IN MY ATTEMPTS to find out whether the world really was being secretly ruled from inside the Caesar Park golfing resort that June weekend, I contacted dozens of Bilderberg members. And, of course, nobody returned my calls. Nobody even wrote back to decline my request and thank me for my letter, and these are people whose people always write back and decline requests—Peter Mandelson’s office, for instance—which is why I began to envisage these silences as startled ones.
I did manage to speak to David Rockefeller’s press secretary, who told me that Mr. Rockefeller was thoroughly fed up with being called a twelve-foot lizard, a secret ruler of the world, a keeper of black helicopters that spy on anti-Bilderberg dissenters, and so on.
The Rockefeller office seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the conspiracy theories. They troubled Mr. Rockefeller (his press man said). They made him wonder why some people are so scared and suspicious of him in particular and global think tanks such as Bilderberg in general. Mr. Rockefeller’s conclusion was that this was a battle between rational and irrational thought. Rational people favored globalization. Irrational people preferred nationalism.
I asked him why he thought no Bilderberg member had returned my calls or answered my letters.
“Well,” he shrugged, “I suppose it’s because they might want to be invited back.”
I PERSEVERED. I wanted the information. I felt I deserved to have the information, and I simply couldn’t believe that, in this day and age, there was some information that I couldn’t get my hands on. It was driving me crazy.
I learned that being followed around by a man in dark glasses was tame in comparison to the indignities suffered by some of the few prying journalists who had traveled this road before me. In June 1998 a Scottish reporter tracked Bilderberg to the Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire, and when he started asking questions he was promptly handcuffed by Strathclyde police and thrown into jail.
BILDERBERG MEMBERS CONTINUED to ignore my inquiries through the end of 1999 and into 2000. It was around the same time that my former Islamic fundamentalist friend Omar Bakri decided to take against me in a big way.
It began innocently enough. I wrote an article about him in the Guardian newspaper, and a few days later he phoned to say that as a result of it he had been asked to appear on a TV discussion program entitled Fanatical Debate.
“Fanatical Debate!” sighed Omar. “What a name! See how you’ve typecast me, Jon.”
We laughed about it.
The next day Omar called back. Something had changed.
“I am very angry with you,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“You said you’d portray Omar the husband, and you lied.”
“How could I portray Omar the husband if you never introduced me to your wife once during the entire year we were together?” I said.
“Anyway,” said Omar, “I am not angry. I am happy.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it was a funny article,” said Omar. “It made me laugh.”
THREE HOURS LATER, I received a telephone call from Helen Jacobus, a journalist on the Jewish Chronicle.
“I’ve just been speaking to Omar Bakri,” she said. “He’s very angry. He says that you have personally destroyed relations between all Muslims and all Jews in the U.K. He says that if there is a violent aftermath, you will have nobody to blame but yourself. He says that the Zionist-controlled British media has demonized him, and it is all your fault. Would you care to comment?”
“But,” I said, “I haven’t.”
“Is that it?” said Helen. “Is that your comment?”
“I haven’t,” I said. “I just haven’t.”
“My God, Jon,” said Helen. “This is all we need.”
“What else did Omar say?” I asked her.
“He said that you will burn in hell,” she said.
THIS WAS THE worst possible news. Here I was, still smarting at the heavy-handed treatment afforded to me by the Bilderberg security guards in Portugal, and Omar was going around telling people that I was part of the international media-controlled Jewish conspiracy. I seemed to be in a unique, and not pleasant, position in the grand conspiratorial scheme of things.
I debated whether to phone Omar and remind him that journalism is very much a team effort. There are researchers, publishers, and so on. I realized then, with shame, that I do not cope well under pressure.
I telephoned Omar.
“Omar,” I said, “did you tell the Jewish Chronicle that I have destroyed relations between all Muslims and all Jews?”
“Yes,” he said, merrily.
“Don’t you think it’s getting out of hand?” I said.
“Oh, Jon,” said Omar. “I know how to work the media! Ha ha! Don’t you think it is all very funny? I’m going to cause as much trouble as possible, ha ha!”
“But what if some of your followers take your words seriously and—you know—kill me?” I said.
“Oh, Jon,” he muttered. “Don’t be silly. We are all very mature. All Muslims are very mature.”
“So we’re friends?” I said.
“Of course,” said Omar.
“Maybe I can come over?” I suggested.
“Oh no,” said Omar. “I can never trust you again. You lied. I am very angry. You have caused much unhappiness among the Muslims.”
“But you said you were very happy.”
“Oh yes,” said Omar. “I am very happy.”
“Omar,” I said, “are you happy or angry?”
“Happy,” said Omar.
There was a silence.
“There’s something else,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“Helen Jacobus said that you said that I would burn in hell.”
“Ha ha ha!” said Omar. “I was joking! I say that to my children! If you don’t do your homework you will go to the hellfire! Ha ha! I can’t believe that you believed me!”
“So I won’t go to hell?”
“You will go to paradise,” said Omar. “And if you go around telling people that I said you will burn in hell then I will give you sixty lashes.”
“Will you?” I said.
“Jon!” said Omar. “I’m joking again! Ha ha!”
“Ha ha,” I said.
“Sixty lashes for you!” said Omar.
IN 1999, THREE nail bombs exploded in London—in Brixton and Brick Lane and at a gay bar in Soho. The bomber, David Copeland, believed that Tony Blair’s government was being secretly controlled by a clique of powerful Jews who call themselves the Bilderberg Group and meet once a year in a five-star hotel at an undisclosed location. He also believed that this Judaic-Satanic elite attends a secret summer camp every year called Bohemian Grove, where they sacrifice children on an altar to their owl god.
The Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic publicly blamed the Bilderberg Group for starting the war against him in the former Yugoslavia. His accusation was barely reported. I suppose that the journalists at the press conference had never heard of the Bilderberg Group and simply didn’t know what to write.
The Iraqi government announced in November 2000 that the vote-rigging scandal that convulsed the American elections in Florida was all part of the great Bilderberg Jewish conspiracy to get their man, Al Gore, into power. Other conspiracy theorists contended that this could not be true because George W. Bush was himself a regular attendee at Bohemian Grove and must, therefore, also be part of the conspiracy.
I thought about Timothy McVeigh visiting the remains of Randy Weaver’s cabin and rummaging through the family’s scattered belongings like an archaeologist, or a pilgrim, shortly before blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City—a building he considered to be the local headquarters of the global elite. I realized just how central these conspiracy theories were to the practice of terrorism in the Western world.
In October 2000, in Gaza, a twelve-year-old boy called Mohammed al-Direh went out looking for used cars on a Saturday morning with his father. They blundered into a street battle with Israeli soldiers. The boy hid behind his father’s back for safety. He was killed. It was a clean and deliberate shot. The Israelis appeared to the world like old-fashioned monsters.
A series of posters appeared overnight in London and Birmingham calling, in vast letters, for the murder of the Jews.
The final hour will not come until the Muslims kill the Jews . . .
At the bottom of the poster was a telephone number. I recognized it straightaway. It was Omar’s cell phone number.
That night, a Jewish student was brutally stabbed while reading the Talmud. Britain’s Jews were becoming scared. I was becoming scared. I felt that things were getting out of control. I was one of the only Jews in Britain on speaking terms with Omar, so I telephoned him.
“Hello, Jon,” he said. “How are you? It is lovely to hear you.”
“Omar,” I said. “Why have you done this? Why are you bringing all of this to Britain? I think that you have done a terrible thing.”
“Oh, Jon,” said Omar, sadly. “You know me. I had nothing to do with the posters.”
“But your phone number was printed at the bottom,” I said.
“Some terrible person must have found my number,” said Omar.
“But why would they do that?” I asked.
“To frame me,” said Omar. “To get me into trouble. I had nothing to do with the posters. I promise you that. We are not at war with the Jewish community but with the terrorist state of Israel. The posters were nothing to do with me.”
“Oh, Omar,” I said.
“What?” said Omar.
“Nothing,” I said.
What else was there to say?
FOR A WHILE, I became paranoid. Even when I wasn’t actually being followed, I imagined I was. One morning I found my car unlocked. I had locked it the night before. But nothing had been stolen. A wire was dangling behind the rearview mirror. Had that wire been dangling there before?I didn’t want to tell my wife that I suspected we were being surveilled. I didn’t want to panic her. For a month after that, the conversations we had in our car were stilted and awkward.
“Have we got enough milk?” my wife would ask.
“That is so,” I would reply.
In the spring of 2001, two extracts from Them appeared in the Guardian newspaper, including the chapter about being chased through Portugal by the Bilderberg Group. As a result, I was invited to appear on Channel 4’s Big Breakfast TV show. A taxi picked me up at 5 A.M. and took me to the cottages in East London that they have turned into a TV studio. I was greeted by a production assistant who wanted to run through the questions with me.
“The interviews will be filmed in the attic, she said. “It’s creepy and shadowy up there.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said.
“First,” she said, “Paul will do a bit of an introduction—Joining me up in the attic is crazy conspiracy theorist Jon Ronson’—and then he’ll . . .”
I coughed. “I really don’t feel comfortable being introduced as a crazy conspiracy theorist,” I said.
She looked panicked.
“Could you not introduce me as a writer and documentary maker?” I said.
There was a silence.
“I know it isn’t as good,” I admitted.
“How about conspiracy theory investigator?” she said.
“I really prefer writer and documentary maker,” I said, apologetically.
“How about conspiracy theorist and writer?” she said.
“That still doesn’t sound absolutely right,” I said.
“How about writer and conspiracy theorist?” she said. “Or writer on conspiracy theories?”
“I would be prepared to accept writer and documentary maker who investigates conspiracy theories and theorists,” I said.
“I definitely have a problem with documentary maker,” she said.
“Conspiracy writer?” I said. “Actually, no . . .”
“Yes,” she said. “That sounds good.”
In the end, I was introduced as a writer and documentary maker and crazy conspiracy theorist.
I felt I was gaining insight into what it must be like to be David Icke.
I CONTINUED DUTIFULLY to write to Bilderbergers, although I held out no hope of a breakthrough.
And then, one Tuesday morning, the phone rang. It was the instantly recognizable voice of a Bilderberg founder member, for thirty years one of their inner circle, their steering committee, a Bilderberg agenda setter, a headhunter—a secret ruler of the world himself, should you choose to believe the assorted militants I had spent the last five years with.
It was Denis Healey.
Dennis Healey was one of Britain’s most powerful political figures during the 1970s. He was the deputy leader of the Labour Party and Chancellor of the Exchequer during the dark years of spiraling taxation and inflation. Despite his fearsome budgets—he once promised to “squeeze the rich until the pips squeak”—he was remembered as a jovial and scrupulous moderate, with a tremendous laugh and vast eyebrows, two great hedgehogs nestling on his forehead. It was a surprise to find Lord Healey at Bilderberg’s heart. Unlike Peter Mandelson, or Henry Kissinger, or David Rockefeller, or Vernon Jordan, he was not seen as a cunning puppet-master. He was a plain-living centrist, who spent much of his retirement years eulogizing the Yorkshire Dales. (David Icke, by the way, remained on the fence about whether Dennis Healey was a shape-shifting reptile. He said he hadn’t done his genealogy.)
“How can I help you?” said Lord Healey.
“Well,” I said, “would you tell me what happens inside Bilderberg meetings?”
“OK,” he said, cheerfully.
There was a silence.
“Why?” I said. “Nobody else will.”
“Because you asked me,” he said. Then he added, “I’m an old fart. Come on over.”
ONCE LORD HEALEY had agreed to talk to me—and I had circulated this information far and wide—other Bilderberg members became amenable too (albeit on the condition of anonymity).
These interviews enabled me to, at least, piece together the backstage mechanics of this most secret society.
So this is how it works. A tiny, shoestring central office in Holland decides each year which country will host the next meeting. Each country has two steering committee members. (The British ones have included Lord Carrington, Denis Healey, Andrew Knight, the one-time editor of The Economist magazine, and Martin Taylor, the ex-CEO of Barclays Bank).
They say that each country dreads its turn coming around, for it has to raise enough money to book an entire five-star hotel for four days (plus meals and transportation and vast security—every package of peas is opened and scrutinized, and so on). They call up Bilderberg-friendly global corporations, such as Xerox or Heinz or Fiat or SmithKline Beecham or Barclays or Nokia, who donate the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed. They do not accept unsolicited donations from non-Bilderberg corporations. Nobody can buy their way into a Bilderberg meeting, although many corporations have tried.
Then they decide who to invite—who seems to be a “Bilderberg person.”
THE NOTION OF a Bilderberg person hasn’t changed since the earliest days, back in 1954, when the group was created by Denis Healey, Joseph Retinger, David Rockefeller, and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (a former SS officer while he was a student—ironic that a former Nazi, albeit a low-ranking and halfhearted one, would give birth to an organization that so many would consider to be evidence of a Jewish conspiracy).
“First off,” said a steering committee member to me, “the invited guests must sing for their supper. They can’t just sit there like church mice. They are there to speak. I remember when I invited Margaret Thatcher back in 75. She wasn’t worldly. She’d probably never even been to America. Well, she sat there for the first two days and didn’t say a thing. People started grumbling. A senator came up to me on the Friday night, Senator Mathias of Maryland. He said, ‘This lady you invited, she hasn’t said a word. You really ought to say something to her.’ So I had a quiet word with her at dinner. She was embarrassed. Well, she obviously thought about it overnight because the next day she suddenly stood up and launched into a three-minute Thatcher special. I can’t remember the topic, but you can imagine. The room was stunned. Here’s something for your conspiracy theorists. As a result of that speech, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger and the other Americans fell in love with her. They brought her over to America, took her around in limousines, and introduced her to everyone.
“I remember when Clinton came in ‘91,” he added. “Vernon Jordan invited him along. He used it as a one-stop-shop. He went around glad-handing everyone. Nobody thought they were meeting the next president.” (Of course, Jim Tucker would contend that they all knew they were meeting the next president—for they huddled together that weekend and decided he would be the next president.)
At times I become nostalgic for when I knew nothing. There are so few mysteries left, and here I am, I presume, relegating Bilderberg to the dingy world of the known.
The invited guests are not allowed to bring their wives, girlfriends, or—on rarer occasions—their husbands or boyfriends. Their security officers cannot attend the conference and must have dinner in a separate hall. The guests are expressly asked not to give interviews to journalists. Rooms, refreshments, wine, and cocktails before dinner are paid for by Bilderberg. Telephone, room service, and laundry bills are paid for by the participants.
There are two morning sessions and two afternoon sessions, except for on the Saturday when the sessions take place only in the evening so the Bilderbergers can play golf.
The seating plan is in alphabetical order. It is reversed each year. One year Umberto Agnelli, the chairman of Fiat, will sit at the front. The next year Norbert Zimmermann, chairman of Berndorf, the Austrian cutlery and metalware manufacturer, will take his place.
While furiously denying that they secretly ruled the world, my Bilderberg interviewees did admit to me that international affairs had, from time to time, been influenced by these sessions.
I asked for examples, and I was given one:
“During the Falklands War, the British government’s request for international sanctions against Argentina fell on stony ground. But at a Bilderberg meeting in, I think, Denmark, David Owen stood up and gave the most fiery speech in favor of imposing them. Well, the speech changed a lot of minds. I’m sure that various foreign ministers went back to their respective countries and told their leaders about what David Owen had said. And you know what, sanctions were imposed.”
The man who told me this story added, “I hope that gives you a flavor of what really does go on in Bilderberg meetings.”
THIS IS HOW Denis Healey described a Bilderberg person to me:
“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.”
He said, “Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers, and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren’t politicians. We make a point of getting along younger politicians who are obviously rising, to bring them together with financiers and industrialists who offer them wise words. It increases the chance of having a sensible global policy.”
“Does going help your career?” I asked Denis Healey.
“Oh yes,” he said. Then he added, “Your new understanding of the world will certainly help your career.”
“Which sounds like a conspiracy,” I said.
“Crap!” said Denis Healey. “Idiocy! Crap! I’ve never heard such crap! That isn’t a conspiracy! That is the world. It is the way things are done. And quite rightly so.”
He added, “But I will tell you this. If extremists and leaders of militant groups believe that Bilderberg is out to do them down, then they’re right. We are. We are against Islamic fundamentalism, for instance, because it’s against democracy.”
“Isn’t Bilderberg’s secrecy against democracy too?” I asked.
“We aren’t secret,” he snapped. “We’re private. Nobody is going to speak freely if they’re going to be quoted by ambitious and prurient journalists like you who think it’ll help your career to attack something that you have no knowledge of.”
I noticed a collection of photo albums piled up on his mantelpiece. Denis Healey has always been a keen amateur photographer, so I asked him if he’d ever taken any pictures inside Bilderberg.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Lots and lots of photographs.”
I eyed the albums. Actually seeing the pictures, seeing the setup, the faces, the mood—that would be something.
“Could I have a look at them?” I asked him.
Lord Healey looked down at his lap. He thought about my request. He looked up again.
“No,” he said. “Fuck off.”