In America power is everything, and it is secret societies that provide the highways which grant members lifelong access to the dark corridors of power. Skull & Bones is one such network eminating from a temple tomb at Yale University and stretching all the way up to George W. Bush himself.SKULL & BONES..
We met a wall of secrecy when we called past members to uncover the story of “Skull & Bones” – many tried to deny all knowledge of the private club formed in 1832.
RECORDED IV: I don’t have a comment on that. Our membership is private. The membership is private and I really can’t tell you if I am or I’m not.
W.Tarpley (Author): The symbolism is skull & crossbones, the deaths head or Todenkopf as the SS called it during the second world war. It’s a very sinister symbolism. It’s obviously free-Masonic.
But now the clubs rituals and old boy networks are coming to light.
Dr. A. Sutton (Professor): Most people want to get along, to gain power and prestige. And they know the way to do that is to listen to the guy above you. So if someone say, in Skull and Bones, calls people he knows and those people know of the power of Skull and Bones, all it takes is a hint or a suggestion.
W. Tarpley: What we have here is a private network acting really in violation of the United States constitution infesting the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department, Pentagon, the CIA and other government institutions.
And yet all this power stems from the life-long bonds formed in the Skull & Bones rituals, where an oath of secrecy is sworn.
Mayer (S&G 1959): Do you know how it all started out? It’s been established for, I think about 150 years in Avon by undergraduates and graduates of Yale University. 15 members are elected each year. Basically, personal relationships are the most important product of the years that you spend in relationship to the organisation.It’s a very personal experience.
W. Tarpley: The emissaries of the various secret societies would come up behind them, tap them on the shoulder, and say something like ‘Skull and Bones do you accept?’ And generally, of course, they did accept and then, as the people were tapped they then left the courtyard and proceeded to the vault-like or mausoleum-like headquarters of these secret societies. That, I think since has been abolished or moved indoors or somehow is no longer so easy to observe as it might have been say 50 or 100 years ago.
Dr. R. Bunch (PROFFESOR): Part of the problem is source of information. We have very little about the Bones from the tomb itself and most comes indirectly such as an article written by a student that went to Yale and actually lived in the Jonathan Edwards dorm and he had this to say ‘It was part of the Jonathan Edwards folklore that on the April evening following tap night at Bones, if one could climb to the Tower of Weir Hall, the odd castle that overlooks the Bones courtyard, one could hear strange cries and moans coming from the bowels of the tomb as the 15 newly tapped members were put through what sounded like a harrowing ordeal. Returning alone to my room late at night, I would always cross the street rather than walk the side walk that passed right in front of Bones. Even at that safe distance, something about it made my skin crawl.
If you were invited to join the tomb cult, you became part of the east coast Anglo Saxon elite – joining the Rockefellers, the Harrimans and the Bushes.
Dr. A. Sutton (Professor): The core, as you go through the early 20th century, is comprised of 15 or 20 families, partially from old line American families going to the pilgrims and partially from money, banking money, that came up through the late 19th century.
Dr. P. Phillips (Professor): Conversation at that level is all off the record. There’s no press involved so it’s like the men are getting kind of a first hand understanding. It may not be any big trade secrets or anything, but they’re getting an off the record understanding of the way things are, the way things should be. And I think this certainly gives them an advantage in the world, in the economic world, because you know, what the directions are, what the movers or shakers are thinking and what’s some of the major policy considerations that are being considered.
Q: Are there any famous members or well known members – George Bush.
M. Mayor: The George Bush? Yup, but that kind of focus is not of great interest to the members.
Q: How do you mean?
Mayor: Because we’re much more interested in the personal issues not external achievement.
05.53VO And yet membership of Skull & Bones seems to result in remarkable careers.. Among its members are three presidents, a clutch of judges, CIA officials and various tycoons.
Dr. R Bunch: They swear to take care of each others interests and they do it and that in the normal conduct of life is probably okay but when one of them becomes President of the United States it’s time to ask questions. What have you sworn to do for your brothers and what interests are you pushing that are really on their agenda and not on the agenda of the American people.
George. W. Bush has been asked about his membership of Skull & Bones..
Q: Does it still exist?
Bush Jr: The thing is so secret that I’m not even sure if it still exists. Record that as the most unusual question I’ve ever been asked in my entire career.
Tarpley: With Bush we reached the bottom of the barrel in terms of American politicians. You have to look at them again and again and ask ‘how did this guy make it?
Bonesmen helped fund George W.s extraordinary rise to power. (Making him $15 million through the Texas Rangers Baseball Club. And) spending millions on a Bush billboard campaign in key swing states.No family has produced more club members than the Bushes: 9 members of the clan including Bushes father, the 41st president, are among its alumni.
Q: Mr President are you a member of Skull and Bones?(aside) He wants me to leave the room
Devotees are supposed to leave the room if the societies name is mentioned, incase they betray its secrets..
Q: You ever met Bush?
Kemp: Oh Yes he was a couple of years behind me but I have met him
Bush senior’s Skull & Bones name was Magog, the name given to the most sexually experienced bonesman.. George W. is known as ‘temporary’ since he was too lazy to change his initial name.Skull & Bones is just one of many secret societies, scattered around the United States, that still dominate the paths to power. In San Fransisco there is the men only Bohemian grove club.
Dr A. Sutton: You have a group that sees itself as superior to all others within society..And I think that is the element which is carried over from Skull and Bones into these organisations. This superiority.
Bohemian club member: This is a private property you’re not supposed to be here at all.. and turn that camera off..’
This what happened when we tried to film at the Bohemian Club.
Bohemian club member: I’m sorry where’s your property line, I’m not sure.
Founded in 1872 by media and business men…. Modern day members have included Ronald Reagan and Henry Kissenger…
Bohemian club member: Move – do you understand move?
Well we okay we got the hospitality - the negative hospitality of the San Francisco Bohemian Club.
There have been cases where people have written about the club and or snuck in. Dirk Matthison from People Magazine snuck in and was actually spotted by a Time Warner executive and expelled from the Grove. He, in fact, lost his job 6 months later though they claim it wasn’t related to that but it was certainly coincidental
These secret networks have also taken their elitist mentality a stage further. Skull & Bones and George Bush Senior have both been linked to the euthegenics movement – belief in the superiority of the anglo saxon race. And fellow Bonesian Averell Harriman has been strongly implicated with US business funding for Hitler in the 1930’s..(And some family traditions are hard to break down..)
Are they done – No. there’s all that tradition and it needs to be protected and it has great wealth to protect and how do they protect it? They’ll find new means. They’ll hold offices, they’ll hold appointed offices and elective offices and they will be in charge of huge amounts of money.
Skull and Bones today is one of a number of groups. It happens to be now a semi-secret group. If this is one secret organisation and I was fortunate enough to get the membership list, how do I know or anyone know that there are not other secret group where I have not and nobody else has had the membership list. So we have to take the hypothesis in mind that there could be other groups which are truly secret. No one is aware of their existence which have this ultimate purpose.
We met a wall of secrecy when we called past members to uncover the story of “Skull & Bones” – many tried to deny all knowledge of the private club formed in 1832.
RECORDED IV: I don’t have a comment on that. Our membership is private. The membership is private and I really can’t tell you if I am or I’m not.
W.Tarpley (Author): The symbolism is skull & crossbones, the deaths head or Todenkopf as the SS called it during the second world war. It’s a very sinister symbolism. It’s obviously free-Masonic.
But now the clubs rituals and old boy networks are coming to light.
Dr. A. Sutton (Professor): Most people want to get along, to gain power and prestige. And they know the way to do that is to listen to the guy above you. So if someone say, in Skull and Bones, calls people he knows and those people know of the power of Skull and Bones, all it takes is a hint or a suggestion.
W. Tarpley: What we have here is a private network acting really in violation of the United States constitution infesting the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department, Pentagon, the CIA and other government institutions.
And yet all this power stems from the life-long bonds formed in the Skull & Bones rituals, where an oath of secrecy is sworn.
Mayer (S&G 1959): Do you know how it all started out? It’s been established for, I think about 150 years in Avon by undergraduates and graduates of Yale University. 15 members are elected each year. Basically, personal relationships are the most important product of the years that you spend in relationship to the organisation.It’s a very personal experience.
W. Tarpley: The emissaries of the various secret societies would come up behind them, tap them on the shoulder, and say something like ‘Skull and Bones do you accept?’ And generally, of course, they did accept and then, as the people were tapped they then left the courtyard and proceeded to the vault-like or mausoleum-like headquarters of these secret societies. That, I think since has been abolished or moved indoors or somehow is no longer so easy to observe as it might have been say 50 or 100 years ago.
Dr. R. Bunch (PROFFESOR): Part of the problem is source of information. We have very little about the Bones from the tomb itself and most comes indirectly such as an article written by a student that went to Yale and actually lived in the Jonathan Edwards dorm and he had this to say ‘It was part of the Jonathan Edwards folklore that on the April evening following tap night at Bones, if one could climb to the Tower of Weir Hall, the odd castle that overlooks the Bones courtyard, one could hear strange cries and moans coming from the bowels of the tomb as the 15 newly tapped members were put through what sounded like a harrowing ordeal. Returning alone to my room late at night, I would always cross the street rather than walk the side walk that passed right in front of Bones. Even at that safe distance, something about it made my skin crawl.
If you were invited to join the tomb cult, you became part of the east coast Anglo Saxon elite – joining the Rockefellers, the Harrimans and the Bushes.
Dr. A. Sutton (Professor): The core, as you go through the early 20th century, is comprised of 15 or 20 families, partially from old line American families going to the pilgrims and partially from money, banking money, that came up through the late 19th century.
Dr. P. Phillips (Professor): Conversation at that level is all off the record. There’s no press involved so it’s like the men are getting kind of a first hand understanding. It may not be any big trade secrets or anything, but they’re getting an off the record understanding of the way things are, the way things should be. And I think this certainly gives them an advantage in the world, in the economic world, because you know, what the directions are, what the movers or shakers are thinking and what’s some of the major policy considerations that are being considered.
Q: Are there any famous members or well known members – George Bush.
M. Mayor: The George Bush? Yup, but that kind of focus is not of great interest to the members.
Q: How do you mean?
Mayor: Because we’re much more interested in the personal issues not external achievement.
05.53VO And yet membership of Skull & Bones seems to result in remarkable careers.. Among its members are three presidents, a clutch of judges, CIA officials and various tycoons.
Dr. R Bunch: They swear to take care of each others interests and they do it and that in the normal conduct of life is probably okay but when one of them becomes President of the United States it’s time to ask questions. What have you sworn to do for your brothers and what interests are you pushing that are really on their agenda and not on the agenda of the American people.
George. W. Bush has been asked about his membership of Skull & Bones..
Q: Does it still exist?
Bush Jr: The thing is so secret that I’m not even sure if it still exists. Record that as the most unusual question I’ve ever been asked in my entire career.
Tarpley: With Bush we reached the bottom of the barrel in terms of American politicians. You have to look at them again and again and ask ‘how did this guy make it?
Bonesmen helped fund George W.s extraordinary rise to power. (Making him $15 million through the Texas Rangers Baseball Club. And) spending millions on a Bush billboard campaign in key swing states.No family has produced more club members than the Bushes: 9 members of the clan including Bushes father, the 41st president, are among its alumni.
Q: Mr President are you a member of Skull and Bones?(aside) He wants me to leave the room
Devotees are supposed to leave the room if the societies name is mentioned, incase they betray its secrets..
Q: You ever met Bush?
Kemp: Oh Yes he was a couple of years behind me but I have met him
Bush senior’s Skull & Bones name was Magog, the name given to the most sexually experienced bonesman.. George W. is known as ‘temporary’ since he was too lazy to change his initial name.Skull & Bones is just one of many secret societies, scattered around the United States, that still dominate the paths to power. In San Fransisco there is the men only Bohemian grove club.
Dr A. Sutton: You have a group that sees itself as superior to all others within society..And I think that is the element which is carried over from Skull and Bones into these organisations. This superiority.
Bohemian club member: This is a private property you’re not supposed to be here at all.. and turn that camera off..’
This what happened when we tried to film at the Bohemian Club.
Bohemian club member: I’m sorry where’s your property line, I’m not sure.
Founded in 1872 by media and business men…. Modern day members have included Ronald Reagan and Henry Kissenger…
Bohemian club member: Move – do you understand move?
Well we okay we got the hospitality - the negative hospitality of the San Francisco Bohemian Club.
There have been cases where people have written about the club and or snuck in. Dirk Matthison from People Magazine snuck in and was actually spotted by a Time Warner executive and expelled from the Grove. He, in fact, lost his job 6 months later though they claim it wasn’t related to that but it was certainly coincidental
These secret networks have also taken their elitist mentality a stage further. Skull & Bones and George Bush Senior have both been linked to the euthegenics movement – belief in the superiority of the anglo saxon race. And fellow Bonesian Averell Harriman has been strongly implicated with US business funding for Hitler in the 1930’s..(And some family traditions are hard to break down..)
Are they done – No. there’s all that tradition and it needs to be protected and it has great wealth to protect and how do they protect it? They’ll find new means. They’ll hold offices, they’ll hold appointed offices and elective offices and they will be in charge of huge amounts of money.
Skull and Bones today is one of a number of groups. It happens to be now a semi-secret group. If this is one secret organisation and I was fortunate enough to get the membership list, how do I know or anyone know that there are not other secret group where I have not and nobody else has had the membership list. So we have to take the hypothesis in mind that there could be other groups which are truly secret. No one is aware of their existence which have this ultimate purpose.