George W. Bush and the
Brotherhood of Death
4 September, 2002
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.
Sometime in the early 1830s, a Yale
student named William H. Russell--the future valedictorian of the class of
1833- traveled to Germany to study for a year. Russell came from an
inordinately wealthy family that ran one of America's most despicable business
organizations of the nineteenth century: Russell and Company, an opium empire.
Russell would later become a member of the Connecticut state legislature, a
general in the Connecticut National Guard, and the founder of the Collegiate
and Commercial Institute in New Haven. While in Germany, Russell befriended the
leader of an insidious German secret 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.
The men called their organization
the Brotherhood of Death, or, more informally, the Order of Skull and Bones.
They adopted the numerological symbol 322 because their group was the second
chapter of the German organization and founded in 1832. They worshiped the
goddess Eulogia, celebrated pirates, and plotted an underground conspiracy to
dominate the world.
Fast-forward 170 years. Skull and
Bones has curled its tentacles into every corner of American society. This tiny
club has set up networks that have thrust three members into the most powerful
political position in the world. And the group's influence is only increasing-the
2004 presidential election might showcase the first time each ticket has been
led by a Bonesman. The secret society is now, as one historian admonishes,
" 'an international mafia'. . . unregulated and all but unknown." In
its quest to create a New World Order that restricts individual freedoms and
places ultimate power solely in the hands of a small cult of wealthy, prominent
families, Skull and Bones has already succeeded in infiltrating nearly every
major research, policy, financial, media, and government institution in the
country. Skull and Bones, in fact, has been running the United States for
years.
Skull and Bones cultivates its
talent by selecting members from the junior class at Yale University, a school
known for its strange, Gothic elitism and its rigid devotion to the past. The
society screens its candidates carefully, favoring Protestants and, now, white
Catholics, with special affection for the children of wealthy East Coast Skull
and Bones members. Skull and Bones has been dominated by about two dozen of the
country's most prominent families--Bush, Bundy, Harriman, Lord, Phelps,
Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney among them--who are encouraged by the society to
intermarry so that its power is consolidated. In fact, Skull and Bones forces
members to confess their entire sexual histories so that the club, as a
eugenics overlord, can determine whether a new Bonesman will be fit to mingle
with the bloodlines of the powerful Skull and Bones dynasties. A rebel will not
make Skull and Bones; nor will anyone whose background in any way indicates
that he will not sacrifice for the greater good of the larger organization.
As soon as initiates are allowed
into the "tomb," a dark, windowless crypt in New Haven with a roof
that serves as a landing pad for the society's private helicopter, they are
sworn to silence and told they must forever deny that they are members of this
organization. During initiation, which involves ritualistic psychological
conditioning, the juniors wrestle in mud and are physically beaten--this stage
of the ceremony represents their "death" to the world as they have
known it. They then lie naked in coffins, masturbate, and reveal to the society
their innermost sexual secrets. After this cleansing, the Bonesmen give the initiates
robes to represent their new identities as individuals with a higher purpose.
The society anoints the initiate with a new name, symbolizing his rebirth and
rechristening as Knight X, a member of the Order. It is during this initiation
that the new members are introduced to the artifacts in the tomb, among them
Nazi memorabilia--including a set of Hitler's silverware-dozens of skulls, and
an assortment of decorative tchotchkes: coffins, skeletons, and innards. They
are also introduced to "the Bones whore," the tomb's only full-time
resident, who helps to ensure that the Bonesmen leave the tomb more mature than
when they entered.
Members of Skull and Bones must make
some sacrifices to the society--and they are threatened with blackmail so that
they remain loyal--but they are remunerated with honors and rewards, including
a graduation gift of $15,000 and a wedding gift of a tall grandfather clock.
Though they must tithe their estates to the society, each member is guaranteed
financial security for life; in this way, Bones can ensure that no member will
feel the need to sell the secrets of the society in order to make a living. And
it works: No one has publicly breathed a word about his Skull and Bones
membership, ever. Bonesmen are automatically offered jobs at the many
investment banks and law firms dominated by their secret society brothers. They
are also given exclusive access to the Skull and Bones island, a lush retreat
built for millionaires, with a lavish mansion and a bevy of women at the
members' disposal.
The influence of the cabal begins at
Yale, where Skull and Bones has appropriated university funds for its own use,
leaving the school virtually impoverished. Skull and Bones' corporate shell, the
Russell Trust Association, owns nearly all of the university's real estate, as
well as most of the land in Connecticut. Skull and Bones has controlled Yale's
faculty and campus publications so that students cannot speak openly about it.
"Year by year," the campus's only anti-society publication stated
during its brief tenure in 1873, "the deadly evil is growing."
The year in the tomb at Yale
instills within members an unwavering loyalty to Skull and Bones. Members have
been known to stab their Skull and Bones pins into their skin to keep them in
place during swimming or bathing. The knights (as the student members are
called) learn quickly that their allegiance to the society must supersede all
else: family, friendships, country, God. They are taught that once they get out
into the world, they are expected to reach positions of prominence so that they
can further elevate the society's status and help promote the standing of their
fellow Bonesmen.
This purpose has driven Bonesmen to
ascend to the top levels of so many fields that, as one historian observes,
"at any one time The Order can call on members in any area of American
society to do what has to be done." Several Bonesmen have been senators,
congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and Cabinet officials. There is a Bones
cell in the CIA, which uses the society as a recruiting ground because the
members are so obviously adept at keeping secrets. Society members dominate
financial institutions such as J. P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and
Brown Brothers Harriman, where at one time more than a third of the partners
were Bonesmen. Through these companies, Skull and Bones provided financial
backing to Adolf Hitler because the society then followed a Nazi-and now
follows a neo-Nazi--doctrine. At least a dozen Bonesmen have been linked to the
Federal Reserve, including the first chairman of the New York Federal Reserve.
Skull and Bones members control the wealth of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and
Ford families.
Skull and Bones has also taken steps
to control the American media.
Two of its members founded the law
firm that represents the New York Times. Plans for both Time and Newsweek
magazines were hatched in the Skull and Bones tomb. The society has controlled
publishing houses such as Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In the 1880s, Skull and
Bones created the American Historical Association, the American Psychological
Association, and the American Economic Association so that the society could
ensure that history would be written under its terms and promote its
objectives. The society then installed its own members as the presidents of
these associations.
Under the society's direction,
Bonesmen developed and dropped the nuclear bomb and choreographed the Bay of
Pigs invasion. Skull and Bones members had ties to Watergate and the Kennedy
assassination. They control the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral
Commission so that they can push their own political agenda. Skull and Bones
government officials have used the number 322 as codes for highly classified
diplomatic assignments. The society discriminates against minorities and fought
for slavery; indeed eight out of twelve of Yale's residential colleges are
named for slave owners while none are named for abolitionists. The society
encourages misogyny: it did not admit women until the 1990s because members did
not believe women were capable of handling the Skull and Bones experience and
because they said they feared incidents of date rape. This society also
encourages grave robbing: deep within the bowels of the tomb are the stolen
skulls of the Apache chief Geronimo, Pancho Villa, and former president Martin
Van Buren.
Finally, the society has taken
measures to ensure that the secrets of Skull and Bones slip ungraspable like
sand through open fingers.
CLIP - Read the rest at http://www.msnbc.com/news/802773.asp?cp1=1
See also: Skull & Bones Society:
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