BILDERBERG: THE EARLY CIA CONNECTION

How CIA Coopted the Power Elite

The annual Bilderberg Meeting is taking place this weekend in Madrid, Spain.

High on its list of key topics is State of AI and AI Safety.

Alas, for the first time in seven decades, Henry Kissinger will not be present.

The Power Elite is usually associated with the beliefs of conspiracy theorists.  

Thanks to a whole cottage industry that has sprung up over the past half century, the mainstream media is quick to quash anything that smacks of conspiracy theory, which it associates with cranks.  

As a result, salient facts get ignored.

The Power Elite are not “conspirators.” They are super-lobbyists on an international scale; a serious moneyed elite that floats in and out of government service and take it upon themselves to shape foreign and economic policies, usually from behind the scenes.

When the Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947, its primary mission was to engage the Soviet Union in a Cold War.

It was this overlap with the Power Elite that evolved into the Bilderberg Group.

It began with CIA's recruitment of an enigmatic Polish adventurer named Joseph Retinger, perhaps the least known important figure of the 20th century.

Retinger was an odd little man who hobbled around on a gnarled cane and smoked effeminately with a long cigarette holder.  

Smart and brazen, he moved easily in aristocratic and political circles throughout Europe.  He was not a businessman, but a socializer extraordinaire, a mixer of people. 

Retinger came to CIA's attention through the FBI, which had taken a wartime interest in the Pole when he traveled to Washington as part of the Polish-Government-in-Exile's delegation headed by General Wladyslaw Sikorski.  

The Bureau suspected that Retinger was up to no good, probably in the pay of the Reds.  So FBI gumshoes trailed him everywhere, and CIA eventually got wind of it.  

Retinger was well traveled, erudite and resourceful.  More important, he possessed amazing contacts throughout Europe, all of whom basked in his mystique as a grey eminence.

But best of all, in the early 1930s Retinger had conceived an outlandish plan for European unity:  a united Europe with no borders and a single currency.  

No one was interested. No one except Retinger's father-in-law, a British politician named E.D. Morel, whose plan to raise the issue in Parliament faded as war clouds gathered over Germany.

Distressed after the war by the Western sell-out of his native Poland to Soviet domination behind the Iron Curtain, Retinger settled in London.

CIA determined that Retinger had two hot buttons:

1)  A free Poland.

2)  A united Europe.

These were the buttons CIA pushed when they sent senior intelligence officers to London to meet Retinger.  

Almost immediately, Retinger got talking about his old intellection of European unity. Retinger wanted to rekindle this concept, and he believed that the political climate was better than ever as Europe recovered from war; indeed, he had delivered a speech 18 months earlier to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in an attempt to raise support for his concept.

A few words about RIIA, known as Chatham House, the handsome mansion it occupies at 10 St. James's Square in London. 

It was and partly remains the skeletal framework for the existing Power Elite, fronted by tweedy academics, usually from All Souls College, Oxford.

The members who heard Retinger's speech in the privacy of Chatham House Rules (off-the-record, no attribution) were modestly impressed.  

But no cigar.

Until CIA pitched Retinger a lifetime supply.

The Pole was ecstatic.  He didn't care from whence the money came; it was his noble ideation that mattered.  

CIA offered Retinger the means with which to pursue his dream—a black salary and funding that would cover everything including his kitchen sink.

Then Retinger went to work, which for him meant chummy lunches at Claridges, cocktails in a quiet corner at the Savoy—and several furtive excursions to the continent where he lobbied the support of his closest Power Elite buddies:  Belgian foreign minister Paul van Zeeland and Paul Rijkens, chairman of Unilever.  

Able to utilize their  political and industrial clout, Retinger, in 1948, organized the First Congress of Europe, which he convened in The Hague

Throw an important-sounding conference with the right names attached and leaders, present and future, will come. They came, they discussed—and finally they agreed:  A Council of Europe would be established, along with national committees in each European country.

Simultaneously, CIA created a front organization called the American Committee for a Unified Europe (ACUE), its purpose being to lobby American support for Retinger's brainchild, a united Europe.

ACUE's chairman was William "Wild Bill" Donovan, who ran the war-time Office of Strategic Services (OSS). 

ACUE's vice chairman was Allen Dulles, another OSS veteran and future CIA director.

ACUE's executive director was Thomas Braden, chief of CIA's division on international organizations.

ACUE became the mechanism CIA used for funding Retinger's next step:  to create the Brussels-based European Movement and become its secretary-general.  

From 1949 till 1953, the operation cost CIA less than $1.5 million

The Soviet Union, CIA's chief adversary, watched in alarm as Western Europe began to unify.

More important, the Power Elite signed on, adopting Retinger as their own.

Out of this mixture evolved Bilderberg.

So what the hell is Bilderberg? 

Hang tight, we're getting there.

Having now positioned Retinger respectably with an office and important-sounding title, CIA had him suggest to his Power Elite buddies that they create a new international forum that would conform with Chatham House Rules, whose purpose would be to push European unity from behind the scenes and to establish an unofficial Atlantic Alliance for improving relations between Europe and the United States.  

Something private, cozy—with the refinement and decorum of a St. James's gentlemen's club.

CIA felt that someone with a royal title should nominally head the group, give it that special cachet needed to attract power-brokers. 

Retinger analyzed the possibilities.  It needed to be a reigning royal, not an exile.  

Retinger's first choice was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, partly because he knew a quick introduction could be arranged through Paul Rijkens of Unilever.  Also, Bernhard had married into the Dutch royal family and hence was not cursed with the madness that troubled the related (some say inbred) royals of Europe.

Bernhard, sensing new opportunities for himself in such high-level networking, was happy to accept the role of Honorary Chairman.  

Of what, they had not yet decided.

Retinger traveled through Europe and Britain, putting together a circle of initiates, approved in advance by CIA.  

These included:

Hugh Gaitskell (Labour MP) and Sir Colin Gubbins (British Intelligence) of Britain.

Alcide de Gasperi, prime minister of Italy.

Antoine Pinay, prime minister of France.

The first meeting of the initiates took place on 25 September 1953, in the Paris apartment of Jan Pomian, Retinger's personal assistant. Around an old ping-pong table, assorted power-brokers fleshed out what their new forum should be, and who should be invited to join.  

Bottom line:  They agreed to press on.

As per CIA's instructions, Retinger then steered the proceedings in favor of drawing the United States into the fold.

Retinger escorted Prince Bernhard on a trip to Washington, D.C. where CIA arranged for both men to meet their director, Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith, and Charles "C.D." Jackson, National Security Adviser to President Eisenhower.

The result:  An American circle of initiates was formed.  

Its members included David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank, Dean Rusk of the Rockefeller Foundation (later, secretary of state), and ketchup king Henry Heinz II.

Both circles worked toward organizing a conference.

It was held over the weekend of May 29-31, 1954 in Oosterbeek, Holland, at Hotel de Bilderberg.

The Dutch government anted up, but CIA paid for the equipment that recorded everything the participants said.

There were about 80 participants at Hotel de Bilderberg, the first and last time their annual conference would be held at the site that provided their name.

Original initiates attended, plus other politicians, bankers and industrialists—handpicked on the basis of their good-standing at Chatham House and its American equivalent, the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

The proceedings were strictly confidential; the conference was not reported in the media despite the presence of so many heavy-hitters being in one place.

To give you an idea of how the Power Elite thinks, this gem comes directly from their recorded minutes in 1954:

When the time is ripe, our present concepts of world affairs should be extended to the whole world.

Bilderberg continued to meet—sometimes twice a year— throughout the ‘50s, ‘60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and into this century.  

It still meets today, usually in June and always before a G-7 summit.  A secluded luxury resort hotel is fully-booked for the weekend pow-wow.  

Bilderberg members and guests arrive quietly—mostly by private jet—and depart just as quietly.

No press conferences. Chatham House Rules.

The only hiccup occurred in 1976 when Prince Bernhard was exposed for taking bribes from the Lockheed Corporation. Despite the publicity that resulted from this scandal, Bilderberg was not mentioned.

Yet no chances were taken:  The conference scheduled for that year was cancelled; Bernhard stepped down as chairman and was temporarily replaced by the former British Prime Minister Alec-Douglas (Lord) Home.  

In 1979, former German President Walter Scheel took the gavel. A decade later, former NATO general-secretary Lord Carrington took his place.  

Bilderberg became the Power Elite's top tamale as European unity became a reality, nurtured though its true father, Joseph Retinger, who did not live long enough to see his brainchild realized.  (The grey eminence passed in 1960 with everyone around him still puzzled about who paid his bills.)

If you have any doubt about Bilderberg’s major role in crafting European unity, you need only consult the confidential minutes of their September 1955 conference in Garmisch, West Germany:

It was generally recognized that it is our common responsibility to arrive in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market.

On an extended front, relations between Europe and the United States were greatly strengthened.  When socialist governments occasionally came to power in European countries, the CIA ensured through Bilderberg that they were tamed socialists, bred at Bilderberg conferences.

Through Bilderberg, CIA built a rock-solid front against the Soviet Bloc.

From the minutes of Bilderberg's 1956 conference in Fredensborg, Denmark: 

Participants were warned to “keep in mind” the necessity to maintain our security arrangements.  Lenin is always a dominant force in the USSR and he taught communists that the big historical questions can only be resolved through violence.

Bilderberg also capitalized on the Power Elite's favorite pastime:  Sizing up and filtering potential political leaders.

Example:  Henry Kissinger was a regular attendee of Bilderberg for a dozen-plus years before claiming fame as Nixon's national security adviser and, soon after, secretary of state.

Example:  Bill Clinton attended Bilderberg in 1991 (at the invitation of steering committee member Vernon Jordan) before announcing his candidacy for the White House.  Some believe Clinton needed their final nod.  

CIA ran the Bilderberg machine out of a small office in New York City, first at 39 East 51st Street, later at 477 Madison Avenue.

The old-fashioned, drab interior of Murden & Company looked like a Hopper painting.

Its business of setting agendas and compiling potential invitees for Bilderberg was presided over by former CIA official William Bundy, who became Bilderberg's Secretary for North America in 1976.

An unamused Bill Bundy getting door-stepped by RE at the 1978 Bilderberg Meeting in Torquay, Great Britain

As a registered charity, American Friends of Bilderberg, Inc., administrated by Murden & Company, raised operating costs from foundations and corporations—mostly from the Exxon Corporation and the Ford Foundation… and others with a vested interest in globalism.

If you want a true definition of how the Power Elite operates, it appears on page 39 of their "strictly confidential" minutes from Bilderberg's 1955 conference:

The discussions were remarkable for the measure of agreement expressed... participants will return to their various countries enriched by a clearer knowledge and understanding.  Participants may, in light of their consensus of opinions, be able to pass these views on to public opinion in their own spheres of influence, without disclosing their source.

With European unity a slam-dunk, Bilderberg and the Power Elite in general moved to loftier goals.  

One such goal:  The New World Order, in which a heavily-supported UN military force polices the globe.