The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity.[citation needed] Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years. In 1957, the first US conference was held in St. Simons, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.
Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of around 18 nations. Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary General. There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee". In addition to the committee, there also exists a separate advisory group, though membership overlaps.
Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugel took over as permanent secretary in 1960, upon Retinger's death. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General has been held successively by Joseph E. Johnson of the Carnegie Endowment, William Bundy of Princeton, Theodore L. Eliot, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Casimir A. Yost of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
A 2008 press release from the American Friends of Bilderberg stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
According to the American Friends of Bilderberg, the 2008 agenda dealt "mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran".
Chairmen:
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1954–1975)
Walter Scheel
Alec Douglas-Home (1977–1980)
Eric Roll (1986–1989)
Lord Carrington (1990–1998)
Étienne Davignon
Participants:
Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards politicians, bankers, and directors of large businesses.
Heads of state, including Juan Carlos I of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, have attended meetings. Prominent politicians from North America and Europe are past attendees. In past years, board members from many large publicly-traded corporations have attended, including IBM, Xerox, Royal Dutch Shell, Nokia and Daimler.
The 2009 meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister Kostas Karamanlis; Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen; Sweden foreign minister Carl Bildt; U.S. State Department number two James Steinberg; U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; World Bank president Robert Zoellick; European Commission head José Manuel Barroso; Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
In a European Parliament session in Brussels, Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of the European Parliament, questioned the nominations of Bilderberg and Trilateral attendees for the posts of EU President and EU foreign minister.
In 2009 the group had a dinner meeting at Castle of the Valley of the Duchess in Brussels on 12 November with the participation of Herman Van Rompuy, who later became the President of the European Council.
Because of its secrecy and refusal to issue news releases, the group is frequently accused of political conspiracies. Critics include the John Birch Society, an American economic nationalist advocacy group, Canadian writer Daniel Estulin, British writer David Icke, American writer Jim Tucker, politician Jesse Ventura and radio host Alex Jones. The Bilderberg Group was the topic of a 2009 episode of the TruTV series Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.
Denis Healey, a Bilderberg founding member and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, has said:
“ To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing. ”
In 2005 then-chairman Étienne Davignon discussed these accusations with the BBC.
“ It is unavoidable and it doesn't matter. There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion...When people say this is a secret government of the world I say that if we were a secret government of the world we should be bloody ashamed of ourselves.”
Before the 2001 meeting, a report in The Guardian stated:
...the press have never been allowed access and all discussions are under Chatham House rules (no quoting). Not surprisingly, such ground rules, while attracting publicity-shy financiers, have also fuelled the fantasies of conspiracy theorists.
Jonathan Duffy, writing in BBC News Online Magazine, states:
No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted... In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is largely decided by Bilderberg.
Investigative journalist Chip Berlet notes the existence of Bilderberger conspiracy theories as early as 1964, in the writings of conservative political activist Phyllis Schlafly. In Berlet's 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by Political Research Associates, he writes:
The views on intractable godless communism expressed by Schwarz were central themes in three other bestselling books which were used to mobilize support for the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. The best known was Phyllis Schlafly's A Choice, Not an Echo, which suggested a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Part was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose policies would pave the way for global communist conquest.
G. William Domhoff, a research professor in psychology and sociology who studies theories of power, sees the role of social clubs such as Bilderberg as being nothing more than a means to create social cohesion within a power elite. He adds that those understandings of the clubs such as the Bilderberg fit with the perceptions of the members of the elite. In a 2004 interview with New Internationalist magazine, Domhoff warns progressives against getting distracted by conspiracy theories which demonize such clubs and make scapegoats of them. He argues that the opponents of progressivism are the corporate elite, the Republican Party, and conservative Democrats. It is more or less the same people who belong to clubs such as the Bilderberg, but it puts them in their most important roles, as capitalists and political leaders, which are visible.
Recent meetings:
2005 (5–8 May) at the Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Überfahrt in Rottach-Egern, Germany
2006 (8–11 June) at the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
2007 (31 May – 3 June) at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel,[31] in Şişli, Istanbul, Turkey.
2008 (5–8 June) at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, United States
2009 (14–16 May) at the Astir Palace resort in Athens, Greece
2010 (3–7 June) at the Hotel Dolce in Sitges, Spain
Source: Bilderberg Group
