ORDER OF THE SKULL & BONES

The Order of Skull and Bones by Kris Millegan

The Order of Skull and Bones, Everything You Ever
Wanted to Know, But Were Afraid to Ask, By Kris
Millegan. [Note: the web site from which the
original was posted is no longer in service].

1. The Secret Origins of Skull & Bones

The story begins at Yale, where three threads of
American social history -- espionage, drug
smuggling and secret societies -- intertwine into
one. Elihu Yale was born near Boston, educated
in London, and served with the British East India
Company, eventually becoming governor of Fort
Saint George, Madras, in 1687. He amassed a great
fortune from trade and returned to England in
1699. Yale became known as quite a
philanthropist; upon receiving a request from the
Collegiate School in Connecticut, he sent a
donation and a gift of books. After subsequent
bequests, Cotton Mather suggested the school be
named Yale College, in 1718. A statue of Nathan
Hale stands on Old Campus at Yale University.
There is a copy of that statue in front of the
CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Yet
another stands in front of Phillips Academy in
Andover, Massachusetts (where George H.W. Bush
('48) went to prep school and joined a secret
society at age twelve). Nathan Hale, along with
three other Yale graduates, was a member of the
"Culper Ring," one of America's first
intelligence operations. Established by George
Washington, it was successful throughout the
Revolutionary War. Nathan was the only operative
to be ferreted out by the British, and after
speaking his famous regrets, he was hanged in
1776. Ever since the founding of the Republic,
the relationship between Yale and the
"Intelligence Community" has been unique. In
1823, Samuel Russell established Russell and
Company for the purpose of acquiring opium in
Turkey and smuggling it to China. Russell and
Company merged with the Perkins (Boston)
syndicate in 1830 and became the primary American
opium smuggler. Many of the great American and
European fortunes were built on the
"China"(opium) trade. One of Russell and
Company's Chief of Operations in Canton was
Warren Delano, Jr., grandfather of Franklin
Roosevelt. Other Russell partners included John
Cleve Green (who financed Princeton), Abiel Low
(who financed construction of Columbia), Joseph
Coolidge and the Perkins, Sturgis and Forbes
families. (Coolidge's son organized the United
Fruit company, and his grandson, Archibald C.
Coolidge, was a co-founder of the Council on
Foreign Relations.) William Huntington Russell
('33), Samuel's cousin, studied in Germany from
1831-32. Germany was a hotbed of new ideas. The
"scientific method" was being applied to all
forms of human endeavor. Prussia, which blamed
the defeat of its forces by Napoleon in 1806 on
soldiers only thinking about themselves in the
stress of battle, took the principles set forth
by John Locke and Jean Rosseau and created a new
educational system. Johan Fitche, in his "Address
to the German People," declared that the children
would be taken over by the State and told what to
think and how to think it. Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel took over Fitche's chair at the
University Of Berlin in 1817, and was a professor
there until his death in 1831. Hegel was the
culmination of the German idealistic philosophy
school of Immanuel Kant. To Hegel, our world is
a world of reason. The state is Absolute Reason
and the citizen can only become free by worship
and obedience to the state. Hegel called the
state the "march of God in the world" and the
"final end". This final end, Hegel said, "has
supreme right against the individual, whose
supreme duty is to be a member of the state."
Both fascism and communism have their
philosophical roots in Hegellianism. Hegellian
philosophy was very much in vogue during William
Russell's time in Germany. When Russell returned
to Yale in 1832, he formed a senior society with
Alphonso Taft ('33). According to information
acquired from a break-in to the "tomb" (the Skull
and Bones meeting hall) in 1876, "Bones is a
chapter of a corps in a German University....
General Russell, its founder, was in Germany
before his Senior Year and formed a warm
friendship with a leading member of a German
society. He brought back with him to college,
authority to found a chapter here." So class
valedictorian William H. Russell, along with
fourteen others, became the founding members of
"The Order of Scull and Bones," later changed to
"The Order of Skull and Bones". The secretive
Order of Skull and Bones exists only at Yale.
Fifteen juniors are "tapped" each year by the
seniors to be initiated into next year's group.
Some say each initiate is given $15,000 and a
grandfather clock. Far from being a campus
fun-house, the group is geared more toward the
success of its members in the post-collegiate
world. The family names on the Skull and Bones
roster roll off the tongue like an elite party
list -- Lord, Whitney, Taft, Jay, Bundy,
Harriman, Weyerhaeuser, Pinchot, Rockefeller,
Goodyear, Sloane, Stimson, Phelps, Perkins,
Pillsbury, Kellogg, Vanderbilt, Bush, Lovett and
so on. William Russell went on to become a
general and a state legislator in Connecticut.
Alphonso Taft was appointed U.S. Attorney
General, Secretary of War (a post many "Bonesmen"
have held), Ambassador to Austria, and Ambassador
to Russia (another post held by many "Bonesmen").
His son, William Howard Taft ('87), is the only
man to be both President of the United States and
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.


2. Secrets of the "Tomb"

The Order flourished from the very beginning in
spite of occasional squalls of controversy. There
was dissension from some professors, who didn't
like its secrecy and exclusiveness. And there was
backlash from students, showing concern about the
influence "Bones" was having over Yale finances
and the favoritism shown to "Bonesmen."

In October of 1873, Volume 1, Number 1, of The
Iconoclast was published in New Haven. It was
only published once and was one of very few
openly published articles on the Order of Skull
and Bones. From The Iconoclast:

"We speak through a new publication. because the
college press is closed to those who dare to
openly mention 'Bones'....

"Out of every class Skull and Bones takes its
men. They have gone out into the world and have
become, in many instances, leaders in society.
They have obtained control of Yale. Its business
is performed by them. Money paid to the college
must pass into their hands, and be subject to
their will. No doubt they are worthy men in
themselves, but the many, whom they looked down
upon while in college, cannot so far forget as to
give money freely into their hands. Men in Wall
Street complain that the college comes straight
to them for help, instead of asking each graduate
for his share. The reason is found in a remark
made by one of Yale's and America's first men:
'Few will give but Bones men and they care far
more for their society than they do for the
college....'

"Year by year the deadly evil is growing. The
society was never as obnoxious to the college as
it is today, and it is just this ill-feeling that
shuts the pockets of non- members. Never before
has it shown such arrogance and self-fancied
superiority. It grasps the College Press and
endeavors to rule it all. It does not deign to
show its credentials, but clutches at power with
the silence of conscious guilt.

"To tell the good which Yale College has done
would be well nigh impossible. To tell the good
she might do would be yet more difficult. The
question, then, is reduced to this -- on the one
hand lies a source of incalculable good -- on the
other a society guilty of serious and
far-reaching crimes. It is Yale College against
Skull and Bones!! We ask all men, as a question
of right, which should be allowed to live?"

At first, the society held its meetings in hired
halls. Then in 1856, the "tomb", a vine- covered,
windowless, brown-stone hall was constructed,
where to this day the "Bonesmen" hold their
"strange, occultish" initiation rites and meet
each Thursday and Sunday.

On September 29, 1876, a group calling itself
"The Order of File and Claw" broke into the Skull
and Bones' holy of holies. In the "tomb" they
found lodge-room 324 "fitted up in black velvet,
even the walls being covered with the material."
Upstairs was lodge- room 322, "the 'sanctum
sanctorium' of the temple... furnished in red
velvet" with a pentagram on the wall. In the hall
are "pictures of the founders of Bones at Yale,
and of members of the Society in Germany, when
the chapter was established here in 1832." The
raiding party found another interesting scene in
the parlor next to room 322.

From "The Fall Of Skull And Bones":

"On the west wall, hung among other pictures, an
old engraving representing an open burial vault,
in which, on a stone slab, rest four human
skulls, grouped about a fools cap and bells, an
open book, several mathematical instruments, a
beggar's scrip, and a royal crown. On the arched
wall above the vault are the explanatory words,
in Roman letters, 'We War Der Thor, Wer Weiser,
Wer Bettler Oder, Kaiser?' and below the vault is
engraved, in German characters, the sentence; 'Ob
Arm, Ob Beich, im Tode gleich.'

The picture is accompanied by a card on which is
written, 'From the German Chapter. Presented by
D. C. Gilman of D. 50'."

Daniel Coit Gilman ('52), along with two other
"Bonesmen," formed a troika which still
influences American life today. Soon after their
initiation in Skull and Bones, Daniel Gilman,
Timothy Dwight ('49) and Andrew Dickinson White
('53) went to study philosophy in Europe at the
University of Berlin. Gilman returned from Europe
and incorporated Skull and Bones as Russell
Trust, in 1856, with himself as Treasurer and
William H. Russell as President. He spent the
next fourteen years in New Haven consolidating
the order's power.

Gilman was appointed Librarian at Yale in 1858.
Through shrewd political maneuvering, he acquired
funding for Yale's science departments (Sheffield
Scientific School) and was able to get the
Morrill Land Bill introduced in Congress, passed
and finally signed by President Lincoln, after
being vetoed by President Buchanan.

This bill, "donating public-lands for State
College for agriculture and sciences", is now
known as the Land Grant College Act. Yale was the
first school in America to get the federal land
scrip and quickly grabbed all of Connecticut's
share at the time. Pleased by the acquisitions,
Yale made Gilman a Professor of Physical
Geography.

Daniel was the first President of the University
of California. He also helped found, and was the
first president of, John Hopkins.

Gilman was first president of the Carnegie
Institution and involved in the founding of the
Peabody, Slater and Russell Sage Foundations.

His buddy, Andrew D. White, was the first
president of Cornell University (which received
all of New York's share of the Land Grant College
Act), U.S. Minister to Russia, U.S. Ambassador to
Berlin and first president of the American
Historical Association. White was also Chairman
of the American delegation to the first Hague
Conference in 1899, which established an
international judiciary.

Timothy Dwight, a professor at Yale Divinity
School, was installed as president of Yale in
1886. All presidents since, have been either
"Bonesmen" or directly tied to the Order and its
interests.

The Daniel/Gilman/White trio was also responsible
for the founding of the American Economic
Association, the American Chemical Society and
the American Psychological Association. Through
their influences on John Dewey and Horace Mann,
this trio continues to have an enormous impact on
education today.

3. Networks of Power

In his book "America's Secret Establishment,"
Antony Sutton outlined the Order of Skull and
Bones' ability to establish vertical and
horizontal "chains of influence" that ensured the
continuity of their conspiratorial schemes.

The Whitney-Stimson-Bundy links represent the
"vertical chain".

W. C. Whitney ('63), who married Flora Payne (of
the Standard Oil Payne dynasty), was Secretary of
the Navy. His attorney was a man named Elihu
Root. Root hired Henry Stimson ('88), out of law
school. Stimson took over from Root as Secretary
of War in 1911, appointed by fellow Bonesman
William Howard Taft. Stimson later became
Coolidge's Governor-General of the Philippine
Islands, Hoover's Secretary of State, and
Secretary of War during the Roosevelt and Truman
administrations.

Hollister Bundy ('09) was Stimson's special
assistant and point man in the Pentagon for the
Manhattan Project. His two sons, also members of
Skull and Bones, were William Bundy ('39) and
McGeorge Bundy ('40) -- both very active in
governmental and foundation affairs.

The two brothers, from their positions in the
CIA, the Department of Defense and the State
Department, and as Special Assistants to
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, exercised
significant impact on the flow of information and
intelligence during the Vietnam "War."

William Bundy went on to be editor of Foreign
Affairs, the influential quarterly of the Council
on Foreign Affairs (CFR). McGeorge became
president of the Ford Foundation.

Another interesting group of "Bonesmen" is the
Harriman/Bush crowd. Averil Harriman ('13),
"Elder Statesman" of the Democratic Party, and
his brother Roland Harriman ('17) were very
active members. In fact, four of Roland's fellow
"Bonesmen" from the class of 1917 were directors
of Brown Brothers, Harriman, including Prescott
Bush ('17), George Bush's dad.

Since the turn of the century, two investment
bank firms -- Guaranty Trust and Brown Brothers,
Harriman -- were both dominated by members of
Skull and Bones. These two firms were heavily
involved in the financing of Communism and
Hitler's regime.

Bonesman share an affinity for the Hegellian
ideas of the historical dialectic, which dictates
the use of controlled conflict -- thesis versus
anti-thesis -- to create a pre- determined
synthesis. A synthesis of their making and
design, where the state is absolute and
individuals are granted their freedoms based on
their obedience to the state -- a New World
Order. Funding and political maneuvering on the
part of "Bonesmen" and their allies helped the
Bolsheviks prevail in Russia. In defiance of
federal laws, the cabal financed industries,
established banks and developed oil and mineral
deposits in the fledgling U.S.S.R.

Later, Averil Harriman, as minister to Great
Britain in charge of Lend-Lease for Britain and
Russia, was responsible for shipping entire
factories into Russia. According to some
researchers, Harriman also oversaw the transfer
of nuclear secrets, plutonium and U. S. dollar
printing plates to the U.S.S.R.

In 1932, the Union Banking Corporation of New
York City had enlisted four directors from the
('17) cell and two Nazi bankers associated with
Fritz Thyssen, who had been financing Hitler
since 1924.

>From "George Bush; The Unauthorized Biography":
"President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property
Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order
Number 248 [11/17/42] seizing the property of
Prescott Bush under the Trading with Enemy Act.
The order, published in obscure government record
books and kept out of the news, Note #4 explained
nothing about the Nazis involved; only that the
Union Banking Corporation was run for the
'Thyssen family' of 'Germany and/or Hungary' --
'nationals ... of a designated enemy country.'

"By deciding that Prescott Bush and the other
directors of the Union Banking Corporation were
legally 'front men for the Nazis', the government
avoided the more important historical issue: In
what way 'were Hitler's Nazis themselves hired,
armed, and instructed by' the New York and London
clique of which Prescott Bush was an executive
manager? ...

"4. New York Times, December 16, 1944, ran a
five-paragraph page 25 article on actions of the
New York State Banking Department. Only the last
sentence refers to the Nazi bank, as follows:
'The Union Banking Corporation, 39 Broadway, New
York, has received authority to change its
principal place of business to 120 Broadway.'

"The Times omitted the fact that the Union
Banking Corporation had been seized by the
government for trading with the enemy, and the
fact that 120 Broadway was the address of the
government's Alien Property Custodian."

After the war, Prescott went on to become a U. S.
Senator from Connecticut and favorite golfing
partner of President Eisenhower. Prescott claims
responsibility for getting Nixon into politics
and takes personal credit for bringing Dick on
board as Ike's running mate in 1952.

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