Skull and Bones

It's a little known fact, but the alumni of Yale University’s secret society “Skull and Bones” founded in 1832 reads like a who’s who of the rich and powerful. Indeed the societies avowed purpose is the placement of members into positions of power and even a partial list of those members (Bonesmen) reveals the depth of its influence:

William M. Evarts (1837), U.S. Secretary of State
Timothy Dwight V (1849), Yale President
William Henry Gleason (1853), Lt. Governor of Florida
Chauncey Depew (1855), U.S. Senator
William Howard Taft (1878), 27th President of the United States (the first of three Bonesmen to become President)
Henry L Stimson (1888), U.S. Secretary of War
Pierre Jay (1892), first chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Percy Rockefeller (1900), director of Remington Arms and Standard Oil
Harold Stanley 1908), founder of Morgan Stanley
Donald Ogden Stewart (1916), author, screenwriter and Academy Award winner
Prescott Bush (1916), U.S. Senator, Father of George Bush Sr. and grandfather of George Bush Jr.
Robert A. Lovett (1918), U.S. Secretary of Defence
Britton Hadden and Henry Luce (1920), co-founders of Time-Life Enterprises
H.J. Heinz II (1931), Heir to H.J. Heinz Co.
William P. Bundy (1939), State Department liaison for the Bay of Pigs Invasion
James Whitmore (1942), American Actor
Richard Dale Drain (1943), CIA operative, proposed Bay of Pigs Invasion
George W. Bush Sr. (1948), 41st U.S. President; 11th Director of Central Intelligence
Robert Gow (1955), President of Bush Sr.’s Zapata Oil
Frederick W. Smith (1966), founder of FedEx
John Kerry (1966), U.S. Senator
George W. Bush Jr. (1968), 43rd President of the United States
Edward S. Lampert (1984), founder of ESL Investments
Austin Goolsbee (1991), Barack Obama’s economic advisor

The origins of “Skull and Bones” are somewhat ambiguous (some conspiracy theorists believe they are an American chapter of the Bavarian Illuminati), their roots and early history one of mystery, mysticism, mayhem and in some cases downright illegality.

It began with founders William Huntington Russell, whose family had made themselves incredibly wealthy smuggling opium from Turkey into China and Alphonso Taft who would become the father of William Howard Taft the 27th President of the United States.

Originally known as the Eulogian Club, it paid obeisance to Eulogia the goddess of eloquence who allegedly ascended to heaven upon the death of Demosthenes the Greek orator in 322 BC supposedly returning at the time of the societies inception in 1832. Bonesmen are purportedly encouraged to steal objects to give her as gifts, the skulls of Geronimo (allegedly stolen by President Bush‘s grandfather), Pancho Villa and Che Guevara along with Hitler’s china and the gravestone of Elihu Yale stolen from Wrexham, Wales, all apparently reside within the society’s padlocked headquarters a cold almost windowless edifice known affectionately as the “Tomb.”

Reports of grown men engaging in bizarre nocturnal initiation ceremonies involving knife wielding women, satanic and skeleton costumes, bones and coffins, along with intimate tete-a-tetes in which Bonesmen reveal intimate sexual secrets to each other, sometimes while naked, might seem funny to some, even ludicrous, but when one considers that these men and since 1992 women wield upon graduation immense power it is also upon reflection downright frightening.

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