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Skull and Bones

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This article is about a secret society. For the pirate flag see Jolly Roger; for the international poison symbol see skull and crossbones.

Skull and Bones (also known as "Chapter 322" and "Brotherhood of Death") is a secret society at Yale University. It is said to be the first such Yale society, established by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft in December, 1832; Phi Beta Kappa, however, was a secret society when the Yale chapter was formed on December 8, 1779. By the late 19th century, the most prestigious of these societies were Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, and Wolf's Head. Others included Book and Snake and Berzelius. Today, Scroll and Key and Skull and Bones are primary rivals.

Criticism of Skull and Bones members has centered upon concentration of wealth, elitism, opium dealing, subversion of the educational process at Yale, war profiteering, and especially nuclear war profiteering. In the exposé "Fleshing out Skull and Bones" (ISBN 0-9720207-2-1), author Kris Millegan and others offer evidence that Skull and Bones exerts massive and undue influence upon the foreign policy of the United States and has been involved in deciding upon the instituional organization of higher education and its curricula, along with the "accepted historiography" in the United States. A Skull and Bones member founded the American Historical Association for instance. Moreover, Skull and Bones members organized the U.S.'s land grant university system. Both Cornell University (New York) and Yale University (Connecticut) became hegemonic in these states because Skull and Bones members assured that the federal grant frameworks were monopolized by their selected crony universities without sharing any funds for well over 30 years. On the West Coast, Skull and Bones members were involved in organizing the State of California's educational system in the late 1800s as well. In the Midwest, the University of Wisconsin system and the University of Michigan System were faciliated by Skull and Bones networks.


Membership

Existing members choose fifteen new Skull and Bones members during their junior year. Many of the details of Skull and Bones membership, initiation and practices are subject to speculation, for the reason that they are kept closely secret by almost all members (often called Bonesmen). However, the Society published membership lists until 1971, and the following listing is based upon those lists at the Yale Library.

F. Trubee Davison (1918) was Director of Personnel at the CIA in the early years. Some of the other "Bonesmen" connected with the intelligence community are:

Some other prominent Bonesmen include:

Overview

Members of Skull and Bones include George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush, President of the United States, and Senator John Kerry (who ran for the office of President of the United States in the 2004 election). The wealth and success of its members past and present has enabled the establishment of the Russell Trust Association, which holds the society's real estate. It has been alleged that graduating members are given large amounts of money by the society, with conditions attached.

File:Skull&bones.jpg
The "Tomb"

Members are forbidden from revealing affiliation until their graduation, at which point they are permitted to wear Skull and Bones pins in public. Lists of purported members are readily available and may be located with a simple Internet search, though some have questioned the accuracy of such lists. For printed verification, the leaked membership rosters provided by original Skull and Bones researcher Antony Sutton are included as an appendix in Kris Millegan's book Fleshing Out Skull and Bones.

The rituals of Skull and Bones take place in the organization's campus building, which is called the Tomb, adjoining Jonathan Edwards College. Ron Rosenbaum, author and columnist for the New York Observer alleged that Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, and a band of Bonesmen, robbed the grave of Geronimo in 1918, taking the skull of the Apache Chief and bringing it back to be kept in the tomb[1]. While most members are supposedly Christian, no particular religious affiliation is said to be required for membership.

Controversy and conspiracy theories

There are three distinct aspects of controversy that deal with secret societies, among these being their rituals and their connections to power. The most interesting among them however, is their intended philosophy. Particular to Skull and Bones is the appearance that it indoctrinates its members to a philosophy that idolizes death and the attainment of power by killing. This, when connected to the fact that a seemingly disproportionate number of Skull and Bones members go on to important positions in the intelligence community (like the CIA), reported to use torture and murder to achieve its ends (see, for instance, the Phoenix Program), raise for some the intuition that the core philosophy of the fraternity itself is designed to engender among its members an allegiance to unwholesome or immoral interests and ideals.

It is important to note that senior members choose their Skull and Bones successors based on their expected future success; Bush and Kerry, in particular, are members of prominent families. And many alumni of Yale and the other universities—especially Ivy League schools and highly selective liberal arts colleges including Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams—have also gone on to similarly prominent careers, without involvement in secret societies. Others may instead pursue highly successful careers in education, banking, law, industry, and government.

Some have argued Skull and Bones is little more than any other college or university fraternity. Some honor societies at other universities, such as the Order of the Bull's Blood, Sword and Serpent and Cap and Skull at Rutgers University, the Bishop James Madison Society at the College of William and Mary and the Iron Arrow Honor Society at the University of Miami, were reportedly inspired by the Skull and Bones, or provide similar prestigious, elite recognition of students.

However, Skull and Bones has several points that make it differnt than an honor society or a common fraternity. First, its membership rosters were meant to be entirely secret and its activities are secret. Second, it is what is called a "senior society," in that only upcoming seniors are inducted into the secret society only for one year prior to graduation. Third, members have a history of committing crimes to further The Order, whether these crimes are part of the initiation or simply as a mutual encouragement of peer pressure, it is unknown. For instance, graverobbing has been commited on several occasions as well as various minor thefts across the Yale campus. The Skull and Bones Tomb is the current resting place for the stolen skull of Geronimo. Fourth, The Order inspires occassionally a fanatical loyality. Members have been known to stab the Bones insignia into their flesh to keep it on them while showering or swimming. Both John Kerry and George W. Bush were members of Skull and Bones. They both refused to talk about their common membership in Skull and Bones, despite being asked on television about it. 

   Bush: "It's so secret I can't talk about it." 
   Interviewer: "What does that mean for America?"

Bush refused to answer that question. In another interview, when Kerry was in turn asked about Skull and Bones, Kerry said: "Sorry, I wish there was something I could manifest...[and then he quickly changed the subject]." Other signs of a "higher loyalty" to Bones is seen in appointment frameworks. Bush has appointed over 10 Skull and Bones members to his Administration in only his first term. Kerry has been known to abuse his publicly funded Senator's office to "recruit" potential future Bonesmembers whom he knew were juniors going to Yale.

Another area of interest is the aspect of specific ritual acts, which members take part of. Of the few accounts of such rituals, some are claimed to be related or similar to Satanic practices. Within the Bones 'tomb' are rooms dedicated for what appears to be Satanic worship, or as Kris Millegan writes, is uncannily like a room arranged for an entrance into an higher level of the Bavarian Illuminati. There are innumerable human skulls and bones in the 'tomb' which of course is illegal under Connecticut law.

BUILDING A BONESMAN: DESENSITIZED ELITIST "KNIGHTS" AGAINST A WORLD OF "BARBARIANS"

More plausible and supported, however, are accounts (as with many fraternities) of rites-of-passage related to sexuality, conquering fear, and group trust. Among the reports is an initiation rite, wherein a pledge spends a night naked in a coffin while telling other members of their sexual encounters. Ritualized homosexuality may play a part of the Bones "bonding experience" as well.

Starting in 1833, each year one of the responsibilities of the cohort of fifteen seniors is to select fifteen new junior members to replace them. This is called being "tapped" (selected) for the society. To be tapped for Skull and Bones is seen by many Yale students as the hightest honor that can be attained, though some occassionally refuse. For a year, Bones members meet at least weekly and conduct long self-analysis of each other and critique. This is aimed at creating a long term bond between them as they leave the university instead of during their stay at the university. Within the Bones 'tomb' are rooms dedicated for what appears to be Satanic worship, and as noted above, Kris Millegan writes these rooms are uncannily arranged like a room arranged for an entrance into an higher level of the Bavarian Illuminati. [Article: "The Boodle Boys".] Bones members are reported to be forced to reveal their innermost secrets and their "sexual biography" to one another. This may be useful later for blackmailing to keep them in line or loyally quiet. In the tomb with each other for year, members reputedly (according to those who have broken in and/or disaffected members) dine off Hitler's china set and silverware consuming expensive gourmet meals cooked for them by their own private maid/chef. Members are given new code names. Plus, the members call themselves "Knights," and simulaneously call everyone else in the world at large "barbarians." The Order encourages members to view the world outside of Skull and Bones in a desensitized fashion and in a dissimulating fashion.


A LAYERED SECRET SOCIETY OF INNER CORE FAMILIES AND OUTER "PORCH BRETHEREN"

Partially, "tapping" is a response to visible or anticipated excellence, thus it could be considered meritocratic. However, since a great many members of the membership in this secret society are drawn over and over from the same families as the "core" of the group, it is a typical nested secret society with "porch bretheren" on the outside making a power network for those in the inner administrative levels of the secret society. The top repetitive familes in Skull and Bones are known because in 1985 a disgruntled Skull and Bones member leaked rosters to a private researcher, Antony Sutton. These rosters had been entirely secret for more than 150 years. Sutton was astounded at the information they contained: it was a whole level of secret political and economic integration that he had only been able to research publicly before.

Therefore, the hard data we have about this secret society comes from their own membership rosters. Known data covers the years 1833-1985, with some additional years. This original leaked 1985 data was kept privately for over 15 years, as Sutton feared that the xeroxed pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it. The information was finaally reformatted as an appendix in the book Fleshing out Skull and Bones by editor, researcher, and writer Kris Millegan, who published it in 2003. The data show the following families as an intergenerational elite core of Skull and Bones: Smith, Walker, Allen, Brown, Clark, White, Day, Johnson, Jones, Miller, Stewart, Thompson, Cheney, Taft, Williams, Adams, Davis, Foster, Shepard, Campbell, Hall, Robinson, and Whitney.

HISTORY OF "THE ORDER" AND THE DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES VERY MUCH INTERTWINED

The history of Skull and Bones is intimately involved with the expansion of the military industrial complex from Connecticut's "arsenal of democracy"; with the expansion of the oil raw material regime and the demotion of other choices of energy, with the design to create a political monopoly on energy supplies; with the land grant university frameworks in the United States (started by Bonesmembers and monopolized by them in Connecticut and New York for 30 years--it is Skull and Bones financial cronyism which built Cornell University in New York and Yale University in Connecticut, while other universities suffered). Educationally or scientifically, Bonesmen started the American History Association, and were involved in the "scientific racism" eugenics policies in the early 20th century United States. Bonesmembers are involved in innumerable wars which are typically started without any evidence of danger or started on entirely false pretexts, in the history of the United States.

Based on historical analysis of institutions that Bones are involved in, drawn from information in the 1833-1985 membership roster, their effect on the United States has been to turn it into a very secretive, aristocratic, warmongering, and centralized operation of power in many "public" institutions ranging from education, the military, corporations, courts, and political representation.

The video of a purported Skull and Bones ritual, taken by journalist Ron Rosenbaum, shows hooded, masked figures participating in what looks like an initiation rite. Bonesmen themselves have laughed it off saying, "we just wanted to f*ck with him."

On December 11, 1909, the New York Times reported that Harold Phelps Stokes, a former member of Skull and Bones, had donated a mummy to the society which he acquired on his visit to Egypt with another member, Allan Klots. The article noted that "Klots and Harold Stokes appear to have thought that the mummy would be a picturesque addition to the paraphernalia of Skull and Bones...."

The conspiracy theories and stories surrounding Skull and Bones was the subject of a fictional film The Skulls, which has had at least two sequels and rather mixed reviews.

Mysticism

Skull and Bones are said within the mysticism community to be a subdivision of a larger society known as the 'Black Lodge', which is diametrically opposed to the Great White Lodge. Some have alleged that the society has ties to the Thule Society, which was involved in the foundation of Nazi Germany, as well as the Vril Society, also a society deeply involved in Nazism. This would connect with the Nazi memorabilia found in the Tomb.

Quotes

See also

Videos

Articles

Further Reading

  • Fleshing Out Skull and Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society (2003), by Kris Millegan, editor
  • America's Secret Establishment by Antony C. Sutton
  • George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992), by Tarpley and Chaitkin. The copiously documented 700 page book is available free on the web: http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. Chapter 7, "Skull and Bones: The Racist Nightmare at Yale," is recommeded.
  • Secrets of the Tomb by Alexandra Robbins (ISBN 0-31-672091-7)
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