Bohemian Grove pilgrimage starts
The Press Democrat | Santa Rosa, CA
By BOB NORBERG
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Friday, July 14, 2006 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, July 14, 2006 at 1:33 a.m.
A steady line of Gulfstream, Cessna and Falcon corporate jets landed Thursday at Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, signaling the opening of the annual Bohemian Grove encampment.
“We love this,” said Bob Gallagher, general manager of Apex Aviation, which had more than a dozen private aircraft parked on its tarmac. “It’s good for business, it’s good for Apex, cars, hotels, catering . .. it helps the whole county.”
The annual encampment is as much a thread in the fabric of Sonoma County as the fall grape crush and foggy beach days, and it draws as many as 3,000 to the exclusive men-only club amid the Russian River redwoods.
Among the attendees will be former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is scheduled to speak, according to the Bohemian Grove Action Network, which has been protesting at the encampment since 1980. Grove officials would not confirm the speech schedule.
Meanwhile, rumors circulated among airport workers Thursday that actors John Travolta and George Clooney also were expected to fly in.
The annual gathering has its detractors, who contend the participants – from government leaders to corporate executives – meet outside public view and discuss such issues as the war in Iraq and terrorism.
“I wouldn’t say ‘sinister’ is the word at all, but the people who are involved there are doing some politically very inappropriate things to the world,” said Peter Phillips, a Sonoma State University sociology professor who wrote his doctoral thesis on the club.
Phillips will be among the protesters July 22 outside the gates of the Monte Rio retreat, where they have picketed each event since 1980.
Members of the San Francisco-based Bohemian Club have been coming to its 2,700-acre retreat for 117 years. The club caters to ex-presidents, high-ranking government officials, corporate executives, artists and entertainers.
It cloaks itself in secrecy, denying any requests for tours of the grove and requiring all employees to sign nondisclosure agreements.
The encampment officially begins Saturday with the “Cremation of Care,” a ceremony that includes a large bonfire, and runs for two weeks, with the middle weekend drawing the largest and usually the most prestigious crowd.
Thomas Reed of Healdsburg, a former secretary of the Air Force and an inactive member, is scheduled to talk on his Cold War experiences.
Reed said the club comprises a broad base of people who are just as likely to be discussing school vouchers as some pressing world issue.
“It is an area where friends get together,” Reed said. “To say it is a place where nefarious schemes are hatched, I have not seen that. You get a lot of people together and people will talk about things, but where the protesters describe it as a cabal, it doesn’t work that way.”
On Thursday, corporate jets arrived at the airport with men in blue blazers and business-casual attire who stepped onto small red carpets and were whisked by awaiting rental cars.
Among the luggage of three arrivals were four cases of expensive French wine.
Federal Aviation Administration controllers said there will be 50 planes landing Thursday and today carrying Bohemian Grove participants.
Apex’s Gallagher said the company probably will sell 20,000 gallons of jet fuel over the weekend.
“It’s Christmastime for us,” Gallagher said.
Hertz branch manager Brenda Hirsch said they would rent about 40 vehicles Thursday, driving the cars onto the tarmac to meet the arrivals and collecting luggage in golf carts.
“We don’t do this for everybody,” Hirsch said. “It doesn’t happen on your day-to-day basis.”
