[A-List] New Skull and Bones Book

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, The Ivy League And The Hidden
Paths of Power/ by Alexandra Robbins, Little Brown, N.Y. 2002
Book Excerpt: 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 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.