SKULL & BONES
Progressive Review: http://prorev.com/skull.htm
Check here for a list of Bones members
AP – A Yale University historian discovered a 1918 letter that raises anew questions about a secretive Yale student society and the remains of the American Indian leader Geronimo. The letter, written by a member of Skull and Bones to another member of the society, purports that some of the Indian leader’s remains were spirited from his burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to a stone tomb in New Haven that serves as the club’s headquarters. . . At one of the most selective universities in the country, Skull and Bones marks the elite of the elite. Only 15 Yale seniors are asked to join each year. Alumni include President Bush, Sen. John Kerry, President William Howard Taft, numerous members of Congress, media leaders, Wall Street financiers, the scions of wealthy families and agents in the CIA.
Members swear an oath of secrecy about the group and its strange rituals, which includes devotion to the number “322” and initiation rites that include confessing sexual secrets and kissing a skull. The atmosphere makes Skull and Bones favorite fodder for conspiracy theorists.
Its most enduring story concerns Geronimo, who died in 1909. According to lore, members of Skull and Bones – including the president’s grandfather, Prescott Bush – dug up his grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-09-geronimo_x.htm?ord=1
YALE ALUMNI MAGAZINE – Skull and Bones and other Yale societies have a reputation for stealing, often from each other or from campus buildings. Society members reportedly call the practice “crooking” and strive to outdo each other’s “crooks.” And the club is also thought to use human remains in its rituals. In 2001, journalist Ron Rosenbaum ’68 reported capturing on videotape what appeared to be an initiation ceremony in the society’s courtyard, in which Bonesmen carried skulls and “femur-sized bones.”
It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache’s grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class.
It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache’s grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class. At the time, says Gaddis Smith, Larned Professor of History emeritus, who is writing a history of Yale since 1900, “there was a racial consciousness and a sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority above all others.” He notes that James Rowland Angell, who became president of Yale in 1921, “would say, very explicitly, that we must preserve Yale for the ‘old stock.'” Smith adds, “The slogan of the first major fund-raising campaign for Yale, in 1926, was ‘Keep Yale Yale.’ The alumni knew exactly what it meant.”
http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2006_05/notebook.html
EARLIER STORIES
PROZAC JOURNALISM
SKULL & BONES IS JUST THERE TO SERVE YOU, FOLKS
[This article is not just a defense of Skull & Bones; it also describes up how much of Washington’s elite feels about itself]
DON OLDENBURG, WASHINGTON POST – This legacy of Bones prominence is not surprising since Yale, like all prestigious universities, theoretically is attended by the nation’s best and brightest, many of whom are from wealthy and powerful families — a circle of success. Bones taps those who the members think are the most promising of this promising pool.
But with its veil of secrecy, Bones also inspires far-fetched conspiracy theories. Skull and Bones has been accused of being a satanic group, an international Mafia, and an incubator of future agents of a “New World Order.”
What feeds such suspicions is that Bonesmen are like a cross between Forrest Gump and Zelig — always in the picture at major historical crossroads: Bonesmen oversaw development of the atomic bomb and influenced the decision to use it on Japan. They managed the postwar occupation of Germany. They helped shape U.S. Cold War policies. They were policymakers during the Vietnam War. They have ties to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission — two hot-button organizations for conspiracy theorists. . .
Since Bush moved into the White House, he has nominated or appointed at least 10 Bonesmen to prestigious positions — among them the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bill Donaldson, ’53; Assistant Attorney General Robert McCallum, ’68; General Counsel to the Office of Homeland Security Edward McNally, ’79; and his close friend Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Roy Austin, ’68. . .
Bush has also benefited from Bones on his path to power. His first real job, the financing of his first oil company, his lucrative partnership owning the Texas Rangers baseball team, the big money backing his campaigns — all had Bones backing. . . .
For more than three centuries, Yale has seen its job as educating future leaders — from the 14 Yalies who served on the Continental Congress and four signers of the Declaration of Independence to four of the past six U.S. presidents (the two Bushes; Bill Clinton, Yale Law ’67; and Gerald Ford, Yale Law ’41).
This year’s Democratic primary was flush with Yalies, in addition to Kerry: Joe Lieberman, ’64 and Yale Law ’67, and Howard Dean, ’71. They and President Bush were undergrads when then-Yale President Kingman Brewster proclaimed Yale’s goal to be to produce “one thousand male leaders every year.” After Brewster turned the university coed in 1969, the statement was trimmed to “one thousand leaders.”
Levin, who has been president for 11 years, often refers to Yale as “a laboratory for leadership.” Aside from the university’s acclaimed academic life, Yale provides undergrads a wealth of opportunities to lead. . .
Looking out of his office windows, Levin can see Scroll and Key’s headquarters. In a sense, Skull and Bones is just a microcosm of Yale’s culture of leadership, he suggests. . .
EMENDATION
A YALE ALUMNUS points out that Skull & Bones is not is not next door to the Yale Daily News building, but a block away. ‘Next door to the Yale Daily News building is Wolf’s Head, which in Bush’s years was a wild-ass drinking fraternity, of which, I believe, he was a member.”
WELL, WE TOOK CARE OF THAT, DIDN’T WE? (LAUGHTER)
Russert: You were both in Skull and Bones, the secret society.
President Bush: It’s so secret we can’t talk about it.
Russert: What does that mean for America? The conspiracy theorists are going to go wild.
President Bush: I’m sure they are. I don’t know. I haven’t seen the (unintel) yet. (Laughs)
Russert: Number 322.
President Bush: First of all, he’s not the nominee, and I look forward . . .
EMENDATION
NO SKULL & BONES HELICOPTER LANDING PAD
WE HAVE REMOVED the cite of Alexandra Robbins book on Skull & Bones because the excerpt included legends about the secret organization that she later refutes. For example, when the sainted Doug Ireland passed on the item to an editor at one of the major news weeklies, he wrote back: ” I’ve passively collected S&B lore for some 20 years. I’ve never heard the bit about the roof of the S&B building being a helicopter landing pad; possible, but unlikely. The building is really only one story high, and it’s on a street right in the middle of the campus, next door to the Yale Daily News, as a matter of fact. I should think that aviation regulations would make it illegal to land a helicopter in such a densely populated area. . . John Kerrypersonally recruited a friend of mine to be in Bones but my friend, to his credit, turned them down.”
As it happened, we were contemporaneously in contact with an exceptionally good source on this matter, former New Haven alderman John Halle, whose reflections on that job we have just posted. He responded:
“Here’s the deal. The story about a landing pad for a helicopter is a canard, one of many, that are contained in the introduction of Alexandra Robbins excellent book. The way the book is organized to is to lay out all of the legends about S+B in the introduction and then, in the main body, Robbins debunks the ones which need to be debunked and documents what really goes on there. Unfortunately, she was too clever by half. A lot of people read only the introduction and took as fact false information, some of which turns out to have been created by the Bonsers themselves as a diversion.
“So, to be clear, there is no helipad at the Bones tomb. Also, while I haven’t been inside, by all accounts its a pretty shabby place, as is their summer retreat on the St. Lawrence River. (There is no Caribbean island). Also, so far as I know, you don’t get cash upon graduating. In fact, the organization itself has very little money. (They’re a 501C3 and yes, as an alderman you can be damn sure I looked into taxing them. That was the first thing I thought about. I never looked into trying to get the fire department to shut them down for lacking appropriate egress, which I think they might, but that’s for someone else.)
“This is not to say that there are not a lot of benefits to being in the Skulls. But it’s important to understand what these benefits are to understand the psychology of the members. What they get out of membership is a social circle of initiates of similarly uptight, ambitious and superficial elitists with whom they can let their hair down without fear of being judged. The last they need is cash. What they need is the ability to feel as “supported” and “connected” to others. I know this sounds new-agey, but that’s what Robbins book shows which, as I say, is quite good.”
Of course, the problem is that when you set out to create myths is that you end up creating myths.
Why Skull & Bones matters
As we learn more of the strange little society called Skull & Bones, it is useful to remember that what we know already is enough:
America is about to choose between two presidential candidates who belonged to an organization whose values were infantile, elitist, misogynist, anti-democratic and secret and whose purposes include the mutual support and protection of its members as they make their into the upper ranks of American society and throughout their adult lives. Far from apologizing for this, the two candidates refuse to give open and honest answers about their participation. Further, at least one of the candidates, Kerry, has retained a close enough relationship to the organization to have sought news members from among his young acquaintances.
The most benign view of this was expressed by the conservative columnist David Brooks, who told CBS, “My view of secret societies is they’re like the first class cabin in airplanes. They’re really impressive until you get into them, and then once you’re there they’re a little dull.”
Certainly, Skull & Bones is not alone. For example, a decade ago in ‘Shadows of Hope’ I described a more open if just as dubious influence on American politics:
While institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute have long added theoretical underpinnings to political policy, Clinton’s arrival has forced such institutions of the New York-Washington axis to take seats behind the Cambridge-headquartered John F. Kennedy School of Government. In fact, the Clinton administration seems practically a subsidiary of this academy of wonkdom. Half of Clinton’s cabinet has ties to the school either as students, officials, fellows or faculty: Les Aspin, Bruce Babbit, Ron Brown, Henry Cisneros, Robert Reich, Richard Riley and Donna Shalala.
The Kennedy School is to government what the Harvard’s business school was to corporations in the 1980. There is a similar emphasis on technical skills — decision trees, case studies and so forth — and little interest in ethics, philosophical or humanistic principles. Not surprisingly, a lot of the money for the school comes from large corporations who are more than happy to have their tax deductible contributions used to teach public officials the Kennedy School way of governing.
“This bureaucratic boot camp did once consider creating a “chair in poverty” to study “who has been poor for a long time and why,” but according to the Washington Post, then Dean Graham Allison (now in Clinton’s Pentagon) was unable to come up with the money. It didn’t really surprise him since, after all, most donors are “wealthy people, not poor people.” The conservative nature of this institution can be gauged by the fact that flaming moderate Robert Reich was considered its left-wing, a flank that apparently did not qualify him for tenure.
Executive dean Hale Champion told the Post that “if there isn’t a lot of traffic between here and in Washington, then we’re not in touch with what’s going on.” A Kennedy School graduate student in an interview with Andrew Ferguson of the Washingtonian put it more succinctly:
“The vast majority of people [at the school] are idealists. They want to change the world. But it’s more than that. To be honest, we feel that we’re entitled to change the world. . . You think that’s arrogant. Maybe it is. But look around you. What you’ve got here are some of the brightest people in this country. If the country needs to change, let’s face it, we’re the ones to change it.”
It’s not the first time that Harvard has felt entitled to such a role in Washington. In the 1960s Harvard theorists applied their paradigms to Southeast Asia with disastrous results. The 1980s were propelled in part by dubious management theses emanating from its business school. In the 1990s we find not only the Kennedy School rising to power, but former members of the Soviet bloc coming under the sway of Harvard B-School professor Jeffrey Sachs, whose plans for weaning these emerging republics from communism appear an economic version of General Sherman’s approach to weaning Georgia from the Confederacy. . .
Harvard grads permeate not only the upper level of politics, but also of the media, the law and the think tanks, carrying with them an aura of what songwriter Allen Jay Lerner called Harvard’s “indubitable, irrefutable, inimitable, indomitable, incalculable superiority.” This Harvard old (still mostly) boy network is a significant — yet because of its discretion underrated — influence on the city’s values and policies, reflecting, in the words of the historian and reluctant Harvard grad V.L. Parrington, the “smug Tory culture which we were fed on as undergraduates.”
Seventy-five years later, this smug Tory culture quietly thrives in Washington, Not the least indication of this is the fact that products of Harvard and/or Yale comprise one-third of the top positions in an administration that said it was going to look like America.
Now the control has passed to Yale or, to be fair, the offspring of one of its most childish manifestations. It is said, of course, that if you raise such matters you are engaging in ‘conspiracy theories.’ In fact, this phrase is popular among the political and media elite precisely because it provides a dirty mirror reflection of the very values that this elite holds: “If the country needs to change, let’s face it, we’re the ones to change it.” It is schools such as Harvard and Yale that inculcate their political science and history majors with a sense of change being the product of a small number of great minds working in concert with their peers. It is this arrogant illusion that kept blacks, women, and the poor so long out of the history books in such places. They called it the Great Man Theory of History.
In fact, you don’t need any conspiracy at all to create a Skull & Bones, a Kennedy School, or a Washington Post newsroom. All you need is the right environment. If you want a field of corn, all you have to do is plant corn and get it enough water.
Besides, those who have used such institutions as Skull & Bones to make their way through life tend not to be clever enough to engage in a conspiracy. That requires social intelligence, lateral thinking, imagination, all of which are in short supply among the products of such places. That’s one reason they need the institutional assistance in the first place.
I know. I was supposed to be one of them. I was punched by several “final clubs” at Harvard but quickly turned them down for I found their members among the most boring people I had met at college. Instead, I found my way to the Harvard radio station – a salon des refuse for many of the most interesting people at the school. I became news director and was subsequently elected station manager, but was unable to serve because I had been placed on probation due to my excess of extracurricular activities and inattentiveness to the prescribed curriculum.
The other day, Jim Ridgeway of the Village Voice, a former editor of the Daily Princetonian, and I were trying to think of people who had served in major Ivy League media positions yet had not become – in the manner, say, of Adam Clymer or Don Graham – totally embedded in establishment values and media. We could only think of two others: William Greider and Larry Bensky. There are probably more, but it’s certainly a far smaller club than Skull & Bones. We were the weeds in the corn field. Another one, interestingly, was a guy named Howard Dean.
The problem with such people is that we actually know how the system works. We have been probationary members of it and have betrayed and deserted it taking along the secrets of the crypt. Yes, as David Brooks says, it is as boring as first class, but who said the distortion of power, the corruption of society, and narcissistic excesses of ambition had to be interesting? Power at play is often the dullest thing on earth because in the end it is only a bad substitute for what really matters.
Still, we are left with the problem that our supposedly democratic system has narrowed itself down to a choice of two members of an ersatz nobility smaller yet more powerful than the British nobility. And not only are its members not meant to say anything about it. According to them and their friends in the media, neither are we.
’60 MINUTES’ REPORT ON SKULL & BONES
SKULL AND BONES ODDS
[We asked readers for the odds of 600 Skull & Bones members of presidential age having two colleagues running against each other for the presidency.]
BPD – Apparently 100%.
MARK MOTYKA, MATHEMATICS LEAGUES – The odds of a Skull and Bones vs Skull and Bones Presidential election, using the numbers you gave for the estimate, would be the sqare of (600/146,000,000), or about one chance in 59,211,111,111. However, there is a glitch: since one of the two Bonesmen was already appointed to the position by the SCOTUS, we have a conditional probability for this particular election. That is, one of the candidates WILL be a Bonesman. In this particular case, the odds that Bush would run against another bonesman would be 600/146,000,000, or about one chance in 243,333. All of the above assumes the usual two candidate duopoly that our media so happily reinforces. Should Americans have a choice of more then than two presidential candidates, the odds are considerably lower.
EDDIE M. ABBOTT, M.D. – 1 chance in 60 billion. Pretty unlikely. But you also need to factor in the increased likelihood of a Yale graduate being president when compared to an Arkansas high school dropout. Don’t know how to do that.
RUTH ROWAN MA – Random chance of two skull and bones members running for president is in one in 59 billion ((600/146million)squared). But Gide would tell you to doubt that.
YALE PROFESSOR OF STATISTICS – What appears straightforward may not always be so. There are many assumptions one must make to proceed with the problem. If we impose very naive assumptions such that (i) party affiliation is not an issue, (ii) that each age-eligible person in Skull & Bones is just as likely as any other to run for president, and, (iii) more generally, we assume each age-eligible person in the overall population is just as likely as one another to run for president, then we proceed as follows. We sample two people to run for president from the overall age-eligible population at random, and see if both of them are from Skull & Bones. This is an example of a hypergeometric probability, and the answer is: 1.686043e-011
That is a VERY SMALL probability. We can add additional assumptions that take away some of the randomness of the above selection process (thereby, making the calculations more difficult), as we would certainly think that there is a greater probability that individuals from Skull & Bones would run for president versus a general age-eligible person in the entire population.
YALE SECRET CULT WON’T RETURN INDIAN SKULL BUSH’S GRANDDADDY HELP STEAL
INDIAN COUNTY – The Skull and Bones Society admitted to Apache leaders 17 years ago that they had a skull they call “Geronimo’s” in their secret cult museum in New Haven, Conn. Still, his remains have not been returned. Raleigh Thompson, former San Carlos Apache tribal councilman for 16 years, said it is time to bring Geronimo home to be buried in the mountains that he loved.
. . . During an interview at the Mount Graham Sacred Run, Thompson said he was present in New York when the Skull and Bones Society admitted that it held Geronimo’s remains in 1986. . . The grave robbing was exposed when Apache leaders received a photo and information in the 1980s. The informant, fearing for his life and never identified, provided Apache leaders with a photo of the cult museum’s display of Geronimo’s remains in a glass cage. The informant also provided a copy of a Skull and Bones Society log book, in which the 1918 grave robbery was recorded.
According to the Skull and Bones log book entry, Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush, and five other officers at Fort Sill, Okla., desecrated Geronimo’s grave.
After receiving the information, San Carlos Chairman Ned Anderson, Thompson and tribal attorney Joe Sparks were in an Apache tribal delegation which met with the Society. During a series of meetings, they met with Skull and Bones officials and Jonathan Bush, George Bush’s brother, in New York City in 1986.
However, Thompson said the skull that the Skull and Bones Society offered to return to the Apache delegation was that of a young boy, not Geronimo, and the Apache leaders refused it. “They admitted that they called this skull Geronimo. They gave us the skull, but the skull was so small that it looked like a young boy’s skull.” Thompson said. “Based on that, we didn’t want to take the skull. I think they switched the skull on us.”
RON ROSENBAUM, NY OBSERVER – It’s the primal scene of American power, of Bush family values. For two centuries, the initiation rite of Skull and Bones has shaped the character of the men who have shaped the American character, including two Presidents named Bush. And last Saturday, April 14 – for the first time ever – that long-secret rite was witnessed by a team of outsiders, including this writer. Using high-tech night-vision video equipment able to peer through the gloom into the inner courtyard of the Skull and Bones “Tomb” in New Haven, The Observer team witnessed:
– The George W. effect: intoxicated by renewed proximity to Presidential power, a robed Bonesman posing as George W. harangued initiates in an eerily accurate Texas drawl: “I’m gonna ream you like I reamed Al Gore” and “I’m gonna kill you like I killed Al Gore.”
– Privileged Skull and Bones members mocked the assault on Abner Louima by crying out repeatedly, “Take that plunger out of my ass!”
– Skull and Bones members hurled obscene sexual insults (“lick my bumhole”) at initiates as they were forced to kneel and kiss a skull at the feet of the initiators.
– Other members acted out the tableau of a throat-cutting ritual murder.
It’s important to remember this is not some fraternity initiation. It is an initiation far more secret – and far more significant, in terms of real power in the United States – than that of the Cosa Nostra. If the Bushes are “the WASP Corleones” – as the ever more stingingly waspish Maureen Dowd has suggested – this is how their “made men” (and women) are made. It’s an initiation ceremony that has bonded diplomats, media moguls, bankers and spies into a lifelong, multi-generational fellowship far more influential than any fraternity. It was-and still remains – the heart of the heart of the American establishment. . .
Of course, there is more to Skull and Bones than the mystical mumbo-jumbo of its rituals. The rituals are less important than the relationships-the bonds of power and influence that develop between Skull and Bones initiates after they graduate. But the relationships are first forged by the rituals and fact that the founders of Time Inc. and the CIA., as well as several Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors – the men who made the decision to drop the Hiroshima bomb, invade the Bay of Pigs and plunge us into Vietnam, the Tafts, the Bundys, the Buckleys, the Harrimans, the Lovetts – all took part in this initiation ritual may have something to do with the real world power of those bonds. The unspoken understanding, the comfort level with the clandestine, the nods and winks with which power is exercised. . .
Most of the speculative lore about the Skull and Bones ritual has centered on its death fixation. Beyond the obvious skull-and-crossbones insignia, of course, the most persistent story is that initiates spend their senior year in the basement crypt of the Bones Tomb taking turns lying in a coffin and, in two long, intense, psycho-drama autobiographical sessions in said coffins, recount their personal and sexual history to the other 14 chosen ones. The better to bond for life with those they know best and prepare for their destiny as stewards of the ruling class. . .
KERRY MUM MEMBERSHIP IN INFAMOUS SKULL & BONES
BOSTON HERALD – Sen. John F. Kerry expounds on many issues in his presidential campaign, but he’s completely silent on one topic: his membership in Skull and Bones, Yale’s infamous secret society. “John Kerry has absolutely nothing to say on that subject. Sorry,” said Kerry spokeswoman Kelley Benander. . . There’s also another high-profile member of the club: President Bush.
Bonesmen already are buzzing over the prospect of the first Bones vs. Bones presidential race should Kerry win his party’s nomination and face Bush in 2004. “Bones don’t care who wins,” said author Alexandra Robbins, whose book “Secrets of the Tomb” pierced the secrecy shrouding the 171-year-old society. “If Kerry wins, it’s still a Bones presidency.” Robbins calls the group “probably the most secretive and successful club in America,” and adds, “It’s also pretty bizarre.”
Every year, 15 Yale juniors are tapped for the club, which holds meetings twice a week in a crypt-like building known as the “Tomb.” Robbins described the interior, replete with skulls and skeletons, as a cross between the “Addams Family” and a slightly shabby English men’s club. There are bizarre initiation rites, including a ceremony where new members must spend an evening before a roaring fire in the Tomb recounting details of their sexual history to fellow members.
Kerry was tapped for the club in 1968, two years after Bush, whose father and grandfather were also Bonesmen. Kerry’s brother-in-law from his first marriage, David Thorne, was Bones. So was the late husband of Kerry’s current wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. The Bones alumni roster is flush with CIA officials, business moguls, congressmen and Supreme Court justices. The club owns a secluded 40-acre island retreat on the St. Lawrence River.
In 1986, Kerry allegedly tried to recruit Jacob Weisberg, then a college-age intern at “The New Republic” magazine. Weisberg, now Slate magazine editor, said Kerry made his pitch during a private meeting in his Senate office. Weisberg declined, pointedly asking Kerry how he squared his liberalism with membership in such an elitist club that refused to admit women. “Kerry got sort of flustered and said, `I’ve marched with battered women,’ ” Weisberg told the Herald. Five years later, Kerry was among those voting to force the club to admit women after a bitter court fight.
THE LEGEND OF SKULL AND BONES
by Alexandra Robbins (Intro to Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League and the Hidden Paths of Power, by Alexandra Robbins, Back Bay Books, N.Y. 2002)
Please note that those who have criticized Alexandra Robbin’s book clearly did not read her whole book as she starts out with the legends about Skull and Bones in the opening, and then proceeds to confirm some and knock-down others; she is the first to get Bonesmen and Boneswomen to talk (over 100) and herself a member, perhaps former now, of Scroll and Key, the second most powerful secret society and power network at Yale.
–
Sometime in the early 1830s, a Yale student named William H. Russell—the future valedictorian of the class of 1833- traveled to Germany to study for a year. Russell came from an inordinately wealthy family that ran one of America’s most despicable business organizations of the nineteenth century: Russell and Company, an opium empire. Russell would later become a member of the Connecticut state legislature, a general in the Connecticut National Guard, and the founder of the Collegiate and Commercial Institute in New Haven. While in Germany, Russell befriended the leader of an insidious German secret societythat hailed the death’s head as its logo. Russell soon became caught up in this group, itself a sinister outgrowth of the notorious eighteenth-century society the Illuminati. When Russell returned to the United States, he found an atmosphere so Anti-Masonic that even his beloved Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society, had been unceremoniously stripped of its secrecy. Incensed, Russell rounded up a group of the most promising students in his class-including Alphonso Taft, the future secretary of war, attorney general, minister to Austria, ambassador to Russia, and father of future president William Howard Taft-and out of vengeance constructed the most powerful secret society the United States has ever known. – The men called their organization the Brotherhood of Death, or, more informally, the Order of Skull and Bones. They adopted the numerological symbol 322 because their group was the second chapter of the German organization and founded in 1832. They worshiped the goddess Eulogia, celebrated pirates, and plotted an underground conspiracy to dominate the world. Fast-forward 170 years. Skull and Bones has curled its tentacles into every corner of American society. This tiny club has set up networks that have thrust three members into the most powerful political position in the world. And the group’s influence is only increasing-the 2004 presidential election might showcase the first time each ticket has been led by a Bonesman. The secret society is now, as one historian admonishes, ” ‘an international mafia’. . . unregulated and all but unknown.” In its quest to create a New World Order that restricts individual freedoms and places ultimate power solely in the hands of a small cult of wealthy, prominent families, Skull and Bones has already succeeded in infiltrating nearly every major research, policy, financial, media, and government institution in the country. Skull and Bones, in fact, has been running the United States for years.
–
Skull and Bones cultivates its talent by selecting members from the junior class at Yale University, a school known for its strange, Gothic elitism and its rigid devotion to the past. The society screens its candidates carefully, favoring Protestants and, now, white Catholics, with special affection for the children of wealthy East Coast Skull and Bones members. Skull and Bones has been dominated by about two dozen of the country’s most prominent families—Bush, Bundy, Harriman, Lord, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney among them—who are encouraged by the society to intermarry so that its power is consolidated. In fact, Skull and Bones forces members to confess their entire sexual histories so that the club, as a eugenics overlord, can determine whether a new Bonesman will be fit to mingle with the bloodlines of the powerful Skull and Bones dynasties. A rebel will not make Skull and Bones; nor will anyone whose background in any way indicates that he will not sacrifice for the greater good of the larger organization.
– As soon as initiates are allowed into the “tomb,” a dark, windowless crypt in New Haven with a roof that serves as a landing pad for the society’s private helicopter, they are sworn to silence and told they must forever deny that they are members of this organization. During initiation, which involves ritualistic psychological conditioning, the juniors wrestle in mud and are physically beaten—this stage of the ceremony represents their “death” to the world as they have known it. They then lie naked in coffins, masturbate, and reveal to the society their innermost sexual secrets. After this cleansing, the Bonesmen give the initiates robes to represent their new identities as individuals with a higher purpose. The society anoints the initiate with a new name, symbolizing his rebirth and rechristening as Knight X, a member of the Order. It is during this initiation that the new members are introduced to the artifacts in the tomb, among them Nazi memorabilia—including a set of Hitler’s silverware-dozens of skulls, and an assortment of decorative tchotchkes: coffins, skeletons, and innards. They are also introduced to “the Bones whore,” the tomb’s only full-time resident, who helps to ensure that the Bonesmen leave the tomb more mature than when they entered. – Members of Skull and Bones must make some sacrifices to the society—and they are threatened with blackmail so that they remain loyal—but they are remunerated with honors and rewards, including a graduation gift of $15,000 and a wedding gift of a tall grandfather clock. Though they must tithe their estates to the society, each member is guaranteed financial security for life; in this way, Bones can ensure that no member will feel the need to sell the secrets of the society in order to make a living. And it works: No one has publicly breathed a word about his Skull and Bones membership, ever. Bonesmen are automatically offered jobs at the many investment banks and law firms dominated by their secret society brothers. They are also given exclusive access to the Skull and Bones island, a lush retreat built for millionaires, with a lavish mansion and a bevy of women at the members’ disposal. The influence of the cabal begins at Yale, where Skull and Bones has appropriated university funds for its own use, leaving the school virtually impoverished. Skull and Bones’ corporate shell, the Russell Trust Association, owns nearly all of the university’s real estate, as well as most of the land in Connecticut. Skull and Bones has controlled Yale’s faculty and campus publications so that students cannot speak openly about it. “Year by year,” the campus’s only anti-society publication stated during its brief tenure in 1873, “the deadly evil is growing.” – The year in the tomb at Yale instills within members an unwavering loyalty to Skull and Bones. Members have been known to stab their Skull and Bones pins into their skin to keep them in place during swimming or bathing. The knights (as the student members are called) learn quickly that their allegiance to the society must supersede all else: family, friendships, country, God. They are taught that once they get out into the world, they are expected to reach positions of prominence so that they can further elevate the society’s status and help promote the standing of their fellow Bonesmen. – This purpose has driven Bonesmen to ascend to the top levels of so many fields that, as one historian observes, “at any one time The Order can call on members in any area of American society to do what has to be done.” Several Bonesmen have been senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and Cabinet officials. There is a Bones cell in the CIA, which uses the society as a recruiting ground because the members are so obviously adept at keeping secrets. Society members dominate financial institutions such as J. P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Brown Brothers Harriman, where at one time more than a third of the partners were Bonesmen. Through these companies, Skull and Bones provided financial backing to Adolf Hitler because the society then followed a Nazi-and now follows a neo-Nazi—doctrine. At least a dozen Bonesmen have been linked to the Federal Reserve, including the first chairman of the New York Federal Reserve. Skull and Bones members control the wealth of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford families. – Skull and Bones has also taken steps to control the American media. – Two of its members founded the law firm that represents the New York Times. Plans for both Time and Newsweek magazines were hatched in the Skull and Bones tomb. The society has controlled publishing houses such as Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In the 1880s, Skull and Bones created the American Historical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Economic Association so that the society could ensure that history would be written under its terms and promote its objectives. The society then installed its own members as the presidents of these associations. Under the society’s direction, Bonesmen developed and dropped the nuclear bomb and choreographed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Skull and Bones members had ties to Watergate and the Kennedy assassination. They control the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission so that they can push their own political agenda. Skull and Bones government officials have used the number 322 as codes for highly classified diplomatic assignments. The society discriminates against minorities and fought for slavery; indeed eight out of twelve of Yale’s residential colleges are named for slave owners while none are named for abolitionists. The society encourages misogyny: it did not admit women until the 1990s because members did not believe women were capable of handling the Skull and Bones experience and because they said they feared incidents of date rape. This society also encourages grave robbing: deep within the bowels of the tomb are the stolen skulls of the Apache chief Geronimo, Pancho Villa, and former president Martin Van Buren.
– Finally, the society has taken measures to ensure that the secrets of Skull and Bones slip ungraspable like sand through open fingers. Journalist Ron Rosenbaum, who wrote a long but not probing article about the society in the 1970s, claimed that a source warned him not to get too close. – “What bank do you have your checking account at?” this party asked me in the middle of a discussion of the Mithraic aspects of the Bones ritual.I named the bank. “Aha,” said the party. “There are three Bonesmen on the board. You’ll never have a line of credit again. They’ll tap your phone. They’ll. . . ” . . .The source continued: “The alumni still care. Don’t laugh. They don’t like people tampering and prying. The power of Bones is incredible. They’ve got their hands on every lever of power in the country. You’ll see—it’s like trying to look into the Mafia.” – In the 1980s, a man known only as Steve had contracts to write two books on the society, using documents and photographs he had acquired from the Bones crypt. But Skull and Bones found out about Steve. Society members broke into his apartment, stole the documents, harassed the would-be author, and scared him into hiding, where he has remained ever since. The books were never completed. In Universal Pictures’ thriller The Skulls (2000), an aspiring journalist is writing a profile of the society for the New York Times. When he sneaks into the tomb, the Skulls murder him. The real Skull and Bones tomb displays a bloody knife in a glass case. It is said that when a Bonesman stole documents and threatened to publish society secrets if the members did not pay him a determined amount of money, they used that knife to kill him. This, then, is the legend of Skull and Bones.
– It is astonishing that so many people continue to believe, even in twenty-first-century America, that a tiny college club wields such an enormous amount of influence on the world’s only superpower. The breadth of clout ascribed to this organization is practically as wide-ranging as the leverage of the satirical secret society the Stonecutters introduced in an episode of The Simpsons. The Stonecutters theme song included the lyrics:
– Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We do! We do. . . Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do! We do.
– Certainly, Skull and Bones does cross boundaries in order to attempt to stay out of the public spotlight.When I wrote an article about the society for the Atlantic Monthly in May 2000, an older Bonesman said to me, “If it’s not portrayed positively, I’m sending a couple of my friends after you.” After the article was published, I received a telephone call at my office from a fellow journalist, who is a member of Skull and Bones.He scolded me for writing the article—”writing that article was not an ethical or honorable way to make a decent living in journalism,” he condescended —and then asked me how much I had been paid for the story. When I refused to answer, he hung up. Fifteen minutes later, he called back.
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“I have just gotten off the phone with our people.” “Your people?” I snickered. “Yes. Our people.” He told me that the society demanded to know where I got my information. “I’ve never been in the tomb and I did nothing illegal in the process of reporting this article,” I replied. “Then you must have gotten something from one of us. Tell me whom you spoke to. We just want to talk to them,” he wheedled. “I don’t reveal my sources.”
– Then he got angry. He screamed at me for a while about how dishonorable I was for writing the article. “A lot of people are very despondent over this!” he yelled. “Fifteen Yale juniors are very, very upset!” I thanked him for telling me his concerns.
– “There are a lot of us at newspapers and at political journalism institutions,” he coldly hissed. “Good luck with your career”—and he slammed down the phone.
– Skull and Bones, particularly in recent years, has managed to pervade both popular and political culture. In the 1992 race for the Republican presidential nomination, Pat Buchanan accused President George Bush of running “a Skull and Bones presidency.” In 1993, during Jeb Bush’s Florida gubernatorial campaign, one of his constituents asked him, “You’re familiar with the Skull and Crossbones Society?” When Bush responded, “Yeah, I’ve heard about it,” the constituent persisted, “Well, can you tell the people here what your family membership in that is? Isn’t your aim to take control of the United States?” In January 2001, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd used Skull and Bones in a simile: “When W. met the press with his choice for attorney general, John Ashcroft, before Christmas, he vividly showed how important it is to him that his White House be as leak-proof as the Skull & Bones ‘tomb.’”
– That was less than a year after the Universal Pictures film introduced the secret society to a new demographic perhaps uninitiated into the doctrines of modern-day conspiracy theory. Not long before the movie was previewed in theaters—and perhaps in anticipation of the election of George W. Bush—a letter was distributed to members from Skull and Bones headquarters. “In view of the political happenings in the barbarian world,” the memo read, “I feel compelled to remind all of the tradition of privacy and confidentiality essential to the well-being of our Order and strongly urge stout resistance to the seductions and blandishments of the Fourth Estate.” This vow of silence remains the society’s most important rule. Bonesmen have been exceedingly careful not to break this code of secrecy, and have kept specific details about the organization out of the press. Indeed, given the unusual, strict written reminder to stay silent, members of Skull and Bones may well refuse to speak to any member of the media ever again.
– But they have already spoken to me. When? Over the past three years. Why? Perhaps because I am a member of one of Skull and Bones’ kindred Yale secret societies. Perhaps because some of them are tired of the Skull and Bones legend, of the claims of conspiracy theorists and some of their fellow Bonesmen. What follows, then, is the truth about Skull and Bones. And if this truth does not contain all of the conspiratorial elements that the Skull and Bones legend projects, it is perhaps all the more interesting for that fact. The story of Skull and Bones is not just the story of a remarkable secret society, but a remarkable society of secrets, some with basis in truth, some nothing but fog. Much of the way we understand the world of power involves myriad assumptions of connection and control, of cause and effect, and of coincidence that surely cannot be coincidence.