Both major presidential candidates are members of a small
secret society at Yale University - the Order of Skull & Bones. On
different Sunday mornings, "Meet the Press" anchor Tim Russert
asked George Walker Bush and John Forbes Kerry if they could talk about
their memberships in this 172-year-old clandestine club.
Tossed off with nervous laughter, their answers were, "It's so secret
that I can't talk about it," and, "Not much, because it's a
secret."
Should citizens be concerned about this unwillingness to discuss an elite
organization? Is it relevant? Don't we all have the freedom to fraternize
with whom we please? Aren't Lions, Kiwanis, Elks and similar organizations
used by many in pursuit of business and political connections? So what?
William Huntington Russell founded the Order of Skull & Bones in 1832
after he returned from studies in Germany. The Russell family's business
- Russell & Co. - was the premier American opium shipper and the third
largest in the world. In the 1830s, opium became the world's largest commercial
commodity, and the maneuverability and speed of the American clipper ships
laid foundations of great wealth with the smuggling of opium into China.
Many of the fortunate sons of Russell & Co. families were sent to
Yale and were "tapped" into the Order of Skull & Bones.
Fifteen new members are chosen each year from the junior class at Yale.
After initiation rites that include simulated murder, the kissing of a
skull and chants about the devil and death, they are known as Knights
during their senior year. Reportedly, members hold weekly sessions in
which they talk about their sex lives, which some say helps forge a strong
fraternal bond. The initiates have privileges beyond those enjoyed by
fellow students - including a near million-dollar clubhouse, a private
island and access to a distinguished and powerful cadre of fellow Bonesmen.
Three Bonesmen have occupied the Oval Office: William Howard Taft (who
also served as chief justice of the Supreme Court), George Herbert Walker
Bush, and his son. Members have included more than 20 U.S. senators, three
U.S. Supreme Court justices and myriad lesser officials.
The order is legendary in its promotion of its members above all others.
As a Yale alumnus noted in 1905 about the senior secret society system
at Yale, "the best man doesn't always win."
George W. Bush has appointed 11 fellow Bonesmen to government jobs: Evan
Griffith Galbraith, adviser to the U.S. mission to NATO; William Henry
Donaldson, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; George
Herbert Walker III, U.S. ambassador to Hungary; Jack Edwin McGregor, member
of the advisory board of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp.; Victor
Henderson Ashe, member of the board of directors of the Federal National
Mortgage Association; Roy Leslie Austin, U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and
Tobago; Robert Davis McCallum Jr., associate attorney general; Rex Cowdry,
associate director of the White House's National Economic Council; Edward
McNally Sr., associate counsel to the president and general counsel to
the Office of Homeland Security; David Batshaw Wiseman, an attorney in
the Justice Department's Civil Division; and James Emanuel Boasberg, an
associate judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
Taft and George H. W. Bush were both one-term presidents.
George W's secret name in the order is reported to be "Temporary."
Will he be the first member of the Order of Skull & Bones to serve
two terms, in spite of his secret name, or will he hand the reins of government
to his rival Bonesman, John Kerry?
This is the first time that both major candidates are members of Skull
& Bones. There has been little discussion of the order in Democratic
and Republican circles. The Washington Post assigned Bonesman Dana Milbank
to cover the election, and he hasn't brought the question up. Even Ralph
Nader has been quiet. Is this because Nader's sometimes lawyer and long-standing
associate, Donald Etra, is Skull & Bones 1968, and a good friend of
George W. Bush?
Author Antony Sutton in the 1980s called attention to the order's predilection
for trying to politically influence both the left and the right. Is our
current presidential election a contest between the two best candidates
for the job, or a cynical dialectic ploy for control of our republic and
our collective future?
As a Bonesman is reported to have said about Bush vs. Kerry, "It's
a win-win situation."
Maybe it is for the order.
But what about the rest of us?
Kris Millegan (ramillegan @aol.com) lives in Noti and works as a writer
and publisher. His book, "Fleshing Out Skull & Bones," is
available from www.trineday.com.
Skull vs. Bones: the final rigging
of the electoral system?
In 1991, in Louisiana, the corrupt Democrat Edwin Edwards
was running for governor against Klansman / Republican David Duke. People
throughout the country were horrified that a Nazi might become a Governor.
They called it the Governor's Race From Hell -- Edwin
Edwards vs. David Duke.
There were bumper stickers that read, "Vote for the crook; it's
important!" www.fredmulhearn.com/092991.html
It seemed in 2004 that voting for Kerry was the equivalent of the "need" for Edwards to win that election.
from a CBS story about Skull and Bones
One can't help but make certain comparisons with the mafia, for example.
Secret society, bonding, stakes may be a little higher in one than the
other. But everybody knows everything about everybody, which is a form
of protection.
"I think Skull and Bones has had slightly more success
than the mafia in the sense that the leaders of the five families are
all doing 100 years in jail, and the leaders of the Skull and Bones
families are doing four and eight years in the White House,"
says Rosenbaum.
archived at www.prisonplanet.com/111803skullandbones.html
(sorry for the link to prisonplanet, not the best source for these sorts of stories)
Skeleton key to the White House
Both John Kerry and George Bush were members of Yale's secretive Skull
and Bones society. Matthew Wells scours the university for future presidents
Tuesday February 24, 2004
"The Hangman equals death, The Devil
equals death, Death equals death!"
It's weird to think that the two men who are now contesting
the most powerful job in world politics, both apparently went through
an occult ritual that involved dressing-up and chanting the words above,
prostrate in front of a fellow student wielding a butchers' knife and
dressed in animal skin.
www2.bostonherald.com/news/national/bone05152003.htm (no longer
posted on the Herald website)
Kerry made his Bones in secret club - like Bush
by Andrew Miga, Boston Herald [US]
May 15, 2003
WASHINGTON - 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.
Kerry is a respected senator and a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran,
but 36 years after he was initiated into what has been called the ``ultimate
old boy network,'' he's wary of breaking the ultra-exclusive club's strict
secrecy code.
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.
TrineDay, a Lane County, Oregon publishing house, announces its third
book in national release, Fleshing Out Skull &
Bones, Investigations into America’s Most Powerful Secret Society.
Fleshing Out Skull & Bones brings together for the first time many
original source documents and writings from over 10 different writers
giving readers the widest and most detailed view of this very powerful
secret group, The Order of Skull & Bones
Fleshing Out Skull and Bones breaks new ground about the Order and its
members' involvement in the financing of Hitler and the Nazis. The book
investigates how the society operates, makes available for the first time
the Order’s corporate records and asks questions about its tax exempt
status. This book reveals for the first time the Order’s involvement
in the birth of the oil/gasoline business and many other interesting historical
tidbits.
Book Review
Fleshing Out Skull & Bones
Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society
Edited by Kris Millegan
Hardcover: 712 pages; US$39.95
Published by Trine Day
ISBN: 0-9720207-2-1
Publication Date: October 2003
Reviewed by Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
February 11, 2004—Despite the publicity in recent years, Skull
& Bones is not a household name. Even those Americans who
have heard of Yale's oldest and most secretive society tend to dismiss
it as nothing more than just another college fraternity.
Kris Millegan has done a masterful job in assembling and compiling what
is known about Skull & Bones, including writing several chapters of
his own, in "Fleshing Out Skull & Bones: Investigations into
America's Most Powerful Secret Society"--so masterful that it may
be more than you ever wanted to know about this secret society, its history,
and the history of the secret, but nowhere as influential, societies born
in its wake. To date, three Bonesmen have occupied the White House: William
Howard Taft, George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush. Also from
the ranks of Skull & Bones have come two chief justices of the Supreme
Court, more than 20 senators and members of the House, cabinet officers,
judges and state officials, in addition to captains of banking and industry.
This is not just another old boys' (and now girls') network. It is a network
extraordinaire in all American history, which may surpass even
that of the Freemasons. One difference between members of Skull &
Bones and Masons is that the former are forbidden from publicly acknowledging
their membership in Bones. Moreover, from what is known about Skull &
Bones' rituals, they are dark--some say satanic.
George W. Bush has reportedly walked out of rooms when asked about his
membership. Senator Kerry, also a Bonesman, fobs off such questions.
The on-campus group is small and is made up of seniors: only 15 members.
Each year those 15 members each "tap" one junior as being worthy
to join their secret society. But it's a "tap" that lasts a
lifetime, opening doors to the powerful elite. Does this sound more like
the Mafia than the antics of kids in an American university?
Yet, if the current trend holds and John Kerry becomes the Democratic
nominee for president, for the first time in history, two Bonesman
will be squaring off for the White House in November. That alone raises
interesting questions as to why this secretive, powerful and influential
society would pit two of its own against each other. Unfortunately,
the answer is not in the book.
What does such an influential secret society say about an open and democratic
America? Combine Bonesman, who may or may not hold memberships in other
secretive organizations, with Freemasons, Opus Dei, P2 and, perhaps, even
the Mafia, and you have a worldwide network of extraordinary power.
Put "Fleshing Out Skull & Bones" on your must-reading list.
You won't be disappointed.
www.ctrl.org/MilleganStews/Whitewash.html
The Order of Skull & Bones is the Wizard of Oz!
Presidents are just assassinated!
There is no conspiracy!
It’s just necessary for us barbarians "to be able to make sense
of the world!"
Whitewash, Smokescreen, Disinformation and Modified Limited Hang-out
Recent Yale graduate, Alexandra Robbins’s
new book, Secrets of the Tomb – Skull and Bones, The Ivy League,
And The Hidden Paths of Power portends to be an exposé, but in
reality is a response by Bones to its critics, an apologia
and… more skullduggery. Ms. Robbins, claims to be a member of one
of Yale’s seven senior secret societies (she never reveals which
one) writes:
"The rumors and conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones,…
are widespread and deep-rooted.… the most fascinating thing I learned
through my interviews with members of Skull and Bones is that the majority
of rumors were carefully planted by the Bonesmen themselves."
And,
"Skull & Bones is at its core, equivalent to the Wizard of Oz,
the puny but cunning man hidden behind a curtain of mystique, projecting
images that inspire awe and terror in order to expand himself into something
great and terrible."
And,
"If the Wizard of Oz can represent Skull and Bones, then one must
point out that, for a while, Oz needed its Wizard to provide balance and
a constant current of reassurance." [emphasis in original]
According to Ms. Robbins, The Order of Skull & Bones is all just a
façade and the conspiracy theories are created out of a psychological
need of us "barbarians." It’s just a "frat"
house that taps into the power of the Ivy League old boy network. Just
a bonding "thing," Skull and Bones isn’t "cultlike"
but its critics are.
"The Bonesmen cannot see the outside world without first looking
through the Bones-constructed prism; at the same time, the outside world
cannot see into Bones headquarters—instead, barbarians can only
project their own imagery onto the, blank, brown walls of the tomb. Which
they do. Often. At great length. The attention paid to Skull and Bones
is cultlike, and it has grown exponentially in recent years because of
the Bush dynasty and the expansion of the Internet, which has provided
a most convenient medium through which to discuss and expound on conspiratorial
ties. Skull and Bones is not a legend just to those who live it. To barbarians
also, it is more than merely an institution; it is a concept onto which
people project the images necessary for them to be able to make sense
of the world. However sinister the notion of an all-powerful secret society
might be, the existence of a Skull and Bones also brings us some measure
of relief. The secret society allows us to believe that things don’t
just happen: genocide isn’t just caused by one crazy individual,
presidents aren’t just assassinated, family political dynasties
aren’t just born. Even chaos, the society’s conspiracy theories
tell us, has causality. The secret society--like the power of the elitist,
old-school colleges, the small groups of mogul networks, and the political
dynasties--survives because people like to believe that seemingly random
events are orchestrated by someone or something in control. "We’ve
all done a good job of keeping the quintessential mystery alive,"
one patriarch said to me, "because people don’t believe this
is all we do." Perhaps one of the reasons people are so fascinated
with conspiracy theories, particularly the far-reaching networks associated
with secret societies and old-school power, is that they need causality
in much the same way as they need a God. People’s need for the Skull
and Bones conspiracies to elucidate an underlying order is similar to
the need for religion to explain death and purpose. Underground control
suggests order and order implies reason. Explanations, however implausible,
are somehow reassuring."The psychological underpinnings, the rhetoric
and the techniques used to "massage" the message in this book
I find very interesting. Also, her use of the term barbarians to refer
to non-members and her use of Bone’s terms of deference to older
members, I also find interesting.
Ms. Robbins takes a swipe at the "sinister" views of Bones with
an exaggerated and shunted version of many of the allegations about Bones
in an introduction titled The Legends of Skull and Bones. By mixing reality
with known myth Ms. Robbins clumsily tosses aside many historical tragedies
brought about by the elite deviance of Bones and its cohorts. She then
proceeds to tell us "What follows, then is the truth about Skull
and Bones." But by simply not addressing many of the allegations
against Bones that she brings up in her "legends" she lays down
more smoke and mirrors on the whole subject of what is real and what is
fiction, even ending her book with more of the same:
"Whether the legend of Skull and Bones reflects a sinister veracity
or a prismatic distortion depends almost entirely on one’s desired
perception. The great conspiracy surrounding the society is one of half-truths
and our own willing complicity. And its secret, great and terrible, is
that Skull and Bones, unreal, has mastered both"
This book is not an expose it is a paean to The Order of Skull & Bones.
Secrets of the Tomb is designed to deflect mounting exposure and criticism
of The Order’s secrecy and its malignant effect upon our body politic
and our republic.Ms. Robbins has insights into the culture of Yale and
access to Bones members. She supplies us with some gossip, some new info,
a map of the inside of the tomb, and plenty of Bone’s unsourced
shallow retorts.
I will offer a small disassembly of one piece of Ms. Robbins disinformation,
for now… Her dismissal of the history of Skull & Bones financial
dealings with the Nazis consisted of one sentence.
"Nor was it Skull and Bones that specifically instructed members
to aid Adolf Hitler, though Hitler’s financier stowed $3 million
in the Union Banking Corporation, a bank that counted among its seven
directors Prescott Bush."
Ms. Robbins gives us no documentation of her assertion that all that happened
was that Fritz Thyssen "stowed" just "$3 million"
in a bank that "counted among its seven directors Prescott Bush."
Poor Pres, just been stuck with a bad rap, them mean Nazis did it behind
his back. What a crock!
If one checks the historical record one finds that the Union Banking Co.
was established in 1924 to formalize an agreement between Bonesman Averell
Harriman and Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist and author of I Paid
Hitler. Union Bank was more than just some place to stow money but was
anactive participant in the rearming of Germany and the financing of Naziism.
Union Banking Corporation was eventually seized by the US Alien Property
Custodian in October on 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
And there were many more Bonesmen involved than just Prescott Bush. And
much more involvement in the financial affairs of Germany and the Nazis.
In 1933 there were eight directors of Union Bank. Four were members of
Skull & Bones, classmates Roland Harriman, Knight Woolley, Ellery
Sedgewick James and Prescott Bush. In 1942 the bank had (Ms. Robbins is
correct) only seven directors but there were three Bones directors and
shareholders, Roland, Prescott and Ray Morris. And their shares were declared
as being "held for the benefit of… members of the Thyssen family,
[and] is property of nationals… of a designated enemy country…"
There is much more historical evidence about The Order’s and the
Bush’s involvement in the financing of Germany and of Hitler. There
is George Herbert Walker’s and Prescott Bush’s major involvment
with the Harriman Fifteen Corporation and the American Ship and Commerce
Corporation which both helped in the rearmament of Germany and the rise
of Naziism.
Ms. Robbins also side-stepped the very real relationship between The Order,
eugenics and Hitler. But that is par for the course for this book. Not
that I do not recommend it. For as I have learned much can be gathered
from disinformation, first there are the "bona fides" that must
be supplied and then there is what is not said and where they wish you
to go, which always provides illumination.
February 18, 2004—Whichever way you roll the dice they come
up snake eyes. They win and you lose. What were the odds that two Yale
grads and two Bonesmen would be vying for the position of presidential
puppet in 2004?
Before you get defensive about our so-called "democratic process,"
let me inform you that Yale University was the site of the old O.S.S.,
forerunner of The CIA and for the last 40 years—not coincidentally—almost
all victorious presidential candidates (aside from the anomaly, Jimmy
Carter) have been vetted either by Yale, the CIA or the elite Skull
and Bones Society. Not that there appears to be any difference
Whether Bush wins in a landslide—as expected here—or Kerry
sweeps the Democrats back into nominal, yet fictitious, control of the
U.S. government, no power shift is expected. Michael Donnelly asks the
pertinent question in Counterpunch: Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet. To paraphrase playwright William Shakespeare,
Senator Kerry may yet "out-Herod Herod."
Yet not since Watergate or the sinister Mena operation, have we witnessed
such shenanigans or government abuse in high places. Call me a fatalist,
but I fully expect a manufactured, domestic "terrorist strike"
in the month before the November election. Otherwise American voters,
an endangered species of animal similar to the Dodo, shall probably
witness either the surprise discovery of Saddam's hidden Weapons of
Mass Destruction, or the capture of Osama Bin Laden—or both.
Possibly, the neocons will unveil Osama emerging from another
spider hole at gunpoint, metaphorically pulling the rabbit out of the
hat again sometime in September or early October. Another likely scenario
are massive riots in New York City during the RNC. With massive
police response to the "anarchists"—actually undercover
police agents—the Republicans will be seen as a party fully in
charge, frightening to some, fully reassuring to those who value a false
sense of security at the expense of liberty.
To the average voter on election day, the choice will be the devil he
knows—George W. Bush—or apparently the devil he doesn't
know—Senator Kerry. Either way, the skullduggery will continue.
Pragmatists stuck in traffic at the wheel of their SUVs, pondering Life
After The Oil Crash, can perhaps take solace that we occupy the second
largest known reserves of oil. Only problem how to extricate it?
Thus, the only clear winners on the horizon remain the Power Elites.
Certainly The Higher Circleshardly care who sits in the West Wing; witness
the almost preschool level of intelligence exhibited by the current
occupant. As long as George follows the script and doesn't embarrass
the prudes who wield influence with the religious masses, as did Clinton,
he won't be A Left Behindsort of president. No, the clear losers are
those unfortunate Iraqis, the common American soldier sent to far-flung
lands to guard the "neo-confiscated" oil wealth and, of course,
you and I, the American citizen.
Douglas Herman, essayist and USAF veteran, is author of the much-reprinted
Achtung! Are We the New Nazis? He lives and works as an Alaska
fisherman in Kodiak.
from Thursday, January 22, 2004 by Pacifica Radio's Democracy
Now! Skull & Bones: The Secret Society That Unites John Kerry and
President Bush
Interview with Alexandra Robbinswww.commondreams.org/headlines04/0122-10.htm
I actually want to back way up and talk about, at least as mention exactly
what Skull and Bones is, because while some people on the East Coast have
heard about the society, other people across the country have no idea
that we are looking right now if the polls are correct, at what would
be the first Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones presidential election.
That's pretty weird. Skull and Bones is America's most powerful secret
society. It's based at Yale, where it's headquartered in a building called
the Tomb, and Skull and Bones has included among its members, presidents,
including presidents George W. Bush and his father, as well as William
Howard Taft, Supreme Court Chief Justices, C.I.A. officials, cabinet members,
congressmen and senators. What makes it so staggering that we could have
a Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones, Kerry versus Bush election is
that this is a tiny tiny club. There are only 800 living members. Only
15 per year. It's staggering that two of them could be facing off for
the presidency and so many of them have achieved positions of prominence.
One of the interesting and I think disturbing things about Skull and Bones
is that its purpose is to get members into positions of power and have
those members hire other members into prestigious positions. This is something
we have seen with George W. Bush since his ascendancy to the presidency,
he has put several Bones members into prestigious positions, such as Bill
Donaldson, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The number
two and number three guys in the Justice Department, the guy that puts
out all of Bush's secrecy memos. His assistant Attorney General is a major
Bonesman. Bonesman Frederick Smith was Bush's top choice for Secretary
of Defense until he had to withdraw for health reasons. The general council
of the Office of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense’s representative
to Europe. The list goes on and on and on. That's something that's interesting,
because George W. Bush likes to feign his distance from Yale, from Bones,
from Northeastern establishment elite connections, and yet he's going
ahead and following Skull and Bones to the letter.
.... One other thing interesting about Kerry that I wanted to mention
is that both of his wives have been directly related to members of Skull
and Bones. A sister and daughter which is another connection to Skull
and Bones that people don't usually know about.
AMY GOODMAN: Does it matter to Skull and Bones who wins this
presidential race?
ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: No. That's a good question and one that I asked many
Bonesmen and the way they describe it is a win-win situation. As long
as there's a Bonesman in the White House there are going to be many more
Bonesmen in the administration.
New York Daily News
www.nydailynews.com
Thursday, March 4, 2004
Yale Bones Connect Bush, Kerry
By Lloyd Grove, Daily News Columnist
Never mind Iraq, terrorism and the economy. For some conspiracy-minded
voters, the real issue of the 2004 presidential campaign is the
allegedly sinister influence of Skull and Bones. Both President President Bush and his all-but-certain Democratic
opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, were members of the elite
and secretive club that meets in a windowless mausoleum on the Yale campus
in New Haven.
Both Kerry, Class of '66, and Bush, Class of '68, are extremely reluctant
to discuss their common ties to what Skull and Bones expert Ron Rosenbaum
calls "the most powerful of all secret societies in the strange Yale
secret-society system."
Back in August, "Meet the Press" moderator Tim Russert gave
Kerry the third degree on his Bones connection.
"What does that tell us?" Russert demanded.
"Not much, because it's a secret," Kerry parried.
"Is there a secret handshake? Is there a secret code?"
"I wish there were something secret I could manifest there."
On the Feb. 8 installment of "Meet the Press," the President
was similarly uncommunicative.
"It's so secret we can't talk about it," he told Russert.
"What does that mean for America?" Russert pressed. "The
conspiracy theorists are going to go wild."
"I'm sure they are," Bush agreed with a nervous giggle.
Since its founding in 1832, Skull and Bones has had fewer than 2,000 members,
including three Presidents - Bush, his father and William Howard Taft
- and such powerbrokers as W. Averell Harriman, Henry Stimson and Henry
Luce, who all engaged in what Rosenbaum calls "certain occult rituals
of the ruling class."
Bonesmen tend to help other Bonesman. The current President has
staffed his administration with such Bones brothers as Securities and
Exchange Commission Chairman William H. Donaldson, Assistant Attorney
General Robert McCallum, Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago Roy Austin
and Edward McNally, general counsel to the Office of Homeland Security. Skull and Bones investigator Alexandra Robbins, author of the
book "Secrets of the Tomb," told Lowdown yesterday that the
society is positively gleeful over the Bush-Kerry contest.
"Individual Bonesmen will sway according to their personal affiliations,"
she said, "but the Bonesmen I've spoken to have said it's a win-win
situation."
In what might be eerie coincidence or further disturbing evidence of a
scheme for world domination, The Washington Post has assigned Bonesman
Dana Milbank to chronicle the battle between Bush and Kerry.
"I have been assigned to monitor all secret hand signals during the
debates," Milbank told me -- half in jest but wholly in earnest?
"I have it on good information that if this one gets tied up in a
recount, [late Supreme Court Justice and Bonesman] Potter Stewart will
return from the grave to write the majority opinion."
http://dir.salon.com/books/it/2000/01/21/bones/index.html?pn=1
salon.com
Skulls in the closet
What does membership in a bastion of privilege say about
George W. Bush's character?
By Stephen Prothero
- - - - - - - - - -
January 21, 2000 | One evening in May 1967, a man dressed in a black
hood and sporting a gold pin emblazoned with a skull and crossbones approached
George W. Bush, slapped him on the back and offered him membership in
Yale's oldest secret society. The governor-to-be accepted and, like his
grandfather and father before him, became a member of Skull and Bones.
Skull and Bones is one of the nation's most exclusive and powerful secret
societies. The list of past and present Bonesmen, as members are called,
makes California's Bohemian Grove retreat (also patronized by Gov. Bush
and his dad) look like your local Rotary Club. Members have served as
senators, secretaries of state, national security advisors, attorneys
general, CIA directors and Supreme Court justices.
They have also become presidents of universities, CEOs of Fortune 500
companies, foundation presidents and founders of investment banks. Two
Bonesmen, William Howard Taft and George Bush, were elected president,
a post Gov. Bush now hopes to fill.
Much has been made of the Texas governor's "youthful indiscretions"
and of his gentleman's C's at Yale. But membership in Bones shaped
George W. Bush far more than road trips or college courses. In
the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky mess, character has emerged as a leading
theme in presidential politics. An examination of the culture of Skull
and Bones should shed some light on the character of the latest Bush who
would be president.
Though a seniors-only society, Skull and Bones is more than a tad sophomoric.
Each May on "Tap Day," senior Bonesmen troll around Yale's campus,
selecting, or "tapping," 15 juniors for membership in the upcoming
class. The initiation rites that follow sound like something out of Fred
Flintstone's Water Buffalo Lodge or a Robert Bly retreat. Each knight,
as neophytes are called, reportedly regales his fellow initiates with
his sexual exploits. (He may or may not be naked and may or may not be
lying in a coffin.)
During initiation, he endures some sort of physical challenge (mud wrestling?
diving into a dung pile?) before being born again with a new name and
a new identity. In the outside world, members are never to speak about
their society. If outsiders raise the topic, Bonesmen are supposed to
leave the room.
Members take their secrecy oath seriously -- no insider has ever published
an expos -- so it is impossible to separate the realities from the rumors
that swirl around the society. One rumor has each new member receiving
a $15,000 payout. Another says the interior of the "Tomb" (the
eerie Gothic headquarters where twice-a-week meetings are held) is decorated
with human remains, including the skulls and bones of notables such as
Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and Apache warrior Geronimo.
Are the rumors true? Certainly not all of them; the society is probably
not the fountainhead of a vast international conspiracy to spread Hegel's
dialectic via the drug trade. But Bush is not helping to clear the air.
Like his father, who has consistently refused to discuss Skull and Bones,
he isn't talking. And members of his 1968 Skull and Bones class whom I
contacted either neglected to return my calls or refused to comment on
what goes on inside the Tomb. "We don't discuss those things,"
said Roy Leslie Austin, now a sociology professor at Penn State. "We
just don't."
Skull and Bones was founded by William H. Russell in 1832, more than a
decade before Texas joined the union. At the time, men's fraternal organizations
were so popular that politicians like former President John Quincy Adams
were denouncing their secret oaths as cancers on the body of the republic.
When Phi Beta Kappa responded to the anti-masonry in the air by abolishing
its oath of secrecy, Russell (who later become Yale's valedictorian) founded
"The Scull and Bones" as an alternative.
For the next century and a half, Skull and Bones, as Russell's society
came to be known, guarded its secrecy with the zeal of Howard Hughes and
the nuttiness of J.D. Salinger.
In 1856, Bones incorporated as the Russell Trust Association and members
built the grim sandstone mausoleum that is still used as society headquarters.
In 1876, pranksters broke into that crypt through a window and investigated
its interior. Bonesmen responded by bricking up all the windows, which
remain sealed today. Supporters describe Skull and Bones as a meritocracy
that, by rewarding excellence in academics, athletics and the arts, has
fostered achievement at Yale and beyond.
From this perspective, the society's rites, however secretive or sophomoric,
promote fading virtues such as friendship and loyalty. And the society
does have an astonishing record when it comes to turning out leaders.
Russell saw the society as a way to promote and reward academic excellence.
But Bones gradually expanded its mission, tapping not only outstanding
scholars but also football captains, Yale Daily News editors and members
of the a cappella group the Whiffenpoofs. Eventually, the society also
began selecting Bonesmen not for what they had accomplished in life but
for who they were by birth.
George Herbert Walker Bush was no doubt selected in part because his father,
Prescott S. Bush, was a U.S. senator and a Bonesman. But the president-to-be
was also a decorated World War II pilot and captain of the Yale baseball
team. George W. Bush, who had a less illustrious youth than his father,
is more plainly a legacy member, tapped because of his genes and not his
deeds. >From its inception, Skull and Bones has been a bastion of privilege
-- an ideal steppingstone from a preppie past to an establishment future.
And so the society has been regularly denounced for its elitism as well
as its secrecy. In 1878, the Yale Courant ripped Bonesmen as "vampires
of darkness." Bones, it wrote, was a "a curse to the college"
that promoted "royal and stylish living" and divided the undergraduate
classes into "castes."
That same year, the Yale Daily News called the society's mummeries "supremely
silly." During the 1960s, critics claimed Skull and Bones and other
Yale-only secret societies rewarded conformity rather than achievement.
Today, denouncing those societies as anti-democratic cults is almost as
routine at Yale as Tap Day itself.
Bones waited about a century to respond to the criticism. After World
War II, it began admitting blacks and Jews. In 1991, the outgoing Bones
delegation tried to tap the first Boneswomen. Patriarchs, as Bones alumni
are called, literally barred the doors to the Tomb. Led by conservative
William F. Buckley Jr., they obtained a court order temporarily blocking
non-male members. In the society-wide vote that followed, however, the
conservative blue bloods were defeated and a few women were admitted to
the rolls.
There are likely many things this society does well. I would love to have
been a skull on the wall in a private debate between, say, Sen. David
Boren and Sen. John Kerry or authors Archibald MacLeish and John Hersey
(all Bonesmen).
But I doubt the Tomb fosters the sort of character necessary for leadership
in multicultural America and the new global economy. And I am certain
it is an unsuitable incubator for the presidency in the 21st century.
This is true for Bonesmen tapped for their accomplishments in rowing or
debating. But it is doubly true of those who, like Bush, were tapped primarily
for the accomplishments of their forebears.
Since our country's inception, Americans have been profoundly ambivalent
about power and wealth. That is why Horatio Alger is as much a part of
the American mythos as is the Titanic. We like to worship the high and
the mighty, but we love to see them go under. True, the rich are different
from the rest of us. So are the powerful.
But both are supposed to live, at least in this country, by some rules.
The rich are expected to earn their money through hard work or cunning.
And the powerful are to earn their power in public elections, not private
clubs. Just as many years ago George W. Bush was suddenly tapped for an
exclusive society, critics today might charge that he similarly coasted
into becoming an odds-on favorite for the White House before a single
ballot had been cast.
salon.com
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Stephen Prothero graduated from Yale in 1982. He teaches in the religion
department at Boston University and is the author of "The White Buddhist:
The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott" (Indiana University Press).
Copyright 2003 Salon Media Group, Inc.
