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The Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual, unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 120 to 140 guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are people of influence. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from finance, industry, labour, education and communications. Meetings are closed to the public and often feature future political leaders shortly before they become household names.

The group meets annually at hotels or resorts throughout the world - for two consecutive years in Europe followed by a year in the United States or Canada. This tradition appeared to be broken in 2008 when the meeting was held in Chantilly, Virginia, so as to give easier access to those associated with the US elections. The 2009 Bilderberg meeting took place from 14-16 May in Athens, Greece.

Everything's set. The hotel is being primped and hoovered, the security is arriving, the press is nowhere to be seen, and I just had a really boring crab salad. It's shaping up to be a vintage Bilderberg.

We were lunching in the Palm Court restaurant of the Westfields Marriott hotel, in Chantilly, Virginia. A few days from now, this hotel will be dripping with billionaires and bankers, industry CEOs and finance ministers, here for the annual Bilderberg summit. "The leaders of the world are coming to our hotel", beams one member of staff. "Are you here for the brunch?"

We are. Most of the other guests have left by now. The hotel is edging towards lockdown. All that's left is a team of nervy conference organizer who start filming us with their iPhones, several dozen security operatives, me, my wife and a really rather boring 'spook', brunching on an adjacent table.

He droned on for the full length of a crab salad about his "internal and external drivers", about how "I got a panel of three-star admirals together" to secure a "$30m contract" and how "CACI excels in capture management".

He talked fondly of CACI International Inc (a giant defense contractor), although more recently he's had "a nice success rate with Booz Allen" (another giant defense contractor). His world was the deathly dull blur between the federal government and private defense corporations. The grim feeding trough of "systems solutions", "security logistics" and "mission assurance". My crab ended just as he was declaring, wisely: "When you leave the navy and you go to a contractor, you say: what's my mission?"

His mission for the next week or so is to keep the queen of the Netherlands, the chairman of Barclays, and the chairman, vice-chairman and CEO of Shell Oil safe and sound for a three-day conference. The hotel is encircled by the offices of the world's largest arms' manufacturers, 15 minutes up the road from the headquarters of the CIA. I suspect they'll be OK.

The Bilderberg conference was last here in Chantilly, at the exact same godforsaken spot, back in 2008 – which, like 2012, was a US election year, and the moment the current economic woes really started hitting the fan. You might remember, it was the year when then-senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton paid a flying visit to Bilderberg (aka 'an event in northern Virginia'), after shaking off the press pack during the Democratic presidential campaign. AP had the story:

"Reporters travelling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair might when they arrived at Dulles International Airport after an event in northern Virginia and Obama was not aboard the airplane."

You can watch the hilarious footage of Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, trying (and failing) to placate a furious press corp, who found themselves tricked aboard a flight to Chicago. "Others had a desire to meet with him in a private way," he explains. This is an extraordinary admission from Gibbs – "others" clicked their fingers, and Obama came running, with Hillary in tow.

Bill Clinton was introduced to the political big league at Bilderberg 1991. The man who introduced him was Vernon Jordan, a lawyer, civil rights activist and currently board member of Lazard investment bank. Speaking last year about the occasion, Jackson recalls:

"In 1991, I took Bill Clinton to the Bilderberg meetings in Baden Baden, Germany. Bilderberg meetings have been going on since 1954, sort of the North-American / European Alliance."

Later, after Clinton won the election:

"The steering committee of Bilderberg came to Washington in January, and I called the president up and I said 'Mr President, they're here' – and he came to the Four Seasons hotel, and the Europeans felt like they owned him because they met him when he was totally unknown."

That's interesting: a meeting of the Bilderberg steering committee at the Four Seasons in Washington? In January? But according to Bilderberg's official website, "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual conference".

As for this year's election, rumours are already circulating about Bilderberg and presidential running mates, sparked off by a Washington Post report back in April on the matter of Republican senator Marco Rubio's speech at the Summit of the Americas:

"[John] Edwards gave a speech in June 2004 at the Bilderberg conference that was widely credited as one reason John Kerry chose him."

Aside from the US presidency, the big debate of Bilderberg 2012 is likely to be: what in Hades do we do about Greece? The Eurozone is Bilderberg's biggest project, but it's been looking distinctly shaky of late. What's to be done? You can feel the unwillingness of Bilderberg to countenance a 'Grexit' in the stern words of Bilderberg spokesperson, the UK member of parliament for Rushcliffe, Kenneth Clarke. To leave the Euro, says Clarke, would be "disastrous" for the Greeks. "If they get a hopeless lot of rather cranky extremists elected at the next election then they will default on their debt." Clarke took the time to brand eurosceptic British MPs "right-wing nationalists", and euroscepticism itself "irresponsible".

Clarke's most telling remark is that: "It's going to take a crisis, an absolute crisis, to make Europe's leaders act." This week's Economist magazine agrees: "For the past six decades, steps forward to greater European union have taken place at moments of incipient crisis."

"A consensus is slowly emerging that, whether a Greek exit is to be averted or weathered, there will have to be a greater level of integration in the euro zone, with tighter constraints on the freedom of national governments."

This message, that out of the struggle will come a new strength, seems to be the Bilderbergian line. For example, EU Commissioner Joaquin Almunia (whom we spotted at Bilderberg 2010) says we need now to "reinforce the European Parliament's role" which "will also strengthen the role of the [EU] Commission". So his solution to the crisis: "I need a bigger office."

The Economist says that if the "elite venture" of Europe is to survive and thrive, "Europe's elites" have got their work cut out. It ventures to give the elites some "unashamedly technocratic" advice on how to forge their closer union, but it needn't worry, the technocrats of Bilderberg seems to have the matter in hand. Mario Monti (unelected Italian PM, Bilderberg steering committee) said this week: "Europe can have euro bonds soon."

But we're not in Europe now, we're in Chantilly, and the CIA is just up the road from the conference venue, so protestors had better stay on their best behaviour. And we're expecting plenty of them – gathering under the activist umbrella: "Occupy Bilderberg"

What a difference a year makes. Occupy Bilderberg? I love it. The Occupy movement seems finally to have realised that the problem isn't the 1%, it's the 0.001%. It's the guys and gals and whatever David Rockefeller is who are meeting in Chantilly, Virginia, at the end of the week. Many hundreds of protestors have pledged to show up. And who knows, they may just manage to drag the mainstream news media with them.

Historically, one of the biggest problems people have had with Occupy is that its aims and demands have been a little, shall we say, "diffuse". Not the case with Occupy Bilderberg. That's the nail getting hit squarely on the head. Occupy Bilderberg is keyhole activism. Picking the exact right spot and sticking the scissors in.

"We refuse to pay for the banks' crisis" was the cry from OccupyLSX back in the autumn. They demanded an end to "our democracy representing corporations instead of the people." What Bilderberg represents is the fact that our democracy IS our corporations. And politics is just the wake behind a shark fin.

The original Bilderberg conference was held at the Hotel de Bilderberg, near Arnhem in The Netherlands, from 29 May to 31 May 1954. It was initiated by several people, including Denis Healey and Jozef Retinger, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, who proposed an international conference at which leaders from European countries and the United States would be brought together with the aim of promoting understanding between the cultures of the United States and Western Europe.

Retinger approached Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who agreed to promote the idea, together with Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland, and the head of Unilever at that time, the Dutchman Paul Rijkens. Bernhard in turn contacted Walter Bedell Smith, then head of the CIA, who asked Eisenhower adviser Charles Douglas Jackson to deal with the suggestion.

The guest list was to be drawn up by inviting two attendees from each nation, one of each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. Fifty delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe attended the first conference along with 11 Americans.

The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent Steering Committee was established, with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details, with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Conferences were held in France, Germany, and Denmark over the following three years.

In 1957, the first US conference was held in St. Simons, Georgia, with $30,000 from the Ford Foundation. The foundation supplied further funding for the 1959 and 1963 conferences.

Organizational Structure

Meetings are organized by a steering committee with two members from each of around eighteen nations. Official posts, in addition to a chairman, include an Honorary Secretary General. There is no such category in the group's rules as a "member of the group". The only category that exists is "member of the Steering Committee". In addition to the committee, there also exists a separate advisory group, though membership overlaps.

Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugel took over as permanent secretary in 1960, upon Retinger's death. Prince Bernhard continued to serve as the meeting's chairman until 1976, the year of his involvement in the Lockheed affair. The position of Honorary American Secretary General has been held successively by Joseph E. Johnson of the Carnegie Endowment, William Bundy of Princeton, Theodore L. Eliot, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Casimir A. Yost of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

A 2008 press release from the American Friends of Bilderberg stated that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued" and noted that the names of attendees were available to the press. The Bilderberg group unofficial headquarters is the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1954-1975)

Alec Douglas-Home (1977-1980)

Walter Scheel

Eric Roll (1986-1989)

Lord Carrington (1990-1998)

Etienne Davignon

The steering committee does not publish a list of attendees, though some participants have publicly discussed their attendance. Historically, attendee lists have been weighted towards politicians, bankers, and directors of large businesses.

Heads of state, including Juan Carlos I of Spain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, have attended meetings. Prominent politicians from North America and Europe are past attendees. In past years, board members from many large publicly-traded corporations have attended, including IBM, Xerox, Royal Dutch Shell, Nokia and Daimler.

The 2009 meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis; Finnish prime minister, Matti Vanhanen; Sweden foreign minister, Carl Bildt; U.S. State Department number two, James Steinberg; U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner; World Bank president, Robert Zoellick; European Commission head, Jose Manuel Barroso; Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

List of Bilderberg Participants

In a European Parliament session in Brussels, Mario Borghezio, an Italian member of European Parliament, questioned the nominations of Bilderberg and Trilateral Commission attendees for the posts of EU President and EU foreign minister. The Trilateral Commission was established by David Rockefeller in 1972 after the Bilderberg Group refused to incorporate Japan.

In 2009 the group had a dinner meeting at Castle of the Valley of the Duchess in Brussels, in the 12th of November, with the participation of Herman Van Rompuy, who later became the President of the European Council. The newspaper De Tijd (and several others afterwards) reported that, at this meeting, Van Rompuy showed support for a European green tax: "Van Rompuy told the elite club that the European government leaders are increasingly becoming proponents of Europe tapping off green income, so that the contributions of member states to the EU can be decreased."

Because of its secrecy and refusal to issue news releases, the group is frequently accused of secretive and nefarious world plots. Critics include the John Birch Society, the Canadian writer Daniel Estulin, British writer David Icke, American journalist Jim Tucker and radio host Alex Jones.

Bilderberg founding member and, for 30 years, a steering committee member, Denis Healey has said: To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.

According to the American Friends of Bilderberg, the 2008 agenda dealt "mainly with a nuclear free world, cyber terrorism, Africa, Russia, finance, protectionism, US-EU relations, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islam and Iran".

2009: May 14-16 - Astir Palace resort in Athens, Greece

2008: June 5-8 - Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, United States

2007: May 31 - June 3 - Ritz-Carlton Hotel, in Sisli, Istanbul, Turkey

2006: June 8-11 - Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

2005 May 5-8 - Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Uberfahrt in Rottach-Egern, Germany

List of Bilderberg Meetings

Inside the secretive Bilderberg Group BBC - October 7, 2005

The Ultimate Conspiracy - 50th anniversary BBC - June 3, 2004

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