Bilderberg/1999
The 1999 Bilderberg Meeting was the 47th such meeting and had participants from Europe, the United States and Canada. It was held at Sintra, Portugal. The 110 guests included 32 business executives, 27 politicians, 12 financiers, 10 editors/journalists and 9 academics. The next meeting was the 2000 Bilderberg.
Contents
- 1 Agenda
- 1.1 1. Kosovo
- 1.2 2. The US Political Scene
- 1.3 3. Current Controversies: Genetics and the Life Sciences
- 1.4 4. Redesigning the International Financial Architecture
- 1.5 5. The Social and Political Impacts on Emerging Markets of Recent Economic Events
- 1.6 6. NATO's future
- 1.7 7. The Relationship between Information Technology and Economic Policy
- 1.8 8. Current Events
- 1.9 9. Russia's Foreign Policy
- 1.10 10. How Durable is the Current Rosy Complexion of European Politics?
- 2 Premature deaths
- 3 Exposure
- 4 Known Participants
- 5 Witnesses
- 6 References
Agenda
The 1999 Bilderberg Agenda has not been leaked, but the website at Bilderberg Meetings has posted an agenda.
1. Kosovo
2. The US Political Scene
3. Current Controversies: Genetics and the Life Sciences
4. Redesigning the International Financial Architecture
5. The Social and Political Impacts on Emerging Markets of Recent Economic Events
6. NATO's future
7. The Relationship between Information Technology and Economic Policy
8. Current Events
9. Russia's Foreign Policy
10. How Durable is the Current Rosy Complexion of European Politics?
Premature deaths
Giannos Kranidiotis, three months after the meeting, died with his son in a freak air event, twenty minutes before the plane landed in Bucharest.[1]
Exposure
James Tucker reported that the 1999 Bilderberg meeting was unusually widely covered by the international corporate media.[2] The UK magazine Big Issue of 15 November 1999 reported on the Bilderberg as follows:[3]
In the first of a two-part series, Gibby Zobel uncovers how the global power elite decides our future at the shadowy Bilderberg Summit each year. Documents from the secret summit - leaked to The Big Issue - reveal what they said about money and war.
For nearly 50 years an elite group of the West's most powerful men and women, a shadow world government, have met in secret. Tony Blair is in the club. Every US president since Ike Eisenhower has been too. So are top members of the British Government. So are the people who control what you watch and read - the media barons. Which is why you may never have heard of Bilderberg.
"Lines of black limousines, unmarked except for a 'B' on the windscreen, swept in, sometimes accompanied by police escorts, sometimes not," says an eyewitness of this year's meeting in Portugal. "A helicopter was overhead, and other security officers were prudently patrolling the hillsides. The policy on duty at the gates made it crystal clear that they were only the tip of the security iceberg."
For two-and-a-half days, relaxing in exclusive luxury amid vast armed security, the powerful leaders discussed past and future wars, a European superstate, a global currency, genetics, and the dismantling of the welfare state. Unaccountable, untroubled and unreported, the Bilderberg meetings have formed the basis of international policy for decades. Last year freelance journalist Campbell Thomas was arrested just for knocking on doors near the clandestine gathering in Turnberry, Scotland. He remained in custody for eight hours. Other journalists were told that even the Bilderberg menu was confidential (a move they named 'Kippergate'). A serving police officer told 'The Big Issue': "Special Branch and CIA were everywhere - they were calling the shots."
Never in its 47-year history has the content of these discussions been made public. Until now. The Big Issue has uncovered the Bilderberg Papers - the secret minutes of this year's meeting in Portugal. Some of it is banal, some of it sensational. It blows the lid off the thoughts of presidents, chairmen of multinational companies, world bankers, Nato chiefs and defence ministers.
The meetings are shrouded in such secrecy that Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked last year in the House of Commons, failed to disclosed his own attendance at Bilderberg in Athens in 1993. So, what have they been hiding?
- Nato gave Russia carte blanche to bomb Chechnya
- 'Dollarisation' could be the the next step after the single European currency
- A senior British politician thinks New Labour is "consolidating the victories of the Right". On welfare cuts he adds: "It might be easier for somebody who claimed to be a socialist to impose change."
- After Kosovo Nato is in danger of mimicking a colonial power
Although 14 media chiefs and journalists from across eight countries attended this year, none of them chose to tell their readers of the meeting. It would not serve their interests to be cut out of the elite loop. With an invite-only guest-list, covert operations and such deafening silence, it is little surprise that conspiracy theories have thrived, from the anti-semites who believe in a Jewish global elite, to the paranoid delusions of the radical left. The effect has been to leave the importance of the meetings tainted by association. It suits the Bilderbergers perfectly.
The Bilderberg meetings began in a Dutch hotel on May 29 1954, from where it gets its name. 'The Economist', in a rare reference to it in 1987, said that the importance of the meetings was overplayed but admitted: "When you have scaled the Bilderberg, you have arrived."
At last year's meeting, former defence minister George Robertson, who is now Nato secretary-general, planned strategies with the Bilderberg chair and ex-Nato chief Lord Carrington. Observer editor-in-chief Will Hutton attended Bilderberg in 1997. He believes that it is the home of the "high priests of globalisation". "No policy is made here," he says, "it is all talk. But the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide."
The 64-page leaked document - The Bilderberg Papers - is dated August 1999. The powerful transatlantic clique at the private hideaway included new Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson MP, environmentalist Jonathon Porritt, Kenneth Clarke MP, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, billionaire oil and banking tycoon David Rockefeller, Monsanto chief Robert B Shapiro, and the head of the World Bank, James D Wolfensohn.
Although Asian and African politics and economics were discussed the continents' countries had no seats at this summit. The official eight-strong UK delegation included bankers Martin Taylor, former chief executive of Barclay's and Eric Roll, a banker for Warburgs. They were joined by Martin Wolf of The Financial Times and two journalists from The Economist, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, who, the minutes indicate, prepared this document.
The papers are marked 'Not for Quotation'. It states: "There were 111 participants from 24 countries. All participants spoke in their personal capacity, not as representatives of their national governments or employers. As is usual at Bilderberg meetings, in order to permit frank and open discussion, no public reporting of the conference took place." None of the quotes in each of the 10 sections are directly attributable to any named individual, but the moderator and panellists in each discussion are listed. It is made perfectly clear, however, who is saying what. It is not known who else is in the audience, but their comments are identified by their country and profession.
Over two weeks, we report on the central themes of this year's meeting. This week: money and war. Next week: genetics - what the head of Monsanto and a leading British environmentalist discussed behind closed doors.
what they said about... money
Giants of the global banking world, in a debate titled Redesigning the International Financial Architecture, discussed the concept of 'dollarisation' which is sure to send euro-sceptics into a frenzy. Around the table were Kenneth Clarke MP, Martin S Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stanley Fisher [sic.], deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ottmar Issing, board member of the European Central Bank and Jean Claude Trichet, governor of the Bank of France.
Bilderberg is understood to have been the birthplace of the single european currency. The deputy director of the IMF opens by remarking: "It is worth noting that this is the first Bilderberg meeting where the euro is fact rather than a topic for discussion."
During the discussion, "One of the panellists was sure that if the euro worked, more regional currencies would emerge. Others raised the question of dollarisation as a possible cure."
There is a dissenting voice:
"The only possible reason for surrendering control of your monetary policy to Washington (where nobody would make decisions on the basis of what mattered in Buenos Aires [or London]) is the fairly rotten financial records of the governments concerned." what they said about... war
Despite Tony Blair's presidential stance over Kosovo, Nato's historic war was pilloried at Bilderberg. "The mood at the meeting was surprisingly subdued... most of the speakers concentrated on the downside of the conflict," begins the discussion on Kosovo.
Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, weighs in, saying Kosovo "could be this generation's Vietnam". Nato is in danger of replacing the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires in a series of permanent protectorates, he said. Another panellist warned that troops could be there for 25 years. Kissinger felt that this left Nato open to accusations of colonialism. "How did one persuade countries like China, Russia and India that Nato's new mandate was not just a new version of 'the white man's burden' - colonialism?" asked Kissinger.
Charles D Boyd, executive director of the US National Study Group, said Kosovo is now a wasteland, a humanitarian disaster comparable with Cambodia. "Nato used force as a substitute for diplomacy rather than as a support for it... it used force in a way that minimised danger to itself but maximised danger to the people it was trying to protect."
An unnamed British politician "wondered whether the [Nato] alliance could hang together after the end of the war. He warned that "there would be little popular enthusiasm for putting lots of resources into solving the region's gigantic problems."
Peter Mandelson told the group that "two roads stretch in front of Nato. One leads to a new division of Europe, where the continent returns to its ethnocentric ways. Under this scenario, the UN is fairly powerless, Russia and China are excluded, and Nato is little more than an enforcer. The second road is a little closer to the nineteenth century Europe, with all the great powers - not just America and the EU, but Russia, China and Japan co-operating."
More details from the papers published in the Big Issue on November 22.
Known Participants
109 of the 110 of the participants already have pages here:
| Participant | Description |
|---|---|
| Umberto Agnelli | Italian business magnate with multiple deep state connections including the Bilderberg Steering committee. |
| Esperanza Aguirre | President of Madrid who resigned after her right hand man was imprisoned |
| Paul Allaire | Bilderberg Steering Committee member and board of the Council on Foreign Relations who headed Rank Xerox |
| Joaquim do Amaral | Portuguese politician who attended the 1999 Bilderberg. Party-supported candidate for President in 2001, losing to fellow Bilderberger Jorge Sampaio. |
| Otto Wolff von Amerongen | Bilderberg Advisory Committee member, deep politician |
| Beatrix Armgard | Former Dutch Queen. Survived 2009 Queen's Day Attack. In 1962 became the first woman to attend a Bilderberg meeting. Kicked a very heavy Bilderberg habit in 2015. |
| Percy Barnevik | Bilderberg Steering committee member in the Wallenberg Sphere |
| Evan Bayh | US lawyer, lobbyist, and politician |
| Franco Bernabè | Italian banker and manager, Steering Committee of the Bilderberg |
| Carl Bildt | Swedish deep politician, serial Bilderberger and visitor to the MSC. Sitting on an impressive number of deep state related commissions. |
| Conrad Black | Fraudulent Bilderberg steering committee member |
| Charles Boyd | 3 Bilderbergs, CFR, husband of Jessica Mathews |
| Kenneth Clarke | Bilderberg Steering committee, The Other Club, UK politician. When former child actor Ben Fellows went public with accusations that Clarke had assaulted him, Fellows was prosecuted for "attempting to pervert the course of justice". |
| Kristin Clemet | Triple Bilderberger Norwegian politician |
| Bertrand Collomb | Connected French businessman. 13 Bilderbergs. |
| Jon Corzine | 6 times Bilderberger financier |
| João Cardona G. Cravinho | Portuguese government minister who attended the 1999 Bilderberg |
| George David | Greek Cypriot entrepreneur, Bilderberg Steering committee. |
| Étienne Davignon | Belgian deep politician, EU commissioner, Bilderberg chairman, Egmont Institute president |
| Christopher Dodd | US lobbyist, lawyer and politician. MPAA CEO |
| Tom Donilon | Spooky Bilderberger. Has advised the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, designing policy, managing conventions, preparing candidates for debates, and overseeing presidential transitions. His brothers are also deep state operatives. |
| Gazi Ercel | Turkish central banker and 4 times Bilderberger |
| Sedat Ergin | Educated at Robert College. Hürriyet's Washington correspondent for six years. Worked for Turkish version of CNN. |
| Martin Feldstein | US economist, Trilateral Commission, heavy Bilderberg habit towards the end of his life. |
| Stanley Fischer | Israeli/US central banker and quad Bilderberger |
| Paolo Fresco | Italian Bilderberg businessman. Ex Fiat Chairman |
| Francesco Giavazzi | Italian double Bilderberg economist |
| Peter Godsoe | Attended the 1999 Bilderberg as Chairman and CEO of the Bank of Nova Scotia |
| Donald Graham | Son of Katharine Graham, TLC, Facebook, 10 Bilderbergs |
| Frank de Grave | Acting Mayor of Amsterdam in 1994. 1999 Bilderberg. Tried exposing a big Dutch bank to the De Nederlandsche Bank, was ignored initially. Became a member of the Council of State in 2018. |
| Eduardo Marçal Grilo | Portuguese politician. Attended the 1999 Bilderberg. From 2000 director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. |
| Chuck Hagel | US Secretary of Defense, Chairperson of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board |
| Victor Halberstadt | A professor of economics, with a minimal Wikipedia page, who has attended all Bilderberg meetings since 1975. |
| Tom Hedelius | Double Bilderberg Swedish financier |
| Per Egil Hegge | Spooky Norwegian journalist and editor |
| Peter Herrndorf | Canadian media executive who attended the 1999 Bilderberg. |
| Jim Hoagland | US journalist whose Deep state connections include the CFR, Hoover Institution, Institute for Strategic Dialogue and 4 visits to the Bilderberg |
| Richard Holbrooke | Bilderberg/Steering committee, deep state operative |
| Jan Huyghebaert | Belgian businessman, 11 Bilderbergs |
| Westye Høegh | President of the Norwegian Shipowners' Association, Bilderberg Steering committee |
| Matías Rodríguez Inciarte | Former Bilderberg Steering committee, Spanish banker and possibly deep politician |
| Otmar Issing | Triple Bilderberger European central banker who became "international advisor" for Goldman Sachs. |
| Vernon Jordan | Close friend of Bill Clinton. A member of the Bilderberg Steering committee who attended 34 Bilderberg meetings. |
| Nikolai Kamov | Bulgarian politician. 2002 Bilderberg |
| Henry Kissinger | US deep politician, 40+ Bilderbergs, Nobel peace prize, war criminal |
| Hilmar Kopper | Bilderberg/Steering committee, chairman of Deutsche Bank |
| Giannos Kranidiotis | A greek diplomat and politician who was killed together with his son in a "freak accident" 3 months after attending a Bilderberg meeting. |
| Marie-Josée Kravis | Like her husband, Henry Kravis, a billionaire multi-Bilderberger |
| Suna Kıraç | Turkish Koç family Bilderberg Steering Committee member paralysed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis |
| Jan Leschly | Danish Big Pharma executive who attended 3 Bilderbergs from 1998 to 2002 |
| ... further results | |
Witnesses
| Witness | Description |
|---|---|
| Maja Banck-Polderman | Bilderberg Executive Secretary. Attended 7 Bilderbergs |
| Joao Estarreja | Unidentified "in attendance" at the 1999 Bilderberg |
| Michael Farren | Former Deputy White House counsel and Bilderberger convicted of attempting to murder his wife |
| Diemut Kastner | Worked for the Public Relations Department of Creditanstalt-Bankverein. "In attendance" at the 1988 and 1999 Bilderbergs |
| John Micklethwait | Editor of The Economist for 9 years then Bloomberg News |
| Adrian Wooldridge | UK journalist and columnist. Regular "observer" at the Bilderberg for The Economist. |
