A RED Hyundai slows outside Kanata's Brookstreet Hotel, set amid the manicured green campuses of Ottawa's hi-tech firms. "What's going on?" the driver asks, leaning out.
"Sir, there's a global crime syndicate meeting," cries Alex Jones, the host of an Austin, Tex., radio show who's been stalking the secretive Bilderberg Group for years.
He was one of a pack of alternative journalists, conspiracy theorists and just plain suspicious local folks who camped out last night and caught a glimpse, they said, of David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, former N.B. premier Frank McKenna and a host of other bigwigs.
They might well have -- all those names were on a rare, unsigned Bilderberg press release, Canadian Press reported.
New York Gov. George Pataki, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada and two figures behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi -- are also in town, according to the release.
One no-show was Prime Minister Stephen Harper. But he's already addressed the group at a 2003 meeting in France.
DETAINED AT AIRPORT
There's still a strong Canadian contingent this year, including Power Corp.'s Paul Desmarais and Heather Reisman, of Indigo Books.
Talk-show host Jones said he almost didn't make it.
He said he was detained at the Ottawa Airport for more than 12 hours by border guards who seemed to know who he is.
It was no coincidence, Jones insisted.
"These guys love secrecy -- 125 of the most elite people on the planet meeting together and setting policy," Jones said. "It's diabolical -- world government, global taxation. On the agenda here, they're debating (an impending) attack on Iran."
The Bilderberg Group -- named after the Dutch hotel where they first met in 1954 -- has as its stated goal to increase ties between Europe and North America.
Bilderbergers meet behind closed doors, they say, so the politicians, tycoons and royalty can speak frankly.
But even mainstream critics call them elitist. They've spawned a stream of conspiracy theories.
"A very powerful group of people who destroy every constitution on Earth to create a new world order" is the conclusion of Canadian Daniel Estulin who published a book that, he said, prominent Bilderbergers arranged to have banned.
The tiny group controls the world's 6 billion people, said Estulin, who, undeterred, is at work on a second book from his home base in Spain.
"It's safer for me there," he said darkly.
