This purpose has driven Bonesmen to ascend to the top levels of so many fields that, as one historian observes, "at any time The Order can call on members in any area of American society to do what has to be done." Serval Bonesmen have been senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and cabinet officials. There is a Bones cell in the CIA, which uses Skull and Bones 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 Bonsmen.
Through these companies, Skull and Bones provided finsncialbacking to Adolf Hitler because the society then followed a Nazi- and now follows a neo Nazi- doctrine. At least one dozen Bonesmen have been linked to the Federal Reserve, including the first Chariman of New York Federal Reserv. 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. Ywo 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.
Ubder the society´s direction, Bonesmen developed and dropped the nuclear bomb and navigated the Bay of Pigs invasion. Skull an Bones members had ties to Watergate and the Kennedy assassintion.
They control the Council of 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 asd codes for highly classified diplomatic assignments.
The society discriminates against minorities and fought for slavery; indeed as evidence 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 womaen until the 1990s because members did not belive women were capable of handling Skull and Bones experience and because they said they feared incidents of date rape. This sociiety 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 and Bones slip ungraspable like sand through open fingers. Jounalist Ron Rosenbaum, who wrote a long but not probing article aboute the society in the 1970s, claimed that a source warned him not to get too close.
"What bank do you have your checking account at?" this party asked me in the middle of a discussion of the Mithraic aspects of the Bones rituel.
I named the bank.
"Aha," said the party. "There are three Bonesmen on the board. You´ll never have a line of credit again. They´ll tap your phone. They´ll..."
...The source continued: "The alumini still care. Don´t laugh. They don´t like people tampering and prying. The power of Bones is incredible. They´ve got their hands on every lever of power in the country. You´ll see- it´s like trying to look into the Mafia."
In the 1980s, a man known only as "Steve" had contracts to write two books on the society, using documents and photographs he had acquired from the Bones crypt.But Skull and Bones found out about Steve. The society broke into his apartment, stole the documents, harassed the author, and scared him into hiding, where he has remained ever since. The books were never completed. In Universal Pictures´ Spring 2000 thriller The Skulls, an aspiring journalist is writing a profile of the society for the New York Times. When he sneaks into the tomb, the Skulls murder him. Similarly, in the real Skull and Bones tomb is a bloody knife in a glass case. It is said that when a Bonesman stole documents from the society and threatened to publish Skull and Bones. secrets if they did not pay him a determined amount of money, the society used that knife to kill him.
This, then, is the legend of Skull and Bones.
***
It is astonishing that so many people continue to believe, evan in moden America in the twenty-first century, that a tiny college club wields such an enormous amount of influence on the word´s only superpower. The breadth of clout ascribed to this organization is practically as wide-ranging as the leverage afforded to the satirical secret society of the Stonesutters in an episode of the television show The Simpsons. Thestonecutters theme song included the lyrics:
Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who leaves the Atlantis off the maps? Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Certainly, the society does cross boundaries in order to attampt to stay out of the public spotlight. When I wrote an article about the society for The Atlantic Monthly in may 2000, an older Bonesman said to me: "If it´s not portrayed positively, I´m sending a couple of my friends after you." After the article wa published, I received a telephone call at my office from a fellow journalist, who is a member of Skull and Bones. He scolded me for writing the artical- ""writing that article was not an ethical or honorable way to make a decent living in journalism, " he condescended - and then asked me how much I had been paid for the story. When I refused to answer, he hang up. Fifteen minutes later, he called back.
"I have just gotten off the phone with our people.
"Your people?" I snickered.
"Yes, our people."
He told me that society demanded to know where I got my information.
"I´ve never been in the tomb and nothing illegal in the process of reprting this articel," I replied.
"Then you must have gotten somthing from one of us. Tell me whom you spoke to. We just want to talk to them," he wheedled.
"I don´t reveal my sources." Then he got angry. He screamed at me for a while about how dishonorable I was for writing the article.
"A lot of people are very despondent over this!" he yelled. "Fifteen Yale juniors are very, very upset!"
I thanked him for telling me his conerns.
"There are a lot of us at newspapers and at political journalism institutions," he coldly hissed. "Good luck with your career" - and he slammed down the phone.
Skull and Bones, particularly in recent years, has managed to pervade both popular and political culture. In the 1992 race for the Republican presidential nomination, Pat Buchanan accused President George Bush of running " a Skull and Bones presidency." In 1993, during Jeb Bush´s Florida gubernatorial campaign, one of his constituents asked him: You´r familiar with the Skull an Crossbones Society?" When Bush responded: "Yeah, i´ve heard about it," the constituent persisted: "Well, can you tell the people here what your family membership in that is? Isn´t your aim to take control of the United States?" In January 2001, New York Times columnist Mauureen Dowd used Skull and Bones in simile: "When W. met me the press with his choice for attorney general, john Ashcroft, befor Christmas," Dowd wrote: "He vividly showed how important it is to him that his White House be as leak-proof as the Skull and Bones tomb."
Later the year, the Universal Pictures film introduced the secret society to a new demographic perhaps uninitiated into the doctrines of modern-day conspiracy theory. At about the time the movie was being pre-screened in theaters - and perhaps in anticipation of the election of George W. Bush - a letter was distributed to Bonesmen from Skull and Bones headquarters. In view of the political happenings in the barbarian world, the memo read: "I feel compelled to remind all of the tradition of privacy and confidentiality essential to the well being of our Order and strongly urge stout resistance to the seductions and blandishments of the Fourth Estate..
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