Bilderberg: Transatlanticism and European Integration
"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
- Intro
First things first - Third place in "pervasiveness"
- Funding: Multinational banks and corporations
- From "political dialogue" to big business lobby
- The most dominant Bilderberg banks: Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wallenberg, Deutsche Bank, KKR
- Dominance of modern EU think tanks
History - Almost the first of its kind - but the ICC is older
- A continuation of the interwar "businessmen's peace"
- An evolution of obscure 1-on-1 meetings
- Nazi history
- Institutes of International Affairs: Bilderberg and Trilateral tied them together
- Bilderberg: still unique among U.S.-E.U. relations
- The CIA-backed NGO network Bilderberg emerged from
- Origins: E.U. worries about McCarthyism
- Retinger insignificant as founder
- Real founders: CFR, CIA, big business
- Rockefeller-Kissinger dominance in Bilderberg
- David Rockefeller's wider influence
- From Bilderberg to Trilateral Commission
- "Brotherhood" and "Bilderberg alumni"
Appendices - A: Details of Bilderberg's most dominant banks
- B: Details of Bilderberg's domination of modern EU think tanks
- C: Additional details on Bilderberg and Trilateral ties of institutes of international affairs
- Notes
List of key names, years, and key early interests - United States: Chase
- Italy: Fiat
- Netherlands: Orange royal family | Shell | Unilever
- Great Britain: Warburg | BP | Shell | Unilever
- Sweden: Wallenbergs
- Germany: Otto Wolff AG | Thyssen
- Switzerland
- Belgium: Banque Bruxelles Lambert | Solvay | Societe Generale
- France
- Eastern Europe: Retinger
"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 appearance 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:
- Council on Foreign Relations: 98% (58/59) official historical membership, with 100% (+1 person) involvement.
- Trilateral Commission: 64% (38/59) official historical membership, with 65% (+1 person) known involvement.
- Bilderberg: 61% (36/59) have visited at least once.
- Atlantic Council: 51% (30/59) official historical membership, with 63% (+7 persons) known involvement.
- Bretton Woods Committee: 54% (32/59) official historical membership.
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) transatlantic 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: foundations as Ford and Rockefeller, often in the early years when money is scarce; and multinational banks and corporations, the same interests that are represented in Bilderberg. However, officially, we don't know who finances Bilderberg.
Just to take this beyond the realm of speculation, here's a short list of unearthed funding of Bilderberg over the past three-quarters of a century, with almost all info coming from a 2014-published Dutch doctoral thesis:
- 1954: Prince Bernhard holds a sales pitch to the boards of the following major corporations, which subsequently agree to fund Bilderberg: Philips, AKU, Shell, KLM, Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij, Steenkolen Handelsvereniging, Hoogovens, Staatsmijnen, Standard Vacuum, and B.P.M. In total, he receives about €12,000 9, which corresponds to about €120,000 in 2024 euros.
- 1956: Industrialist Baron de Launoit donates 1 million Belgian franks 10, which appears to be about €250,000 in 2024 money.
- 1957, 1958: The Rockefeller Foundation respectively donates $5,000 11 and $10,000 12 to the "Bilderberg Group", through the Carnegie Endowment. In 2024 dollars that would be about $55,000 and $110,000 respectively.
- 1957, 1959 and 1963: The Ford Foundation respectively donates $30,000 13, $48,000 14 and $85,345 15 to the "Bilderberg conference", the first two years also through the Carnegie Endowment. In 2024 dollars that would be about $340,000, $520,000 and $875,000 respectively.
- 1958: Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell, a Bilderberg visitor in 1954, 1956 and 1958, asks British companies to fund Bilderberg. Afterwards, he informs Bilderberg steering committee member Victor Cavendish-Bentinck (9th Duke of Portland; chair Joint Intelligence Committee 1939-1945) that donations have been received from BP, Shell, ICI and Unilever. 16
It's peculiar and quite outdated that the funding sources of Bilderberg aren't listed online, but we have a clear idea where the money is coming from. The Ford, Rockefeller and other "liberal CIA"-type foundations also funded the Trilateral Commission, after which the group kept growing and more and more corporate funding started flowing in.
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 structuring 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% representing 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.
The most dominant Bilderberg banks: Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wallenberg, Deutsche Bank, KKR
When we run searches for major banks through Bilderberg membership lists, mainly from 1982 on (as mainly these have biographies behind the names), and in addition manually search for individuals tied to banks that eventually are known to pop up the most, we find the results below with regard to Bilderberg domination. Only a few banks and-or families really jump out, followed by many smaller interests:
- David Rockefeller and his Chase Manhattan and JPMorgan Chase: At least 129x. Since the death of David Rockefeller, the banks' influence seems to be waning.
- Goldman Sachs: Officially 57x, but it appears to be over 90x looking at all side-Goldman Sachs directorships and advisory boards. Goldman Sachs only became a player in Bilderberg after setting up its low-profile international advisory board in 1982 and entering its "golden era".
- KKR: 63x, through three individuals, since 1989.
- The Wallenberg family and their banks Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and Investor AB: Over 57x, mainly due to decades-long involvement of family members, who started visiting Bilderberg from 1957 on.
- Deutsche Bank: 42x, from 1961-2019, having been represented by at least 8 board members.
- Lazard: 33x. In 1972 and 2002 Lazard was represented by Michel David-Weill. Between 1999 and David-Weill's 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.
- UBS Warburg: 25x. This bank was primarily represented by steering committee member Lord Eric Roll, who attended all Bilderberg conferences from 1969 to 2002. UBS by itself has never been represented in Bilderberg, likely in part due to Lord Roll's presence.
- Rothschild: 17x, mainly due to the French Edmond de Rothschild, who visited Bilderberg over 1968-1977, partly as a steering committee member, and also was a Trilateral Commission member from about 1975 to 1985. The British Sir Evelyn de Rothschild visited in 1983 and 1998. On the latter occasion he met his future wife here, Lynn Forester de Rothschild.
- Societe Generale: 15x. Baron Pierre de Bonvoisin represented the bank 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.
- Paribas: 15x, only between 1985-2003.
- HSBC: 13x, since 1997.
- Barclays: 11x, since 1994.
- Citibank/Citigroup: 8x, all between 1983-2012.
- Banque de France: 7x, by Jean-Claude Trichet.
- Bain & Company: 5x, but only over 1997-2000.
- Morgan Stanley: 4x, in 1987, 2007 (by two persons) and 2009.
- Fortis: 3x, through Maurice Lippens. This Dutch bank is defunct.
- ABN AMRO: 2x.
- Morgan Asset Management: 1x, in 2015.
- Bank of America: 1x.
- BlackRock: 1x, in 2015, by its vice chairman.
- Blackstone: 0x. Founders Stephen Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, the chair of the CFR from 1985 to 2007 in succession to David Rockefeller, are/were major globalists, but have not been involved in Bilderberg. Peterson visited once in 1978, well before Blackstone was founded. Schwarzman never visited. Peterson was a founding Trilateral Commission member until 1978, which Schwarzman also never was a member of.
- Wells Fargo: 0x.
- U.S. Bancorp: 0x.
Additional details on the Bilderberg visitors who were part of these top banks, visit appendix A to the article.
Dominance of modern EU think tanks
As will be discussed in much more detail later on in this article, Bilderberg always has been heavily focused on European integration. This is also where Bilderberg stands out in. When you check the historical boards of all the European Union's globalist think tanks, you quite consistently find a lot of Bilderbergers. Bilderberg schism, the Trilateral Commission, also is very important in this process.
Below is a list of major globalist think tanks largely focused on the integration process of the European Union, which have major Bilderberg ties. The last three are separated, because the first of the last three was founded by George Soros, the second received major seed funding from him 17, and the third had George Soros 18 and then, from April 2021, his son Alexander on the board. 19 Soros, despite being a 1990, 1994, 2000, and 2002 Bilderberg visitor and a past member of the Trilateral Commission, is a bit of a different creature than other Bilderbergers or Trilaterals, mainly due to his extremely extensive "liberal CIA" and antifa financing. He's got his fingers literally in everything "activist" within the European Union.
- 1981: American European Community Association.
- 1983: The European Round Table of Industrialists.
- 1989: European Institute.
- 1995: Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility Europe / CSR Europe.
- 1996: Notre Europe / renamed to the Jacques Delors Institute.
- 1996: Centre for European Reform.
- 1996: European Policy Centre.
- 1999: Friends of Europe.
- 2006-2016: Business for a New Europe.
- 1979: Open Society Foundations
- 2007: European Council on Foreign Relations.
- 1962: Munich Security Conferences.
Details of which Bilderberg member has been involved in which institute have been delegated to an appendix here, where also all the sources are located, because discussing the details could easily get very boring. The only thing that needs to be remembered here is that Bilderberg has been very much preoccupied with stimulating European integration, and could be considered the "alpha" of most of the think tanks above.
BILDERBERG 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 ISGP's 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:
- 1919: Atlantic City (founding).
- 1920: Paris (founding).
- 1921: London.
- 1923: Rome, hosted by new dictator Mussolini.
- 1925: Brussels.
- 1927: Stockholm.
- 1929: Amsterdam.
- 1931: Washington D.C.
- 1933: Vienna.
- 1935: Paris.
- 1937: Berlin, hosted by Adolf Hitler.
- 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." 20 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" 21, with Morgan still being more influential than the Rockefellers, was the dominant financial interest on the American side at Versailles. 22 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 continuation of the interwar "businessmen'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 by looking at the International Chamber of Commerce, The Conference Board, the CFR and various founding and early members of Bilderberg.
- 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 elaborate, 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. 23 - 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. The original constitution of the International Chamber read that the group's purpose was "to encourage progress and to promote peace and cordial relations among countries and their citizens by the cooperation of businessmen and organizations." 24 Despite Mussolini hosting the 1923 conference and Adolf Hitler the 1937 one, the concept of a "businessmen's peace" or "businessmen for peace" remained prominent slogans with the International Chamber in the interwar years. - 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.
- 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-.
An evolution of obscure 1-on-1 meetings
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:
- Hermann Abs of Deutsche Bank and the notorious Nazi conglomerate I.G. Farben, served as an advisor to post-World War II German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and, after already having been involved in the European League for Economic Cooperation since 1950 alongside future Bilderberg co-founders Joseph Retinger and Paul van Zeeland 25, eventually 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", controversial as it may be. 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. 26 - Founding Bilderberg member Alberto Pirelli 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.
In the 1910s, the Pirellis were among those corporate and banking interests buying advertisement space in Mussolini's fascist newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, eventually leading to Mussolini's fascist takeover of Italy in 1922. 27 Meanwhile, Alberto Pirelli's younger brother, Piero, was part of the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference's Supreme Economic Council under Lord Robert Cecil, and subsequently became part of the League of Nations Economic Committee 28, all putting the family in close contact with the Morgans and other elite Anglo-American interests.
After 1922, the Pirellis continued to support and represent the Mussolini regime. Alberto Pirelli was among Mussolini's favorite corporate appointments 29, appearing alongside him 30, and donating to war efforts. 31 From 1928 on, Alberto Pirelli became part of the Conference Board's "foreign correspondents" board, and, from 1928 to 1932, a president of the International Chamber of Commerce. 32 Throughout the 1920s, Pirelli also was involved in war reparations negotiations on behalf of Mussolini's Italy, alongside German delegates as the unofficially appointed Hitler financier Fritz Thyssen 33, Pilgrim and Rockefeller Foundation man Owen D. Young, Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont, and also J.P. Morgan, Jr. himself. 34 The Morgan bank not only provided a $100 million load to Mussolini in 1923, with Morgan partner Thomas Lamont aiding Mussolini in giving him a favorable image in the West, but Pirelli and Gianni Agnelli's Fiat (another Mussolini supporter and major, future Bilderberg interest) received loans from the Morgan Bank as well in this period. 35 In 1934, Pirelli founded an Italian branch of the CFR and RIIA: the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI). 36 Originally supported by Mussolini, ISPI is still flourishing even a century later, with much of Italy's biggest corporations represented. 37
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.
Bilderberg's Nazi history
Similar to when studying the Pilgrims Society, the International Chamber of Commerce, the CFR, the 1001 Club, or the Rockefellers and Morgans themselves, also with Bilderberg, or the overlapping Trilateral Commission, one will run into historic ties of various members to fascist regimes during the run up to World War II. The following names are noteworthy in that respect with regard to Bilderberg. There aren't many names, but they are big business-related, and tend to be rather closely tied to David Rockefeller on a long-term basis. For sources, visit ISGP's combined bio- and membership-list for Bilderberg.
- David Rockefeller (1915-2017): Visited Bilderberg over 59 years: 1954-2013, only missing 6 conferences. Chair of Chase Manhattan Bank. Key founder Trilateral Commission 1973-2007.
The family's ties to the fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini have been relative well-documented, and were controversial already at the time. They ran, for example, through Standard Oil and its German and Italian subsidiaries. 38 In another example, through first-of-a-kind lobbying of the U.S. government on a voluntary basis by its cartel partner Standard Oil, owned by the Rockefellers, I. G. Farben was able to produce and import tetraethyl lead 39, shaving off many years of dangerous research, and increasing the horsepower of Nazi Germany's jetfighters with a whopping 67% percent. 40 Without that development, Germany would not have had a competitive air force by the time it was forced to go to war. - Hermann Abs (1901-1994): Bilderberg 1958, 1961, 1966. Original chairman of the second Davos meeting in 1972, but was forced to cancel.
Director Deutsche Bank 1938-1945. Director of the notorious IG Farben chemical concern that made use of slave labor at Auschwitz and created Zyklon B, the gas used in the Nazi gas chamber. Before and during World War II, a member of the Club von Berlin, together with Hitler backers as Hjalmar Schacht, Baron Kurt von Schroder, industrialists Fritz Thyssen and Friedrich Flick, and many other elites. Arrested in January 1946, but freed in April by the British, reportedly for not supporting the Nazi regime. Never prosecuted. Long-time Bilderberg steering committee member and Warburg chairman Lord Eric Roll was criticized for hiding Abs' Nazi history in his obituary. 41 - Otto Wolff von Amerongen (1918-2007): Bilderberg 1955-2001 47-years. Joined Bilderberg's advisory committee in 1983. Only missed the Oct. 1957, 1959 and 1981 meetings. Director Standard Oil of New Jersey, later Exxon, 1971-. Member of Chase Manhattan's international advisory council anno 1972. Founding member Trilateral Commission 1973-2007, executive from at least 1981 to at least 1998.
Son of Otto Wolff, who became one of the top financiers of Hitler's NSDAP no later than 1931, immediately before he rose to power. By the early 1920s Otto Wolff was a known competitor of Fritz Thyssen in both the steel and mining business. After a merger of several steel interests in 1926, including the Thyssens, Wolff became a shareholder and founding advisory board member of the newly founded company Vereinigte Stahlwerke, the largest steel trust in the world behind U.S. Steel. Other founding members were Fritz Thyssen, the founding chair and Hitler's most key financier since 1923; Hermann Schmitz, a director of Hitler-supporting concern IG Farben (whose primary U.S. partner was the Rockefeller's Standard Oil); and directors of Deutsche Bank, Bayrische Vereinsbank and Dresdner Bank. After Thyssen fled Germany in 1939, Otto Wolff was the third biggest shareholder of Vereinigte Stahlwerke, after the Nazi government and Rheinische Stahlwerke (owned by I.G. Farben). Died in 1940. - Kurt Birrenbach (1907-1987): Bilderberg 1960, 1963, 1966-1968, 1972. Member Trilateral Commission 1973-.
Member NSDAP 1933-1939, until he married his South American wife. South American-based steel exporter-importer until 1954. Representative of Countess Anita Zichy-Thyssen, the only daughter of key Hitler backer Fritz Thyssen (1873-1951) and a major shareholder in the Thyssen steel company over 1954-1978. Chairman of the supervisory board of Thyssen 1954-. Aided the founding of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation in 1959, of which he became vice chair. Chair Fritz Thyssen Foundation 1965-1987. Chair August-Thyssen-Hutte AG 1962-1973. President of Thyssen Vermogensverwaltung 1971-1978. - Gerhard Geyer: Bilderberg 1954 and 1956.
Joined the Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft (DAPAG) in 1926, became a director in 1939, chairman in 1948, and kept this position until at least the late 1950s. 42 DAPAG was co-founded by the Rockefellers and owned for 94% by the Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey (trade name Esso) in 1938. DAPAG was among the Rockefeller oil companies criticized in the U.S. during World War II for its continued dealings with the Nazi regime. 43 Two DAPAG directors, Emil Helfferich and Karl Lindemann, were members of the Keppler Circle, a.k.a. Freundeskreis Himmler 44, which served as an unofficial economic advisory council to the Nazi Party from December 1931 on.
The company was renamed Esso AG in 1950, after the phonetic pronunciation of the initials 'S' and 'O' in the name Standard Oil. Also chairman of the supervisory board of shipping company Esso Tankschiff Reederei GmbH. - Alberto Pirelli (1882-1971): Bilderberg 1954, March-Sep. 1955, Oct. 1957, 1958, 1960, 1963.
Big business owner who helped fund the Mussolini coup of 1922, and represented and supported the regime for two decades. - Gianni Agnelli (1921-2003): His FIAT company was represented at Bilderberg from 1954, and he himself attended most meetings over 1957-2000, with family members attending additional years. Founding member Chase Manhattan's International Advisory Council 1965-. Member Trilateral Commission 1973-.
His grandfather, Giovanni Agnelli (1866-1945), was considered a supporter of fascism: Acquaintance of Benito Mussolini from 1914. Named as being one of the advertisers in Mussolini's fascist, pre-coup Popolo d'Italia newspaper, alongside Pirelli and other major industrial and banking interests. Appointed by Mussolini as a lifetime Senator in 1923, representing the National Fascist Party. He kept this position until being stripped from it at the end of World War II. Accused by the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale of 1943-1947 of being a collaborator of Mussolini. Briefly stripped from ownership of his companies, but this was reversed. He died in December 1945, however. - John Hugo Loudon (1882-1971): Bilderberg 1962, 1965, 1972. In 1984 nephew Aarnout Loudon visited. Chairman and CEO of Royal Dutch Shell 1951-1965, chairman advisory board 1965-1975. Member Trilateral Commission 1973-. Founding chairman of the initial board of Chase Manhattan's International Advisory Council 1965-.
Second son of Shell founder Hugo Loudon (1860-1941). By 1922 both father and son shared boards with with the later pro-Hitler Sir Henri Deterding.
Institutes of International Affairs: Bilderberg and Trilateral tied them together
The Pirelli biography provided in the previous sections 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, in countries all over the West, and also in various non-western countries.
The author found these institutes over a period of two decades while putting together ISGP's index of 2,000 NGOs. The full list gathered:
- 1920: Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House or RIIA).
- 1921: Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
- 1922: Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).
- 1925-1961: Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR).
- 1928: Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA).
- 1933 or older: Netherlands Institute of International Affairs.
- 1933: Australian Institute of International Affairs.
- 1934: South African Institute of International Affairs.
- 1934: Institute for International Political Studies, Italy / Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale.
- 1938: Swedish Institute of International Affairs / Utrikespolitiska Institutet.
- 1941: Institute of Jewish Affairs. Now the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.
- 1944: Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
- 1947 or older: Polish Institute of International Affairs.
- 1947: Royal Institute for International Relations (RIIR or Egmont), Belgium.
- 1949: Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs
- 1955: German Council on Foreign Relations / Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Auswartige Politik e.V. (DGAP).
- 1957: Prague Institute of International Relations.
- 1959: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
- 1959: Japan Institute of International Affairs.
- 1961: Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
- 1961: Atlantic Institute for International Affairs.
- 1965: Institute of International Affairs, Rome / Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).
- 1979: French Institute for International Relations (IFRI).
- 1983: Netherlands Institute of International Relations (Clingendael).
- 1983: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
- 1989: Israel Council on Foreign Relations.
- 1993: Danish Institute of International Affairs.
- 2007: European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), funded by Bilderberg and Trilateral veteran George Soros. 45
Every single time one of the institutes above was found, of course, the question went, "Isn't this what Professor Carroll Quigley talked about in his 1966 book 'Tragedy & Hope'? And its 1981 follow-up 'The Anglo-American Establishment'?" That certainly is the case, and is widely known in conspiracy circles. Quigley did not write about this though in the sense of modern "cultural communist" globalism, which these groups represent, but rather as a British imperialist conspiracy set up by British-South African businessman Cecil Rhodes and continued by one of his chief allies, Lord Alfred Milner. In 'Tragedy & Hope' Quigley wrote:
"The power and influence of this Rhodes-Milner group in British imperial affairs and in foreign policy since 1889, although not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated. ... In 1919 they founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) for which the chief financial supporters were Sir Abe Bailey and the Astor family (owners of The Times). Similar Institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief British dominions and in the United States (where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations) in the period 1919-1927. After 1925 a somewhat similar structure of organizations, known as the Institute of Pacific Relations, was set up in twelve countries holding territory in the Pacific area, the units in each British dominion existing on an interlocking basis with the Round Table Group and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the same country." 46
ISGP already demonstrated that the Pilgrims Society, which Quigley never talked about, forms a much more obvious glue between the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. On the American side it featured Andrew Carnegie, the Morgans, Mellons, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Harrimans, Rockefellers, and other robber barons, included about half of the CFR leadership, and on top of that already was founded in 1903. The British chapter was founded in 1902 and included the royal family, the Astors, Cecils, the occasional Rothschild and other leading aristocrats and bankers, including at least a good number of (very obscure) RIIA leadership.
The Pilgrims only covered the Anglo-American connection though. Clearly the above list reveals that this network of institutes of international affairs spread far beyond the English-speaking world. And with Pirelli setting up the Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale in 1934, we find the same Morgan connection.
That connection alone is enough to suspect that there are more such connections. The problem is, information on the origin of these institutes generally is extremely obscure. So there is not a whole lot to write there.
What we do find is that from 1954 Bilderberg, to some extent, started serving as a "transatlantic glue" to these institutes of international affairs. Not only was Bilderberg founded from the U.S. side by nothing but CFR members, with some regularity it also brought in representatives from British, Canadian, Italian and Belgian "sister CFRs", which were older than Bilderberg; and also invited leadership from "sister CFRs" that were founded after the creation of Bilderberg.
The same thing happened with Bilderberg-schism the Trilateral Commission from 1973, and in even clearer fashion. The founding 1973 Trilateral membership list contained among its 58 initial European members:
- Sir Kenneth Younger, listed as, "Former Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs," a position he held from 1959 to 1971. Bilderberg visitor in 1959.
- Karl Kaiser, listed as, "Director of the Research Institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy [DGAP]", which he headed from 1974 to 2003. Visited Bilderberg in 1970, 1971, 1974 and 1985. Member Trilateral Commission 1973-2005. Member strategy council French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) anno 2006-2013.
- Cesare Merlini, listed as, "Director, Italian Institute of International Affairs [IAI]." Merlini visited Bilderberg in 1973 and 2004. He was a Trilateral from 1973 until at least 1998, but was not listed at least in 1985. 1968 Bilderberg visitor Altiero Spinelli, who has a World War II Rockefeller tie through Albert O. Hirschman, took the initiative to set up IAI in 1965. 47 Spinelli's daughter visited Bilderberg in 1980 and 1993.
- John Christian Sannes, listed as, "Director, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs", which he was from 1959 to 1983. Member Trilateral Commission 1973-1983, but never visited Bilderberg.
Just from these names we can tell that the Trilateral Commission took very long-term advice from the German Council on Foreign Relations / Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Auswartige Politik e.V. (DGAP), followed by the Italian Institute of International Affairs, and for the first decade also from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
The best-known example in this case is Thierry de Montbrial, the founding executive chair of the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) from 1979 until at least the 2020s. 48 De Montbrial has visited Bilderberg every year from 1975 to 1997, partly as a steering committee member, and again from 2000 to 2006 and from 2008 to 2013. He was a member of the Trilateral Commission from at least 1978 until 2002. This essentially makes IFRI a creation of both Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission.
There are many more of these examples though, and that is with very incomplete information:
- Honorary 1999-2011 Bilderberg chairman Etienne Davignon, who visited the group since 1972 and also was a Trilateral in the late 1990s, was chairman of the Royal Institute for International Relations (RIIR or Egmont) in Belgium anno 2007. 49 A number of additional Bilderberg and Trilateral Commission visitors were EGMONT directors anno 2007, including Baron Daniel Janssen, Willy Claes, Willy De Clercq, Mark Eyskens, Guy Spitaels, Leo Tindemans and, through her father, Antoinette Spaak. 50
- Wallenberg protege Erik Belfrage was chair of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs / Utrikespolitiska Institutet (UI) around or anno 2000, was a member of the Trilateral Commission from 2001 to 2016, and visited Bilderberg in 2005.
- Roy MacLaren, a Bilderberg visitor in 1972, 1985, 1992, 1994 and 1999, ended up chairing the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA) from 2000 to 2006.
These are almost random examples, but over time, even with limited access to information, you find a lot of Bilderberg and Trilateral Commission visitors who have also served on the boards of these institutes of international affairs. This article actually has an appendix in which these ties are explored in more detail. This certainly is the case for EGMONT in Belgium, IFRI in France, and DGAP in Germany.
This does not involve a perfect 1-on-1 connection. It's not like every national institute of international affairs has its permanent representative at Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission. But it is clear that many of these institutes of international affairs are directly or closely indirectly tied to both each other, as well as Bilderberg and Trilateral Commission. And that is an aspect of politics that really hasn't been researched at all. If it wasn't for the work of ISGP, no one on the "outside" would even realize that such a vast network of institutes of international affairs exists, all with the same purpose of advising or lobbying the government on (globalist) foreign policy.
Bilderberg: still unique among U.S.-E.U. relations
As just discussed at length, Bilderberg takes a unique place in history by being (just about) the first of its kind. Subsequently it helped draw together not just government officials, business leaders and scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, but also many more local think tanks and conferences, most notably all the various institutes of international affairs. However, even today, with so many additional, international 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, streamlining 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.
As already said, 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:
- American European Community Association (1981-).
- The European Round Table of Industrialists (1983-).
- European Institute (1989-).
- Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility Europe / CSR Europe (1995-).
- Notre Europe / renamed to the Jacques Delors Institute (1996-).
- Centre for European Reform (1996-).
- European Policy Centre (1996-).
- Friends of Europe (1999-).
- Open Society Foundations (1979-, but not significant in the E.U. until about 2000).
- Business for a New Europe (2006-).
- European Council on Foreign Relations (2007-)
- Munich Security Conferences (1962-, but obscure early history and increasingly more influential since the 1980s at least).
The CIA-backed NGO network Bilderberg emerged from
If we go back to Bilderberg's origins in 1954, and strictly look at the post-World War II years, 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 51, 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.
Future Bilderberg founder Joseph Retinger was a key founder and founding secretary general of the European Movement, until 1950, alongside chairman Duncan Sandys 52, Winston Churchill's son-in-law. 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. 53 The earlier-mentioned Count Rene Boël served as founding treasurer. The second treasurer was Theo Lefevre 54, a visitor of Bilderberg in 1967.
The connection continued in later years through Georges Berthoin, a chief assistant to Jean Monnet at the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952-1955 and president of the European Movement for 1978-1981. Berthoin visited Bilderberg three times in this period: in 1977, 1982 and 1983. 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. 55
The American Committee on United Europe (1948-)
The ACUE was a Rockefeller Brothers Fund- 56 and CIA-backed vehicle that was the primary financier of Retinger and Duncan Sandys' European Movement. The European Movement even featured prominently in ACUE brochures, just beneath the listing of directors, with Retinger's name being listed as well. Anno 1953 these directors included:
- World War II OSS head William Donovan, a key founder of the ACUE with Allen Dulles 57;
- retiring CIA director Walter Bedell Smith, a Pilgrims Society executive whom Prince Bernhard contacted in this period to help him set up Bilderberg, in which Bedell Smith played a logistical role;
- OSS veteran and incoming CIA director Allen Dulles, who grew up with the Rockefellers and served as CFR president;
- George S. Franklin, Jr., as secretary, an old Harvard roommate of David Rockefeller and eventual founding secretary of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission.
Around this time the wife of John McCloy joined the board too. John McCloy, David Rockefeller's family-appointed mentor at the CFR and Chase Manhattan Bank, both of whom McCloy chaired, visited Bilderberg in the 1950s and 1960s, with David being the primary unofficial overseer of the Bilderberg conference from 1954 to 2013.
Early ACUE board member Allen Dulles, CIA director 1953-1961 and a very close friend of David Rockefeller since his college years 58, 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.
These ties immediately make it clear that Joseph Retinger founded Bilderberg with the backing of his American supporters, who represented the CIA, CFR, Rockefeller, big business and U.S. government in general. Their primary goal was to unite Europe against Soviet communist subversion.
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. Other founding ACUSE members also visited Bilderberg: Maurice Faure ('54, '56), Kurt Kiesinger (regular between '55-'60), Rene Pleven ('63), Rene Lefevre ('67), and likely more. 59 1956-1975 ACUSE vice present Max Kohnstamm 60, was 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 he 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) 61, once again immediately demonstrating that "Europe's founders" were beholden to big business. Paul Volcker, Jacob Wallenberg, and Marcus Wallenberg, Jr., all tied in with Bilderberg, 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 Democrat - 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 "communist". 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
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..." 62
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]." 63
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 and the group's secretary general.
Considering the European Movement would soon be financed by the earlier-discussed CIA-, Ford Foundation- and Rockefeller Brothers Fund-financed American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), its board stacked with OSS, CIA and Rockefeller elites as chairman William Donovan, the former OSS head; vice chairman Allen Dulles, the incoming CIA director; Walter Bedell Smith, the outgoing CIA director, and various additional Rockefeller-tied elites, it should be clear that by the time he founded Bilderberg in 1954, Joseph Retinger was operating as an extension of these interests.
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. Funding, as so often, came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. 64
This should make it clear 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 made that clear in previous sections: 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 - largely controlled by David Rockefeller and Rockefeller family mentor John McCloy - with two sitting CIA directors, Walter Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles, in no small part through the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), playing supporting roles. The purpose? Anti-communism, which comes down to securing the future of big business.
Joseph Retinger, an intellectual backed for a number of years by "Rockefeller CIA" NGO the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), first expressed his worries on McCarthyism and Europeans becoming increasingly wary of the United States to founding Unilever chairman Paul Rijkens. 65 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 a "good friend" of Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, an old Unilever human resource manager, SMS-ing him at 6 a.m. to get him to ram through multinational-friendly tax reforms. 66
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. 67 At the same time Rijkens was a member of Prince Bernhard's Tie Club / Dassenclub, founded in 1948. 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." 68
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. 69
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. 70
Next Bernhard 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. 71
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. 72
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 73, became a member of the CFR within a couple of months of the initial Bilderberg meeting. A full list of the initial 1954 American Bilderberg attendees and the years they joined the CFR:
- David Rockefeller: CFR member 1942-2017; chair 1970–1985, member 1942-1949, director 1949-1985; key Trilateral Commission founder.
- Nelson Dean Jay: CFR member 1942-; director J.P. Morgan & Co.
- George Nebolsine: CFR member 1944-.
- Gardner Cowles Jr.: CFR member 1945-.
- George Bingham: CFR member 1946-.
- George Ball: CFR member 1948-.
- Paul Nitze: CFR member 1949-.
- C.D. Jackson: CFR member 1950-.
- H.J. Heinz II: CFR member 1952-; father Howard: member 1924-.
- J. D. Zellerbach: CFR member 1952-.
- George McGhee: CFR member 1953-.
- Cola Parker: CFR member 1953-.
- George Perkins: CFR member 1953-.
- Joseph Spang Jr.: CFR member 1954-.
- John Coleman: CFR member mid 1954- or 1955-; commissioned by Jackson to organize the initial BB participants in 1953-1954.
- Walter Bedell Smith: CFR member 1952-; CIA director 1950-1953 and under secretary of state 1953-1954, who co-founded Bilderberg, but did not attend.
- Dwight Eisenhower: CFR member 1949-; interested in using the Bilderberg plan in his 1952 presidential campaign, but others did not like that; agreed that (incoming) administration officials worked on the Bilderberg plan.
- Averell Harriman: CFR member 1924-; didn't want to touch the Bilderberg plan during the 1952 elections, because it was politically sensitive.
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 with 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, putting 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 74, 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 membership/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:
- George Ball of Lehman Brothers.
- Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli
- Shell chieftain John Loudon.
- Otto Wolff von Amerongen, tied to the Thyssen interests.
- Kurt Birrenbach, a representative of the Thyssen fortune.
- Lord Eric Roll of S.G. Warburg.
- Max Kohnstamm, a founding vice president and secretary general of the Action Committee for a United States of Europe (ACUSE).
- 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 prestigious 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. 75
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. 76 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. 77 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: Details of Bilderberg's most dominant banks
When we run searches for major banks through Bilderberg membership lists, mainly from 1982 on (as mainly these have biographies behind the names), and in addition manually search for individuals tied to banks that eventually are known to pop up the most, we find the results below with regard to Bilderberg domination. This is an appendix to the chapter 'The most dominant Bilderberg banks', where the conclusions are summarized.
DETAILS:
- Chase Manhattan and JPMorgan Chase: 129x(+).
- David Rockefeller: 51x over 1954-2013.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Willard Butcher: As chair of Chase Manhattan, he represented the bank once in Bilderberg in 1987.
- 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.
- 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." 78 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 committee. Visitor Trilateral Commission 1992-2002 and North American chairman 2003-2009. Continued as a Trilateral executive until 2018.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Stephen Friedman: Partner and chair Goldman Sachs when he visited Bilderberg in 1993-1994.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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-.
- Hank Paulson: CEO of Goldman Sachs 2000-2006. Bilderberg 2007 only, when he had become treasury secretary.
- 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.
- Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach: Visited Bilderberg in 1992 as "Adviser, Goldman Sachs International Ltd."
- 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: - Henry Kissinger: Founding member of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board in 1982.
- Robert McNamara: Founding member of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board in 1982.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Walter Mondale: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 1999. Visited in 1971 and 1981.
- Donald Gregg: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 1999-2002. Visited Bilderberg once in 1985.
- Karel van Miert: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 2001-2005. Visited Bilderberg once in 1993.
- Thomas Foley: Member board of Goldman Sachs' international advisory board anno 2001-2005. Visited Bilderberg in 1988, 1990, 1995, 2002.
- 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.
- KKR: 63x, through three individuals, since 1989.
- Henry Kravis: Visited Bilderberg 27x since his first visit in 1989, always as a partner in Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR).
- Marie-Josee Kravis: Wife of Henry Kravis since 1994. Visited Bilderberg 29x since, serving as co-chair of the Bilderberg steering committee anno 2020-2024 and president of American Friends of Bilderberg Inc. anno 2021-2024.
- David Petraeus: Visited Bilderberg as chairman of the KKR Global Institute in 2014-2019, and 2022: 7x.
- Wallenberg, representing Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and Investor AB: 57x.
- Wallenberg family: Five members of the family visited between 1957 and 2022. 50x total.
- Bo Ramfors: Visited in 1991 as managing director and group CEO of SEB.
- Bjorn Svedberg: Visited once in 1997 as president and CEO of SEB.
- Percy Barnevick: Visited three times from 1999 to 2001 as chairman of Investor AB.
- Claes Dahlbeck: Visited in 2003 as chairman of Investor AB.
- Sara Mazur: Visited in 2019 as director of Investor AB.
- Deutsche Bank: 42x from 1961-2019. Representatives at Bilderberg have included:
- Hermann Abs
- Alfred Herrhausen
- Gunther F. W. Dicke
- Hilmar Kopper
- Ulrich Cartellieri
- Kenneth S. Courtis
- Josef Ackermann
- Paul Achleitner
- 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.
- UBS Warburg: 25x, mainly by steering committee member Eric Roll. UBS by itself has never been represented.
- Rothschild: 17x, mainly Edmond de Rothschild and to a lesser extent Sir Evelyn de Rothschild.
- 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.
- Paribas: 15x, only between 1985-2003
- HSBC: 13x, since 1997.
- Barclays: 11x, since 1994.
- Citibank/Citigroup: 8x, all between 1983-2012.
- Banque de France: 7x, by Jean-Claude Trichet.
- Bain & Company: 5x, but only over 1997-2000.
- Morgan Stanley: 4x, in 1987, 2007 (by two persons) and 2009.
- Fortis: 3x.
- ABN AMRO: 2x.
- Morgan Asset Management: 1x, in 2015.
- Bank of America: 1x.
- BlackRock: 1x.
- Blackstone: 0x.
- Wells Fargo: 0x.
- U.S. Bancorp: 0x.
B: Details of Bilderberg's domination of modern EU think tanks
The most influential NGOs working towards European integration in the present era, have contained among their founders and early members individuals who at that point already were Bilderberg veterans. A (rather lengthy) list, with sources:
- American European Community Association (1981-): Founding patrons included long-time Bilderberg veterans as George Ball, Henry Kissinger and George McGhee. 79 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. 80
From Brussels Etienne Davignon - who regularly started visiting Bilderberg in 1972, eventually becoming honorary chairman - was the most important founding patron. 81 Anno 2024 only three overseers of the association are listed. These are Davignon, fellow-Bilderberg visitor Baron Frans Van Daele, and a non-Bilderberger. 82
Various other Bilderberg veterans were involved in the American European Community Association: Edward Heath, Sir Frank Roberts, Collette Flesch of Luxembourg, Dr. Ralf Dahrendorf from Germany, Leo Tindemans from Belgium and the Dutch Wisse Dekker of Philips. 83
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 Swedish Volvo chairman Pehr Gyllenhammar. 84 As for a background, Gyllenhammar first had become friends with David Rockefeller in 1971, who invited him three times to the Bohemian Grove, where he also met other key Bilderbergers besides Rockefeller, such as Henry Kissinger and Paul Volcker. Eventually he decided that the Bohemian Grove was too strange for him 85, but from at least 1978 Gyllenhammar also shared 1001 Club membership with the Rockefellers, as well as the Rothschilds, Bechtels and various royal houses of Europe.
The founding industrialists represented Volvo, FIAT, Shell, Philips, Thyssen, Siemens, Lafarge, Olivetti, United Technologies, Imperial Chemical Industries, Nestlé, etc., but the industrialists were not Bilderberg veterans. John Harvey-Jones of Imperial Chemical Industries had attended a 1978 meeting. Umberto Agnelli of FIAT would attend his first Bilderberg a month after the meeting, although his family was deeply involved in Bilderberg since the 1950s. Gianni Agnelli and John Elkann (Agnelli), two long-time Bilderbergers, followed up Umberto at the ERT in later years. Notably, two additional attendants at the founding meeting represented the European Commission: Francois-Xavier Ortoli and Etienne Davignon 86, and they both had visited Bilderberg before, in particular Davignon.
Combine this with Gyllenhammar's Rockefeller-Kissinger connection, and one could still say that the European Round Table of Industrialists was a Bilderberg creation, despite recruiting from industry not being Bilderberg's focus. It is more into finance and banking.
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). 87 - 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. 88
Past and present board members as Lawrence Eagleburger 89 and C. Boyden Gray 90 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. 91
Apart from Lamy, Notre Europe presidents Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa (until 2011), Antonio Vitorino (2010-) 92 and Enrico Letta (anno 2021-2024) 93 also all visited Bilderberg years before they were appointed to the presidency. Javier Solana on the board of directors 94 is a long-time occasional Bilderberger, and, without checking deeper, there are likely others.
Looking at Notre Europe's old steering committee, renamed to Notre Europe Committee around 2009, we see some of the same names, including Davignon and Lamy, as well as numerous additional Bilderberg veterans. Mario Monti, a Bilderberg steering committee member since the first time he visited Bilderberg way back in 1983, is one. Others included Bilderberger Jean-Francois Poncet, of a generational diplomat family; and the daughters of Bilderbergers Paul Henri-Spaak - a political mentor of Davignon - and Altiero Spinello 95, 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.
Notre Europe's 2008 Council Europe d'Orientation, to discuss important issues, apart from familiar names, also included Bilderbergers Carlo Ciampi, Jean-Luc Dehaene, Joschka Fischer, Wim Kok, Lord Christopher Patten, Romano Prodi, Sir Peter Sutherland, Paul Hermelin, and other, non-Bilderberg names as Jacques Santer, Jean Claude Juncker, Gerard Mestrallet, and Lord Simon of Highbury. 96
Anno 2010 the board of directors of Notre Europe included Wallenberg agent and 2005 Bilderberg visitor Erik Belfrage, as well as Bilderbergers Philippe De Schoutheete, Jean Pisani-Ferry, and the earlier-mentioned Jean-Francois Poncet. 97 Bilderberger Karel Van Miert was on the board until his death in 2009. 98 - 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. Less influential advisory board members as Antonio Vitorino, former INSEAD dean Antonio Borges, Lord Dahrendorf, and Lord Hannay also all visited Bilderberg. 99
- European Policy Centre (1996-): A think tank founded by decades-long Bilderberger (1961-) and founding European chair of the Trilateral Commission (1973-) Max Kohnstamm 100, 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. Looking at the 007 board, apart from the afore-mentioned, we find Bilderbergers Karel Van Miert and Antonio Vitorino as vice presidents, with other Bilderbergers on the board including Unilever chair Antony Burgmans, Philippe de Schoutheete, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Erkki Liikanen, as well as top-non-Bilderberg-globalist Gareth Evans. 101
Bilderberger Lord Kerr of Kinlochard joined the board in 2007 102, quickly becoming vice president until 2016, continuing as a regular member of the advisory council after that. Anno 2024 Lord Kerr still is part of the EPC's strategic council, alongside fellow-Bilderberg veterans as Baron Frans van Daele, Wolfgang Schussel, Herman van Rompuy, and Joaquin Almunia, as well recognizable globalists as Jean-Claude Juncker and Federica Mogherini. 103 - 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. Looking at the Praesidium in 2010, we find 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. We also find Bilderberg veterans Carl Bildt, a Wallenberg protege; Pascal Lamy, Mario Monti, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Pat Cox, Jean-Luc Dehaene, Anna Diamantopoulou, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, as well as the non-Bilderberg Guy Verhofstadt. 104 Among the trustees for that year we find Bilderbergers Michel Rocard, Javier Solana, Philippe de Schoutheete, Erkki Liikanen, and Baron Frans van Daele. 105
Anno 2024 Davignon still is (trustee) president of Friends of Europe. Bilderberg veteran and fellow-trustee Thomas Leysen is president of the governing board of Friends of Europe. Bilderbergers Carl Bildt and Anna Diamantopoulou still are there on the board of trustees, flanked by Bilderberg veterans Jaap de Hoop-Scheffer, Dame Paul Neville-Jones, and possibly a few other new Bilderberg names. On a personal note, also to be found is Dutch GreenLeft party head Jesse Klaver 106, who has been here since at least 2020. - Business for a New Europe (2006-2016): 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. 107 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. Lord Kerr still was there in 2016, along with upcoming Bilderberger Richard Gnodde, a co-CEO of Goldman Sachs, and major non-Bilderberg globalist Sir Martin Sorrell 108
This group was founded in 2006 109, but the original website url is not known anymore to this author. 2000 Bilderberg visitor Lord Peter Mandelson was among the group's first speakers in 2006. 110 The group seems to have dissolved after Brexit passed in 2016, which it sought to prevent. - 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. 111 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 annually 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. The same goes for Morton Abramowitz, who was a trustee until 2002: elite, but not a Bilderberg visitor. Bilderberg visitor over 1967-1971 and 1973, Bill Moyers, was an OSF trustee until 2002. Martti Ahtisaari, another major elitist and Bilderberg visitor of the mid 1990s, is part of the OSF's "joint advisors' group". As said, traditional elitism is not the domain of Soros. - 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 112, a four-time Bilderberger since 1990, as well as a Trilateral in the 2001-2005 period.
Founding council members included co-chair Princess Mabel Wisse Smit of Orange, who, through her inlaws is tied into Bilderberg, and Bilderbergers Martti Ahtisaari (1994-), Gijs de Vries (1997-), Jean-Luc Dehaene, Joschka Fischer, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Lord Chris Patten (2007, but represented in 2003 by assistant Anthony Cary), George Soros himself, and Antonio Vitorino. 113
Within a year the following Bilderbergers joined the council: Lord George Robertson (1998 only) 114, Pascal Lamy 115, Lionel Jospin 116, Etienne Davignon 117, Wolfgang Ischinger 118, Wolfgang Schussel (1984) 119, Prince Karl Schwarzenberg 120, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa (1986, 1998, etc.) 121, Renato Ruggiero (1986 and on) 122.
Several years more, the following Bilderbergers also were part of the ECFR council: Javier Solana, Carl Bildt, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Count Alexander Lambsdorff (through his uncle, Otto, who first visited Bilderberg in 1980), Gerhard Cromme of ThyssenKrupp, and likely others. 123
Plenty more Bilderbergers are to be found when checking more deeply. In addition, anno 2010 Lord Kerr of Kinlochard was part of a high-level ECFR panel, alongside George Soros. 124 - 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. 125
Horst Teltschik visited Bilderberg four times between 1982 and 1990, and became chair of the MSC from 1999 to 2008. 126 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 held until 2022. 127
BMW director Dr. Wolfgang Reitzle was the founding chairman of the Munich Security Conference's advisory council from 2009 to 2020 128; he first visited Bilderberg in 1992. Siemens AG chairman Joe Kaeser was elected advisory council chairman of the Munich Security Conference in December 2020. 129 He first visited Bilderberg in 2015.
Other Bilderberg veterans on the advisory council of the MSC anno 2021 include George Soros, who was replaced by his son Alexander Soros in April 2021 130; Carl Bildt, Javier Solana, Thomas Enders, Anne Lauvergeon, and Radoslaw Sikorski. 131 Other advisory board members, such as Jane Harman and Prince Turki al Faisal 132, may not have visited Bilderberg, but are top globalists high up in ISGP's Superclass Index. Meanwhile, advisory council member Federica Mogherini 133 is a trustee of Soros' International Crisis Group, similar to Javier Solana.
Oliver Bate visited Bilderberg after joining MSC's advisory council. 134
C. Additional details on Bilderberg and Trilateral ties of institutes of international affairs
These are extra names and details related to the chapter here on institues of international affairs.
- 1920: The Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA - Chatham House):
- Christopher Woodhouse: MI6 agent involved in 1953 MI6-CIA-orchestrated Iran coup. Director general RIIA 1955-1959. Bilderberg 1963.
- Sir Duncan Oppenheim: Bilderberg 1955-1956, 1968. Chair RIIA 1966-1971.
- Sir Kenneth Younger Managing director RIIA 1959-1971. Bilderberg 1959. Founding Trilateral executive in 1973, listed as "Former Director of the [RIIA]". Gone here by 1978.
- Sir Andrew Shonfield: Director of studies at RIIA 1961-1968, (managing) director 1972-1977. Bilderberg 1968.
- Sir James Eberle: Bilderberg 1984, visiting as "Director, The [RIIA]," a position he held over 1983-1990.
- Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: Trilateral 2002-2019, executive 2003-2019. All Bilderberg meetings 2004-2016 (steering committee largely). Member of RIIA's Panel of Senior Advisers anno 2011.
- R. Nicholas Burns: Member of RIIA's Panel of Senior Advisers anno 2011. Trilateral 2016-2021.
- Lord Hurd of Westwell: Bilderberg 1980-1981. Co-president RIIA 2002-2009. Chair of RIIA's Panel of Senior Advisers anno 2011.
- Lord George Robertson: Bilderberg 1998, 2001. Member of RIIA's Panel of Senior Advisers anno 2011.
- Sir Evelyn de Rothschild: Bilderberg 1983, 1998. Founding member of RIIA's William Pitt Group, "committed to the long-term success of [RIIA]", 2009-.
- John Whitehead: Trilateral 1982-1985. Bilderberg 1984-1987, 1989, 1990-1992 (steering committee), 1993-1997. Member of RIIA's Panel of Senior Advisers anno 2011.
- 1921: The Council on Foreign Relations:
- 14 of 15 U.S. Bilderberg founders were existing members of the CFR, the 15th joining the CFR a few months later.
- David Rockefeller: Member CFR 1942-2017, director 1949-1970, chair 1970-1985. Co-founder and 59-year-long visitor of Bilderberg 1954-2012, only missing 8 meetings. Founder and 45-year-long member of the Trilateral Commission 1973-2017, North American chair 1977-1991.
- Henry Kissinger: Member CFR, director 1977–1981. 66-year-long visitor of Bilderberg October 1957, 1964, only missing two meetings between 1977-2022. 45-year-long visitor of the Trilateral Commission 1978-2022s, mostly as an executive, except in the 2000s and 2010s.
- It appears most U.S. Bilderberg visitors, certainly the more prominent ones, were members of the CFR. The CFR also is the only "branch" of the international affairs institutes whose entire historical membership and directorships are known, so it would be a (massively) skewed comparison to start discussing all examples from the CFR here.
- 1928: The Canadian Institute of International Affairs:
- John Wendell Holmes: President / director general of CIIA 1960-1973. Bilderberg 1961 and 1968.
- Roy MacLaren: Bilderberg 1972, 1985, 1992, 1994, 1999. Chair of CIIA 2000-2006, director 2006-2007. Trilateral 2001-2015, mostly as an executive.
- Andre Desmarais: Director CIIA 2007-. His father visited Bilderberg in 1982. His brother, Paul., Jr., in 2006 and 2008. His father briefly was a Trilateral anno 1995, followed by Andre from at least 1998 and continuing into the 2020s. President and co-CEO of his family's Power Corp., which finances the CIIA.
- Jim Balsillie: Chair CIIA 2007-. Trilateral 2007-2011.
- 1934: The (Italian) Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI):
- Alberto Pirelli: Co-founder and patron of ISPI, alongside Mussolini. Bilderberg visitor in 1954, March-Sep. 1955, Oct. 1957, 1958, 1960, 1963.
- Boris Biancheri: President ISPI 1997-2011. Trilateral from at least 1998 to 2004, being listed as, "Chairman, I.S.P.I., Milan. Former Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
- 1947: The Belgian Royal Institute for International Relations (Egmont):
- Benoit de Bonvoisin: Advisory board member Egmont anno 1985. Known as the "Black Baron" for involvement in all kinds of CIA "Strategy of Tension" schemes. Son of Societe Generale chair Baron Pierre de Bonvoisin, who was invited to the first Bilderberg.
- Baron Daniel Janssen: Director Egmont anno 2010. Bilderberg 1969-1984 (almost every year), 1995, 2000. Founding Trilateral 1973-2013.
- Viscount Etienne Davignon: Protege of 1950s-1960s Bilderberg visitor Paul Henri Spaak. Bilderberg regular 1972-2014, serving as honorary chair 1999-2011. Trilateral 1985-2001. Chair Egmont anno 2010.
- Willy Claes: Bilderberg 1994-1995. Anno 2010 a director of Egmont.
- Willy De Clercq: Trilateral anno 1978, and again from at least 1993, until 2001. Director Egmont anno 2010.
- 1954: Bilderberg is founded.
- 1955: German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP):
- Karl Kaiser: Bilderberg 1970-1971, 1974, 1985. Trilateral 1973-2005. Managing director DGAP 1974-2003.
- Helmut Schmidt: Bilderberg 1973-1974, 1977, 1980. Vice president DGAP anno 1999.
- Count Otto Lambsdorff: Founding Trilateral 1973-1977. Bilderberg 1980, 1982-1984. Trilateral exec. at least 1993 until his death in 2009. Listed member of DGAP anno 2006. 135
- Count Hagen Lambsdorff: Managing board DGAP anno 2014. 136
- Count Alexander Lambsdorff: Nephew of Count Otto. Member DGAP anno 2006 137, advisory committee anno 2021. 138 Trilateral since 2020-.
- Richard von Weizsacker: Bilderberg 1970. Honorary member DGAP anno 2006.139
- Horst Teltschik: Bilderberg 1982, 1984, 1988, 1990. Trilateral at least '95-'01.
- Wolfgang Ischinger: Bilderberg 2002, 2008, 2012, 2015, 2017-2018. Conference participant DGAP anno, 1999, steering committee some time after, advisory committee anno 2021. 140
- Tom Enders: Trilateral 2005-2006. Bilderberg 2009-2015, part of the steering committee. President DGAP 2019-. 141
- Henri de Castries: Annual visitor Bilderberg 2002-2019, as chair 2012-2019. Trilateral 2004-2006. Advisory committee DGAP anno 2021-2022. 142
- Fiona Hill: Trilateral since 2020. Advisory committee DGAP anno 2021-2022. 143 Also a member of DGAP's Academic Advisory Committee anno 2021.
- 1959: The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI):
- John Christian Sannes: First managing director of NUPI 1959-1983. Founding Trilateral 1973 until at least 1981. Never visited Bilderberg.
- Johan Jorgen Holst: Second managing director NUPI 1983–1986, 1989–1990. Visited Bilderberg once in 1990 as "Director, [NUPI]; Former Minister of Defence."
- Arne Olav Brundtland: Senior research fellow NUPI anno '91. Visited Bilderberg in 1991. His wife was the '81, '86-'89, '90-'96 Norwegian PM Gro Harlem Brundtland, who visited Bilderberg in 1982 and 1983.
- None of the later managing directors ever were invited to either Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission.
- 1959: The Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI):
- Directors of 2023 appear to be insignificant. Absolutely nothing is known about old directors or financing. The authors heavily suspects a Wallenberg influence, but cannot demonstrate it at this point, at least not for any era apart from the turn of the century.
- Erik Belfrage: Certainly a contributor to SIIA / UI anno 1990, chair anno 2000, president anno 2006. Top Wallenberg protege. Bilderberg 2005. Trilateral 2001-2004, executive 2004-2016.
- 1961: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs:
- Raimo Vayrynen: Bilderberg 2008, as "Director, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs," a position he occupied in 2007-2009.
- 1965: The Italian Institute of International Affairs (IAI):
- Altiero Spinelli: A "founder of Europe", through his wife and brother-in-law deeply tied to the Rockefellers, already when he co-wrote the 1941 'Ventotene Manifesto' and founded the European Federalist Movement in 1943. 144 Main founder of the IAI. 145 Bilderberg 1968, his daughter in 1980 and 1993. From 1970 to 1979, he also was a member of the Bilderberg-tied Club of Rome.
- Cesare Merlini: Founding Trilateral member from 1973 until at least 1998 (not listed in 1985). Bilderberg 1973 and 2004. Managing director and later chair of IAI from at least 1973 to 1998.
- 1979: The French Institute for International Relations:
- Thierry de Montbrial: Annual Bilderberg visitor 1975-1997 (became steering committee), 2000-2006, 2008-2009, 2010-2013. Trilateral since at least 1978, until 2002. Founder in 1979 and head of IFRI 1979-2020s.
- Pierre Lellouche: Co-founder and deputy director IFRI 1979-1988. Trilateral 1995-2009. Bilderberg 1996, 2003.
- Jean-Claude Trichet: Director IFRI anno 2002-2003. Bilderberg 2008-2010. EU chair Trilateral Commission 2012-2021.
- Bertrand Collomb: Bilderberg 1991-1992, 1996-2003 (steering committee), 2005-2006, 2008. Trilateral 1995-2016. Director IFRI anno 2002-2003, president management board anno 2008, and member strategy board anno 2006-2009.
- Louis Schweitzer: Son of 1963 and 1965 Bilderberg visitor Pierre-Paul Schweitzer. Himself Bilderberg 1989, 1993, 2002. Trilateral 1995-2001. Director IFRI anno 2002-2003, member management board anno 2008, deputy chair and secretary anno 2013, 2021.
- Michel Francois-Poncet: Related to Jean A. Francois-Poncet, a 1982, 1985, 1988 Bilderberg visitor. Himself visited Bilderberg in 1985. Vice chair and treasurer IFRI anno 2002-2003.
- Jean-Claude Casanova: Bilderberg 1967. Founding Trilateral 1973-2001. Director IFRI anno 2023.
- Karl Kaiser: Member of IFRI's strategy council anno 2006-2013. Bilderberg 1970-1971, 1974, 1985. Trilateral 1973-2005. Managing director DGAP 1974-2003.
- 1983: Netherlands Institute of International Relations (Clingendael):
- Max van der Stoel: Bilderberg 1980. Supervisory board Clingendael "around 1992". 146 Foreign affairs minister 1973-1977, 1983-1986. Ambassador to the UN 1986-1993.
- Ruud Lubbers: Dutch PM 1982-1994. President Clingendael 1995-2001. 147 Bilderberg 1983, 1991, 1992, 1994.
- Hans van den Broek: Foreign minister 1982-1993 under PM Lubbers. Bilderberg 1986, 1988, 1995. Daughter Marilene married a son of Prince Bernhard of Orange in 1998. President Clingendael 2001-2011, succeeding Lubbers. 148
- Alexander Rinnooy Kan: Supervisory and business advisory board Clingendael anno 1998. 149 Bilderberg 2010.
- Herman Wijffels: Bilderberg 1997. Business advisory board Clingendael anno 1998. 150
- Sigrid Kaag: Received foreign relations training at Clingendael in 1990 151, keeping involved as a speaker/tutor over at least 2015-2020. 152 Bilderberg 2018-2019, visiting as foreign trade minister, alongside PM Mark Rutte. Foreign minister in 2021-2022, vice PM and finance minister 2021-. American University in Cairo and Oxford-educated former pro-Palestine activist who worked for Shell Oil and the United Nations. She has children with Anis al-Qaq, a former PLO vice minister under Arafat. In the 1990s, while active in Palestine, Jewish settlers called her "whore of the Arabs", with accusations she invented the story that her "[Arab] father-in-law was in 1995 stabbed on the Jerusalem promenade by a Jew wearing an Arab keffiyeh," after critics claimed that "Israeli police records show no record of such an incident that year." 153
Notes
- March 10, 2001, Jon Ronson for The Guardian, 'Who pulls the strings? (part 3)'.
- 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'." - Oct. 25, 1972, New York Times, 'Economic Analysis').
- 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)). - 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).
- *) 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'. - July 16, 2018 @JohnBrennan tweet.
- The first Webarchive at web.archive.org for bilderbergmeetings.org dates back to June 7, 2010.
- Jan. 1, 2014, R. Geven (Doctoral Thesis, Maastricht University), 'Transnational networks and the common market: business views on European integration, 1950-1980', pp. 69-70.
- Ibid.
- 1957 annual report, Rockefeller Foundation, p. 325: "[Through the] Carnegie Endowment: ... Bilderberg Group: expenses of American participants: $5,000."
- 1958 annual report, Rockefeller Foundation, p. 462: "[Through the] Carnegie Endowment ... Bilderberg Group: expenses of American participants: $10,000."
- 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."
- Jan. 1, 2014, R. Geven (Doctoral Thesis, Maastricht University), 'Transnational networks and the common market: business views on European integration, 1950-1980', pp. 69-70.
- ecfr.eu/content/entry/about/ (accessed: Oct. 11, 2007): "Launched in October 2007 to promote a more integrated European foreign policy... ECFR is backed by the Soros Foundations Network..."
- securityconference.org/en/about-us/advisory-council/ (accessed: June 29, 2020): "Chair: Wolfgang Reitzle. ... Members: Paul Achleitner ... Prince Turki Al Faisal ... Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani [of Qatar] ... Oliver Bäte ... Carl Bildt ... Thomas Enders ... Fu Ying ... Herman O. Gref ... Jane Harman ... Toomas Hendrik Ilves ... John Kerry ... David Miliband ... Federica Mogherini ... Radosław Sikorski ... Javier Solana ... George Soros ... James G. Stavridis..."
- Ibid. (accessed: May 7, 2021): "Chair: Joe Kaeser ... Members: ... Alexander Soros [replacing George Soros, who still was listed on May 3]..."
- 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.
- Dec. 18, 1912, UPI (founded in 1907 as United Press Associations), 'Investigation shows Morgan, 17 firms control $25.3 billion'.
- 1997, Charles R. Geisst, 'Wall Street: A History', p. 148: "Thomas Lamont ... became Wilson's most trusted adviser during the Versailles peace conference that began in 1919. ... Wilson valued his counsel more than that of the other Morgan men who were plentiful at the conference. Bernard Baruch jealously remarked that there were so many Morgan men at the conference that it was apparent they were indeed running the show."
- 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.
- May 1922, International Conciliation (publication of the 1899-founded American Association for International Conciliation (AAIC), 'The International Chamber of Commerce', p. 4 (PDF).
- Feb. 1995, Drs. M. van der Velden, 'The Origins of the European League for Economc Co-operation (ELEC)' (official brochure): "... the autumn of 1946 (1) when the founding fathers of ELEC, Paul van Zeeland ... and Joseph Retinger... In 1950 the German section of ELEC was formed. Chairman of this section became the banker Hermann Abs. The Italian section founded by its President Enrico Falk was also formed in 1950. "From 1950 ... Baron Rene Boel became chairman of the Conseil Central..."
eleclece.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/vdv-origins1.pdf (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024). - 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.
- A) More sources in ISGP's ICC article. B) 2002, Gerhard Feldbauer (communism-inclined former GDR journalist stationed in Hanoi 1967-1973, Rome 1973-1983; counselor in Algeria 1981-1983, ambassador to Zaire 1983-), 'Marsch auf Rom: Faschismus und Antifaschismus in Italien, von Mussolini bis Berlusconi und Fini', p. 13 (translated from German): "The "Popolo d'Italia" was a war-focused newspaper that was financed in particular by leading circles in the armaments industry (Dino Ansaldo, shipyards; Ettore Conti, electrical industry; Emilio Benedetti, mechanical engineering; Guido Donegani, chemistry; Giovanni Agnelli, vehicles; Alberto Pirelli, tires and rubber) and represented their war interests in open chauvinism."
- 1999, Frank N. Magill, 'Dictionary of World Biography: Volume IX: The 20th Century O-Z', p. 3021: "The younger Pirelli brother [Piero] was a member of the Supreme Economic Committee of Versailles ... and a member of the League of Nations Economic Committee."
- 1930, Associazione fra le societa italiane per azioni, Business and financial report: a monthly survey of Italian trade and industry: "'Dr. Pirelli on Economic Reconstruction': The Association of Italian Corporations (Joint Stock Companies) held its annual meeting on 28th November, honored by the presensence of ... Mussolini. The President of the Association, Dr. Alberto Pirelli, opened the annual address..."
- Jan. 1934, Pathfinder - Digest Of World Affairs: "Premier Mussolini's "guild" system for ruling the state was unanimously approved by the Italian Senate. Immediately thereafter Il Duce named 13 men, among them Italy's richest industrialist, Albert Pirelli, to organize the 13 corporations of this new scheme.">
- 2014, Lucy M. Maulsby, 'Fascism, Architecture, and the Claiming of Modern Milan, 1922 1943', p. 202: "Pirelli gave a sum of one million lire to Mussolini in honour of Italy's "victory" in the Ethiopian campaign in June 1936."
- 1928, National Industrial Conference Board (later The Conference Board), 'A Picture of the World in Economic Conditions', p. vii. (PDF)
- 1942, Henry Junior Taylor, 'Time Runs Out', p. 16: "The Germans were scuttling the Dawes Plan, as they had intended to from the first. And who should be in the forefront of the operation, ensconced at the Hotel Crillon but Fritz Thyssen... gentle wizard of the Nazi money bags. I did not find Thyssen so gentle in Paris that spring [of 1928]."
- A) Alberto Pirelli and Owen D. Young already were delegates to the 1923 Dawes Plan with Owen D. Young, but only by the time of the 1929 Young Plan did J.P. Morgan, Jr. and Morgan partner Thomas Lamont become delegates and had Owen D. Young joined the Rockefeller Foundation as a trustee.
B) Feb. 18, 1929, Time, 'International: Grand Spectacle': "The second Dawes Committee (TIME, Jan. 14 et seq.), which will revise the Dawes Plan. ... Enter Governor Emile Moreau of the Bank of France and the principal delegates: Owen D. Young and J. P. Morgan of the U. S., Sir Josiah Stamp of Britain, Governor of the German Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Industrialist Alberto Pirelli of Italy, Banker Emile Francqui of Belgium, one-time financial attache at London, Kengo Mori of Japan, etc., not forgetting Mr. Morgan's alternate, Thomas W. Lamont. Sir Josiah Stamp (espying Mr. Young) : "Hello, Owen! My, you look splendid!" - 1990, Ron Chernow, 'The House of Morgan', pp. 279-281. Full citation to be found in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article.
- ispionline.it/en/institute/history (accessed: Sep. 25, 2022): "ISPI's [was] launched on 27th March 1934 by a group of young scholars from the Universities of Milan and Pavia ... inspired by the examples of London's Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs [RIIA] and New York's Foreign Policy Association. [A] meeting in February 1935 with Alberto Pirelli ... did not only guarantee the funding ... but it also provided strong links with the business community, while ensuring some autonomy from the fascist regime. ... Thanks to Alberto Pirelli's efforts, Mussolini allowed ISPI to move its headquarters to Palazzo Clerici, a more prestigious venue than the first one in Via Borghetto. [From] the 25th of July 1940, granting ISPI the use of the Palazzo for 29 years on payment of a rent of ten lire, along with the obligation to deal with the restoration. In December 1940 the renovation work was approved directly by Mussolini..."
- ispionline.it/en/ node/17788/board-directors (accessed: Sep. 25, 2022; anno 2022 AIG is a member, but not represented on the board).
- May 1, 1941, Congressional Record, p. A2054, Congressman Bernard J. Gehrmann of Wisconsin, 'Rockefeller's Anguish'.
- *) Dec. 1945, Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 'Elimination of German Resources for War', part 7 on I. G. Farben, pp. 943-944.
*) Aug. 6, 1978, New York Times, 'With a Branch at Auschwitz'. Article on Standard Oil and I.G. Farben together aiding Hitler's Luftwaffe. - Jan. 1947, United States Bombing Survey, 'Oil Division Final Report', p. 2, 'General Summary'.
- Dec. 24, 1994, The Economist, 'The art of the obituary'.).
- Nov. 22, 1951, Zeit.de, 'Porträt eines deutschen Managers': "Der Vorsitzer des ESSO-Vorstandes, Gerhard Geyer... führte ihn der Zufall 1926 zur "Deutsch-Amerikanischen Petroleum-Gesellschaft", die heute den gleichen Namen wie die amerikanische Muttergesellschaft und wie alle internationalen Schwesterngesellschaften trägt: ESSO. ... Die schwerste Krisenzeit –: der Krieg, 1939 war Gerhard Geyer Mitglied des Vorstandes geworden."
- May 1, 1941, Congressional Record, p. A2054, Congressman Bernard J. Gehrmann of Wisconsin, 'Rockefeller's Anguish'.
- 1952, U.S. Government Printing Office, 'Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals', Vol. VI: Oct. 1946 - April 1949, pp. 301-317, testimony of Karl Lindemann. See transcription of this section in the ICC members list under "Lindemann, Karl".
- ecfr.eu/content/entry/about/ (accessed: Oct. 11, 2007): "Launched in October 2007 to promote a more integrated European foreign policy... ECFR is backed by the Soros Foundations Network..."
- 1966, Professor Carroll Quigley, 'Tragedy & Hope', p. 132.
- iai.it/en/comunicati/nathalie-tocci-elected-director-institute-international-affairs-iai (accessed: Oct. 6, 2024): "The Italian Institute of International Affairs, founded in 1965 upon the initiative of Altiero Spinelli..."
- ifri.org/en/thierry-de-montbrial (accessed: Oct. 6, 2024): "Founder and Executive Chairman of IFRI..."
- egmontinstitute.be/board.html (access: March 3, 2007): "Président / Voorzitter: DAVIGNON, Etienne, Vice-President de Suez-Tractebel. ... CLAES, Willy [BB '94, '95, '03] ... DE CLERCQ, Willy [no BB; TC anno '78, until '04)]... DE DECKER, Armand [visitor Le Cercle] ... EYSKENS, Mark [founding member TC '73, until entering gov in '76] ... JANSSEN, Daniel, Baron ['73-'13; BB regular '69-'00], Président du C.A. Solvay & Cie ... SPAAK, Antoinette [father Paul-Henri was BB '59, '60, '63] ... SPITAELS, Guy [BB '91] ... TINDEMANS, Leo [BB '80]..."
- Ibid.
- eleclece.eu/ (accessed: Aug. 28, 2024): "Founded in 1946 by Paul Van Zeeland (Belgium), Josef Retinger (Poland) and Pieter Kerstens (Netherlands) – who were rapidly joined by other European figures including Edmond Giscard d’Estaing (France), Harold Butler (Great Britain) and [from 1950] Herman Abs (Germany)..."
- cvce.eu/en/recherche/unit-content/-/unit/04bfa990-86bc-402f-a633-11f39c9247c4/272166ae-84b2-466b-9cfa-4df511389208 (accessed: Aug. 28, 2024): "The ICMEU, chaired by the British Conservative MP, Duncan Sandys ... and headed by its Secretary-General, Joseph Retinger, immediately established an office in London and a branch in Paris..."
- Ibid.
- 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..."
- cvce.eu/en/histoire-orale/unit-content/-/unit/000e34e5-0692-4c66-8a48-f0dbc38156cb (accessed: Aug. 28, 2024): "Berthoin (Georges)...".
- 1941-1950 annual review (its first review), RBF, PDF page 7 of 11: "Agencies Receiving Contributions 1941-49: ... American Committee on United Europe... Balance Sheet: December 31, 1950."
- 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."
- 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', p. 149: "John Foster Dulles [the brother of Allen], the eminent international lawyer, was chairman... I had known him and his family since my college years. ... His daughter Lillias had been part of a small group of friends during my college years and one of Peggy's closest friends. In fact, when I was courting Peggy in the 1930s, she always stayed with the Dulleses at their New York town house."
- Dec. 1955, No. 11, Bulletin from the European Community for Coal and Steel, p. 2: "The achievement of M. Monnet has been to gain the support of virtually the entire range of authoritative European political and trade union opinion outside the extreme nationalist right and extreme communist left. ... The founder-members of the [Action] Committee are : ... M . Guy Mollet ... Signor Amintore Fanfani ... Herr Kurt Kiesinger ... Theo Lefevre, ... Herr Martin Blank ... Maurice Faure ... Rene Pleven ... Trade Unions: ..."
- archives.eui.eu/en/ fonds/155415?item=JMDS.A-09.06 (accessed: Aug. 28, 2024): " Max Kohnstamm Papers... Vice-President of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe, 1956-1975..."
- www.perjacobsson.org/sponsors.htm (accessed: Aug. 28, 2024): "Founding Sponsors: Honorary Chairmen: Eugene R. Black [and] Marcus Wallenberg... Founding Chairman: W. Randolph Burgess... [Founding] Sponsors: Herman J. Abbs ... Lord Cobbold ... Maurice Frere ... Viscount Harcourt ... Gabriel Hauge ... Albert E. Janssen ... Jean Monnet ... David Rockefeller..."
- Dec. 7, 2004, Nederland 3 / VPRO documentary, Andere Tijden, 'Prins Bernhard', 5:00 (the Bilderberg interview was first broadcasted on January 6, 2004).
- 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', pp. 410-415.
- 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): "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."
- 1962, Alden Hatch, 'H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An Authorized Biography', p. 214 (PDF).
- Nov. 24, 2018, AD, 'Topman Unilever: Afschaffen dividendbelasting was onze harde eis'.
- *) 2004, Willem Oltmans (part of the Rijkens Group), 'Hollandse sporen in de sawa', p. 311.
*) 2009, Wouter Meijer, 'Ze zijn gek geworden in Den Haag', p. 95. - history.state.gov/historicaldocuments /frus1951v02/d352 (accessed: Aug. 28, 2022): "[ Paris ,] December 21, 1951. Excerpt From Mutual Security Act of 1951."
- 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..."
- 1962, Alden Hatch, 'H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: An Authorized Biography', p. 216 (PDF).
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', pp. 448-449. See the H.J. Heinz biography in ISGP's Bilderberg membership list for citations.
- 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."
- Ibid.
- 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."
- bilderbergmeetings.org/ background/steering-committee/steering-committee (accessed: May 5, 2023).
- May 27, 1981, AECA document, 'List of Patrons at 27 May 1981' (Screenshot).
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- aeca.org/about/ (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024).
- May 27, 1981, AECA document, 'List of Patrons at 27 May 1981' (Screenshot).
- archives.eui.eu/en/ fonds/543141?item=TENs.B (Historical Archives of the European Union; this document comes from an official ERT document between 1985 and 2001; accessed: Oct. 7, 2024): "ERT’s roots date back to the early 1980s: at the initiative of Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, the CEO of Volvo, 17 European businessmen met in the Paris boardroom of Volvo on 6 and 7 April 1983."
- 2020, Pehr Gyllenhammar, 'Character is Destiny': "David Rockefeller, with whom I'd been friends since our first meeting in 1971 in Gothenburg. ... David Rockefeller invited me to go to Bohemian Grove for three consecutive summers as his guest. ... Henry Kissinger was often there, as was David's and my mutual friend Paul Volcker.
In my recollection, there were no women on the compound except for the ones who served food at the canteens. [It was] eccentric to the bizarre. For example, there were no toilets [and] the opening Cremation of Care ceremony..." - archives.eui.eu/en/ fonds/543141?item=TENs.B (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024): "Both François-Xavier Ortoli and Étienne Davignon from the European Commission attended the meeting."
- ert.eu/all_members_since_1983.aspx (accessed: Jan. 2, 2007; includes all membership dates as well).
- europeaninstitute.org/ content.php?section=boards (accessed: Feb. 2, 2007; example page, without Trichet, who joined later): "Yves-André Istel: Senior Advisor, Rothschild, Inc. ... Bertrand Collomb .... Etienne Davignon ... Jacques Delors ... Peter D. Sutherland. ... Emeriti: ... Robert B. Zoellick."
- Ibid. (accessed: Oct. 15, 2004; example page, without Trichet, who joined later): "Lawrence Eagleburger..."
- europeaninstitute.org/ Boards/boards.html (accessed: Aug. 4, 2010): "Lawrence Eagleburger..."
- notre-europe.eu/011017-19-Conseil-des-garants.html (accessed: Nov. 21, 2012).
- notre-europe.eu/fr/qui-sommes-nous/presidents/ (accessed: May 30, 2012): "President: António Vitorino... Président fondateur: Jacques Delors... Ancien Président: Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa..."
- institutdelors.eu/en/tous-les-contributeurs/letta-enrico/ (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024): "Presidency: Enrico Letta..."
- institutdelors.eu/en/tous-les-contributeurs/solana-javier/ (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024): "Member of the Board of Directors..."
- notre-europe.eu/fr/qui-sommes-nous/comite-notre-europe/ (accessed: Oct. 6, 2011): "Les membres du Comité Notre Europe en 2010: ... Etienne Davignon. Jacques Delors. ... Jean Francois-Poncet. ... Pascal Lamy ... Mario Monti ... Antoinette Spaak. Barbara Spinelli. ... Guy Verhofstadt..."
- notre-europe.eu/fr/qui-sommes-nous/conseil-europeen-dorientation/ (accessed: Nov. 11, 2008): "Les membres du CEO en 2008: ..."
- notre-europe.eu/fr/qui-sommes-nous/conseil-dadministration/ (accessed: Dec. 22, 2010).
- notre-europe.eu/fr/qui-sommes-nous/conseil-dadministration/ (accessed: Nov. 12, 2008).
- cer.org.uk/about_new/about_advisoryboard_new.html (accessed: July 4, 2008; only Zoellick and Bildt missing here): "Richard Haass ... François Heisbourg ... Wolfgang Ischinger ... Lord Kerr ... Pascal Lamy ... Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones ... Lord Robertson GCMG ... Lord Simon of Highbury ... Peter Sutherland ... António Vitorino ... Antonio Borges, Former Dean of INSEAD. ... Lord Dahrendorf ... Lord Hannay..."
- Nov. 18, 2010, The Guardian, Max Kohnstamm obituary: Dutch diplomat and founding father of the European Union'.
- epc.eu/en/ae2.asp?TYP=ABOUT&LV=224 &see=n&PG=AE/EN/ac&AI=37 (accessed: May 2, 2007).
- Ibid. (accessed: Sep. 12, 2007).
- epc.eu/en/strategic-council (accessed: June 22, 2024).
- friendsofeurope.org/Aboutus/Whoweare/PraesidiumandTrustees /tabid/529/Default.aspx (accessed: April 20, 2010; Davignon listed as president).
- Ibid.
- friendsofeurope.org/governance/ (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024).
- Unable to find the original website URL or any of this information anymore.
- businessforneweurope.org/our_people (accessed: June 15, 2016; Roland Rudd listed as chairman.).
- June 13, 2016, BBC, 'The people hoping to persuade UK to vote to stay in the EU': "Roland Rudd ... founded Business for a New Europe in 2006."
- Sep. 26, 2006, The Guardian, 'Trade talks have only 50-50 chance, says Mandelson': "Mr Mandelson told a meeting of the lobby group Business for a New Europe."
- November 14, 2017, former UKIP head Nigel Farage at the European Parliament in Strasbourg: "George Soros recently gave Open Society, his organisation, ... 18 billion dollars. And his influence here and in Brussels is truly extraordinary. Open Society boasts that they had 42 meetings last year [2016] with the European Commission, they have even published a book of reliable friends in the European Parliament and there are 226 names on that list including yours, sir. I thought you'd find this interesting. We even had last week Mr Verhofstadt lobbying on behalf of Mr. Soros at the Conference of Presidents in a battle that is going on with Viktor Orban the Prime Minister of Hungary."
- ecfr.eu/content/entry/about/ (accessed: Oct. 11, 2007): "Launched in October 2007 to promote a more integrated European foreign policy... ECFR is backed by the Soros Foundations Network..."
- ecfr.eu/content/entry/12 (accessed: Oct. 11, 2007): "Council: ... Martti [A.] ... Gijs de [V.] - Jean-Luc [D.] ... Joschka [F.] ... Alain [M.] ... [Lord] Chris [P.] ... George Soros. - Dominique [S.-K.] ... [Princess] Mabel Van [O.]... Antonio [V.]..."
- ecfr.eu/content/council/ (accessed: Dec. 11, 2008; last update list Oct. 2008).
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- ecfr.eu/content/council (accessed: June 7, 2012).
- ecfr.eu/article/commentary_ seminareuopescrisis_what_next/ (accessed/published: July 5, 2010).
- These MSC were manually gathered by this author around 2020, in part from the webarchive of MSC, and are spread out over various lists in different places.
- professoren.tum.de/en/honorary-professors/t/teltschik-horst: "Chairman of the Munich Security Conference (1999-2008)." (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024).
- securityconference.org/en/about-us/president-foundation-council/: "Ischinger was Chairman of the Munich Security Conference from 2008 until 2022 and is now President of the MSC Foundation Council." (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024).
- securityconference.org/ueber-uns/advisory-council/ (accessed: May 31, 2020).
- siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/press-releases/siemens-energy-partners-munich-security-conference-tackle-global-energy-issues.html (accessed: Oct. 7, 2024): "Joe Kaeser appointed the Chairman of the Advisory Council".
- Ibid. (accessed: May 7, 2021): "Chair: Joe Kaeser ... Members: ... Alexander Soros [replacing George Soros, who still was listed on May 3]..."
- securityconference.org/en/about-us/advisory-council/ (accessed: June 29, 2020): "Chair: Wolfgang Reitzle. ... Members: Paul Achleitner ... Prince Turki Al Faisal ... Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani [of Qatar] ... Oliver Bäte ... Carl Bildt ... Thomas Enders ... Fu Ying ... Herman O. Gref ... Jane Harman ... Toomas Hendrik Ilves ... John Kerry ... David Miliband ... Federica Mogherini ... Radoslaw Sikorski ... Javier Solana ... George Soros ... James G. Stavridis..."
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- gap.org/dgap/mitgliedschaft/ (accessed: June 21, 2006)."
- dgap.org/en/events/crisis-ukraine-european-and-global-dilemma: "Hagen Graf Lambsdorff, Member of the DGAP Managing Board"
- gap.org/dgap/mitgliedschaft/ (accessed: June 21, 2006)."
- 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 annual reports, DGAP, p. 24: "[Per:] 30 April 2021: Vorstand: Dr. Thomas Enders, Prasident. ... Prasidium: ... Henri de Castries ... Fiona Hill ... Dr. Wolfgang Ischinger ... Alexander Graf Lambsdorff ... Cristopher Freiherr von Oppenheim ... Ehrenmitglieder: ... Karl Kaiser..."
- gap.org/dgap/mitgliedschaft/ (accessed: June 21, 2006)."
- 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 annual reports, DGAP, p. 24. See a few notes back for all the names.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- ISGP\s Bilderberg membership list has an in-depth biography on Altiero Spinelli and is U.S. intelligence and Rockefeller ties. They ran through his brother-in-law Albert O. Hirschman, among other things a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in the 1941-1943 period.
- April 26, 2017, iai.it, 'Nathalie Tocci elected Director of the Institute of International Affairs (IAI)': "The Italian Institute of International Affairs, founded in 1965 upon the initiative of Altiero Spinelli...".
- parlement.com/9353000/1/ j9tvgajcor7dxyk_j9vvknrezmh4csi/ vg09ll9dv7w7 (accessed: May 4, 2023; Google cache still had the old full biography): "Other positions: Lid Raad van Toezicht, Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen "Clingendael", around August 1992."
- Feb. 14, 2018, Clingendael.org, 'In memoriam Ruud Lubbers': "Chaired [actually listed as president at the time] the Clingendael Board of Governors from 1995 until 2001."; 1998 annual report, Clingendael, p. 7.
- clingendael.nl/cli/clboard.htm (accessed: March 23, 2002 - Aug. 20, 2004): "Board of Governors: Mr. H. van den Broek, president."
- 1998 annual report, Clingendael, p. 8.
- Ibid.
- eerstekamer.nl/bijlage/ 20171103/cv_sigrid_kaag/ document3/f=/vkj0jtfe7pwf.pdf (accessed: May 4, 2023; biography on Dutch Senate website): "1985: BA Midden-Oostenstudies aan de Amerikaanse Universiteit in Cairo. 1987: Master of Philosophy Internationale Betrekkingen aan St. Anthony’s College, Universiteit van Oxford. 1990: Leergang Internationale Betrekkingen aan instituut Clingendael.... Shell ... UNRWA ...UNICEF..."
- *) Sep. 15, 2015, Clingendael.org, 'Sigrid Kaag opent 70e Leergang Buitenlandse Betrekkingen [LBB]'.
*) May 7, 2020, Clingendael.org, 'COVID-19 webinar met Minister Kaag & Corona gezant Feike Sijbesma'. - Oct. 20, 2017, Times of Israel, 'Holland’s new deputy foreign minister called Netanyahu a racist demagogue; Sigrid Kaag, who is married to a senior PLO official, will head up aid efforts, including in the West Bank'.