Them

by Jon Ronson

  “I’m not the sort of person to say something like that,” I said.

  There was a doubtful expression on Jim’s face.

  “Their demeanour,” I said. “You could tell by their demeanour. Change it to demeanour.”

  “You can tell by their…demeanour,” amended Jim, reluctantly, with a red pen.

  There was a chilly pause.

  “You said ‘smell’,” said Jim. “You just forgot you said it.”

  “I did not,” I said, “say smell. I have never in my life said that anybody could be told by their smell.”

  A frosty atmosphere had developed between Jim and myself this past day or so. The tension was driving us apart. I was ready to sell Jim out to save my own skin, and I felt that Jim, invigorated by the chase, was grabbing my hand and jumping blindly into dangerous waters.

  “OK,” said Jim softly, “if you want to have said demeanour, you said demeanour.”

  “I didn’t say smell,” I said.

  ♦

  We had an appointment with Paul Luckman, the editor of the tiny English-language Weekly News, the Algarve parish newspaper that had stuck its neck out and gone big on the Bilderberg story. Paul’s was the only newspaper in Portugal – indeed the only newspaper in the world, as far as I could tell – that was reporting the Bilderberg story.

  Paul is an ex-pat from England, fifteen years an Algarve resident. He is not a journalist by trade. He runs a small telephone company. The Weekly News is a hobby for him and his wife, Madeline, and their two friends from church, Fred and Brendan.

  Paul told me he was perplexed that their parish journal had stumbled into a world exclusive on this explosive, baffling story.

  “I do not consider myself one of the world’s greatest thinkers,” he said over the phone, “but it doesn’t take much to work out that this is something genuine. And no other newspaper will touch it. Nobody. The conversation dies as soon as you say the word Bilderberg. I mentioned it to an editor on the Daily Express yesterday, and he immediately changed the subject. I said, ‘Did you hear what I said?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you know about Bilderberg?’ ‘I’ve, uh, heard of them.’ And that was it. The conversation died.”

  “How did you hear about Bilderberg?” I asked him.

  “From a little newspaper on the internet called The Spotlight,” he said. “Have you heard of them?”

  “I’m actually here in Portugal with Big Jim Tucker,” I said.

  “Oh!” said Paul. “He’s a hero! Bring him along.”

  ♦

  Paul has a little office in a modern glass building in central Lisbon where he conducts his telephone business. He’s a committed born-again Christian. Church posters decorate the walls.

  “I find myself out of my depth,” he said, twisting an elastic band around his fingers. “If what they’re up to is perfectly innocent, why don’t they say what’s going on? But they don’t. Not even a little bit. Not even a hint. Nothing.” Paul paused. “Maybe my head’s gone,” he said, “but the Book of Revelation speaks of a one world order, one financial order, a one-world religion. There’ll be a sense of disorder, of children not respecting their parents, and then a very powerful group will form. So it does all fit together.”

  “I know they’re bad guys,” said Jim, “and I hate them, but I don’t believe they’re satanist.”

  “I believe that Paul’s not saying they’re satanist,” I said. “He’s saying they’re actually Satan.”

  “You think that this is some kind of biblical prophecy being fulfilled?” said Jim.

  “All I’m saying is this is the strangest thing I’ve ever known,” said Paul.

  ♦

  The next morning, Paul sent Fred and Brendan, his fellow Weekly News editors, to meet Jim and me outside the gates of the Caesar Park.

  This was the day Jim said the limousines and the helicopters would arrive. If any of us still had doubts, Jim said, if any of us still didn’t believe, today was the day we would realize that the world was nothing like we had been told it was, that it turned on a sinister axis.

  The four of us waited out in the heat. A gypsy caravan trotted past, a few hikers. An hour trundled slowly by and we filled in the time with small talk.

  “So Paul thinks Bilderberg represents the fulfilment of the Book of Revelation,” I said to Fred.

  He chuckled. “Well that’s where Paul and I part company.”

  We both laughed.

  “You see,” said Fred, “I believe that all the prophecies have already been fulfilled.”

  There was a small silence.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Another hour passed. We ran out of mineral water. We kicked the gravel.

  “They’ll be here,” said Jim, but now even he seemed unsure. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a silk handkerchief. Our shirts were soaked. We stopped talking to each other and just stood there.

  ♦

  Portugal is not an eventful country. There is tourism and there is football and there are golfing tournaments. It was, then, all the more extraordinary that at around four o’clock many of the world’s most powerful people really did begin to roll past us in taxis and anonymous town cars.

  There was David Rockefeller, net worth $2.5 billion, chairman of the Chase Manhattan bank, huddled into the back of a local cab.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Rockefeller,” murmured Jim.

  The gatekeeper bowed and lifted the gate. David Rockefeller waved, and the taxi disappeared up the drive.

  Then came Umberto Agnelli of Fiat, Italy’s de facto royal family, net worth $3.3 billion, barely noticeable in the back seat of some old sedan.

  “Big Bilderberg family,” said Jim. He was trying to remain matter-of-fact, but pretty soon he was grinning broadly.

  “Jim!” I said.

  “Damn right, soldier,” he beamed. “Pretty overwhelming, huh?”

  There was Vernon Jordan, Bill Clinton’s closest friend, his unelected unofficial adviser and golfing partner – Vernon Jordan, who plucked the President from Arkansas obscurity and nurtured him to the White House, and who is widely credited with pulling strings to get James Wolfensohn his job as president of the World Bank.

  There was James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank.

  “Incredible,” murmured Fred. “Unbelievable.”

  And there was Henry Kissinger, possibly the most powerful individual the post-war world has known: Dr Kissinger, who sanctioned the secret bombing of Cambodia and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, who revealed to the press his heart attack with the words, “Well, at least that proves I have a heart,” – and here he was trundling up the drive of the Caesar Park in the back of an old Mercedes.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, I bet you didn’t know about Henry Kissinger,” said Jim. “His accent is as American as mine. Creep up on him at a bar, as I once did, and whisper that you know exactly what he’s up to, and he’ll splutter and shout at you in an accent as American as Mom’s apple pie.”

  I attempted, for a moment, to judge rationally whether there was any truth to this startling claim – whether Henry Kissinger really had throughout his life adopted a fake European accent to camouflage his American one. But I couldn’t. My rationality had suffered a tremendous blow, and I now no longer knew what was possible and what was not.

  The taxis kept coming. There were CEOs of pharmaceutical giants and tobacco companies and car manufacturers, the heads of banks from Europe and North America. Some, like Richard Holbrooke, America’s United Nations representative, gave us friendly smiles, which Jim returned with a glare of undisguised loathing.

  “Who are these people?” said Fred. “Why does nobody want to know?”

  “They’re the masters of the Universe,” said Jim. “The rulers of the world. You know their names now.”

  There was Conrad Black, the world’s third biggest media magnate, the owner of the Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times and 40 Canadian dailies and 447 other newspapers around the
world. Conrad Black, who when asked what epitaph he would like replied, “Just my name and dates. The more exalted a person, the less is written on their tombstone. Charles de Gaulle just has his name and dates, Winston Churchill has the same, Otto von Bismarck has only his last name, and Napoleon Bonaparte has only the letter ‘N’ with no dates at all.” This was a man sure of his place in history, and now I felt that perhaps I understood why.

  Fred and Brendan stared in horrified awe. Like Paul, their fellow editor back in the Algarve, these two men were taking an evangelical stance on Bilderberg, presuming its existence confirmed the prophecies laid out in the Book of Revelation. They looked as if they were witnessing the Devil himself ride past.

  An old bus cruised up the drive. I paid it little attention, assuming it was full of hotel workers. Only Brendan scrutinized the occupants. I glanced over. Brendan seemed frozen to the spot.

  “Brendan?” I said.

  “Brendan!” said Fred, sharply. “What is it?”

  “I looked through the window,” he explained, finally, “and I focused on one person, and he was staring back at me. I was standing with my camera in hand, and this person…just stared.”

  “What kind of stare was it?” I asked.

  “It was a strange stare,” he said. “It was a different type of stare. Yes. He looked down at me. As if he was staring right through me.” There was a pause. “I couldn’t even lift my camera.”

  “And who was it?” I asked.

  Then Brendan said, softly, “It was Peter Mandelson.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Peter Mandelson?” I said.

  “I’ve never seen a stare quite like it,” said Brendan.

  “Who’s Peter Mandelson?” said Jim.

  There was nothing left for us to do, so we got lunch. We lavished praise upon Big Jim, who grinned with satisfaction. He had, indeed, uncovered something extraordinary. Fred half-joked that Jim should win a Pulitzer, except Pulitzer was probably in Bilderberg’s hands. We went back to our hotels to freshen up, and after a while Jim called to ask, if I had a moment, would I mind meeting him in his room?

  ♦

  There seemed to be something on Jim’s mind.

  “We can only wonder what evil things they’re doing in there right now,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

  “They’ve only just arrived,” I said, lighting one too. “They’re probably showering.”

  There was a pause.

  “So what is it, Jim?” I said.

  And then Jim dropped his bombshell – he was calling off the midnight penetration.

  “When I was at the Tiny Bar last night,” he explained, “I met this taxi driver. Local guy. Knew the terrain. I said I’d give him a hundred dollars to escort me through the undergrowth and up the drainpipes. ‘One hundred crisp American dollars,’ I said to him. ‘Buy the wife that red dress she’s always wanted.’”

  Jim paused to cough. He had a coughing fit. He lit a cigarette. I lit one too.

  “Anyway,” resumed Jim after he had drunk a glass of water, “the taxi driver called just now. He said his wife wasn’t going to let him go. Too dangerous, she said. She didn’t want him killed. Poor fool.”

  Jim looked out of the window.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Jim gazed out at the traffic and the ocean beyond. He pulled on his cigarette. As I watched him, I considered the cancellation of the midnight penetration. Jim was never without a cigarette. He didn’t like to admit it but his lungs were shot. His health was no longer a match for drainpipes and guard dogs and armed security. Bill Clinton’s best friend Vernon Jordan was there, thirteen years a director of America’s second-largest cigarette manufacturer, RJR Nabisco. I was sure that it was Jim’s rattling, cigarette-induced emphysema that had put paid to his midnight penetration.

  I went back to my own room and lay on my bed. I drifted off for a while, and then I was woken by the telephone. It was Fred from the Weekly News. He said he had something of great importance to tell me. Could I meet him at once at his hotel?

  “Just come as fast as you can,” said Fred. “I’ll meet you by the pool. And don’t bring your friend Jim Tucker.”

  ♦

  At the poolside of the Hotel California, Fred held a document. The document was screwed up in his hand and damp with sweat. Fred said that he had discovered something terrible in the hours that had passed since our lunch.

  “OK,” said Fred, “I returned to my hotel and I had a swim and then I went to my room and began surfing on the internet. And after a while I found this…”

  Fred passed me the document. I uncreased it and laid it on the table.

  Bilderberg material is fascist hoax!

  Dear friends,

  I am writing to you urgently to warn you about material being circulated about a ‘Bilderberg Conference’ due to take place in June in Portugal. The Washington-based journal Spotlight is quoted as a source of information on the Bilderberg Conference. Spotlight is published by the fascist Liberty Lobby. The purpose of the material appears to be to make people imagine there is a sinister Jewish conspiracy that is trying to dominate the world. You may find much information on Spotlight by contacting any major anti-fascist organization.

  Against fascism and against capitalism, Lisa Taylor

  (International Solidarity with Workers in Russia).

  “What do you think about that?” said Fred.

  There was a long silence.

  “Well,” I said. “I should tell you that the other night Jim told me it was a shame that Abraham Lincoln was an abolitionist.”

  “Did he?” said Fred, clearly startled.

  “But I can’t really think of anything else Jim said that might be construed as…oh – he did say that with the amount of pills they make him take for his plumbing anyone would think he was – ”

  “We’re getting all our information from neo-Nazis?” interrupted Fred. “We’re publishing a newspaper all over Portugal and our sources are neo-Nazis?”

  “You might be,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean…” I paused.

  Fred looked out at the pool. Children were splashing around. It was a lovely day. He put his head in his hands.

  “What,” he said, “have we got ourselves into?”

  ∨ Them ∧

  5

  The Middle Men In New York

  ONE OUT OF EIGHT AMERICANS HAS HARD-CORE ANTI-SEMITIC FEELINGS

  I was back once again inside the New York offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, for ninety years the world’s most influential monitors of anti-Semitism.

  This poster, part of the ADL’s ongoing publicity campaign, was framed on a wall in a corridor outside Gail Gans’ office. Each time I saw it I felt it bore testament to the ADL’s tireless work. What they must have done to find that out. But I also wondered how the terms had been defined. What is hard-core? What are feelings? The small print offered no clues. It was just a statement of fact.

  ♦

  When Gail Gans had given me fact sheets proclaiming Randy Weaver and Jack McLamb and Bo Gritz to be far-right extremists, I considered it to be an overstatement – particularly because I couldn’t think of anything they had said to me that could have been interpreted as being anti-Semitic. I had raised this point with Gail, and she had explained to me about their use of code words.

  It was Jack McLamb’s contention that the ADL are part of the conspiracy, acting as a hugely influential crack team of character besmirchers who spring ruthlessly into action and accuse anyone of anti-Semitism who gets too close to the truth.

  Now Gail said to me, “The Spotlight, James P. Tucker’s newspaper, is the leading anti-Semitic hate propaganda newspaper in America.”

  “Oh yeah,” I thought. “Here we go again.”

  (I had not, at this point, become one of them. I did, however, believe that the ADL might be guilty of utilizing a scatter-shot approach which seemed designed to label any anti-government radical as an anti-Sem
ite, rather than fulfilling their public remit which was to protect the Jewish people from anti-Semitism.)

  Then Gail handed me her Spotlight file. With eyebrows dubiously raised, I picked it up and glanced through it, immediately to discover, with alarm and embarrassment, articles denying the Holocaust, tributes to neo-Nazi skinheads, books written by Spotlight editors dedicated to Adolf Hitler, and on and on. These were articles from some years ago, before The Spotlight began to utilize code words (phrases such as ‘International Bankers’ and ‘International Financiers’).

  “Bloody hell,” I said. “You’re right.”

  Gail looked at me quizzically, as if to say, “Why had you even thought that I might be wrong?”

  I was left in no doubt that I had been hoodwinked by racists, that Big Jim Tucker’s newspaper was every bit as despicable as Gail said it was.

  ♦

  But what about the others? Back in Waco, Colonel Bo Gritz had described himself as being ‘right of Attila the Hun’. He said this while he was squeezed underneath Mount Carmel, the rebuilt Branch Davidian church, this huge man crammed into a tiny space between the floor and the earth, hammering in some lattice work.

  “Early in the morning when the sun don’t shine…” he sang, hammering away.

  “What do you think of the ADL?” I had asked him back then. (I was squeezed in there too.)

  “They are a bunch of bastards and wild dogs,” he growled.

  Bang! Bang! He hammered away with a renewed vigour.

  “They are vicious,” he said. “You’re not going to use that out of context, are you?”

  “No, no,” I said.

  (Why was everyone so afraid of the ADL? Even Bo Gritz, the most decorated Green Beret in the Vietnam War, who told me countless stories of how he carried mortally wounded comrades through enemy lines, and so on. And Alex Jones, the Austin radio talk-show host – one of the most outwardly fearless people I had ever met – even he seemed afraid of how the ADL might respond if I quoted his line about them being the ‘scum of the earth’ out of context.)

  “I am an honorary member of the Jewish Defense League,” said Bo. (The JDL is a militant Jewish organization whose members have murdered Palestinian activists and suspected Nazi war criminals with pipe bombs. Bo’s friend Jack McLamb was an honorary member of something called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms. I had no idea that there were so many crazy Jewish organizations out there and that they counted so many suspected anti-Semites amongst their roll of honour.)