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 the United States' 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, agGeneral 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 society that 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 of the Illuminati. When Russell returned to the U.S., 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, founded in 1832. They worshipped the goddess Eulogia, celebrated pirates, and covertly plotted an underground conspiracy to dominate the world.
Fast forward 170 years. Skull and Bones has curled its tentacles into every reach of American society. This tiny club has set up networks that have thrust three members to the most powerful political position in the world. And its power is only increasing - the 2004 Presidential election might showcase the first time each ticket has been led by a Bonesman. The secret society now, as one historian admonishes, is "'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, or, now, white Catholics, with special affection for the children of wealthy, East Coast Skull and Bones members. Skull and Bones has been dominated by approximately 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 inter-marry so that the society.s power is consolidated. In fact, the society forces members to confess their entire sexual histories so that Skull and Bones, as a eugenics overlord, can determine whether a new Bonesman will be fit to carry on 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 re-christening 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 tchochkes: 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 ever 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 the secret society. "Year by year," the campus' 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 society. 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 supercede 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 Skull and Bones 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 one 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 navigated the Bay of Pigs invasion. Skull and Bones members had ties to Watergate and the Kennedy assassination. They control the Council of 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, as evidence 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. The society broke into his apartment, stole the documents, harassed the author, and scared him into hiding, where he has remained ever since. The books were never completed. In Universal Pictures' Spring 2000 thriller The Skulls, 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. Similarly, in the real Skull and Bones tomb is a bloody knife in a glass case. It is said that when a Bonesman stole documents from the society and threatened to publish Skull and Bones. secrets if they did not pay him a determined amount of money, the society 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 modern America in the twenty-first century, 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 afforded to the satirical secret society of the Stonecutters in an episode of the television show 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 leaves the Atlantis off the maps? Who keeps the Martians under wraps? We do! We do. Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do! We do.
Certainly, the society 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.
"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," Dowd wrote, "he vividly showed how important it is to him that his White House be as leak-proof as the Skull & Bones 'tomb.'"
Later that year, the Universal Pictures film introduced the secret society to a new demographic perhaps uninitiated into the doctrines of modern-day conspiracy theory. At about the time the movie was being pre-screened in theaters - and perhaps in anticipation of the election of George W. Bush - a letter was distributed to Bonesmen 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 that truth does not contain all of the conspiratorial elements that the Skull and Bones legend projects, it is perhaps all the more interesting for this 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.
http://www.secretsofthetomb.com/excerpt.asp
White House 'Bonesman' Leads Nation Into the Dark
By Alexandra Robbins
USA TODAY http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/11.05A.robbins.bones.htm
Wednesday, 25 September, 2002
"My senior year (at Yale University) I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society," President Bush wrote in his autobiography, "so secret, I can't say anything more."
He doesn't have to. He's practically turning the government into a secret society - an old-boy, throwback establishment that even holds its secret spy-court proceedings in an elaborately locked, windowless room that sounds similar to the Bones' elaborately locked, practically windowless "tomb," or campus clubhouse.
Bush, a loyal and particularly active member of Skull and Bones, a mysterious, historically misogynist Yale-based secret society, seems to have done almost all he can to promote a level of secrecy in government not seen since the Nixon administration:
* Last month, Bush-appointed Assistant Attorney General Robert McCallum, a member of Bush's 1968 Skull and Bones class, filed pleadings in U.S. District Court seeking to extend executive privilege to any government official in pardon cases; the move makes information on presidential pardons more secret than it has ever been.
* After 9/11, without initially telling Congress, Bush assembled a shadow government assigned to secret bunkers somewhere on the East Coast. He also tried to cut off some members of Congress from classified information about the anti-terrorist campaign.
* The USA Patriot Act Bush eagerly signed lets the FBI - with permission from a secret Washington "spy court" - view some customer records; store owners cannot reveal the review
* In October 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft released a memo encouraging federal agencies to withhold as much information as possible from the public.
* A month later, just before documents from the Reagan-Bush administration were to be released, Bush signed an executive order severely hindering public access to former presidents' records.
* Bush also signed legislation that jails or fines journalists who publish sensitive leaks, essentially reviving the Official Secrecy Act that President Clinton vetoed.
Bush has a "fetish for secrecy," Vanderbilt University professor emeritus Hugh Davis Graham, now deceased, told the National Journal earlier this year.
Granted, pressing issues of national security merit a level of secrecy. But security and secrecy are not always necessary companions, and some of these examples suggest secrecy for secrecy's sake, such as the pardons and the Reagan documents. Also, a government that operates in secret prevents its constituents from holding it accountable and so may be more prone to arbitrariness and ill-considered conduct. This administration may even be doing itself a disservice with its excess secrecy, which can cause people to conjure up much more malicious and elitist scenarios than may actually exist.
That is what has happened with Skull and Bones, which operates a powerful alumni network but, despite the lore, does not run a secret world government, collaborate with Nazis or require initiates to lie naked in a coffin.
Bonesmen have long helped Bush; he received a fair chunk of his early business financing from them and turned to them for help when he needed a job, investors and campaign assistance. Even his baseball-team purchase involved at least one Bonesman. As president, Bush has appointed fellow Bonesmen to high-level positions, such as Edward McNally, the general counsel of the Office on Homeland Security and senior associate counsel on national security. Yet, although one of his first social gatherings at the White House was a Skull and Bones reunion, Bush feigned ignorance when asked recently about Bones: "The thing is so secret that I'm not even sure it still exists," he replied.
Is it a coincidence that the federal government suddenly prioritizes secrecy when a Skull and Bones president is in power? Maybe. But there's no question that the Bush administration increasingly resembles the Bones' dark, locked tomb.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/11.05A.robbins.bones.htm
Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of PowerTHE TODAY SHOW
http://www.msnbc.com/news/802773.asp?cp1=1
Sept. 4 — Inside a cold, foreboding structure of brown sandstone in New Haven, Conn., lives one of the most heavily shrouded secret societies in American history.
Yale’s super-elite Skull and Bones, a 200-year-old organization whose roster is stocked with some of the country’s most prominent families: Bush, Harriman, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney. Journalist Alexandra Robbins, herself a member of another of Yale’s secret societies, interviewed more than a hundred Bonesmen and writes about the rituals that make up the organization. Read an excerpt from her book ‘The Secrets of the Tomb’ below.
Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power by Alexandra Robbins
THE LEGEND OF SKULL AND BONES
Sometime in the early 1830s, a Yale student named William H.Russell—the future valedictorian of the class of 1833- traveled toGermany 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 society that 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.
Yale’s secret society exposed
September 4, 2002 — Journalist and author Alexandra Robbins discusses her book “Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power” with “Today’s” Ann Curry.
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 silenceand 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.
“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.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/802773.asp?cp1=1
The Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale University: - Tony Gosling 18Aug02
President George W. Bush, past president Bush senior and his father are all three proven initiates of this occult lodge based at a windowless mausoleum - I kid you not - The Tomb on the Yale campus.
New York Observer investigation http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2511
A death cult at the heart of the United States establishment? Impossible surely? But look a little closer and you'll see that seems to be exactly what George W Bush's family club, the order of Skull and Bones, is. Known variously as 'Bonesmen', 'The Order' and 'The Russell Trust Association', George W.Bush's father and grandfather were both initiated into this 'society' who's badge is a skull and cross bones with the lodge number 322 below it.
Lodge 322 is believed to have been founded on June 28th 1832. And the Skull and Bones are believed to have a commemoration ceremony on 28th June every year. This year (2002) on this date George W. Bush was relieved of his presidency for several hours, Dick Cheyne took over running the world's only superpower while Bush was 'undergoing hospital tests'.
If the Nazis' occult Thule Society had been exposed in the twenties millions might not have died - I would like to see the 'Bonesmen' and any other secret groups hungry for power fully exposed as unfit to hold positions of public responsibility.
Author and researcher Antony Sutton died earlier this year on June 17th 2002. He was a British born émigré to the USA and spent much of his academic time researching links from the US establishment and business world to fascism and communism. Particularly enlightening is his research on the financing of the Nazi party which he attributed to Wall street bankers - see his book 'Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler'. Sutton was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, from 1968 to 1973. He was a former economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles. He was born in London in 1925 and educated at the universities of London, Gottingen and California.
In September 1977 an article appeared in the US magazine Esquire. Sutton explains it detailed much of the mumbo-jumbo associated with the Bonesmen. When a new member is initiated into the order "Tonight", he is told, "he will die to the world and be born again into The Order as he will thenceforth refer to it. The Order is a world unto itself in which he will have a new name and fourteen new blood brothers, also with new names."
When Rosenbaum starts to enquire about The Order he is told: "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. Remember, they're secret society too."
The Washington Post broached the subject on 25th February 2000 - 'Shred This After Reading!' Lloyd Grove called the article:
"Before George W. Bush was a good ol' boy, he was a member of Skull and Bones. Author Ron Rosenbaum calls this club "the most powerful of all secret societies in the strange Yale secret-society system." Its roster includes Averell Harriman, Henry Stimson, Henry Luce, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Dubya's dad, former president George Bush. They all engaged in "certain occult rituals of the ruling class," as Rosenbaum writes, in a windowless mausoleum on Yale's New Haven, Conn., campus."
"Although the club dates back to the mid-19th century, Hollywood has just discovered it. "The Skulls," written and produced by D.C. native and Yale grad John Pogue, premieres next month. The movie portrays a sinister conspiracy, a la John Grisham's "The Firm," in which sons of the power elite have their flesh branded with a skull and crossbones, and keep the society's secrets on pain of death. The real Skull and Bones has a similar mania for secrecy, but that didn't stop us from casting a wide net for the reactions of "Bonesmen" to this crass vulgarization of their sacred brotherhood. Dubya and Kerry didn't return our calls, but we managed to talk to a few."
"Washington writer Christopher Buckley told us: "Don't quote me, or I shall have to come and kill you, burn down your house and rape your dog!" Former Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin said the real thing was bad enough without resorting to Hollywood spin: "It strikes me that if anybody wants to make fun of it in such a gross way, that lets Skull and Bones off the hook." And Oklahoma University President and former senator David Boren cautioned: "Make sure you say that when you asked me about this, I gasped and threw the telephone on the floor. There was never any branding. I'm much too chicken to belong to anything that requires your flesh to be burned. Officially, my response is silence.""
Finally here's a two year old interview from Time magazine with Bush happily admitting his family are in the cult. Extracted from: 'My Heritage Is Part Of Who I Am', by Walter Isaacson, Time Magazine, August 7th 2000 (Time Volume 156, No. 6),
……..ISAACSON: But you sure shared a lot of the same upbringing: Andover, Yale, even Skull and Bones. Did you have any qualms, say, about joining an elite secret club like Bones?
GEORGE W. BUSH: No qualms at all. I was honored. I was fairly nonchalant. I didn't view it as a great heritage thing. I didn't take it all that seriously.
ISAACSON: Demystify it a bit for those who might think it's a cross between a Masonic Lodge and the Trilateral Commission. Did your father show up for your initiation, like your grandfather showed up for his?
GEORGE W. BUSH: Without revealing all the great secrets? I got a few of my old club mates who could demystify it right off the bat. My dad didn't tap me. Someone a year ahead of me tapped me. There was an entry celebration. I can't remember whether my dad showed up or not. I don't think so………………
07Aug00 - Time Magazine - Proof that George W. Bush is a member of the Skull and Bones
Time magazine August 7, 2000 Volume 156, No. 6
Campaign 2000/Republican Convention/Interview
www.Time.com
"My Heritage Is Part of Who I Am"
In conversation, Bush exudes both a folksy confidence and an eagerness to charm. In a recent 90-minute talk with managing editor Walter Isaacson, he discussed how his family affected his career.
by Walter Isaacson; George W. Bush
......TIME: But you [George W and father] sure shared a lot of the same upbringing: Andover, Yale, even Skull and Bones. Did you have any qualms, say, about joining an elite secret club like Bones?
BUSH: No qualms at all. I was honored. I was fairly nonchalant. I didn't view it as a great heritage thing. I didn't take it all that seriously.
TIME: Demystify it a bit for those who might think its a cross between a Masonic Lodge and the Trilateral Commission. Did your father show up for your initiation, like your grandfather showed up for his?
BUSH: Without revealing all the great secrets? I got a few of my old club mates who could demystify it right off the bat. My dad didn't tap me. There was an entry celebration. I can't remember whether my dad showed up or not. I don't think so.
TIME: What was the most important thing about your family legacy?
BUSH: The unconditional love I got from my family liberated me. It gave me a sense of security. We were all at a church in Maine recently and the preacher asked whether anyone in the congregation had a perfect family, and the only hand that went up without hesitation was Dad's. It helped Jeb and me not be afraid of defeat....
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