"The home of Skull and Bones on the Yale campus is a stone building resembling a mausoleum, and known as "the Tomb." Initiations take place on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence River (an island owned by the Russell Trust Association), with regular reunions on Deer Island and at Yale. Initiation rites reportedly include strenuous and traumatic activities of the new member, while immersed naked in mud, and in a coffin. More important is the "sexual autobiography": The initiate tells the order all the sex secrets of his young life. Weakened mental defenses against manipulation, and the blackmail potential of such information, have obvious permanent uses in enforcing loyalty among members.

The loyalty is intense. One of Bush's former teachers, whose own father was a Skull and Bones member, told our interviewer that his father used to stab his little Skull and Bones pin into his skin to keep it in place when he took a bath.

Members continue throughout their lives to unburden themselves on their psycho-sexual thoughts to their Bones Brothers, even if they are no longer sitting in a coffin. This has been the case with President George Bush, for whom these ties are reported to have a deep personal meaning. Beyond the psychological manipulation associated with freemasonic mummery, there are very solid political reasons for Bush's strong identification with this cult...."

- . from from chapter 7 of:
The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin

It all began at Yale. In 1832, General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso
Taft put together a super secret society for the elite children of the Anglo-American Wall Street banking establishment. William Huntington Russell's step-brother Samuel Russell ran "Russell & Co.", the world's largest OPIUM smuggling operation in the world at the time. Alphonso Taft is the Grandfather of our ex-president Howard Taft, the creator of the Forerunner to the United Nations.

Some of the world's most famous and powerful men alive today are "bonesmen," including George Bush, Nicholas Brady, and William F. Buckley. Other bonesmen include Henry Luce (Time-Life), Harold Stanley (founder of Morgan Stanley), Henry P. Davison (senior partner Morgan Guaranty Trust), Artemus Gates (President of New York Trust Company, Union Pacific, TIME, Boeing Company), Senator John Chaffe, Russell W. Davenport (editor Fortune Magazine), and many others. All have taken a solemn vow of secrecy.

The Skull & Bones Society is a stepping stone into the Bilderbergs, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission.

America's Secret Establishment", by Antony C. Sutton, 1986, page 5-6, states: "Those on the inside know it as The Order. Others have known it for more than 150 years as Chapter 322 of a German secret society. More formally, for legal purposes, The Order was incorporated as The Russell Trust in 1856. It was also once known as the "Brotherhood of Death". Those who make light of it, or want to make fun of it, call it 'Skull & Bones', or just plain 'Bones'.

The American chapter of this German order was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft who, in 1876, became Secretary of War in the Grant Administration. Alphonso Taft was the father of William Howard Taft, the only man to be both President and Chief Justice of the United States.

The order is not just another Greek letter fraternal society with passwords and handgrips common to most campuses. Chapter 322 is a secret society whose members are sworn to silence. It only exists on the Yale campus (that we know about). It has rules. It has ceremonial rites. It is not at all happy with prying, probing citizens - known among initiates as 'outsiders' or 'vandals'. Its members always deny membership (or are supposed to deny membership) and in checking hundreds of autobiographical listings for members we found only half a dozen who cited an affiliation with Skull & Bones. The rest were silent. An interesting point is whether the many members in various Administrations or who hold government positions have declared their members in the biographical data supplied for FBI 'background checks'.

Above all, The Order is powerful, unbelievably powerful. If the reader will persist and examine the evidence to be presented - which is overwhelming - there is no doubt his view of the world will suddenly come sharply into focus, with almost frightening clarity.

It is a Senior year society which exists only at Yale. Members are chosen in their Junior year and spend only one year on campus, the Senior year, with Skull & Bones. In other words, the organization is oriented to the graduate outside world. The Order meets annually - patriarchies only - on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence River.

Senior societies are unique to Yale. There are two other senior societies at Yale, but none elsewhere. Scroll & Key and Wolf's Head are supposedly competitive societies founded in the mid-19 th century. We believe these to be part of the same network. Rosenbaum commented in his "Esquire" article, very accurately, that anyone in the Eastern Liberal Establishment who is not a member of Skull & Bones is almost certainly a member of either Scroll & Key or Wolf's Head.

.. The selection procedure for new members of The Order has not changed since 1832. Each year 15, and only 15, never fewer, are selected. They are required as a part of their initiation ceremony to lie naked in a coffin and recite their sexual history. This method allows other members to control the individual by threatening to reveal their innermost secrets if they do not "go-along". In the past 150 years about 2500 Yale graduates have been initiated into The Order. At any time about 500-600 are alive and active. Roughly about one- quarter of these take an active role in furthering the objectives of The Order. The others either lose interest or change their minds. They are silent drop-outs.

.. The most likely potential member is from a Bones family, who is energetic, resourceful, political and probably an amoral team player. ... Honors and financial rewards are guaranteed by the power of The Order. But the price of these honors and rewards is sacrifice to the common goal, the goal of The Order. Some, perhaps many, have not been willing to pay this price.

The Old Line American families and their descendants involved in the Skull & Bones are names such as: Whitney, Perkins, Stimson, Taft, Wadsworth, Gilman, Payne, Davidson, Pillsbury, Sloane, Weyerhaeuser, Harriman, Rockefeller, Lord, Brown, Bundy, Bush and Phelps.

sources: Freedom Domain, Jeremiah Project