SUBJECTS DISCUSSED AT THE JUNE MEETING US Elections, Globalisation, New Economy, Balkans, EU Enlargement, the European Far Right.

1954 - Ex-SS Nazi Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands founds and becomes chairman of the first secret transatlantic Bilderberger Conference in his hotel in Holland - hence its name. His 'steering group' boasts the wealthiest bankers and industrialists in the western world.

2000 - Euro-Green party researcher Grattan Healy and I tuck into dinner in the bar of Genval's five-star Chateau du Lac hotel outside Brussels. For once, our minds are not on the food. Rather, how to figure out whether or not the super-secretive Bilderberg Club will tomorrow have this hotel sealed off for their notorious annual meeting.

Somehow elite clubs like Bilderberg and the Trilateal Commission are managing to install more and more of their members as European Commissioners, at the policy-making heart of Europe. And more recently links have been exposed with powerful European policymakers ERT, European Round Table of industrialists. The current Bilderberg chairman founded it! Embarrassing questions are being asked by Green MEP Patricia McKenna at the European Union's policy rubber stamping department, the Parliament.

As for me, I'm curious to see these Bilderbergers in the flesh for the first time, having researched their activities on and off for four years. Being stony broke I've got to Brussels from Bristol mostly by skipping trains, it's got to be the right place after all that effort.

During a snoop round the hotel interior Grattan spots a sign pointing to a 'Steering Committee Meeting' meeting. A deliberate hoax? We'll just have to find out in the morning.

Mike Peters, Marxist Sociology lecturer from Leeds, who has written one of the most comprehensive studies to date on the Bilderbergers, flew into Brussels late that evening Wednesday 31st June. Another chancer.

Arriving at the 'Chateau' the next morning we notice rear entrances have been padlocked and chained. Around the front, the mock-Florentine lobby has a rude addition, a white canvas entrance tunnel and drive-in awning has sprung up overnight. Is this to protect chauffeur-driven guests from the rain on this cloudless day...? or from prying eyes. This is no bum-steer, The Spotlight's got the place all right.

This sometimes seemingly zenophobic right-wing American magazine seems to be the only media that consistently follows Bilderberg activities and the only source for where the meeting will be held. It's not difficult for the Bilderbergers PR people to discredit such a source.

About four the limos begin arriving. The shiny black Mercedes' with their characteristic 'B' clearly displayed in the front windscreen. We can just see into the awning and film most of the participants as they emerge from the backs of the limos. Doormen attempt to hold makeshift curtains up to conceal the more sensitive guests. We manage mostly to film them between the gaps.

We have a chat with photographer and reporter for The Spotlight. What a sincere, concerned pair they seem, and we had been told Spotlight were neo-nazis. Chilling to think that without the bloodhound work of writer Jim Tucker no-one but the participants would know this meeting was taking place.

'But we send out a press release...', the Bilderberg office bleat if you bother to complain. What they don't tell you is that you have to request it from the hotel (how is anyone supposed to know where to call?) and they only release it as everybody's leaving. Too late for the press.

Thursday 1st June is a bank holiday in Belgium. Families are out in the sun, taking a stroll round the lovely Genval lake, almost oblivious to the capitalist heavyweights emerging from limos feet away inside the awning.

The regulars are arriving, Conrad Black, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Kenneth Clarke, David Rockefeller, James Wolfenson, president of the World Bank.

The new Chairman, Viscount Etienne Davignon, comes out to get what, we joke, looks like a bag of drugs from his car. He owns most of the public utilities and one of the biggest banks in Belgium. 'Will you be holding a press conference Mr Davignon?' Grattan shouts, 'I don't think so' Davignon replies. 'Why not'. 'We don't have enough important things to say'.

Capitalism's heavyweights are rolling up now. 'Who's that?' 'It's Jean-Claude Trichet'. 'Who's he?' 'The next boss of the European Central Bank'..He obviously won't have anything important to say either... 'What about this one?' 'That's Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis with William McDonough, president of the Federal Reserve bank of New York' 'That one's the boss of the Washington Post and hey, there goes George Soros! Look, it's one of the new European Commissioners, Pascal Lamy!' This looks like an elite to me.

Another brand-new Merc. arrives. An aloof looking guest turns away from the cameras. We look at each other and shake our heads, another one we don't recognise. One of us calls out to him: 'Are you a big shit sir?'

The passing Belgian public are hanging around, they seem spellbound by the line of polished black Mercs. 'What's going on?', they keep asking, in French, as we prepare for the next arrival. 'It's Bilderberg'. They nod in reply, as if they know what we mean, then shuffle off looking puzzled.

Untouchable elite types swinging out of limos next to a busy public road and footpath. Clearly an uptight securityman's nightmare. Men with bulging sweaters or badly-fitting jackets wearing dark glasses walk back and forth. Ah, that'll be the plain clothes Belgian secret service with their guns then. I ask one if he knows what's going on at the hotel, 'I don'know', he smiles, baring rat-like teeth. He's not a good actor, glad I can't see his eyes. A big CIA officer turns up and orders the Belgians around, they know their place.

This year's Bilderberg had to be hastily rearranged after the Austrian anti-EU 'Freedom Party' was elected hence we and the public are so close by. We might never get this opportunity again. If they had met as planned in Austria there would probably have been official criticism and heaps of publicity. For a cabal all publicity is bad publicity.

Bilderberg does everything it can to conceal where it's meeting and doesn't bother with a press conference any more. Okay, out the window go journalistic freedoms which are the lynch pin of any democracy. Inside, media barons and compliant writers from The Economist, sworn to secrecy, smooch year after year.

They have created a vacuum. We decide to get on the telephone.

On Saturday morning Belgian daily 'De Morgen' delivered the goods with a lead front page story by the ex-editor all about the no longer quite so secret Bilderberg conference. Critical and amusing coverage on national Belgian TV news and in papers and satirical magazines followed into the week. In stead of being secret the conference was one of the big stories of the week. In Belgium.

When the national papers phoned the mayor of the local Genval principality he said they must be joking! If Queen Beatrix and Henry Kissinger were there he'd know about it. Bilderberg, it seems, is above politics.

Politicians, newspaper editors, European commissioners and civil servants who agree to enter Bilderberg swear complete secrecy. Not just about the content of the meeting but about the very existence of Bilderberg. They leave their accountability at the door. Have the bankers grown so arrogant that they now see democratic institutions and public opinion simply as competition to be taken out.

Just as the Bilderbergers were leaving on the Saturday two secret service asked the Spotlight photographer to show a Belgian press pass then threatened to beat him up. They chased him into a nearby taverna where he was rescued by boss and waiters only to be chased again at the local station. He made a narrow escape by running across the tracks to jump on a train going the wrong way. Surreal.

Was someone about to leave the hotel they didn't want him snapping? Clinton was in Aachen that day, just down the road. Bilderberg have been shown to accidentally leave heads of government off the official attendance list before. Just one question we wanted to ask at the press conference that never was.

Bilderberg stretches our credulity, particularly when their habitually anonymous supporters use angry disinformation, mud-slinging and 'guilt by association' in a shabby attempt to discredit critics.

According to the hotel, this year's meeting was a croquet tournament 'with some well-known spectators'. Another cover story was that the French football team were staying. Even the security name tags said Brussels 2000, just like the football.

These power-brokers lie too easily. The more facts that emerge about Bilderberg's key role in lobbying for a corporate controlled Europe and the more lies they disseminate to try to cover themselves the more healthy suspicion they arouse.

Why, for example, might Tony Blair have said in answer to a parliamentary question by Christopher Gill MP in March 1998 that no members of his cabinet had attended Bilderberg meetings, when he himself clearly was on the official Athens conference list in 1993 before becoming Labour leader? His attendance was even commented on by William Rees-Mogg in The Times! The Danish parliament is considering banning all politicians from attending.

So who's in charge? The bankers or the politicians? What about the proverb that says 'the borrower is servant to the lender'? Can Bilderberg politicians like Clarke, Blair and Mandelson be trusted? And are the governments of the world now just PR and tax managers for the banks?

There simply has to be a thorough international examination of this private little bankers' club that has toes in so many political doors. And we must catch up on the right's ability to cut through complex-sounding economics gibberish. They have taken the lead on Bilderberg because they understand the power of the bankers far better than we do on the left.

Economic priorities detrimental to ordinary people in the west, not to mention the developing world, are pushed forward at Bilderberg by the ruling class, those who have more influence than anyone else over the future, in total secret. It's time to call this elite cabal to account and ensure their meetings are fully scrutinised.

(Fraser Clark - The Parallel YOUniversity)