Kenneth Vogel /Politico mocks concerns over Bilderberg group

Kenneth Vogel of the Politico - last discussed here for smearing Jerome Corsi - offers "Bilderbergers excite conspiracists" (link). It's a stock "debunking" article, where mockery replaces any attempt at reporting:

The highest levels of the Obama administration are infested with members of a shadowy, elitist cabal intent on installing a one-world government that subverts the will of the American people.

It sounds crazy, but that's what a group of very persistent conspiracy theorists insists, and they point to President Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as the latest piece of evidence supporting their claims.

It turns out that Sebelius - like top administration economists Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, as well as leading Obama diplomats Richard Holbrooke and Dennis Ross - is a Bilderberger. That is, she is someone who has participated in the annual invitation-only conference held by an elite international organization known as the Bilderberg group.

The only valid counterargument he can present is an unnamed source saying that due to ideological differences among those attending the meetings (the source says, "obviously a Kissinger and a [prominent neoconservative Richard] Perle are going to come down in a very different place than say a Holbrooke or a Johnson") that means that there's no way the meetings could be used to shape policy. However, that misses the point that there's more splits in politics than left-right, such as elite vs. populist.

Why haven't those who've attended the meetings come out publicly and told us what went on? Because they know what would happen: their public careers would be over. When someone reaches the level where they can be invited to such a meeting they've been vetted already, and those doing the inviting are dealing with a known quantity, someone who "knows the score". Being invited to such a meeting is the ultimate in networking, and no doubt the connections made at those meetings pay off in the months and years to follow.

While there are some wild theories, we're right to be concerned about such secretive meetings, and no one should consider Vogel in any way a real reporter.

UPDATE: Compare the Politico's treatment of the Bilderbergers with their treatment of a leftwing mailing list involving bloggers and journalists (politico.com/news/stories/0309/20086.html) and leftwing groups meeting to advise Obama (politico.com/news/stories/0309/20008.html).

Sun, 03/15/2009 - 14:43 · Importance: 4