Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (42 page)

Having secured left-wing support from his work in Europe, and employing right-wing connections resulting from his Vatican ties, Retinger was the best man to serve as a catalyst for such an organization. He proved it in May 1954 when he persuaded Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to host a secret conference for representatives of nato countries. The prince, a major investor in Royal Dutch Petroleum, now Shell Oil, chose
the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, as the site. Attendees at the first conference included U.S. general Walter Bedell Smith, director of the cia, and representatives of the Rockefeller family, who controlled Standard Oil, Shell's largest competitor.

The group has met almost annually over the fifty-plus years since, their meetings sending conspiracy buffs into a frenzy of speculation with Chicken Little concerns about the sky, and virtually everything else, falling to the ground. Powerful men (and increasingly numbers of women) meeting in luxurious surroundings while engaged in private discussions inspire dark speculation.

American critics on the right suspect that Bilderberg attendees are plotting a world government to override hard-earned rights and freedoms. Should the Bilderbergers have their way, they argue, the U.S. would be burdened with a national health-care system and disarmed by draconian gun laws. Meanwhile, the left wing sees Bilderberg representatives manipulating currencies, negotiating resource rights and eviscerating trade unions as a means of tightening their grip on global economics. A few broad-minded (or perhaps merely confused) Web sites support both interpretations of the group's motives.

On a more realistic basis, serious criticism of the Bilderberg Group tends to address four specific concerns:

They are a supragovernmental organization
. All nongovernmental organizations representing international interests deserve monitoring. Other groups in this category might range from opec to university research scientists delving into munitions development and genetic manipulation. A dash of practicality and trust is surely prescribed, however. Given the disdain by democratic governments to recognize long-term global concerns and deal with them in an appropriately expeditious manner, is it surprising that a group such as the Bilderbergers would gather to discuss priorities and exert influence in implementing them?

They manipulate currencies and set global monetary rates.
Currency manipulation and its impact on markets and individuals may indeed be a legitimate concern. But is it reasonable to expect that discussions on this matter would involve presidents and prime ministers agreeing to any plan that would negatively affect their constituents and thus damage their prospects for re-election? It is more logical—and potentially dangerous to the public—for central banks and others to carry out this manipulation in private than in a session whose location, timing and participants are widely known. Conspiracy buffs counter this notion by suggesting that the election prospects of democratic leaders are tightly controlled by Bilderbergers, eliminating any serious objection the leaders may have to decisions made at the conferences. Perhaps, but a large segment of the world population familiar with machinations conducted during the U.S. presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 are convinced that, if election manipulation exists, its perpetrators likely reside closer to home than among Bilderbergers.

They select political figures to become future rulers and target current rulers to be removed from power.
A few dozen men and women gathering to name and approve the next president of the United States, the next prime minister of Great Britain, and the next sheikh of Qatar is indeed a chilling prospect. If that's the case, however, the rejected leaders tend to accept their fate with remarkable grace and silence. The Bilderberg gathering that took place in Stresa, Italy, from June 3 to 6, 2004, reportedly included U.S. president George W. Bush, British prime minister Tony Blair and—surprise, surprise—U.S. vice-presidential candidate John Edwards who, along with running mate John Kerry, lost the U.S. election to Bush five months later. Was the decision awarding Bush his re-election actually made on a June day in Italy? Did Edwards meekly accept the ruling, perhaps with the promise of being elevated to U.S. presidential status in 2008? Was Steven Spielberg directing?

They decide which countries will wage war on others.
The extended period of peace enjoyed by Europe since 1945 is unprecedented given the potential for conflict over those sixty-plus years, and much of the harmony can be directly ascribed to Retinger's vision. Conspiracy advocates may argue that the Bilderberg Group controls the peace as well as the war, but most conflicts since the group's inception have involved nations and communities beyond the group's membership, including Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and other jurisdictions. This does not eliminate the Bilderbergers’ thumbs from these particular pies, but…

Some criticisms remain valid, however, and the roots of most can be laid at the feet of Bilderberg participants. Bilderberg founder Prince Bernhard himself identified the source of these concerns when he said, “It is difficult to reeducate people who have been brought up on nationalism to the idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supranational body.”

This attitude, coupled with the scope of the discussions conducted at Bilderberg sessions and the influence of its participants, fosters concern among normally unruffled folk. The Bilderberg Group's agenda, according to available evidence, appears to focus more on the propagation of its own power and the enrichment of its members than on concerns about global health, energy supply, environmental crises and widespread hunger.

Supporters of the Bilderberg Group will argue that free-ranging discussions between people of widely disparate views must be held in confidence to encourage openness and honesty. They also point out that all political and business decisions, made in both corporate board rooms and political cabinet rooms, are subject to various levels of secrecy. True enough. It is the international aspect of Bilderberg that disturbs most people. The crux of concern over Bilderberg is this: We like to think that, as members of a pseudo-democratic society, we exert
at least periodic control over events within our own state, provincial and national borders, and we are reluctant to relinquish that control to foreigners.

GROUPS WITHOUT APPARENT CONSPIRATORIAL ACTIVITIES
. The members of Skull & Bones have no influence on matters beyond the campus of Yale while they remain students there. But what of the relationship among members after they enter the business and political world?

The concept of networking has existed since humans first organized themselves into tribes. It would be fruitless to monitor and attempt to control activities between fraternity brothers, sorority sisters, lodges, service clubs, Scout troops and similar associations. What happens, however, when members of these organizations operate in collusion, extending the secrecy vows that appeared innocent within a campus environment onto the world stage?

Consider a group of bright, privileged men actively seeking high positions of power in order to pursue goals that reflect the values of the closed society to which they once swore eternal allegiance. Then recall the activities of the Bundy brothers, the lineage of the Bush family, and the questionable antics of the Russell Trust and Union Banking Corporation, among various Skull & Bones escapades.

It is highly unlikely that middle-aged Skull & Bones members still lie naked in coffins while reciting their sexual exploits to each other (especially now that it is a coed organization), or that they exchange some secret ritual upon meeting without grinning in embarrassment. The idea, however, that men of this high caliber, ambition and focus could easily discard their association when planning international financial and political strategies in concert with each other is equally difficult to accept.

OFFICIAL GOVERNMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS EXERTING POWER BEYOND THEIR MANDATE
. If covert decisions are made that adversely affect democratic societies, the source may prove to
be not secret organizations with centuries-old traditions but powerful interests functioning within government apparatus, their actions concealed beneath the impenetrable cloak of national security.

While it may be true that these organizations do not follow practices associated with secret societies, such as elaborate initiation ceremonies, in a world where computer recognition of palm prints and iris patterns instantly identifies a friend or foe, who really needs code words and gestures to confirm identities?

The idea that an acknowledged federal government organization such as the U.S. National Security Council (nsc) is subject to assessment in the same context as the Assassins and Cosa Nostra may be offensive to some, and if this were the only point of comparison the criticism would be justified. But on a broader scale, evidence exists that secret decisions made by this organization have greater negative impact than any confirmable act committed by Masons, Templars, Rosicrucians, Kabbalah, the Illuminati and other favorite targets of conspiracy buffs.

The
NSC
has been described as “the ultimate Washington insider's club, a who's who of those with the power to shape history.” Created by President Harry Truman in 1947 as a means of keeping himself informed of international events, the nsc grants membership to a select group of people whose careers have intertwined throughout years of involvement in matters of defense policy, intelligence gathering and diplomatic relations.

Dominating the nsc from the first day of his entry into the group during the Nixon administration is Henry Kissinger, a man who has never been elected to public office yet whose forty-odd years of activity in clandestine international affairs qualifies him as the most influential figure of our time.

Unlike other U.S. federal organizations, the nsc functions according to an open-ended mandate, its vague purpose supposedly limited to helping the president decide and coordinate military and foreign policy. This intentional haziness permits personalities such as Kissinger and his various sycophants to
exert a disturbing level of control over U.S. affairs which, by definition, involve international activities.

The pinnacle of Kissinger's power in this regard occurred in the latter days of Richard Nixon's presidency. Crippled by revelations of Watergate and tumbling towards his inevitable doom, Nixon abdicated management of the nsc. Into the vacuum stepped Kissinger, seizing the group's direction and, immediately prior to Nixon's resignation, placing U.S. armed forces on a high defcon (DEFense CONdition) alert status, an act that constitutionally belongs exclusively to the president.

This might be considered an aberration, a rare response to an unprecedented situation, but two factors are worthy of concern here. One is Kissinger's widely acknowledged role in illegal international activities including the bombing of Cambodia and the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile. Both are disturbing examples of the power granted to members of the nsc, who lack both the official authority and direct accounting under the country's constitution.

The other is the matter of openness and transparency. Supporters of the nsc and Kissinger will argue, with great conviction, that the pursuit of national security demands certain decisions be conducted in secrecy without prior consultation or later confirmation that the decisions were made at all. The same assertion may be submitted by corporate chiefs justifying board room secrecy from shareholders. nsc decisions, however, are often global in impact and influence, well beyond the scope of the largest corporations. Clearly, it would be a more effective application of energies if rabid concerns about supposed power exercised by groups such as Templars, Masons, Illuminati, Priory of Sion and others were applied instead to existing and acknowledged organizations, including the nsc, whose power and potential for abuse are both evident and extensive.

The world wobbles. Its lack of perfect balance should alert us to the realization that nothing is as stable and predictable as our senses tell us and our preferences desire. Orbital aberrations
and tidal forces occur beyond not only our ability to alter them, but also our means to sense them. We acknowledge their existence and the dangers they represent when catastrophe strikes in the form of an oncoming ice age or a cataclysmic earthquake. Otherwise, we treat such possibilities the same way we treat our own mortality: as a rumor that can only be confirmed when fulfilled.

Rather than deal with cosmic risks, many of us prefer to worry about other dangers, including the threat posed by shadowy groups whose existence may be limited to the speculations and imaginations of overly imaginative authors and Web site owners. We can never, it seems, have too many secret societies on which to project our fears, whether justified or not. Nor, it appears, are we prepared to retire shadowy groups whose last acknowledged act occurred hundreds of years ago.

New secret organizations germinate each year. Most wither under the glare of study and scorn, but others manage to blossom and survive long enough for ancestors a century or two in the future to name them as sources of evils we cannot imagine today. One near-contemporary example illustrates the origins of secret societies, the events that fertilize their growth, and the individuals who cultivate their ground.

The discovery of wreckage on an open ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 proved to be a seminal incident among those suspicious of government conspiracies and the secret societies that foster them. More than half a century after the event, millions of American citizens still believe the detritus was the remains of either a spaceship from another planet or a top-secret military aircraft capable of exceptional flight performance. Both theories, their adherents propose, explain their government's steadfast refusal to reveal details. The actual truth, as available evidence and logic contend, is that a military weather balloon, designed to sample temperature, wind force and other meteorological factors, descended to the ground, as all such equipment will. The military's haste in recovering the material and equipment before a curious heifer stomped it into the soil, or a ranch hand gathered it to display his treasure back in the bunkhouse, is understandable. Military minds are superb at constructing cover fiction in the name of security but this tale had the ring of truth for most people.