19

David Rockefeller has a long history of underreporting his own significance, and what he does here is no exception. Fact is, Joseph Retinger is completely insignificant in the larger scheme of things.

Still, let's ask the question: who is this mysterious Joseph Retinger? Since World War I, Retinger served as a "go-between" for British, French and Polish politicians and aristocrats. After World War II he played a role of considerable significance in setting up several of the early institutions of the European Union. He interacted with all kinds of well-known politicians within these institutions. For those interested in researching that angle more in-depth, Retinger is listed in ISGP's NGO index in relation to:

  • Royal Institute of International Affairs / Chatham House: 1946 speech.
  • European League for Economic Cooperation: 1946 founder.
  • International Committee of the Movements for European Unity (ICMEU): November 1947 founding secretary general, under chairman Duncan Sandys.
  • The Hague Congress (soon led to the European Movement): May 1948 founder and secretary general.
  • European Movement: October 1948 founder.

Considering the European Movement would soon be financed by the CIA-, Ford Foundation- and Rockefeller Foundation-funded American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), its board stacked with elites as future CIA director Allen Dulles, who founded the ACUE while being "head of a committee reviewing the organization of the Central Intelligence Agency"; Rockefeller family representative John McCloy and OSS founder Bill Donovan, it should be clear that by 1948 Joseph Retinger was operating as an extension of these interests. George S. Franklin, Jr., a Harvard roommate of David Rockefeller and later founding secretary of the Trilateral Commission, also was the secretary of the ACUE. 20

This is not all. In 1949, one year after the American Committee on United Europe was founded, the National Committee for a Free Europe was also founded, and came to very closely cooperate with the ACUE. Again Alles Dulles and William Donovan could be found on the board, together with (future U.S. president) Dwight Eisenhower, General Lucius Clay and Henry Luce on the board. 21

These are just first steps into determining that pinning the founding of Bilderberg on Retinger, while accurate to a considerable idea, is a bit of a distraction.

Real founders: CFR, CIA, big business

If Retinger didn't set up Bilderberg, then who did? Well, we already strongly hinted to that in the previous section: the real origins of the annual Bilderberg conferences was as an initiative between Europe-based political- and big business friends surrounding Prince Bernhard of Orange and the big business-funded Council on Foreign Relations, with a sitting CIA director playing a mediating role. The purpose? Anti-communism, which comes down to securing the future of big business.

Joseph Retinger, an intellectual backed by for a number of years by "Rockefeller CIA" elements in his efforts to unify Europe, first expressed his worries on McCarthyism to founding Unilever chairman Paul Rijkens. Unilever, of course, is a familiar name. To this day the company plays a major role within the globalist movement by financing countless of its NGOs, with chairmen and CEOs of the company attending conferences and occupying a variety of NGO boards. Unilever CEO Paul Polman, for example, can and could be found in such NGOs as the Atlantic Council (on the international advisory council), the Clinton Global Initiative and countless NGOs no one has ever heard of, despite sharing them with names as Henry Kissinger and Lynn Forester de Rothschild. In fact, as late as the 2010s, Polman is known to have been calling Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, an old Unilever human resource manager, out of his bed at 6 a.m., to get him to ram through multinational-friendly tax reforms.

So, going back three-quarters of a century, Retinger went to Unilever chief Paul Rijkens with his ideas on what to do with the recent difficulties with the Americans. At the time, Rijkens stood at the center of the Rijkens Group, a powerful, secretive big business lobby founded in 1952 that was becoming increasingly controversial over its attempts to influence Dutch foreign policy towards its Indonesian colony. 22 At the same time Rijkens was a member of Prince Bernhard's Tie Club / Dassenclub, founded in 1948. 23 Hence, it is no surprise that Rijkens is the one who introduced Retinger to Prince Bernhard.

Prince Bernhard agreed with Retinger's ideas, got himself a few second-opinions, and eventually brought everything to his elite American friends. Initially he went to Averell Harriman (CFR 1924-), director of Truman's Mutual Security Agency, an agency set up in 1951 with the purpose to:

"... maintain the security and to promote the foreign policy of the United States by authorizing military, economic, and technical assistance to friendly countries to strengthen the mutual security and ... defenses of the free world." 24

In other words, this agency was at the core of much of the friction between the United States and Europe, a theme so prominent during the first Bilderberg meeting.

It's interesting that Averell Harriman had been given this position in the first place, considering before and even during World War II he had the exact same job in private capacity, when his Brown Brothers Harriman bank "shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to [Nazi] Germany", which of course, apart from making money, came down to sponsoring an earlier "anti-communist" regime. This story is quite well-known, because Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of two later U.S. presidents, was among Harriman's partners in the bank, which did business with the Nazis until forced to stop doing so in 1942. The bank's chief German representative was Fritz Thyssen, a steel baron who greatly aided Hitler's rise to power. 25

In any case, Harriman, as an official representative of the Truman administration, thought Bernhard's idea was "[political] dynamite" and wouldn't touch it, at least not at the time of the elections.

Next Berhard went to presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower (CFR 1949-), a good friend of his since World War II. In total contrast, Eisenhower thought the idea of such a conference was a great idea and even wanted to pitch it in his election campaign. Bernhard objected to any kind of media attention, so plans for such a conference kept churning around in the shadows.

Bernhard also was a very close friend already of Truman's CIA director, General Walter Bedell Smith (CFR 1952-) - as said, a known member, or visitor, of Bernhard's Tie Club in the Netherlands. Again due to the elections, and also because Bernhard did not want the conferences to receive any media attention, it took some time to get things off the ground. Eventually "Beedle" Smith referred Bernhard to yet more of his CFR friends, most notably psychological warfare expert C.D. Jackson (CFR 1950-) of Time-Life, whose owner, Henry Luce, was a director of the CIA front organization the National Committee for a Free Europe.

Eventually 14 out of 15 U.S. participants in the initial Bilderberg conference already were members of the CFR, with David Rockefeller being the only CFR director. The exception, John S. Coleman, assigned by C.D. Jackson to put the American delegation together, became a member of the CFR within a couple of months of the initial Bilderberg meeting.

With that, the question whether or the CFR founded Bilderberg seems answered. Everyone Prince Bernhard talked to in the "U.S. government" at the time already was CFR. Next these people went on to only select CFR members to visit the first Bilderberg conference, with emerging Eastern Establishment kingpin David Rockefeller, as the only CFR director, square in the middle. The CIA played a facilitating role, which is not unusual in its relationship wit big business.

Rockefeller-Kissinger dominance in Bilderberg

As mentioned, David Rockefeller was the most dominant CFR member to be part of the initial Bilderberg meeting. He would continue to visit almost all Bilderberg conferences until 2013, a period of no less than 59 years. During this time, Rockefeller only missed about half a dozen Bilderberg conferences, mainly in his final years.

David Rockefeller's chief protege, Henry Kissinger, first visited Bilderberg in 1957, again in 1964, and has visited (virtually) annually since 1977, even continuing at the age of 99 in 2022, after the Coronavirus pandemic canceled the Bilderberg meetings of 2020 and 2021. This means that Kissinger has been visiting for a total period of 65 years and counting. Kissinger is not just one person operating all by himself. Even in the 2020s, past and present board members of his Kissinger Associates form a powerful, if not controlling, element within the wider globalist movement.

For example, all but one past chairmen and co-chairs of the CFR since David Rockefeller occupied that position from 1970 to 1985 first belonged to David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. In addition, Jami Miscik, the vice chair of the CFR since 2017, three years after she was invited to the Trilateral Commission, also serves as CEO of Kissinger Associates. Needless to say, Kissinger has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since the late 1970s, serving the first 20+ years as an executive, along with other close associates of David Rockefeller.

Ignoring a number of generational Bilderberg families as Wallenberg and Agnelli, possibly the third most frequent visitor of Bilderberg was Otto Wolff von Amerongen, a controversial German steel baron who visited Bilderberg between 1955 and 2001, only missing three meetings over this period. Von Amerongen used to serve on the international advisory board of Chase Manhattan Bank, puting him in particularly close touch with David Rockefeller.

Lehman Brothers partner George Ball visited all but one Bilderberg meetings between 1954 and 1993, dying in 1994. This is a period of 39 years. H.J. Heinz too, who David Rockefeller considered a friend and has vacationed with 26, participated in all meeting from 1954 to 1986, a period of 32 years.

Decades-long Bill and Hillary Clinton mentor Vernon Jordan visited Bilderberg or 40 years, between 1979 and 2019, missing a total of 6 meetings. Jordan was a Rockefeller Foundation trustee from 1971 to 1984, and also was a member of the Trilateral Commission, once again tying us back to David Rockefeller.

Looking at these names, it can be argued that from its founding, all the way until the death of David Rockefeller in 2017, Bilderberg has been the usual Rockefeller globalist operation, working in tandem with other key NGOs as the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, where Rockefeller also was a dominant player in. And that is why focusing on Retinger so much is quite the distraction.

David Rockefeller's wider influence

Looking at David Rockefeller's involvement in Bilderberg and all the subsequent NGOs all over the world he got involved in, it actually looks as if Bilderberg served as "bridge" and blueprint towards establishing this privately-funded globalist network. A partial David Rockefeller biography reads:

  • Member CFR 1942-2017, director 1949-1985, and chair 1970–1985.

  • Co-founder of Bilderberg in 1954 and annual visitor until 2013.

  • Annual visitor over 1962-1988 of the secretive Russian-American Dartmouth Conferences, founded in 1960.

  • Key founder and founding chair of the Americas Society in 1963.

  • Together with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the founder of the Trilateral Commission in 1973, North American chair 1977-1991, and hon. chair and lifetime trustee 1991-2017. Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Paul Volcker became important members of the Trilateral Commission as well.

  • Founding member of the U.S.-China Business Council, set up in 1973.

  • Member of the 1973-founded U.S.-USSR Trade and Economic Council, on which he served with George Shultz.

These are by no means all the NGOs David Rockefeller has been active in, mainly during the second half of the 20th century. But it does illustrate quite clearly that Rockefeller and friends got a taste of creating different types of "Bilderbergs" all over the world.

From Bilderberg to Trilateral Commission

More than a few people probably wonder what the differences are between Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, considering David Rockefeller has been the key figure in both groups, with considerable overlap in membersip/participation existing. Simply put, by 1970 Rockefeller was looking to include Japan into Bilderberg. The steering committee kept ignoring his pleas, so in 1973 he and allies as Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission. Quite a few individuals who earlier participated in Bilderberg, and generally kept doing so, appeared on the founding membership list of the Trilateral Commission:

  1. George Ball of Lehman Brothers.
  2. Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli
  3. Shell chieftain John Loudon.
  4. Otto Wolff von Amerongen, tied to the Thyssen interests.
  5. Kurt Birrenbach, a representative of the Thyssen fortune.
  6. Lord Eric Roll of S.G. Warburg.
  7. Max Kohnstamm, a founding vice president and secretary general of the Action Committee for a United States of Europe (ACUSE).
  8. Baron Daniel Janssen of Solvay.

Close Rockefeller friends as Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Paul Volcker would soon join the Trilateral Commission on the executive board. Despite a shift towards Japan, there also remained a continued interest in European integration at the Trilateral Commission. Founding North American chairman Max Kohnstamm is an example of that. So is Georges Berthoin, the president of the European group of the Trilateral Commission from 1976 to 1992, who had been president of the European Movement from 1978 to 1982. Berthoin visited Bilderberg as well, in 1977, 1982 and 1983.

Overall, the Trilateral Commission has even higher percentages of corporate membership, but this has been addressed elsewhere. ISGP also has a separate Trilateral Commission article.

"Brotherhood" and "Bilderberg Alumni"

Certainly in relation to the arguably more influential and prestigeous Trilateral Commission, it may be important to understand that Bilderberg never strictly was just an annual conference with a rotating membership. The steering committee, generally consisting of the most influential members, has always held additional meetings per year. Also, from the beginning it was made clear that any Bilderberger would be allowed to contact and seek help from any other past or present Bilderberger he encounters in his life, fostering what Unilever chief Paul Rijkens, a Bilderberg co-founder, described as "a sort of brotherhood of friendship and trust". To that end, visitors are provided each other's personal contact addresses. 27

President Eisenhower, the most pure "Rockefeller Republican" the world has ever seen, was "in" on the founding of Bilderberg and always had a personal representative there. 28 When the (equally pro-Rockefeller) Democratic president John F.Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower in 1961, he brought in a cabinet of "Bilderberg alumni" - to use the words of Bilderberg co-founder C.D. Jackson. 29 The "alumni" involved:

  • 1961-1966 national security advisor McGeorge Bundy (CFR 1948-).
  • 1966-1969 national security advisor Walt Rostow (CFR 1955-), before that a State Department counselor over 1961-1966.

  • 1961-1969 secretary of state Dean Rusk (CFR 1952-).
  • 1961-1966 under secretary of state George Ball (CFR 1948-).
  • 1961-1963 under secretary of state for political affairs George McGhee (CFR 1953-).
  • 1961-1963 assistant secretary of defense for int. sec. affairs Paul Nitze (CFR 1949-).

  • 1961-1963 U.S. chair of the Geneva Disarmament Committee Arthur Dean (CFR 1938-).
  • 1961-1963 principal negotiator of the Presidential Disarmament Committee John McCloy (CFR 1940-), who would be appointed a member of the Warren Commission over 1963-1964. Around the same period McCloy served as chairman of the CFR, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and Chase Manhattan Bank.

Of course, this didn't make non-"Bilderberg alumni" additions to Kennedy's administration "independent". Robert McNamara stepped down as Ford Motors president to become Kennedy's secretary of defense for 1961-1968. He would go on to have a lengthy involvement with the Rockefellers, in particular through sustainable development and the Green Revolution. His name would additionally pop up in groups as the CFR, Pilgrims Society and 1001 Club, in those cases too alongside the Rockefellers.

Meanwhile, Allen Dulles, one of two brothers who grew up with the Rockefellers, continued to serve as CIA director under Kennedy. He was invited to attend Bilderberg, wanted to attend, but was never able to do so. He was always kept in the loop though, through founding secretary Joseph E. Johnson and other participants. Dulles, of course, was a major big business player too, and had been president of the CFR before his appointment as CIA director. After he stepped down as CIA director, he was to be found on the executive board of the Pilgrims of the United States.

In addition, earlier-mentioned "Bilderberg alumni" Arthur Dean, a member of the group's steering committee, was a partner in the Dulles brothers' Sullivan & Cromwell law firm from 1929 to 1976, and served as chairman of the firm in the 1960s. Dean visited Bilderberg in 1956, 1957 and 1959, and then every year from 1963 to 1975, with the exception of 1974.

Infamously, we find David Rockefeller mentor John McCloy and Allen Dulles, a friend of David Rockefeller since college, as members of the controversial Warren Commission over 1963-1964, looking into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A year later, in 1965, John McCloy, together with David Rockefeller and Arthur Dean (chairman), set up the Committee for an Effective and Durable Peace in Asia, which, in opposition to a recently assassinated President Kennedy, helped sell the Vietnam War to the public through New York Times ads and the like.

Appendices

A: Donors

Even anno 2021 it can be pretty tricky to figure out who the historic funders of Bilderberg have been, although it stands to reason that the companies represented at the conferences pay a good chunk of the operating costs. These companies happen to be roughly the same as those known to fund the CFR, RIIA and Trilateral Commission. Still, a little bit of information on Bilderberg's early funding has turned up, and indeed, the names look very familiar:

  • 1954, Netherlands: Prince Bernhard holds a sales pitch to the boards of the following corporations, which subsequently agree to fund Bilderberg: Philips, AKU, Shell, KLM, Ned. Handel Mij. Amsterdam, Steenkolen Handelsvereniging, Hoogovens, Staatsmijnen, Standard Vacuum, B.P.M. He receives about €12,000.
  • 1956: Industrialist Baron de Launoit donates 1 million Belgian franks.
  • 1957, 1958: Rockefeller Foundation:
    • 1957 annual report, Rockefeller Foundation, p. 325: "Carnegie Endowment ... Bilderberg Group: expenses of American participants: $5,000."
    • 1958 annual report, Rockefeller Foundation, p. 462: "Carnegie Endowment ... Bilderberg Group: expenses of American participants: $10,000"
  • 1957, 1959 and 1963: Ford Foundation:
    • 1957 annual report, Ford Foundation, p. 84: "Carnegie Endowment... Bilderberg conference in the United States: $30,000."
    • 1959 annual report, Ford Foundation, p. 139: "Carnegie Endowment... Bilderberg conference among Atlantic community relations: $48,000."
    • 1963, Ford Foundation, 'Ford Foundation Grants in New York', p. 30: "Bilderberg Conference program among Atlantic-community nations: $85,345."
  • 1958, England: Prime minister Hugh Gaitskell asks British companies to contribute. BP, Shell, ICI and Unilever comply. The source is a 1958 Bilderberg-affiliated document of Hugh Gaitskell informing Bilderberg steering committee member Victor Cavendish-Bentinck (9th Duke of Portland; chair Joint Intelligence Committee 1939-1945) on, "The following donations have been received..."

Not exactly every corporate name here can be supplied with an indisputable source, but give it some time and that probably will happen.

B: The most dominant Bilderberg banks: Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wallenberg, Deutsche Bank

When we run searches for major banks through Bilderberg membership lists, mainly from 1982 on (as mainly these have biographies behind the names), and manually supplement the banks that pop up the most, we find the results below with regard to Bilderberg domination. Five banks and/ or families really jump out:

  1. David Rockefeller and his Chase Manhattan and JPMorgan Chase.
  2. Goldman Sachs.
  3. The Wallenberg family and their banks Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and Investor AB.
  4. Deutsche Bank.

DETAILS:

  1. Chase Manhattan and JPMorgan Chase: 129x(+).

    1. David Rockefeller: 51x over 1954-2013.
    2. Henry Kissinger: Vice chairman of Chase Manhattan's international advisory council May 1977 - Jan. 1978, taking over as chair from John Loudon in Jan. 1978-. He still was a member of JPMorgan Chase's international council anno 2003-2020. Kissinger visited Bilderberg in 1977-1978, 1980-1992, 1994-2019 and 2022-2023. Hence, apart from the 2020-2021 Covid years, he missed two Bilderberg meetings between 1977 and 2022. So we'll give 43x.
    3. John Loudon: Founding chairman of the initial board of Chase Manhattan's international advisory council 1965-1977. Visited Bilderberg in 1962, 1965 and 1972. Only the last two visits are counted, so 2x.
    4. Gianni Agnelli: Founding chairman of the initial board of Chase Manhattan's international advisory council 1965-, still sitting on the board anno 1990. Visited Bilderberg in 1954. Looking at the relevant years, he visited 1965-1979, 1981, 1984-1998 (certainly steering committee until at least 1994), until 2000. It's not clear how long Agnelli sat on the Chase board, so we'll count him until 1990. That comes down to 22x.
    5. Otto Wolff von Amerongen: Member of Chase Manhattan's international advisory council anno 1972. Von Amerongen visited Bilderberg since 1955 and only missed the 1981 meeting between 1960 and 2001. Because we don't know how long Von Amerongen was on the Chase board, we'll count him a modest 5x.
    6. Lord Carrington: Known to have joined Chase Manhattan's international advisory council after leaving office as secretary of state in early 1977, also joining Kissinger Associates. He visited Bilderberg in 1978, 1983-1984, 1987, 1989, was chairman of Bilderberg 1990-1998, and then visited a last time in 2013. It's not clear how long Lord Carrington sat on the Chase board, but he was still there anno 1990. If we take the 1980-1990 period, we count him a modest 5x.
    7. Willard Butcher: As chair of Chase Manhattan, he represented the bank once in Bilderberg in 1987.
    8. More: Additional Chase and JPMorgan Chase international advisory board members have visited Bilderberg, but it seems we have enough information now to put Chase in a category of its own.

  2. Goldman Sachs: 57x as a basic search, but *much* stronger represented going over all the historic Goldman Sachs executive board as international advisory board members in Bilderberg. Also, anno 2023, the Bilderberg website literally reads, "Barroso, José Manuel (PRT), Chair, Goldman Sachs International LLC; Former President, European Commission." 30 We still need to analyze, but it is likely over 90x and might well be more influential in Bilderberg than JPMorgan Chase is today. Unsurprisingly, Henry Kissinger has been an important bridge between the two banks.

    1. John Whitehead: Partner Goldman Sachs 1956-1984 and senior partner and co-chair 1976-1984. Chair of the international advisory board of Goldman Sachs 1984-1985. Visited all but two Bilderberg meetings between 1984 and 1997.
    2. Robert Hormats: Joined Goldman Sachs International in 1982 - with Kissinger joining its initial low profile international advisory board, heralding Goldman Sachs' "golden age" - and was vice president when he visited Bilderberg for the first time in 1983.
    3. Sir Peter Sutherland: Joined Goldman Sachs' international advisory board in 1990. Chair Goldman Sachs International 1995-2015. Almost continuous visitor of Bilderberg 1989-2015 and a member of the steering commitee. Visitor Trilateral Commission 1992-2002 and North American chairman 2003-2009. Continued as a Trilateral executive until 2018.
    4. Victor Halbertstadt: Annual visitor of Bilderberg 1975-, steering committee and secretary general 1981-, "Chairman Foundation Bilderberg Meetings" anno 2019, and "Co-Chair Bilderberg Meetings" anno 2022. On the board of international advisors of Goldman Sachs since 1991, and still anno 2005 and 2014.
    5. Robert Rubin: Career at Goldman Sachs since 1966, co-chair 1990-1992. Only visited Bilderberg 2010-2015, 2017-2019, when CFR co-chair. Not counted here, because he did not serve on Goldman Sachs' international advisory board at the time of his Bilderberg membership.
    6. John Corzine: Visited Bilderberg in 1994-1997 as senior partner, chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Visited three more times after retiring from Goldman Sachs, while he was Senator from New Jersey (2001-2006). Next became governor of New Jersey 2006-2010.
    7. Robert Zoellick: International vice chair of Goldman Sachs, chair board of international advisors 2006-2007, 2013-2016. Visited Bilderberg in 2003, 2006, 2008-2015 (steering committee), 2017.
    8. Stephen Friedman: Partner and chair Goldman Sachs when he visited Bilderberg in 1993-1994.
    9. E. Gerald Corrigan: Partner and managing director Goldman Sachs and chair Goldman Sachs Bank USA 2008-2016. Only visited Bilderberg once in 1994, when he had just joined Goldman Sachs, after serving as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1985 to 1993.
    10. John Thornton: Joined Goldman Sachs in 1980. Co-CEO Goldman Sachs International 1995-1996. CFR member 1997-. Chair Goldman Sachs Asia 1996-1998. Co-president and co-COO of Goldman Sachs 1999-2003. Left the bank when CEO Henry Paulson decided to stay on in CEO (until 2006). Bilderberg visitor 1999-2004.
    11. Lloyd Blankfein: President and COO of Goldman Sachs 2004-2006, under Hank Paulson. Chairman and CEO Goldman Sachs 2006-2018. Visited Bilderberg once in 2007. Member CFR 2009-.
    12. Hank Paulson: CEO of Goldman Sachs 2000-2006. Bilderberg 2007 only, when he had become treasury secretary.
    13. Paul Achleitner: VP M&A Goldman Sachs New York 1988-1989. Executive director of Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs in London 1989-1994. Chair Goldman Sachs Germany and partner Goldman Sachs Group 1994-1999. Chair Deutsche Bank 2000–2012. Visited Bilderberg annually over 2013-2022 and has been both treasurer and a member of the steering committee.
    14. Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach: Visited Bilderberg in 1992 as "Adviser, Goldman Sachs International Ltd."
    15. Chester Crocker: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 1999-2005. Visited Bilderberg once in 2007.

      INVOLVED IN GOLDMAN SACHS AFTER JOINING BILDERBERG:
    16. Henry Kissinger: Founding member of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board in 1982.
    17. Robert McNamara: Founding member of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board in 1982.
    18. Sir David Orr: Founding member of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board in 1982, at which point he was a former chairman of Unilever. Visited Bilderberg in 1977.
    19. Otmar Emminger: Founding member of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board in 1982. Visited Bilderberg once in 1965. Used to be chair of the Deutsche Bundesbank.
    20. Romano Prodi: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 1990-1993. Visited Bilderberg in 1980, 1981 (joined steering committee), 1982, 1987, 1990 and 2009. Prime minister Italy 1996-1998. President European Commission 1999-2004. Again prime minister Italy 2006-2008.
    21. Walter Mondale: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 1999. Visited in 1971 and 1981.
    22. Donald Gregg: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 1999-2002. Visited Bilderberg once in 1985.
    23. Karel van Miert: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 2001-2005. Visited Bilderberg once in 1993.
    24. Thomas Foley: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 2001-2005. Visited Bilderberg in 1988, 1990, 1995, 2002.
    25. Mario Monti: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 2005-2010. Bilderberg regular between 1983 and 2015, much of it as steering committee member. Member Trilateral Commission since at least 1985, EU chair -2012. European Commissioner 1995-2004.

  3. Wallenberg, representing Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and Investor AB: 57x.
    1. Wallenberg family: Five members of the family visited between 1957 and 2022. 50x total.
    2. Bo Ramfors: Visited in 1991 as managing director and group CEO of SEB.
    3. Bjorn Svedberg: Visited once in 1997 as president and CEO of SEB.
    4. Percy Barnevick: Visited three times from 1999 to 2001 as chairman of Investor AB.
    5. Claes Dahlbeck: Visited in 2003 as chairman of Investor AB.
    6. Sara Mazur: Visited in 2019 as director of Investor AB.

  4. Deutsche Bank: 42x from 1961-2019. Representatives at Bilderberg have included:

    1. Hermann Abs
    2. Alfred Herrhausen
    3. Gunther F. W. Dicke
    4. Hilmar Kopper
    5. Ulrich Cartellieri
    6. Kenneth S. Courtis
    7. Josef Ackermann
    8. Paul Achleitner

  5. Lazard: 33x. In 1972 and 2002 by Michel David-Weill. Between 1999 and his death in 2021 Lazard was represented almost annually by Bilderberg steering committee member Vernon Jordan, the old mentor of Bill and Hillary Clinton who first joined Bilderberg in 1979 and visited over a period of 40 years. Between 2007 and 2018 Lazard chair and CEO Kenneth M. Jacobs also was a very regular Bilderberg visitor.
  6. UBS Warburg: 25x, mainly by steering committee member Eric Roll. UBS by itself has never been represented.
  7. Rothschild: 17x, mainly Edmond de Rothschild and to a lesser extent Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.
  8. Societe Generale: 15x. Baron Pierre de Bonvoisin once in 1954. Eventual Bilderberg honorary chairman Etienne Davignon was the main representative in later decades. Maurice Lippens became vice chair of Societe Generale in 1988 and visited Bilderberg three times from 2000 on. It is not clear if he was still on the board at that point.
  9. Paribas: 15x, only between 1985-2003
  10. HSBC: 13x, since 1997.
  11. Barclays: 11x, since 1994.
  12. Citibank/Citigroup: 8x, all between 1983-2012.
  13. Banque de France: 7x, by Jean-Claude Trichet.
  14. Bain & Company: 5x, but only over 1997-2000.
  15. Morgan Stanley: 4x, in 1987, 2007 (by two persons) and 2009.
  16. Fortis: 3x.
  17. ABN AMRO: 2x.
  18. Morgan Asset Management: 1x, in 2015.
  19. Bank of America: 1x.
  20. Wells Fargo: 0x.
  21. U.S. Bancorp: 0x.

C: Bilderberg's domination of modern EU think tanks

Also the most influential NGOs working towards European integration in the present era, have contained among their founders and early members indivuals who at that point already were Bilderberg veterans. A (rather lengthy) list:

    AECA round table around 2018. Left: chairman Etienne Davignon. Right: former Belgian prime minister and European Council president Herman van Rumpoy.
  • American European Community Association (1981-): Founding patrons included long-time Bilderberg veterans as George Ball, Henry Kissinger and George McGhee. Robert S. Straus joined Bilderberg in 1982.

    Umberto Agnelli - of a family deeply involved in Bilderberg from the start - was the only founding patron from Italy.

    From Brussels Etienne Davignon was the most important founding patron. Even anno 2021 Davignon still is chair of the overall association.

    Various other Bilderberg veterans were involved in the American European Community Association: Edward Heath, Sir Frank Roberts, Collette Flesch of Luxembourg, Leo Tindemans from Belgium and the Dutch Wisse Dekker of Philips.

    Founding patron Sir David Nicolson never visited Bilderberg. He was, however, chairman of Rothmans International, owned by the South African Anton Rupert, a member of the 1001 Club alongside David Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, the British and French Rothschilds, Prince Bernhard and Prince Philip and the Bechtels.


  • The European Round Table of Industrialists (1983-): The initial 1983 meeting was convened by Volvo chairman Pehr Gyllenhammar, who also came to serve as the ERT's founding chairman until 1988 and continued as a regular member until 1994. While not a Bilderberger, Gyllenhammar had been such a good friend of David Rockefeller since 1971, that the latter invited him as his guest to the Bohemian Grove three years in a row, until Gyllenhammar thought the Grove was a bit to eccentric for his taste.

    Most founding members represented big business. Two instead represented the European Union: the first was François-Xavier Ortoli, a former president of the European Commission who visited Bilderberg in 1977. The other was Etienne Davignon, a vice president of the European Union tasked with "industrial affairs". An old protege of Bilderberger Paul Henri-Spaak, Davignon first visited Bilderberg in 1972, became a top banker in 1989, and eventually rose to honorary chairman of Bilderberg. Davignon rose to become the most NGO-connected superclass member in Europe.

    Umberto Agnelli - of the family involved in Bilderberg (and the Trilateral Commission) from the very beginning - was also among the founding members of the ERT. Gianni Agnelli and John Elkann (Agnelli), two long-time Bilderberger, followed up Umberto at the ERT in later years.

    While most names simply are successive heads of various globalist-oriented corporations, well-known Bilderberg names have been among the ERT's membership for all these decades: Sir Peter Sutherland (1997-2009), Baron Daniel Janssen (1991-2006), Bertrand Collomb (1989-2007), Marcus Wallenberg (2002-2005) and Jacob Wallenberg (2005-2020s).


  • European Institute (1989-): Directors of this Washington D.C.-based public policy organization over the decades have included Bilderberg veterans as Sir Peter Sutherland, Etienne Davignon, Bertrand Collomb and Jean-Claude Trichet. Director Robert Zoellick ended up a regular Bilderberg visitor after he left the board of the European Institute in 2001 to join the incoming Bush administration.

    Past and present board members as Lawrence Eagleburger and C. Boyden Gray may not have visited Bilderberg, but still are unusually well-connected members. Yves-Andre Istel has been a chair and co-chair of the European Institute from at least 1997 until 2015, all the while serving as a leading representative of the Rothschilds. He sits on the board of directors until this day. Jacques Delors, who never visited Bilderberg yet still is a major superclass member, also sits on the board.

    Veterans of the European Union's bureaucracy, such as Pascal Lamy, Javier Solana and Jean-Claude Juncker - the first two Bilderberg veterans - all received the European Institute's "Transatlantic Leadership Award".


  • Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility Europe / CSR Europe (1995-): A network of dozens of leading corporations set up in coordination with then-European Commission chairmen Jacques Delors and Jacques Santer.

    The corporations themselves generally are not represented by the highest executives. However, from its inception, CSR Europe has been overseen by Bilderberg's honorary chairman Etienne Davignon, who served as the group's founding advisory board chairman and continues into the 2020s as president.

    Bilderberger Pascal Lamy, at the time European Commissioner for Trade (and soon director-general of the controversial World Trade Organization), is among the individuals who have given speeches to CSR Europe.

  • Notre Europe / renamed to the Jacques Delors Institute (1996-): An EU-based think tank founded in 1996 by Jacques Delors, whom had just retired as chairman of the European Commission. While Delors, despite being a top superclass member, never visited Bilderberg, the other four members of the board of trustees anno 2012 had - and this years before they joined Notre Europe: Spanish economist Pedro Solbes Mira, French banker Philippe Lagayette, Pascal Lamy and Bilderberg's honorary chair Etienne Davignon.

    Apart from Lamy, Notre Europe presidents Antonio Vitorino (2010-) and Enrico Letta (anno 2021) both visited Bilderberg years before they were appointed to the presidency. Javier Solana on the board of directors is a long-time occasional Bilderberger, and, without checking deeper, there are likely others.

    Looking at Notre Europe's old steering committee, we see some of the same names, including Davignon and Lamy. Mario Monti, a Bilderberg steering committee member since the first time he visited Bilderberg way back in 1983, also was a Notre Europe steering committee member. Others included Bilderberger Karel Van Miert, who died in 2009; and the daughters of Bilderbergers Paul Henri-Spaak - a political mentor of Davignon - and Altiero Spinello, the latter considered one of the "founders of Europe" who had ties to the OSS and the Rockefellers from World War II through his brother-in-law, Albert Hirschman.

  • Centre for European Reform (1996-): Advisory board members of this think tank have included Bilderbergers as Sir Peter Sutherland, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Lord George Robertson, Robert Zoellick, CFR president Richard Haass, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, Mario Monti, Carl Bildt, Wolfgang Ischinger, Francois Heisbourg and Pascal Lamy, each and every single one a top superclass member.

  • European Policy Centre (1996-): A think tank founded by decades-long Bilderberger (1961-) and founding European chair of the Trilateral Commission (1973-) Max Kohnstamm, who subsequently served as the EPC's initial president. Long-time Bilderberger (1989-) Sir Peter Sutherland, another European chair of the Trilateral Commission, took over at some point and served as president until 2012. Meanwhile, Bilderberger Lord Kerr of Kinlochard served as vice president from 2007 to 2016, continuing as a regular member of the advisory council after that. Other Bilderbergers on the advisory board have included Karel van Miert of Solvay, Antony Burgmans of Unilever and a number of others.

  • Friends of Europe (1999-): A group founded by and presided over for all these years by the repeatedly-mentioned Bilderberg honorary chairman Etienne Davignon, who first visited Bilderberg in 1972. The most important trustee apart from Davignon is Baron Daniel Janssen, who has served on the board from the beginning and used to be a Bilderberg steering committee member back in the 1980s. Other Bilderberg visitors who served as trustees of Friends of Europe have included: Mario Monti, Carl Bildt, Pascal Lamy, Jaap de Hoop-Scheffer, Dame Paul Neville-Jones, Pat Cox, Javier Solana and Guy Verhofstadt.

  • Business for a New Europe (2006-): Founding advisory council members included UBS vice chair Leon Brittan, a former Bilderberg visitor in 1992 and 1998 when he was vice president of the European Commission; and Sir Peter Sutherland, who first visited Bilderberg in 1989, became a member of the steering committee and also European chair of the Trilateral Commission. Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, who first visited Bilderberg in 2004 and became a steering committee member, joined the advisory board soon after the group's founding.

  • Open Society Foundations (1979-): This is George Soros' "new left"-financing, "liberal CIA" foundation, which started to gain notoriety along these lines in the mid 1990s. Since at least the 2010s the OSF has been organizing dozens of meetings a year with members of the European Commission, and claimed in a report to have 226 "reliable friends in the European Parliament" in this period. In addition, behind the European Union itself, the OSF is the largest financier of the European Network Against Racism, which coordinates pro-open borders antifa armies in all countries of the European Union.

    As for George Soros, he has been a member of the CFR since 1988 and a director in the 1995-2004 period. In 1990 he visited Bilderberg for the first time, followed by visits in 1994, 2000 and 2002. In the early 2000s he was a member of the Trilateral Commission. In addition, since the 1990s he also annualy was part of the Bretton Woods Committee, again with the likes of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.

    Because the OSF finances anti-establishment "new left" activities, it doesn't have an extensive board filled with traditional elites. However, his close ally for many years at the OSF, Princess Mabel Wisse Smit, married into the Orange royal family of Bilderberg fame, although she herself never visited Bilderberg. Martti Ahtisaari, another major elitist and Bilderberg visitor of the mid 1990s, is part of the OSF's "joint advisors' group".

  • European Council on Foreign Relations (2007-): One of many international "sisters" of the CFR and RIIA, the ECFR's founding was funded by George Soros, a four-time Bilderberger since 1990, as well as a Trilateral in the 2001-2005 period. Founding and early council members included:

    • the above-mentioned Princess Mabel Wisse Smit of Orange (co-chair);
    • Prince Constantijn of Orange, a younger brother of King Willem Alexander and son of Queen Beatrix, both of Bilderberg fame;
    • once again Etienne Davignon, the honorary Bilderberg chairman whose first Bilderberg was in 1972;
    • and existing Bilderbergers as Carl Bildt (1992-), the close Wallenberg ally;
    • Martti Ahtisaari (1994-);
    • Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (2003-);
    • Gijs de Vries (1997-);
    • Lord George Robertson (1998 only);
    • Lord Chris Patten (2007, but represented in 2003 by assistent Anthony Cary);
    • Wolfgang Ischinger (2002-);
    • Count Alexander Lambsdorff (through his uncle, Otto, who first visited Bilderberg in 1980);
    • Gerhard Cromme of ThyssenKrupp;
    • Prince Karl Schwarzenberg;
    • Pascal Lamy;
    • Dominique Strauss-Kahn;
    • and Romano Prodi.

    In addition, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard has also been involved in ECFR meetings.

  • Munich Security Conferences: If we look at the regular visitors of the MSC, there's almost no end to cross-membership with Bilderberg: Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Alex Karp and Peter Thiel of Palantir, Richard Haass, Pierre Lellouche and Marcus Wallenberg are just a few of the random names.

    Horst Teltschik visited Bilderberg four times between 1982 and 1990, and became chair of the MSC from 1999 to 2008. Wolfgang Ischinger visited Bilderberg a first time in 2002. Only in 2008 did he follow up Horst Teltschik as chair of the MSC, a position in which he continues into the 2020s.

    BMW director Dr. Wolfgang Reitzle chaired the advisory council of the MCG anno 2013; he first visited Bilderberg in 1992. Siemens AG president and CEO, Joe Kaeser, visited Bilderberg in 2015 and 2016, right before being appointed the new chairman of MSC's advisory council.

    Other Bilderberg veterans on the advisory council of the MSC anno 2021 include George Soros (as this is being typed in April 2021, his son Alexander has taking his place), Carl Bildt, Javier Solana, Thomas Enders and Anne Lauvergeon. Other advisory board members, such as Jane Harman and Prince Turki al Faisal, may not have visited Bilderberg, but are top globalists high up in ISGP's Superclass Index. Meanwhile, advisory council member Federica Mogherini is a trustee of Soros' International Crisis Group, similar to Javier Solana.

    Oliver Bate visited Bilderberg after joining MSC's advisory council.

Notes

  1. March 10, 2001, Jon Ronson for The Guardian, 'Who pulls the strings? (part 3)'.
  2. It took weeks to find the original source for this (alleged?) statement (with work still continuing), as the original source - the New York Times for October 22, 1967 - does not appear to have the relevant article in its digital archives. Different aspects of the speech have been (wrongly and properly) cited though in all kinds of reliable and non-conspiratorial literature from 1968 on. Examples:
    *) 1968, Josh Dunson, 'Freedom in the Air: Song Movements of the Sixties', p. 102, 105 (NYT source): "[Words of Ball:] International companies law..."
    *) 1968, Lester R. Brown, 'The Nation State, The Multi-National Corporation and the Changing World Order.' Published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Not clear if it cites Ball, but it has a similar narrative.
    *) 1968, Arthur Barber, 'The Multinational Corporation and the Nation State.' Published by the Institute for Politics and Planning. Not clear if it cites Ball, but it has a similar narrative.
    *) 1972, The Conference Board, 'Information Technology; Some Critical Implications for Decision Makers', p. 230: "George W. Ball, suggested, in 1967, that such companies should be allowed to escape the control of individual nations and come under international treaties, that only thus can global enterprises avoid the stifling restrictions imposed upon commerce by the archaic limits of nation states and realize their potential to use the world's resources with maximal efficiency. [26] He added ... "We may only use the world's resources in the most efficient manner ... when national boundaries no longer play a critical role in defining economic horizons." [6 - in another source the quote was the non-quoted section above here.] Such major corporations have direct influence over the core industries of even the major nations. Many decisions affecting the global economy now largely occur outside of the local national political system. The nation state today is at best a laggard partner in the global community, often contributing more to the disorder than the control of world events, through clinging to its illusions of earlier physical and sovereign autonomy. In effect, though, we continue to talk and act as though it were indeed possible..." These quotes are part of a 1969 speech of John McHale titled 'The Transnational World', as published by the Bureau of Business Research, The University of Texas at Austin.
    *) 1975, Manitoba MP 1969-1972 Cy Gonick, 'Inflation Or Depression', p. 67: "[Cites Ball as having said:] The multinational corporation is ahead of, and in conflict with existing political organizations represented by the nation states."
    *) 2015, Harry Blutstein, 'The ascent of globalisation': "corporations were unable to pursue 'the true logic of the global economy' by the 'ceaseless interference from its puzzled parent, the sovereign state'."
  3. Oct. 25, 1972, New York Times, 'Economic Analysis').
  4. Sep. 15, 1976, Walter Wriston speech in London, England to an unknown organization, 'People, Politics and Productivity: The World Corporation in the 1980s'. A photocopy of the speech is to be found at the link below:
    fordlibrarymuseum.gov/ library/document/0001/ 241332080.pdf (accessed: Sep. 15, 2022)).
  5. cmsny.org/address-by-sir-peter-sutherland-on-migration-as-a-moral-issue/ (date speech: June 15, 2012; accessed: May 17, 2021; Center for Migration Studies).
  6. *) March 1, 2021, John Brennan on MSNBC's Deadline, without any racial provocation.
    *) March 2, 2021, New York Post, 'Ex-CIA chief John Brennan ‘increasingly embarrassed’ to be a white man'.
  7. July 16, 2018 @JohnBrennan tweet.
  8. The first Webarchive at web.archive.org for bilderbergmeetings.org dates back to June 7, 2010.
  9. May 1922, International Conciliation, pp. 3-4. This is a publication of the 1899-founded American Association for International Conciliation (AAIC), with Pilgrim Nicholas Murray Butler as chair in 1922, and Morgan partner Dwight Morrow a regular board member. It involves an article on the ICC.
  10. Dec. 18, 1912, UPI (founded in 1907 as United Press Associations), 'Investigation shows Morgan, 17 firms control $25.3 billion'.
  11. Quick examples: weforum.org/people/rob-cameron (accessed: May 2, 2023): "Global Head, Public Affairs, Nestlé"; weforum.org/agenda/authors/mark-schneider (accessed: May 2, 2023): "Since January 2017, Chief Executive Officer, Nestlé." Etc.
  12. July 11, 1990, The British Library Board oral histories, 'Hermann Abs, Interviewed by Cathy Courtney'. See the Hermann Abs biography in ISGP's Bilderberg membership list for citations. There also are references to Otto Wolff von Amerongen, Kurt Birrenbach, and Societe Generale bankers Pierre Bonvoisin (invited to the first 1954 meeting) and future Bilderberg honorary chair Etienne Davignon.
  13. 1928, National Industrial Conference Board (later The Conference Board), 'A Picture of the World in Economic Conditions', p. vii. (PDF)
  17. europeanmovement.eu/historical-leaders-of-the-emi/ (accessed: Aug. 28, 2022): "Treasurers of the European Movement International: Comte René Boël. Theo Lefevre. Karl Heinz Narjes..."
  18. Dec. 7, 2004, Nederland 3 / VPRO documentary, Andere Tijden, 'Prins Bernhard', 5:00 (the Bilderberg interview was first broadcasted on January 6, 2004).
  19. 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', pp. 410-415.
  20. oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ ark:/13030/kt7779r94m/ entire_text/ (2009, 2015 additions, Online Archive of Califormia: Hoover Institution Archives; 'Register of the American Committee on United Europe records'; accessed: Aug. 28, 2022): "ACUE was organized as a non-governmental agency by Allen Welsh Dulles, then head of a committee reviewing the organization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on behalf of the National Security Council (NSC), and William J. Donovan, former head of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The ACUE worked closely with US government officials, particularly the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) and the National Committee for a Free Europe, which was being funded by the Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller foundations. One of the aims of ACUE was to covertly finance the European Movement, Le Mouvement Européen (ME), an influential federalist organization in the post-war years."
  21. Ibid.
  22. -
  23. -
  24. history.state.gov/historicaldocuments /frus1951v02/d352 (accessed: Aug. 28, 2022): "[ Paris ,] December 21, 1951. Excerpt From Mutual Security Act of 1951."
  25. Sep. 25, 2004, The Guardian, 'How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power': "Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s..."
  26. 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', pp. 448-449. See the H.J. Heinz biography in ISGP's Bilderberg membership list for citations.
  27. 1962, Alden Hatch, 'H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An Authorized Biography', pp. 103, 214-217 (PDF): "Combined with this 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. To this end a list of names and addresses is maintained to which all participants have access. This makes possible an expanding continuation of association for people who might not otherwise have met. ... Dr Rijkens says, "... Through the years we have achieved a sort of brotherhood of friendship and trust."
  28. Ibid.
  29. Ibid.: "The present American Government is even closer to Bilderberg because President Kennedy has virtually staffed the State Department with what C.D. Jackson calls "Bilderberg alumni"-Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Under-Secretary of State George W. Ball, George McGhee, Walter Rostow, McGeorge Bundy, Arthur Dean, and Paul H. Nitze over at Defence. However, the Steering Committee tries to keep a fairly even balance between Republicans and Democrats."
  30. bilderbergmeetings.org/ background/steering-committee/steering-committee (accessed: May 5, 2023).