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Washington Post Owned Slate Runs Puff Piece On Bilderberg Jack Shafer The Bilderberg "Blackout" About this time each year, the Bilderberg group convenes a weekend conference in a hotel or resort somewhere in North America or Europe in which 120 or so billionaires, bankers, politicians, industrialists, scholars, government officials, influentials from labor and education, and journalists assemble to discuss world affairs in private. This year, the 56th Bilderberg meeting took place over the weekend at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Va., seven miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. As in previous years, Bilderberg critics are berating the mainstream press for observing a "blackout" of a group they believe directs a secret, shadow government. The critics claim that Bilderberg grooms future American presidents and future British prime ministers, pointing to Bill Clinton's attendance in 1991 and Tony Blair's in 1993. Time magazine reported in 2004 that John Edwards impressed attendees at the Bilderberg session in Italy, after which John Kerry asked him to join his presidential ticket. According to the 1980 book Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was enthusiastic about sending staffers to Bilderberg, President John F. Kennedy drew heavily from Bilderberg alumni—Dean Rusk, George W. Ball, George McGhee, Walter Rostow, Arthur Dean, and Paul Nitze—to staff his administration, and many Carter administration officials had attended the retreat. According to a list published by one critic, the attendees of Bilderberg 2008 include Henry Kissinger, Ben S. Bernanke, David Rockefeller, Vin Weber, Henry Kravis, Robert B. Zoelick, Donald Graham, Vernon Jordan, Charlie Rose, and their equals from Europe. Protestors staked out the elite at the hotel's entrance and recorded "surveillance" videos inside and outside the minimum-security facility before the event commenced. About this much the Bilderberg critics are right: The mainstream media ignored Bilderberg 2008. According to Nexis, Wonkette and Raw Story noted the event and the critics' objections on the Web. A simple Web search produces Bilderberg detractors Alex Jones and Jim Tucker sounding their alarms.
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