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Skull and Bones- The Secret Society that has Destroyed America

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 21 February 2006
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KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, this gets complicated because nobody quite agrees when the intelligence agencies started. But Yale was front and center, because the statue that’s in front of the C.I.A. is Nathan Hail. Nathan Hail’s statue that they copied that from appears in front of Connecticut Hall at Yale in New Haven. So, if you go back to the revolution you have Yale and the Secret Service.

AMY GOODMAN: It goes back to Andover where Bush went as well.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Andover was really in the thick of this sort of stuff. They had a secret society sort of junior grade where you practiced to be at Skull and Bones at Yale when you were in Andover. It sounds like a joke today, but it wasn’t then. What happened was the crowd that was in with Prescott Bush and George H. Walker at W.A. Harriman, a number of them became prominent in the intelligence community and then when you get to the firm that was merged out of W.A. Harriman, which was Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the partners there was Robert A. Lovett, who was the son of one of the big cheeses in Harriman’s railroad operation, which is how they knew George H. — I mean, it all fits together. Robert A. Lovett was the man who came up with the blueprint for the C.I.A. after World War II, which was never acknowledged and only became public knowledge maybe 15, 20 years ago. So, he was a major player, and Prescott Bush, I have no doubt, was very close to the intelligence agencies. During World War II he was a director of two companies. One was Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton, and the second is Vanadium Corporation of America. They were both involved in atomic energy projects. Prescott Bush was a friend of Alan Dulles who went on to be the C.I.A. Director, but he was also a lawyer during the 30’s for some of Brown Brothers Harriman international gamesmanship, so to speak. So, they were very tightly knit into all of this. And the real thing about the Bushes is how far back they go in this loose combination of investment banking, Wall Street law, the intelligence community, international business, the State Department, and the War Department.

AMY GOODMAN: That is Kevin Phillips. He is author of the new book, "American Dynasty, Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics Of Deceit In The House of Bush." As we turn now to Alexandra Robbins, the "New York Times" best-selling author of the book, "Secrets of the Tomb — Skull and Bones, the Ivory League and the Hidden Paths Of Power," who was formerly on the Washington, D.C. staff of the New Yorker Magazine. She is a 1998 graduate of Yale University and was the first reporter to publish George W. Bush’s transcript from Yale when he was a student there. We welcome you to Democracy Now!.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Good Morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Juan.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Thanks for having me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Alexandra, I’d like to start out - in your book, you mention John Kerry several times. For those folks who might think this is something of the college days and in the 60’s when Kerry was at Yale, but you mentioned an experience that Jacob Weissberg, the editor of "Slate" magazine had about 20 years later in 1986. Can you talk a little bit about that.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Sure. Skull and Bones is really much more than a college club. In fact the year that the members spend in it, their senior year at Yale (there are 15 members tapped for Skull and Bones membership each year) is really just the beginning. Skull and Bones is a powerful alumni network, perhaps the most elite network in the country and it really focuses on life after college. What Kerry did was he tried to recruit Jacob Weissberg from his senate office in Washington to become a member of Skull and Bones. And Weissberg ended up declining the invitation, but he was shocked that Kerry was a member of the society, which so clearly exhibited a history of misogyny, and he challenged Kerry on it. Kerry sort of blew him off. He said, “Oh, well, you know, you should look at my record - for women, defending battered women, et cetera,” and Weissberg said “I can’t be a part of this,” but he was shocked that Kerry would have his secretary call Weissberg into his office in the senate in order to try to make this recruiting possible.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you actually explain that, the fact that he was an intern at the "New Republic," and he got this call, what this meant to him?

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Yeah. He got a call from Senator Kerry’s office, from his secretary, and Weissberg was spending the semester away from Yale. He was spending it, his junior year in Washington. And he got the call, and the secretary said, “Senator Kerry would like to meet with you tomorrow morning.” And all sorts of things are going through Weissberg’s head. He was thinking, oh, maybe he likes my writing, maybe he’s going to give me a scoop. He said, “Okay, I’ll be there, do you know what it’s about.” The secretary said, “No, he wouldn’t tell me.” He gets there the next morning, about 8:30, I think. And he’s sitting in the senator’s office and the senator is kind of schmoozing him and making small talk and Weissberg is wondering why (I guess he’s about 20 or 21 by then), why he is sitting in Senator Kerry’s office and Kerry said, Kerry brought up Skull and Bones. Weissberg didn’t know that Kerry was a member at that point. ...

AMY GOODMAN: We just heard Kevin Phillips give us kind of a chronology of people who are in Skull and Bones, and its significance in the U.S. establishment, for example, in the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency, with Robert Lovett. Can you talk more about this, for those who would say, come on as Juan was saying before, you are talking about some college club.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Yeah. I actually want to back way up and talk about, at least as mention exactly what Skull and Bones is, because while some people on the East Coast have heard about the society, other people across the country have no idea that we are looking right now if the polls are correct, at what would be the first Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones presidential election. That’s pretty weird. Skull and Bones is America’s most powerful secret society. It’s based at Yale, where it’s headquartered in a building called the Tomb, and Skull and Bones has included among its members, presidents, including presidents George W. Bush and his father, as well as William Howard Taft, Supreme Court Chief Justices, C.I.A. officials, cabinet members, congressmen and senators. What makes it so staggering that we could have a Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones, Kerry versus Bush election is that this is a tiny tiny club. There are only 800 living members. Only 15 per year. It’s staggering that two of them could be facing off for the presidency and so many of them have achieved positions of prominence. One of the interesting and I think disturbing things about Skull and Bones is that its purpose is to get members into positions of power and have those members hire other members into prestigious positions. This is something we have seen with George W. Bush since his ascendancy to the presidency, he has put several Bones members into prestigious positions, such as Bill Donaldson, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The number two and number three guys in the Justice Department, the guy that puts out all of Bush’s secrecy memos. His assistant Attorney General is a major Bonesman. Bonesman Frederick Smith was Bush’s top choice for Secretary of Defense until he had to withdraw for health reasons. The general council of the Office of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense’s representative to Europe. The list goes on and on and on. That’s something that’s interesting, because George W. Bush likes to feign his distance from Yale, from Bones, from Northeastern establishment elite connections, and yet he’s going ahead and following Skull and Bones to the letter.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And besides seeking to employ or promote Bonesmen, is there any other responsibility that Bonesmen are supposed to have to each other?

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Well, there’s loyalty of course, to each other. They’re supposed to call each other up. I revealed the code words in my book, so I assume they have since changed them, but it used to be, “Do you know General Russell. General Russell was the founder of Skull and Bones. All a Bonesman had to do was call up another Bonesman, maybe even if they have never met, and they would cough up money or connections or a plan....

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Alexandra Robbins. Her book is, "Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, The Ivy League and the Hidden Paths of Power.” Alexandra Robbins, the number.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: That would be 322.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the significance of that.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: Okay. So, according to Skull and Bones lore, and this is something that both Senator Kerry and president bush would have learned, in 322 B.C., a Greek orator died. When he died, the goddess Eulogia, the goddess, whom Skull and Bones called the goddess of eloquence, arose to the heavens and didn’t happen to come back down until 1832, when she happened to take up residence in the tomb of Skull and Bones. Now Skull and Bones does everything in deference to this goddess. They have songs or they call them that sacred anthems that they sing when they are encouraged to steal things, some remarkably valuable items, supposedly, they are said to be bringing back gifts to the goddess. They begin each session in the tomb, and they meet twice weekly by unveiling a sort of a guilt shrine to Eulogia. That’s the point of the society. They call themselves the Knights of Eulogia. That’s where the 322 comes in.

JUAN GONZALEZ: John Kerry, in terms of the number 322.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: I spoke with somebody close to Kerry, a member of Skull and Bones. He said that Kerry actually uses 322 as a code in his daily life. ...

AMY GOODMAN: Alexandra Robbins, our guest, “Secrets of the Tomb” is her book. What about the induction ritual.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: That’s a weird one. It’s sort of a cross between Harry Potter novel and a haunted house. The heart of the initiation is a ceremony that takes place in Skull and Bones’ most secret room which now we know is probably called — well, you would think it probably is, I can tell that you it definitely is called room 322. It’s also called the Inner Temple. I did get a hold of the script for initiation. I lay that out in my book. But to give you a little teaser, there is somebody dressed as the devil, somebody dressed as Don Quixote, somebody who is dressed as a pope who has one foot sheathed in a monogrammed white slipper resting on a skull, and the other knights are dress as alumni or patriarchs. In part of that ceremony, the neophytes must kiss the pope’s foot, drink quote, unquote, blood from the eurich, which is a skull container and the initiation ends when the initiator is shoved to his knees in front of Don Quixote as the shrieking crowd falls silence and Quixote taps the junior on the shoulder with a sword and he says, “By order of our order, I dub you the knight of Eulogia.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the articles you wrote elicited a direct response and maybe a threat?

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: When I wrote the first article for "Atlantic Monthly," I dismissed Bones as a harmless organization, because my secret society didn’t have the power agenda, so I didn’t think that Bones did either. After the article came out, I got a call at my office from the New Yorker from a journalist whom I knew by name to be a member of Skull and Bones. He scolded me for writing the article. He said, I’m quoting, “Writing that article was not an ethical or honorable way to make a decent living in journalism.” He asked me how much I had been paid for the story. I refused to tell him and he hung up on me. 15 minutes later, he called back. He says, "I have just gotten off the phone with our people." I laughed. I knew he meant other Bonesmen because I didn’t think somebody would actually say our people. He told me that the society demanded to know where I got my information. I wouldn’t tell him, of course, and then he spent the next 15 minutes or so, berating me for writing about Skull and Bones for having the gall to expose thing about his secret society. He ended the conversation by saying, “There are a lot of us at newspapers and political journalism institutions across the country. Good luck with your career.” He slammed down the phone. I was 23 then. I was an aspiring investigative reporter, so that did shake me a little bit, but what really appalled me was that I found out since that in the years since that call, this guy has been actively going out and trying to destroy my career as a journalist, simply because I wrote about Skull and Bones. ...

JUAN GONZALEZ: You mentioned that — or the caller mentioned there were many journalists who were members of Skull and Bones. It would be interesting to perhaps keep track of the journalists who are, and how they’re covering the current presidential race and analyze their coverage of both Kerry and Bush.

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: There are a slew who are members of Skull and Bones, and some of them are biased. Some of them are not. Dana Milbank of the "Washington Post" is certainly not a biased journalist. He doesn’t hold allegiance to his Skull and Bones connections, which is nice. There are others who follow their profession more than the society, but you will get people in Skull and Bones who favor Skull and Bones. That’s the point of the group.

AMY GOODMAN: Who are the other reporters who are Skull and Bones?

ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: There’s a list of them going back to Henry Lucent in New Haven. There are the founders of "Time" magazine. "Time" and "Newsweek" have Skull and Bones origins, which is kind of strange.
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Forum posts

  • This was worth highlighting:

    "One of the interesting and I think disturbing things about Skull and Bones is that its purpose is to get members into positions of power and have those members hire other members into prestigious positions. This is something we have seen with George W. Bush since his ascendancy to the presidency, he has put several Bones members into prestigious positions, such as Bill Donaldson, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The number two and number three guys in the Justice Department, the guy that puts out all of Bush’s secrecy memos. His assistant Attorney General is a major Bonesman. Bonesman Frederick Smith was Bush’s top choice for Secretary of Defense until he had to withdraw for health reasons. The general council of the Office of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense’s representative to Europe. The list goes on and on and on."

  • Folks,It’s time for pitchforks,baseball bats,bb guns,slingshots,mom’s iron skillet...Whatever you have got on hand...out in the streets...raisin’ hell.....these pieces of human shit have to go!!!

  • HEADLINE: USA nukes Iran 3/22 2006!

  • secrete society to the elite at Yale. The number 322 stands for the year it was started 1832 the other 2 means it is the second chapter the first chapter is in Germany. No one really knows for sure but, a lot of people believe it is the Illuminati also closely related to the Thule society. The same society that Himler and Hitler were members of. It is interesting when the crypt of the Skull and Bones was penetrated by there term for outsiders vandels there was an incredible amount of Natzi krap in there. Also it is interesting the same emblem of the Bones was the same emblem of the SS of the Natzi party. These sick bastards have destroyed America.

    • It all goes back to ADAM WEISHAUPT(JEW who went from being a JESUIT to forming the Illuminati).....Most of the rank&file in these organizations don’t have a clue as to what they are a part of,of course, and are manipulated to perform activities that are part of the LONG TERM PLAN to create hatred,confusion,and death among the GOYIM’ of the world....Things are moving along smoothly and at an accelerated rate and the REAL manipulators are of course sitting back and laughing from their hidden vantage point!! They have finally taken TOTAL control of the european& U.S. media.This control of what we Goyim’ accept as reality was/is the final cog in the wheel.Until we become aware of theMEDIA control,NOTHING is going to change!! Bush& Cheney are just White Stooges who think they are the one’s in control .....This has been going on for several hundred years....GO TO Google: WHO RUNS THE MEDIA and WHO RUNS THE PORNO INDUSTRY....These 2 articles should "raise a few eyebrows"

  • Dear Readers;

    The thing most striking about the article to me is:

    "ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: When I wrote the first article for "Atlantic Monthly," I dismissed Bones as a harmless organization, because MY SECRET SOCIETY didn’t have the power agenda, so I didn’t think that Bones did either."

    I have called this "king of the hill" for over a decade. The more hilarious aspect of king of the hill is when the Christians start slighting the Freemasons for being occult when the origins of Christianity today as applied to a Christian Nation and even sometimes Christian (private) Common Law; an oxymoron in itself rendered an absurdity by virtue that one Christian sees Romans 13 one way and another sees it another way. However it is the poor Christians that are at odds with the IRS and the Rich Christians pay thier Income Tax through 501(c)(3) organizations which are actually a form of worshipping government. At any rate Christianity today is based upon the Magna Charta as it made the English Monarch a puppet/figurehead legislature in 1215. Who did that? The Christians - the Knights Templar who returned from the Crusades to vast land grants with pilfered treasure including the Treasure of Jerusalem. These were the land barons who held the king at swordpoint saying, "Sign it or else." See the attachment from the Laws of Colorado 1861 established for the Territory.

    Justice Story (while still a circuit justice)

    Courts of common law have a jurisdiction concurrent with the admiralty over contracts of marine insurance.

    http://www.nils.com/rupps/torrens-system.htm

    The Torrens System is modern day bottomry. Used to be the captain went down with the ship; no more under the limited liability of insurance! The symbols of the Knights Templar hang in the lobby of the El Paso county clerk and recorder (Colorado).

    http://ecclesia.org/forum/images/suitors/DavidStar.jpg

    My point is that the capital of Colorado regarding territory is (Old) Colorado City which is now a touristy part of the West Side of Colorado Springs. You can sit on Santa’s knee in the first capital building, a log cabin in Bancroft Park; in the shadow of the Masonic capital (every jurisdiction west of the Mississippi) on Mesa Hill.

    The Treasure of Jerusalem was carried to safety over a cliff by four Knights Templar descending by rope. Therefore it is not a golden treasure. It is far more likely the skull and femurs of Mary Magdelene and the secret that evolved around her bringing up Jesus’ offspring in the Jewish community in Gaul (now France). On the table where I sign in at the Masonic Museum there, I photographed this:

    http://friends-n-family-research.info/FFR/Merrill_Mary_Magdalene.jpg

    I have read several books on this and feel the easiest method to link all components in history is by understanding that the Protocols are a forged document originally a charter of the Priory of Sion - the Bloodline - custodians of the Treasure of Jerusalem. A disgruntled government advisor named Sergei Nilus altered the document to frame the Jews, hoping it would advance his position of power in Russia. That failed and so the source of the Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Sion fell into obscurity.

    Here is a wonderful example of the paranoia generated and feeding off more paranoia:

    http://friends-n-family-research.info/FFR/Merrill_METROchapter1.pdf
    http://friends-n-family-research.info/FFR/Merrill_METROchapter2.pdf
    http://friends-n-family-research.info/FFR/Merrill_METROchapter3.pdf

    I met a journalist who brought the kid who survived several bulletwounds at Columbine to our interview; and his mother too. We met in the federal repository and some kind of agent sat at a nearby table. This guy, and I am tempted to spell his name but he seems to be laying quiet so I wont cast aspersions, had a gym bag full of conspiracy theories. What was wierd was some of these books were citing other books in the same bag for source material and authority! He was off into CIA mind control - Ritual Child Abuse to create Psi-Operatives for NSA and other black-ops. I countered with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation; HAMMOND’s Greentree Lecture. He told me that the CIA invented that organization (FMSF) to debunk the truth about what was going on. When the agent heard me tell the guy he was suffering from psychomimetic delusions of pseudonomania he smiled and left the repository, confident the fellow had not won me over to being some kind of future nuisance with a bag of conspiracy books.

    http://friends-n-family-research.info/FFR/Merrill_FMS_FoundationCompilationCorydonHammond.html

    Anyway to make my long story longer, this author interviewed is promoting her own secret society by attacking the more prosperous one, Skull and Bones. So you will probably have to read her book around a lot of sour grapes about Skull and Bones making it into such a prestigious position in history while her secret society is not even mentioned by name (Daughters of the Eastern Star?) in the interview.

    Regards,

    David Merrill.

    P.S. If you cannot appreciate what organized philanthropy has done for you, quit pushing that gas pedal down.