THE BILDERBERG GROUP
By Dr. J.H. Retinger
August 1956
A
few years ago a large number of people began to feel anxious about a growing
distrust of
I
therefore approached H.R.H Prince Bernhard, Dr. Paul Rykens,
and M. Paul van Zeeland with the suggestion that we should organize some
unofficial and private meetings to discuss the difficulties and dangers which
were causing us so much anxiety. To
these meetings we would invite influential and reliable people who carried the
respect of those working in the field of national and international affairs and
whose personal contact with men at the summit of public activity could help to
smooth over these difficulties. Acting
on the advice of my three friends, I approached about a dozen other people,
viz.: Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, Major General Sir Colin Gubbins,
Mr. Ole Bjorn Kraft, M. Guy Mollet, Dr. Rudolf
Mueller, M. Antoine Pinay, M.P. Pipinelis,
M. Max Brauer, Marshal of the R.A.F. Lord Portal of
Hungerford, Ambassador Quaroni, and Signor de Gasperi. In our view
the improvement of relations between
1. Through fear of indiscretion, representatives
discuss only the problems, not their mutual reactions or the reactions those
problems would provoke among the Western countries.
2. They are swamped by details and practical
considerations instead of being able to go to the core of the subject under
discussion.
3. If they are not able to reach agreement on a
certain point they shelve it in order to avoid giving the impression of
disunity. Consequently, incidents occur
which could have been foreseen and which are almost unavoidable in such
circumstances.
On
the other hand, when international meetings take place between representatives
of only a few countries not all inter-related problems can be discussed,
because there is no adequate representation to emphasize the points of all
individual countries.
Finally,
the leaders of public life are not only politicians. Other big interests – religious, financial,
industrial, trade-unionist, intellectual – are also responsible for the
relationship among countries. The second
point we had to consider consisted in ensuring that frank conversations could
take place without running the risk of being misinterpreted by the press and
that there should be no interminable speeches for the sake of publicity. It was clear, therefore, that such
conversations had to be conducted privately, unofficially, and confidentially,
and for this reason we decided not to admit the press to our meetings,
restricting publicity in general to one or two very short communiqués which do
not go into any details, nor mention any individual speakers, in order to
ensure that neither the subject of our discussions nor the names of the participants
should be given any publicity.
Experience has proved this course to be the right one, since our debates
take place in a spirit of complete frankness and discretion, and participants
are never afraid that anything they say will be used against them.
Everybody
who attends our meetings does so in his private capacity even if he is the
leader of a government, a party, or an association, and thus he is not
responsible to his supporters for anything he may say.
In
order not to be accused of starting an unofficial political “mafia,” we decided
from the outset not to consider ourselves a policy-making body but to have as
our principal aim the smoothing over of difficulties and tendencies among
countries and the finding of a common approach in the various fields –
political, cultural, economic, and social.
Moreover, we do not contemplate taking any direct action. We draw the attention of existing
organizations to the points in question; what those organizations do remains
their own responsibility. For this side
of our work, however, we have always had the tacit approval of the Governments
of the countries to which the participants belong.
We
have tried to attract to our group, and our attempt has been successful, people
of various tendencies, although we have not considered it necessary to have a
permanent representative of every tendency of every national group. We think there is no necessity for instance
to have every Catholic country represented by a Catholic and every Protestant
country represented by a Protestant. We
believe that we should invite to our group a certain number of Catholics
wherever they may come from, as long as they have full authority within their
sphere of influence, and of course this applies equally to Protestants. In the same way with trade-unionists, it has
not proved necessary to have a representative of trade-unionists from all the
Western European countries. For this
reason also it has been our custom to invite representatives in the proportion
of one-third politicians and one-fifth business-men and trade-unionists, the
remainder being intellectuals, professional men, and other leaders of public
opinion. The first essential is
undoubtedly to have men of absolute personal and political integrity; the
second, to have men of real international standing, or whose position in their
own countries is such as to give them considerable influence in at least an
important section of the population, men who in their own field hold a position
of authority and enjoy the confidence of their fellow-men; the third, to have
men with no obvious nationalistic bias and who are broad-minded when it comes
to other people’s problems which may conflict with their own; last, but not
least, men who, in addition to the qualifications just mentioned, can be considered
as animated by the highest public spirit.
It
was further decided that to ensure all these conditions no official
organization or association would be set up, and no party, tendency or interest
asked to nominate their representatives.
Instead, we would choose the people to be invited to take part in our
meetings, mostly guided by the nature of the subjects to be discussed, and
using great care to preserve a strict balance.
This decision has proved a wise one.
We hold round-table conferences with people who we believe represent the
general opinion of the leaders of their country. At our meetings, however, we draw
conclusions, but there is no voting on resolutions.
Our
chairman is H.R.H. Prince Bernhard. At
our first meeting, however, M. van Zeeland presided, while at our first
international gathering at Bilderberg the
chairmanship was held in rotation, as follows:
Prince Bernhard, a Belgian, an American. For various reasons it was later decided that
it would be better to have one chairman, and to the satisfaction and pleasure
of all concerned H.R.H. Prince Bernhard accepted this position. He is the convenor
of our international meetings, over which he also presides. I am myself responsible for all the spadework
for the group as a whole, as well as for the members for
So
far as participants in the international conferences are concerned, the main
core remains the same, but since there are always different problems to be
studied different people must be invited to each conference.
It
is our desire to keep this group as a loosely knit association with no rules of
procedure except those acquired by experience.
For this reason, and because of the fact that there are no properly
established offices, the central office having been set up in my own flat, the
running expenses are very small.
Moreover I myself as honorary secretary involve the group in no
financial obligations; only my immediate collaborators, consisting of not more
than four people, receive any remuneration.
Apart from the cost of running the office, the expenses consist mainly
in covering the cost of meetings of the Steering Committee and of international
conferences. It must be added, however,
that the hospitality at these conferences is always offered by the host
country, while the cost of the work of the secretariat, simultaneous
interpretation, translation, printing, etc., is borne
by the international secretariat. The
total expenditure therefore is small and has so far been covered completely by
private subscriptions. Thus the money
received or spent has no strings, political or otherwise, attached to it. Most of the year 1952 was spent in private
consultations between two or three people.
A first meeting was held in
In
November 1952 I went to the
Later
on Mr. Coleman was obliged, on account of illness, to retire from the
chairmanship of the American team and was succeeded by Mr. Dean Rusk. It was thought useful to appoint an American
honorary secretary, who was, and still is, Mr. Joseph E. Johnson. During the four years which followed, other
countries were invited to join in our work and participants from the following
European countries have been present at our meetings:
1
Bilderberg, Oosterbeek,
2
3
4
The
themes discussed were: The attitude
towards Communism and the
A Steering
Committee was formed from the original founders of the group, in which the
Americans mentioned above now participate.
Subjects which do not need a long preparation as far as papers to be
presented are concerned, and for which an attendance of fifteen to twenty
people seems sufficient, are discussed from time to time in this smaller group.
Since the group is
not a policy-making body, its principal object being to smooth over
difficulties between Western Europe and the United States with a view to
improving their mutual relations, together with difficulties among certain
European countries or even certain extra-European countries, it would be
impossible to define what the group has achieved. We certainly provide a meeting-place for
various distinguished personalities having authority in their own particular
fields of action. We have found that an
exchange of views is very helpful, and may sometimes produce new ideas, and that in a way the group may be a factory of
initiative. We decided, however, that
none of the new ideas and initiative would be developed by the group, but that
they should be passed on to some persons or organization who could further
develop them.
*How and when the non-European personalities,
especially the American, joined our group will be explained later.