While Bilderberg’s top man insists that it is just a good old boys club, another Bilderberg participant readily admits it holds influence in global decisionmaking, BBC News reports from London.

“Will Hutton, an economic analyst and former newspaper editor who attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1997, says people take part in these networks in order to influence the way the world works, to create what he calls ‘the international common sense’ about policy,” BBC said.

“On every issue that might influence your business you will hear first hand the people who are actually making those decisions and you will play a part in helping them make those decisions and formulating the common sense,” BBC quotes Hutton.

“And that ‘common sense’ is one which supports the interests of Bilderberg’s main participants—in particular free trade,” BBC told listeners, who number in the millions.

“Viscount Davignon says that at the annual meetings, ‘automatically around the table you have internationalists’—people who support the work of the World Trade Organization, transatlantic cooperation and European integration.”

Viscount Etienne Davignon, 73, is chairman of Bilderberg and a former European commissioner. Today, Davignon is a wealthy banker and is known as the public face behind the unification of Europe under one currency, the euro.

BBC’s Bill Hayton interviewed him at his office in Brussels. Hayton correctly called it an “extremely rare interview.”

“I don’t think [we are] a global ruling class because I don’t think a global ruling class exists,” Davignon told BBC listeners. “I simply think it’s people who have influence interested to speak to other people who have influence.”

Davignon said “business influences society and politics influences society—that’s purely common sense. It’s not that business contests the right of democratically elected leaders to lead.”

“For Bilderberg critics the fact that there is almost no publicity about the annual meetings is proof they are up to no good,” BBC’s Hayton said on air. “Jim Tucker, [senior] editor of . . . American Free Press, for example, alleges they organize wars and elect and depose political leaders. He describes the group as simply ‘evil.’ So where does the truth lie?”

Bilderberg meetings “often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names,” Hayton said. “Bill Clinton went in 1991, while still governor of Arkansas. Tony Blair was there two years later while still an
opposition member of Parliament. All the recent presidents of the European Commission attended Bilderberg meetings before they were appointed.”

BBC did not mention that Blair also attended in 1998 as prime minister.

NO ACCIDENT

Davignon explained that Bilderberg’s steering committee “does its best assessment of who are the bright new boys or girls in the beginning phase of their career who would like to get known. . . . It’s not a total accident.”

“Professor Kees van der Piji of Sussex University in Britain says such private networks of corporate and political leaders play an informal but crucial role in the modern world,” Hayton said. He quotes the professor:

“ ‘There need to be places where these people can think about the main challenges ahead, coordinate where policies should be going, and find out where there could be a consensus.’ ”

This benign image of Bilderberg, however, denies reality. A simple glance at the secret roster of attendees shows it is composed of the wealthy elites, who are all seeking similar goals—increasing their power and profits, while turning the rest of us into serfs on the global plantation.