Robbins - Secrets of the tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power

Copyright 2002 by Alexandra Robbins

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First eBook Edition: September 2002

ISBN: 978-0-7595-2737-9

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Dedicated to Jo, Ira, Missy, Andrew, Irving, Rachel, Marty, Seena, and Dave

This book, frankly, was great fun to write. It might have been less so, if not for the following peoples assistance. Most of all I thank my parents, siblings, and grandparents for their unwavering encouragement. My love and gratitude are too deep to express on a public page.

Thanks also to Ellie and Vicki for continually boosting my excitement about my writing, and for inspiring me regularly with their own. Furthermore, life would be boringand not nearly as cheerfulwithout Dave, Amy, Nick, Rachel, Melanie, and Andrea.

Professionally and personally, I am tremendously grateful to Jane Mayer for her editorial guidance and for constantly brightening my day. Jeff Goldberg, Sy Hersh, Joe Klein, Nick Lemann, Elsa Walsh, and Kevin Buckley have also provided invaluable support, advice, and amusement. Thank you to Cullen Murphy, who edited my original article on Skull and Bones for the Atlantic Monthly and did a brilliant job of it. And thanks to David Remnick of the New Yorker, who enthusiastically sponsored my original research on this subject. Im also grateful to Jeanie Pyun, who taught me more with her magazine edits than she realizes.

I would like to thank the staff of Yale Universitys Manuscripts and Archives Library for their indefatigable energy and willingness to help, particularly Renee Cawley, Nancy Lyon, Bill Massa, Judith Schiff, Sandra Staton, and Chris White. Thanks, as well, to Norman Eule and Andy Pike for their time and counsel.

I knew that working with Geoff Shandler would ensure that this book would be intelligent, but it was not until I saw the effects of his red pencil that I truly understood what a phenomenal editor he is. I cannot thank him enough. I also greatly appreciate the efforts of Dena Koklanaris and Elizabeth Nagle. Finally, Paula Balzer of Sarah Lazin Books, agent and friend, has been terrific in both roles.

Sometime in the early 1830s, a Yale student named William H. Russellthe future valedictorian of the class of 1833traveled to Germany to study for a year. Russell came from an inordinately wealthy family that ran one of Americas 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 deaths 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 classincluding Alphonso Taft, the future secretary of war, attorney general, minister to Austria, ambassador to Russia, and father of future president William Howard Taftand 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 groups influence is only increasingthe 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 countrys most prominent familiesBush, Bundy, Harriman, Lord, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney among themwho 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 societys 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 beatenthis 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 memorabiliaincluding a set of Hitlers silverwaredozens of skulls, and an assortment of decorative tchotchkes: coffins, skeletons, and innards. They are also introduced to the Bones whore, the tombs 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 societyand they are threatened with blackmail so that they remain loyalbut 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.