Guardian Reporter at Bilderberg: Fear my pen

Charlie Skelton reflects on the effectiveness, or otherwise, of his reporting on the annual secret meeting of the global elite
The Guardian
May. 19, 2009

You can't quite make out the face of the Bilderberg delegate on the waterskis, but I'm pretty sure from his shape that it isn't Ken Clarke. Is it the US deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg? No, Steinberg prefers a shorter rope. "Next year I bring a bigger lens," says Paul Dorneanu, the young Romanian Bilderberg hunter who took the photo.

He shows me another: a long-range shot of two happy globalists in an inflatable doughnut ring and Speedos, skidding about behind a powerboat. If only the image was sharper we might see Peter Mandelson snatching a chat with Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank. "So how do we sell ... splooosh! ... wooo! ... the abolition of the pound to the ... sploosh! ... electorate? Again! Again! Once more round the bay!"

The names of this year's delegates are starting to drip in: the prime minister of Greece, Kostas Karamanlis, is a definite. Jim Tucker tells me that the former Swedish prime minister and thinktank whore, Carl Bildt, gave an important speech. "He spoke about the need for a worldwide department of the treasury and a worldwide department of health, brought in on the back of economic meltdown and global warming. Swine flu being the first trick they tried ..."

I ask Jim how he knows this. "I have my sources," he chuckles, his cigarette ash quivering improbably. "They've never once let me down." People on the inside. Maybe Jim and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands had a thing back in the 60s.

Anyone who takes a "fair enough they should meet in private" position on Bilderberg should at least find it odd that we don't properly know who "they" are. We know some of them, thanks in no small part to Tucker's sources, but should publicly elected officials be meeting in armed privacy to discuss global policy with unnamed private individuals? What would you say to that, George Osborne, MP for Tatton - would you say it's "fair enough"?

One of the nastiest ironies of Bilderberg is that, while every effort in the world is done to ensure the anonymity of the delegates, if you turn up to report on the conference you spend your days dipping for your driving licence and being asked your date of birth, your father's first name and whether you are staying here alone. Which hotel? Why you come here?

It isn't just me who's been hauled into police custody for daring to hang around half a mile from the hotel gates. The few journalists who've made the trip to Vouliagmeni this year have all been harassed and harried and felt the business end of a Greek walkie-talkie. Many have been arrested. Bernie, from the American Free Press, and Gerhard the documentarian (sounds like a Dungeons and Dragons character) chartered a boat from a nearby marina to try to get photos from the sea. They were stopped three miles from the resort. By the Greek navy.

This chimes with what a police officer told the Associated Press (on condition of anonymity): "The resort was being protected by hundreds of police, navy commandos, coast guard speedboatsand two F-16 fighter planes." That's right. Two F-16 fighter planes.

Now, if you're wondering why this event isn't being covered properly by the world's media when the Greek navy are turning around boats three miles from an F-16-encircled waterski paradise, keep wondering. If you're grinding your teeth at the paucity of information about Bilderberg, grind harder. Grind louder. Go online. See what Paul Dorneanu has seen. Read the American Free Press. Peek behind the bars of Prison Planet.

As for me, there's not much more I can tell you. I can tell you that (according to a policeman) many of the delegates zipped up the hill between 2am and 4am on Thursday night, to avoid being noticed. (Is it just me or is that a bit lame?) Was Baron Mandelson, the prince of darkness, one of them? How about he tell us where he's been this weekend. And whether or not he went twice on the doughnut. And if so, did he jump the queue in front of Eric Schmidt?

I can tell you that every so often coaches with blacked-out windows made their way up and down the hill. Changes of staff? Fresh hookers? I can tell you that one night I happened upon a delegate nipping out to the pharmacy in his gunproof Mercedes, bodyguard watching the pavements. I'd have gone for my camera but I remembered what Jon Ronson wrote in a kind comment to one of my earlier pieces: "no sudden moves". He wasn't kidding. I wandered off. Me and my various tails.

The thing is, I never really came here to "cover" Bilderberg. I just thought it would be funny to hang out at the cordon and wear T-shirts saying things like "NOBILIZATION!". It's really very peculiar to look back at my first report and watch myself pretending to dodge spooks on dark streets. Ha ha ha. And now? I've hidden twice in the same stairwell in Athens to try to shake off the men following me. I have a favourite bolthole in Athens city centre. That's how much my life has changed.

I've grappled with men in a Metro station; I've screamed for help in Omonoia Square; I've shouted "You're lying to me!" at detectives in an Athens police station; I've grabbed a man riding off on a motorbike and begged him "“ almost in tears "“ to "leave me alone"; I've been yelled at, arrested, followed, searched, shoved, maligned, intimidated, doubted and lied to. So many lies.

I've told the truth about what has happened to me this week. I wonder if the various British politicians who have attended Bilderberg 2009 could bring themselves to tell the truth about how they spent their time. I wonder if someone better than me, a better reporter, a more powerful voice, a politician even, could ask them. Anyone?

My dispatches on the 2009 conference, if they mean anything at all, represent nothing more acutely than the absence of thorough mainstream reporting. I am pretty much the opposite of what's needed. I am a joke. These dispatches are a travesty. A travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. A disgrace to the good name of journalism. I should be ashamed.

That said, I'm actually doing a proper bit of reporting today. I've got an early meeting with the head of Athens CID. We've got some things to discuss ...