Bilderberg 2022: Back from Lockdown. Part 1: The ‘Shadow Government’ Re-Emerges
By Will Banyan (Copyright © 20 August 2022)
When in July 2021, for the second year in a row (Figure 1), the annual Bilderberg Meeting failed to take place, former American Free Press correspondent (now its “Roving Editor”) and self-styled “Truth Hound”, Mark Anderson, claimed there was “speculation” this elite annual conclave was fading away:
Long considered by genuine investigative reporters to be a central source of secretive manipulation of the world’s political, financial and technological infrastructure, the Bilderberg Meetings appear to be, at the very least, dormant, fueling speculation that this collusive clique of “titans” from the fields of banking, government, the upper echelons of the corporate world, select royalty, compromised media outlets, NATO brass, think tanks and academia could be on the verge of folding (World Impact News, Jul. 07, 2021).
A close reading of Anderson’s article, however, fails to furnish examples of this “speculation” from any Bilderberg observers other than from himself. Nevertheless, Anderson proposed as indicators of Bilderberg’s potential demise: a Bilderberg meeting apparently scheduled for June 2021 (at least according to Anderson’s anonymous “UK source”) failed to occur; its “lifeless” website; the “anonymous Bilderberg media department” had not answered queries from Anderson for “several months”; the American Friends of Bilderberg (AFB) had not published an IRS disclosure form since 2018 and the contact number on its last form was a dead end, suggesting this key source of funds for Bilderberg was “no longer officially functioning”; and finally, there was the death of “long time AFB fixture”, lawyer and Democrat operative, James A. Johnson in October 2020.
Despite his valiant effort to fuel that “speculation” about Bilderberg’s future, Anderson shied away from making any explicit conclusions, which was a wise move on his part given recent events with Bilderberg emerging from the pandemic shadows to hold its 68th meeting this year in Washington DC (Figure 2). There were 119 participants at the meeting, which took place over 2-5 June, where they engaged in “informal discussions about major issues”, according to the press release on “The Official Website” for the Bilderberg Meetings.
The Invisible Conference
Unlike previous events there was little notice for this meeting with the official Bilderberg press release not issued until 2 June, when the meeting was already in train; much to the chagrin of many long-time Bilderberg observers. The actual location in Washington DC also was not disclosed by organizers, and was instead revealed to be the Mandarin Oriental Hotel solely through the sleuthing of alt-media activists. Moreover, in what now seems like a remarkably disciplined and possibly coordinated effort amongst most participants; only a handful of those invited to Bilderberg, mainly politicians, gave prior public notice of their attendance at the event. The most oft-cited of these isolated breaks in the wall of silence was an official press release announcing Finnish Prime Minister (PM) Sanna Marin’s participation, which came out just a day before the meeting was due to commence:
Another example was a press release detailing the itinerary of Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, also issued a day before meeting started:
Perhaps the earliest mention of the 2022 Bilderberg meeting was an “updated weekly schedule” for President of the European Council Charles Michel, which had been published a few days before the Washington DC confab had commenced:
Otherwise, for most participants the four days in Washington DC was an inexplicable gap in their official published schedules, or on their social media feeds. In one notable example, the official press release announcing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to the US failed to disclose that he would also be going to Bilderberg:
The transparency failure was even more acute among the US official participants, not one of whom officially acknowledged their participation at this year’s Bilderberg meeting. A number of White House National Security Council (NSC) staffers attended Bilderberg but no record of their participation can be found on the White House website:
It was the same situation with the senior officials from Treasury, Commerce and Defense with no mention of their Bilderberg participation on the official websites:
The impact of this strategy was obvious with almost no forewarning, there were few anti-Bilderberg activists or alt-media representatives in place to observe, protest against or even attempt to infiltrate this elite conclave. Only a small contingent of intrepid activists – specifically Max Blumenthal from Grayzone, Luke Rudkowski from WeAreChange, and freelance “globetrotting journalist” Josh Friedman, who found the Bilderbergers at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel – turned up to loiter outside the barriers where they attempted to heckle and question the few participants that bothered to venture outside. Compared to previous years, especially the 2013 Bilderberg meeting in Watford, in the United Kingdom which attracted thousands of protestors and considerable mainstream media coverage, the 2022 event despite its prime location was almost invisible, something Bilderberg organizers, who are more focused on avoiding public attention unlike the public spectacle that is the World Economic Forum (WEF), must surely count as a success.
Return of the ‘Society of the Elect’1
The meeting was notable on a number of fronts, starting with the location, being the first meeting in the United States since the 65th such conclave had been held Chantilly, Virginia back in 2017. This was also the first time a Bilderberg Meeting had ever been held in Washington DC; although it was perhaps an obvious choice given recent world events, and a desire to re-connect after the trans-Atlantic frictions of the Donald Trump era. It was also the first time the meeting had been led by the new Co-Chairs, Marie-Josée Kravis, Chair of the Museum of Modern Art and also President of American Friends of Bilderberg Inc.2 and Victor Halberstadt Professor of Economics at Leiden University and Chairman of the Foundation Bilderberg Meetings3 (which is responsible for actually organizing each meeting); after the departure of previous Bilderberg Chairman Henri de Castries.
Consistent with previous Bilderberg meetings, and its core purpose as a shaping and influencing operation, a breakdown of participants at this year’s event shows that just over half were attending for the first time. (see Figure 6). These first-time participants are central to Bilderberg’s primary objective of developing a trans-Atlantic consensus, and are typically selected according to their suitability to either present or participate in debates on specialised topics; but ultimately to ensure whatever messages emanate from those discussions can be disseminated into both the public sphere and policy-making realm. The next biggest group comprised members of the Steering Committee, followed by other regular participants, who together form the permanent or semi-permanent core of Bilderberg.
The Washington DC location has generated some other data points of note such as the large overall US contingent, numbering 35 in all, comprising nearly a third of all participants (see Figure 4). Except for Great Britain with 13 participants, most other countries had between two to five representatives. One interesting outlier was the inclusion of Ukraine with two participants, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US, and Yuriy Vitrenko, the CEO of Naftogaz of Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company. The last time Ukraine was represented at Bilderberg was in 2014 when its Minister of Finance attended.
The convenience of the Washington DC location also seemed to contribute to the high level of representation from the Biden Administration with ten officials in total participating.4 The most senior members of this delegation comprised: Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo; CIA Director William Burns; NSC Director Jake Sullivan; Director of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Jen Easterly; Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Adewale Adeyemo; and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Celeste Wallander. They were accompanied by two NSC staff members, and mid-level officials from Commerce and Defense. This was by far the largest single group of US Government officials to attend a Bilderberg meeting in the previous twenty years (see Figure 5). This was a marked contrast to the Obama Administration, which had failed to send any officials to three Bilderberg meetings; it would seem the Biden Administration, in an increasingly complicated world, sees some value in Bilderberg.5
Government and politicians were well represented at this year’s event. The participant list shows that in addition to these US officials, there were: two prime ministers (Finland and Netherlands); one deputy-prime minister (Canada); Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US Oksana Markarowa; NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg; European Council President Michel; UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay; European Commission Vice-President for “Promoting our European Way of Life” Margaritis Schinas; and European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders. In addition to the two cabinet-level officials from the US, there were nine other ministers or ministerial equivalents present:
- José Manuel Albares, (Spain), Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation.
- Thomas Byrne, (Ireland), Minister of State for European Affairs.
- Paschal Donohoe, (Ireland), Minister for Finance.
- Michael Gove, (UK), Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Cabinet Office.
- Lena Hallengren, (Sweden), Minister for Health and Social Affairs.
- Wopke Hoekstra, (Netherlands), Minister of Foreign Affairs.
- Livia Leu, (Switzerland), State Secretary, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
- Kyriakos Pierrakakis, (Greece), Minister of Digital Governance.
- Tinne Van der Straeten, (Belgium), Minister for Energy.
There were also a number of politicians, including US Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema; British MP and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the UK House of Commons, Tom Tugenhadt; Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign Commonwealth and Development Affairs, David Lammy (UK); Danish Social Democrat MP (and World Economic Forum alumni whose 2016 contribution – see Figure 6 – was believed by many to actually be the WEF’s real agenda) Ida Auken; and Polish Member of the European Parliament (and Bilderberg Steering Committee member) Radoslaw Sikorski.
The intelligence community was also well represented: in addition to CIA Director Burns and CISA Director Easterly, was Jeremy Fleming, Director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which is Britain’s signals intelligence and cyber security agency, and Bernard Émié, Director-General of External Security (DGSE), the French secret service.
Among the participants were the usual array of “men of real international standing”, as Bilderberg founder Joseph Retinger put it in a confidential memo to other Bilderbergers in 1956. These are the participants who wield “considerable influence in at least an important section of the population, men who in their own field hold a position of authority and enjoy the confidence of their fellow-men” (Retinger, The Bilderberg Group, August 1956, p.6). Leading the pack was 99-year-old former national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, recently described by Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass as “the preeminent scholar-practitioner of his era.” Though Kissinger’s reputation, which has a very long history of being challenged and disparaged, has absorbed new blows with the great sage thus far failing to secure an audience with President Biden; he has been labelled “an agent of Chinese influence”; and, because of his controversial proposal for resolving the Russia-Ukraine war, of “accommodating aggressive dictatorships.”
Another such influential was Sir John Sawers, a former diplomat and later Director of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, was also in attendance, though as Executive Director of Newbridge Advisory, a firm he founded in 2019 to “advise corporate leaders on geopolitics and political risk.” Sawers has a busy schedule providing commentary on various matters, though focusing mainly on Russia and China, and an exceptional resume: he is also an Honorary Governor of The Ditchley Foundation, a Senior Advisor at Chatham House, and an independent non-executive Director of British Petroleum (BP). Jörg Kukies, listed as a State Secretary, but actually an advisor to German Chancellor Oscar Scholz, is another figure of note. Previously a Deputy Finance Minister and prior to that co-CEO of Goldman Sachs AG, in January this year Koike was appointed as Scholz’s “super advisor” on economic and financial policy as well as European affairs, and his G7 “Sherpa”.
But most importantly the ranks of those gathered at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel were suffused with representatives of the corporate world. There were some 50 CEOS and corporate Chairman and Presidents representing such varied firms as: Total, BP, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Feedzai, Shopify, Microsoft Corporation, Thiel Capital, Volvo Group and Facebook Inc. They were accompanied by the usual crowd of former government officials working for corporate-funded think tanks or consultancies, such as the KKR Global Institute, Center for European Policy Analysis, the Brookings Institution, the Hudson Institute, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Many of these individuals also occupy, in addition to their think-tank sinecures, positions on various corporate boards, although the Bilderberg participant list tends to not highlight this. Former CIA Director and US Army General David Petraeus, for example, is not only the Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, but a Partner at KKR (investment firm Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts), and on the boards of cybersecurity firm Optiv and finance software producer OneStream, and strategic adviser for energy infrastructure company Sempra.
As always members of the media were also present as participants at this meeting. The frequent and returning Bilderberg participants in this group included: Zanny Minton Beddoes, who is a Steering Committee member and Editor-in-Chief of The Economist; Anne Applebaum, a staff writer at The Atlantic; Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs commentator at the Financial Times; Stefano Feltri, Editor-in-Chief of Italian newspaper, Domani; and Murat Yetkin, a Turkish journalist, producer of the Yetkin Report. First-time media representatives comprised: Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor at The Economist; Martin Krasnik, Editor-in-Chief at the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen; Kaius Niemi, Senior Editor-in-Chief of the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat; and Afsin Yurdakul, a journalist with Turkey’s Habertürk News Network. There were also some media-owners and publishers present, including first-time participant Carlos Núñez, the Executive Chairman of PRISA, an entertainment multi-national corporation specialising in Spanish and Portuguese content; and long-term Bilderberg participant Dr Mathias Döpfner, Chairman and CEO of media and tech company, Axel Springer SE.
There were some interesting and notable omissions though. Democrat politician Stacey Abrams, for example, who was elevated into the Steering Committee sometime after the previous Bilderberg meeting, was not listed as a participant, and was reportedly campaigning in Georgia. Other more regular participants from years past were also absent, such as Harvard Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson, Exor CEO John Elkann, Council on Foreign Relations Chairman Emeritus Robert Rubin, Italian journalist Lilli Gruber, and Financial Times Chief Economic Commentator Martin Wolf. Either not everyone could make it because of COVID or some other scheduling conflict, or they were of no more use to Bilderberg.
The Fourth Estate Fails Again?
Due to the success of Bilderberg’s subterfuge, coverage by both the mainstream and the independent media of this year’s meeting was limited prompting numerous alt-media sources to complain of a “total media blackout” (Infowars). Such an observation was perhaps accurate in the case of US media, most of which ignored the event despite its location, but less so in regards to the European mainstream news outlets, many of which did mention the meeting and seemed more attuned to the actual importance of this year’s conference. Perhaps the main reason for not covering the meeting was the absence of large crowds of conspiracists providing fodder for what passes for most journalism on this topic: using Bilderberg as a lens for discovering and mocking fringe politics. Nevertheless, even within these limitations, most of the mainstream media coverage still confined itself to either subtly belittling or directly refuting conspiracist concerns about Bilderberg.
As noted above, in the United States, mainstream media coverage of this year’s Bilderberg meeting was sparse, especially compared to that given to the 2019 meeting. Despite being held in Washington DC, neither the Washington Post, Washington Times, or the Washington Examiner, reported on the meeting; nor did the New York Times, CNN, MSNBCor even Fox News. Politico’s Brussels Playbook reported that EC President Michel and Commission VP Schinas were attending; Politico’s Ottawa Playbook noted that Deputy Prime Minister Freeland was planning to attend Bilderberg, and then suggested conspiracists were no longer interested in it: “Remember when that was the shady international org du jour among the conspiracy set?” Oddly enough, there was no mention of Bilderberg at all in Politico’s West Wing Playbook, even though ten Biden Administration officials were present.
There were a few exceptions, if only from the more disparaged right wing news outlets. Breitbart (Jun. 03, 2022), for example, produced a perfunctory report on the meeting of “global elites” in Washington DC. It noted Bilderberg is “seen as the genesis for ideas ranging from free trade agreements like NAFTA to the creation of the European Union”, but made few, if any, criticisms of the event. Just the News, in contrast, took a harsher view of the meeting that was “all off the record”, noting that Bilderberg “bans ‘reporting journalists’ from attending” and that participants are also “banned” from attributing information they hear at Bilderberg to specific participants.
There was more coverage outside of the US, though the detail was often confined to reciting the details from the Bilderberg press release. The Financial Times, for example,did no more than provide a link to the agenda and press release; and the Canadian Globe and Mail had a one line mention of Freeland’s attendance. The Westmeath Examiner (Jun. 07, 2022), a regional newspaper from Ireland, reported on the participation of “Mullingar man and Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary” at the “secretive Bilderberg Group conference.” The Morning Star (Jun. 06, 2022), a socialist publication from the UK, provided some detail on the “solitary protest…by an anti-war activist and army veteran at a secretive meeting of world political and financial leaders.” German publication t-online noted that Chancellor Scholz’s “super advisor” Jorg Kukies was at the “secretive Bilderberg meeting”; the Western Standard (Jun. 03, 2022), a Canadian regional publication, reported on the Canadian participants, but otherwise only reported the details provided in the press release.
A more substantive and critical account was provided by British journalist and long-time Bilderberg watcher Charlie Skelton. Unable to go on location to observe and fulminate, the usually prolific Skelton channelled his frustrations into a single article for The Guardian (Jun. 04, 2022). “Bilderberg is back with a vengeance”, he wrote, adding that since its last meeting the “western world order”, that Bilderberg had helped shape, was now in “all kinds of flux”; this was reflected in the meeting’s agenda which “reeks of chaos and crisis.” The Washington conference was a “high-level council of war”, its participant list not only included NATO and Ukrainian luminaries, but was “rife with military advisors…and some hefty cogs of the Washington war machine.” Skelton also defended his interest in Bilderberg:
Bilderberg is sometimes dismissed as a talking shop or crazed imagining of conspiracy theorists. But in reality it is a major diplomatic summit, attended this year as ever by extremely senior transatlantic politicians, from the US commerce secretary to the president of the European Council (emphasis added).
Skelton claimed that Bilderberg got “scant coverage” in the media “partly because of its connections to the transatlantic intelligence community”; evident in the number of former and serving senior intelligence officials present at this year’s meeting. He also suggested the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” “looms large over the Washington conference, with ‘Disruption of the Global Financial System’ at the heart of the agenda.”
There were a few outliers of note. The Australian (Jun. 06, 2022), a Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper, seemed to lament that “one of the world’s highest-powered, yet least known, conferences on international affairs” had just concluded “without a single Australian among the attendees.” Most of the report merely recycled the contents of the press release, but The Australian journalist did make some attempt to find out more:
Hotel staff told The Australian they either didn’t know, or weren’t allowed to say, what was happening inside.
“One of the agenda topics was Indo-Pacific realignment … so it’s fair to say that Australia was mentioned a few times,” one of the organisers told The Australian, on the condition of anonymity.
Andres Villena writing in the Spanish publication, La Marea (Jun. 24, 2022), provided more nuanced commentary, noting how the very existence of the “discreet” Bilderberg Group, which seemed to function like an “informal world government”, helped to feed conspiracy theories. But he also suggested that its importance was fading; that it’s latest meeting seemed to be “more of a caricature in decline than a date capable of deciding the future of the world.”
There was considerable coverage of the event in the Finnish media, though much of it was in the framework of refuting the more conspiratorial views of Bilderberg. Mikko Leppänen, a journalist with Finnish newspaper Yle, for example, reported on the Finnish Prime Minister’s participation in the “mysterious Bilderberg meeting”, an event that had “excited conspiracy theorists for years.” For more background Leppänen spoke with former Bilderberg Steering Committee member and Professor of Practice at Tampeere University, Matti Apunen, who reassuringly asserted that Bilderberg was no more than:
[A] high-quality international seminar that deals with the world’s big issues.
According to him, the goal of the meeting is to create a meaningful discussion and generate new ideas.
According to Apunen, during the breaks, people talk to each other freely about the themes of the meeting.
“It is a unique opportunity to meet, for example, top researchers and other people who are otherwise difficult to get hold of,” says Apunen.
He says that he has not observed any lobbying or attempts to influence politicians in connection with the meeting.
Apunen also claimed to find “astonishing” the “tenacity” of the “myth” that Bilderberg operates as a “secret world power organization” (Yle, Jun. 02, 2022).
Some of the most useful reporting came from the Helsingin Sanomat (HS – or Helsinki Dispatch). A day before the meeting started HS reported Finland’s Prime Minister had “travelled to Washington on Wednesday, where she will participate in the Bilderberg Group meeting that will last from Thursday to Saturday.” This report also seemed to confirm there had been effort to conceal her destination as the PM had mentioned “her travel intentions on Instagram on Tuesday, but did not reveal the reason for her trip in more detail at the time.” More revealingly the Prime Minister’s staff told HS that Bilderberg was the “highest priority” on Marin’s itinerary because of the “exceptionally heavyweight” representatives that would be there (HS, Jun. 01, 2022). A follow-up report not only confirmed that Marin’s trip would be paid by the Finnish taxpayer, but that she would “participate in the [Bilderberg] meeting as prime minister” contradicting Bilderberg’s claim that meeting participants “take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity.” The Helsingin Sanomat’ssource for this, Undersecretary of State Timo Lankinen from the Prime Minister’s Office, also bluntly observed the obvious point that Marin “probably wouldn’t have received an invitation to such a meeting if she wasn’t the prime minister” (HS, Jun. 02, 2022).
Another HS report in midst of the meeting included this tidbit from Helsingin Sanomat Editor-in-Chief, Kaus Niemi, who was also a meeting participant:
“The meeting has already been postponed for two years due to the pandemic, but now the meeting could not have come at a more interesting time,” says Niemi from Washington. “The war is raging in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden have applied for NATO membership, China’s importance is growing. The Nordic region and Finland are certainly now in special focus.”
But the bulk of that same report included recollections from previous Finnish participants at Bilderberg of their experiences at the conclave, most of it aimed at dispelling the more sinister interpretations of Bilderberg. Former Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, for example, who attended in 2007 and 2010 as Finance Minister stated:
“The biggest advantage is that there are interesting people who work at a high level in their own operating environments. And the conversation is very informal.”
Katainen admitted the meetings were “meaningful and useful” and told HS that “Bilderberg can offer valuable time to think, an opportunity for spiritual growth and an increase in vision.” This benign view was maintained by Finnish politician Elina Valtonen, who had attended the 2018 meeting, describing it as a “very conversational environment”, but she regarded the conspiracy theories about Bilderberg as “ridiculous” given that the “introductions and discussion” at Bilderberg “can just as well be held at similar events. Also offering his views was the aforementioned Professor Apunen:
“All in all, [Bilderberg] has grown into an incomprehensible myth. According to my observations, it is a seminar among others, and the most that distinguishes it from others is that it is of good quality.”
Similar words of reassurance were provided by Professor Dries Lesage from Ghent University in the Netherlands, when interviewed by VRT News (Jun. 03, 2022), a Dutch media outlet. “The Bilderberg conference is actually an informal networking event to exchange confidential information and insights, but undoubtedly also to influence each other,” the Professor explained. “You always have elites and it is normal that they meet. If it is not at the Bilderberg conference then it is somewhere else.” Lesage was also adamant that Bilderberg “is not a decision-making body”; in fact, “just to be clear: it is also not a committee in control of the world, there is simply no such thing.”
To be continued in Part 2
1 The “Society of the Elect” was a secret society devised by mining magnate and Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) as a means of achieving his lofty goal of federating the British Empire and in time “recovering” the United States. According to Rhodes’ vision this Anglo-American federation would rule the world. Rhodes would go on to become a diamond magnate in South Africa and for a time Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Rhodes’ scheme involved an elaborate hierarchical structure with himself at the top as the “General of the Society”, followed by outer layers of decreasing power and responsibility, starting with the “Junta of the Three”, then the “Circle of the Initiates”, and finally the “Association of Helpers”, which was the broader mass of his envisaged imperial federation movement.
There is some controversy over whether the “Society of the Elect” was actually formed or if it merely remained on Rhodes’ wish list. Georgetown University historian Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) had claimed in his book Tragedy and Hope (1966) that the “Society of the Elect” was not only “formally established”, but that “Association of Helpers” took the form of the Round Table movement. This argument has been supported by Robin Brown’s The Secret Society: Cecil John Rhodes’s Plans for a New World Order (2016). Such claims have been contested by Rhodes biographer Robert I. Rotberg (see his “Did Cecil Rhodes Really Try to Control the World?”, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 42, No.3 (2014)) and by Emeritus Professor Paul Maylam from Rhodes University. For a response to Rotberg see John Klyczek, “CFR Rhodes Scholar says Rhodes Secret Society does not exist”, Intrepid Report, Feb. 10, 2015.
2 Kravis (originally from Canada) attended her first Bilderberg meeting in 1989, then as Executive Director of the Hudson Institute. She married billionaire investor Henry Kravis in 1994. As with most Bilderbergers, her resume is more extensive than the brief description on the official participant list allows. In Kravis’ case she is also a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Chair Emerita of The Economic Club of New York, having served as Chair from 2018 to 2020. She is a Trustee of The Bretton Woods Committee (which describes itself as the “preeminent non-profit organization dedicated to effective global economic and financial cooperation”); and an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Kravis also serves on the boards of LVMH (a French luxury goods multinational corporation) and Publicis Groupe (a French advertising company).
3 Professor Halberstadt attended his first Bilderberg meeting in 1975. He became Bilderberg’s Honorary Secretary General for Europe and Canada in 1981, a position he held through to 1999. Like Kravis, his full resume is more extensive than hinted at in the Bilderberg participant list. Halberstadt’s biography on the World Economic Forum website lists some other positions of note including: Advisor, The Goldman Sachs Group; Board, Koç University, Istanbul; Board, Lee Kuan Yew School for Public Policy, Singapore; and Vice-Chair, International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC).
4 Note, these figures do not include members of the US Congress or State governors or other US politicians. It is confined exclusively to both career and political appointees from the US Federal Government, whether in the White House or in any of the departments, agencies or the armed forces.
5 In comparison, at this year’s World Economic Forum meeting at Davos, the U.S. “official delegation” comprised just four officials from the Biden Administration: US Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein Scott Miller, Commerce Secretary Raimondo, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Jo Lewis. But they were accompanied by 19 members of Congress (see U.S. Embassy in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, “Press Release: U.S. Delegation to Attend the 2022 World Economic Forum”, May 20, 2022). Again it is noteworthy there was an official press release for this delegation at Davos but nothing similar was issued for the ten Biden Administration officials at Bilderberg.
