In Private Capacity

Unreported anywhere, there is a meeting at least one weekend every year of an organization called Bilderberg (after the Bilderberg Hotel in Holland, the site, in 1954, of its first meeting) in alternately the USA, Canada, England and other European countries. About a hundred members of the international establishment, including kings, queens and princes, present and former Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries, Secretaries of State, industrialists, heads of national banks and of major foundations (Ford, Carnegie) and of lending institutions (World Bank, IMF), gather without any press attention whatsoever. Why the secrecy, or absence of noise? Now, for many reasons such as the end of the Cold War, the development of the Internet and the opportunity to gather more frequently in other venues, the Bilderberg, like its near contemporaries the Marshall Plan and NATO, has more or less fulfilled its destiny. Renata Adler's book looks at the relations between secrecy and power. For when the secrecy of Bilderberg is dissipated, so perhaps its value dissolves as well.