The Men Behind the Curtain - Part 8
Skull and Bones
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So far in this series, we’ve discussed the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds and Tax-Exempt Foundations. In this edition, we’ll be going over Yale’s Skull & Bones Fraternity.
Ivy League schools are seen as some of the most prestigious universities in the world. All eight universities place in the top 18 of the 2023 U.S. News & World Report National Universities ranking, including three Ivies in the top five (Yale, Harvard, and Princeton). But the critical, lesser-known truths about these ivy-covered establishments reside in their origins and their additional, more hidden purposes.
We like to talk about the deep state or the “cabal” a lot in this community. In my contributions to the Badlands SubStack I try to offer what I’ve learned regarding the purported inner working of the various factions that make up this geopolitical criminal syndicate, and one thing I’ve yet to touch on is the alleged recruitment process and subsequent grooming of potential candidates. Though my research indicates there are multiple “paths to power”, including being born into one of the cults or showing unusual promise, for the purposes of this post, I am going to keep things limited to the recruitment/grooming process that has been thoroughly documented over the last few centuries at Yale University.
Here are some telling numbers to give you a taste of why I am drawing connections between the Ivy League and the American Deep State: as of 2020, Yale alone has graduated five U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 College founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members, and governors; additionally, hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows, and nine Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university.
A disclaimer: I am not trying to say that graduating from Yale is a damning indictment; I’m sure there have been many positive figures who’ve passed through the university’s campus. But as you will see over the course of this and the next installment of the series, there is a subversive recruitment and grooming process taking place behind closed doors at Yale, and it cannot be mere coincidence that some of the names we will mention have been implicated in all manner of skullduggery, ranging from war crimes to depopulation.
Yale traces its beginnings to a would-be charter called "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School" passed during a meeting in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701.
In 1718, several men involved with the college contacted the successful Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Isaac Newton (who at that time is alleged to have been the grand master of the Order of Sion) would also help by donating books and money to the college. Both men had ties to the secret societies operating behind the powerful East India Company.
Elihu Yale started as a clerk, eventually rising up to the rank of President of the British East India Company settlement in Fort St George, Madras. He later lost that position under charges of corruption for self-dealing and was known for keeping slaves and supporting slave export, a veritable cash cow for the East India Company. So, from its very inception, Yale had connections to the moving forces of the world.
Perhaps more than anything, Yale is known for its exclusive Senior Societies. There are three societies at Yale that have, for ages, stood out among all others: Wolf’s Head, Scroll and Key, and the infamous Skull and Bones.
Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones has also been known as The Order, Order 322, or The Brotherhood of Death. Many of the leading members of the U.S. government and the American intelligence community received their formal education at Yale, and many passed through the Skull and Bones.
The group was founded in 1832 and is the oldest and most prestigious of Yale’s secret societies.
These fraternities serve as a recruiting ground for young men destined for careers in government, law, finance, and other influential sectors of American life. Skull & Bones is the elite of the elite among these secret societies. Only Scroll & Key can claim a near-equal influence on American affairs over the past 160 years.
These societies are not part of any nationwide public association and are cloaked in secrecy. The other elite Ivy League colleges, Harvard and Princeton have similar exclusive secret societies. Yet, even among these few universities, the secret societies of Yale—led by Skull & Bones—are unchallenged in their influence on American political affairs. Though some claim that they aren’t as influential as they once were, this has been a common them going back in time since well before era of the Bushes and the Harimans.
One of many enduring rumors is that the Skull & Bones has an underground affiliation with other societies that were simultaneously founded at two other locations. The number "322" that appears under the skull and crossbones on the Order’s emblem is believed by some to indicate the year of its founding—1832—and the fact that it is the second lodge within an international system. By some accounts, the lodge holding the number "1" is in Germany and the lodge numbered "3" is based at another American college.
Since its founding, Skull & Bones has only inducted about 2,500 members. At any given time, only about 600 or so members of the Order are alive. This small number underscores the tremendous concentration of power in the hands of its members.
Some of the most notable or public facing members of Skull & Bones would be:
Alphonso Taft, a founding member of the Order who served as the Secretary of War under President Rutherford B. Hayes (1876-1880).
William Howard Taft, the only man to ever serve as both the President of and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Henry Lewis Stimson, a partner in the Wall Street law firm of Root and Stimson, Secretary of War under President Taft (1908-1912), Governor General of the Philippines (1926-1928), Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) and Secretary of War under Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1940-1946).
Averell Harriman, an investment banker with Brown Brothers Harriman, director of the Lend-Lease program of the U.S. State Department (1941-1942), U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1943-1946), Governor of New York, Under Secretary of State for Asia (1961-1963), and presidential secret envoy to Soviet leaders Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Andropov.
Robert Lovett, a partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, Assistant Secretary of War for Air (1941-1945), Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Defense (1950), a leading member of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.
Harold Stanley, investment banker and founder of Morgan Stanley.
Robert A. Taft, United States Senator (1938-1950).
Prescott Bush, investment banker and partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, United States Senator from Connecticut, father of George Herbert Walker Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush, United States Congressman (1964-1970), Chairman of the Republican National Committee, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, first American Diplomatic Liaison to the Peoples Republic of China, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1975-1977). Vice President of the United States (1980-1988), President of the United States (1989-1993).
John Thomas Daniels, agro-industrialist, founder of Archer Daniels Midland.
Hugh Wilson, foreign service officer, Counselor to Japan (1911- 1921), U.S. Minister to Switzerland (1924-1927), Assistant Secretary of State (1937-1938). Ambassador to Germany 1938), Special Assistant to the Secretary of State (1939-1941), Office of Strategic Services (1941-1945)
The members of the Order of Skull & Bones, true to their firm belief in "constructive confusion," have intentionally allowed a series of conflicting mythologies to spring up about the origins and history of their secret fraternity. According to one version of the Order’s founding, it was an outgrowth of an earlier British or Scottish Freemasonic grouping first established at All Soul’s College at Oxford University in the late 17th century. Another version of the history of Skull & Bones is that it grew out of the German "nationalistic" secret societies of the early 19th century. Still a third explanation is that Skull & Bones is a uniquely American institution, which adopted some of the rituals of European freemasonry, but which molded these rituals and beliefs into a new form.
Regardless of these conflicting accounts, it can be stated with certainty that the Order was first established on the Yale campus in 1832. It was officially incorporated only in 1856 under the name Russell Trust Association. According to virtually all the available information on its early members, the money required to sustain the secret order’s campus affairs and its broader role in placing its members into key positions of influence upon their graduation from Yale derived from the opium trade in the Far East. That trade was set up by the British East India Company and was flourishing by the time the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, ending the American War for Independence.
The East India Company during this period was controlled by the Baring Brothers Bank. Toward the closing decades of the 17th century, the British House of Rothschild would supplant the Baring Brothers as the controlling financial interests in the China opium trade.
Through the sponsorship of the Barings and also the Rothschilds, a number of leading New England families—some of whom had sided with Great Britain during the American Revolution—were brought into the opium trade as junior partners. These merchant families ran fleets of ships and became extremly wealthy as the result of their association with the British East India Company. Among these key New England merchant families were:
Cabot
Coolidge
Forbes
Higginson
Sturgis
Lodge
Lowell
Perkins
Russell
These New England merchant families founded the United Fruit Company and the Bank of Boston. The founding families of Skull & Bones included the Russell and Perkins families. Over several generations, however, all these families heavily intermarried and became, in effect, one extended power grouping.
Networks of Power and a Legacy of Death
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.
Sutton believes that Whitney-Stimson-Bundy links exemplify what he calls the "vertical chain".
W. C. Whitney (class of 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 Bundy family is often purported by conspiracy researchers to be one of particular importance.)
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 H.W. 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 Hegelian 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 USSR.
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 USSR.
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.
Ritual Conditioning
To be initiated into the Order of Skull & Bones, one must endure a ritual of selection called "tapping". It is conducted by 15 senior classmen of Yale University who make up the current membership of the secret society. They select 15 members of the junior class to be the Bonesmen the following year. Historically, Skull & Bones kept blacks, Jews and all other non-WASPs from its ranks. Within the last 30 years, however, token members from these groups have been occasionally selected to join. Thus, in the most recent list of initiates to the Order, there is one Yalie with a Jewish surname and even one with a Chinese name. Naturally, in recent years the Order has inducted members of homosexual rights groups on the campus into its ranks.
Among the criteria for selection—apart from family ties to the order, which has always been an important factor—is what is referred to by historians and members as the "Three Ordeals." These ordeals are intended to measure the prospective Bonesman’s ability to "make it" in the world beyond the university campus, and also the beginning of their psychological conditioning.
The Three Ordeals cosist of:
Boarding School. The removal from the family unit to be placed in a loveless environment and conditioned into doing what one’s told through fear of physical abuse (in the older generations) or social repercussion.
Trial by Nature. In the older days, Bonesman who have taken an eye to a potential initiate would abduct them and leave them in the wilderness outside of New Haven to test their will and survival ability. This also adds to the trauma while determining how resolved an initiate might be. More affluent initiates have gotten off the hook by taking simple hunting excursions.
War. The experience of combat during wartime is considered to be of special significance for the Bonesmen, who’ve traditionally seen themselves as the elite of the New England WASP warrior caste. Many Yale Bonesmen of President George Bush’s generation, as the result of the outbreak of World War II, went directly from prep school into the military service prior to their entering Yale. For a majority of Bonesmen, the preferred military service has historically been with the U.S. Navy. During World World II, the Naval air corp was a particularly important track for future Bones initiates. In peacetime, participation at Yale in military officer’s training is desirable but not essential. The commitment to enter some branch of the military upon graduation is viewed with favor. Death and war is a recurring theme when it comes to Skull and Bones.
After the formal selection of the next group of prospective Bonesmen, there is an invitation, followed by a formal initiation ceremony. First the 15 senior class members who are the members of the Order select a group of junior class members who are to be "tapped" for Skull & Bones. A group of Bonesmen proceed to the dormitory room of the "tappee." Upon reaching the door, they pound loudly. When the prospective member opens the door, a Bonesman will tap him on the shoulder and yell, "Skull and Bones: Do you accept?" If the candidate accepts, a message wrapped with a black ribbon sealed by black wax with the skull and crossbones emblem and the mystical Bones number 322 is handed to the "tappee." The message appoints a time and a place for the candidate to appear on initiation night. Candidates are instructed to wear no metal objects or clothing.
According to a 1940 Skull & Bones document, the initiation ceremony involves the following kinds of things:
"New man placed in coffin—carried into central part of building. New man chanted over and reborn into society. Removed from coffin and given robes with symbols on it. A bone with his name on it is tossed into the bone heap at the start of every meeting."
Strange rituals were caught on tape in the early 2000s.
Within the Skull & Bones Crypt, also known as "the Tomb," there is what is referred to as a "sacred room" with the number 322. On the arched wall about the vault entrance is inscribed in German:
"Who was the fool, who was the wise man, beggar or king? Whether poor or rich, all’s the same in death."
This quotation from a German Freemasonic ritual remains a source of controversy surrounding the origins of Skull & Bones. It is one of the bits of "evidence" cited by some of the Order’s most ardent critics that the group is "Nazi like" and singularly "Germanic". In fact, the rituals of the Order are very much like the rituals employed by Scottish and English freemasonic lodges.
Some of the mystery and confusion surrounding these occult symbols and rituals is intentionally fostered by the Order itself. Among the principles taught to the members of the Yale secret society are the value of ambiguity and secrecy. These values are not taught as part of a purely mystical or occult quasi-religion; they are taught as valuable tools to be applied by the Bonesmen when they leave the insulated environment of the Yale campus and become officials of government, the intelligence community, the military or the private sector.
Though people will try to tell you that it’s all good fun and that it means nothing, there is a greater psychological purpose to all of this. We’ve all seen, and some may have experienced, a cult-like organization. It’s adherents seem alien to us; we cannot fathom what binds them and makes them zealous of their beliefs. The same psychology that keeps a cult in line is employed in the various fraternal organizations that mold and shape some deep state players.
These people are ancient and master psychologists, who’ve mastered the art of deception and manipulation. What can be done to the human psyche to elicit certain results has been thoroughly studied and applied in elite circles for ages, and is being done on an industrial scale with the advent of television and the internet. In these same circles, these tactics are used to condition the neophyte to place the machinations of the order above even family and God, making them more cold, calculating, and able to compartmentalize natural emotions.
Authors Note: To learn more about the psychological condition employed by these cults, see James Randall Noblit’s Cult and Ritual Abuse and Alison Miller’s Healing the Unimaginable, but be warned, reading these works expose you to knowledge of the most upsetting and depraved behavior humanity is capable of.
SOURCES:
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As an older gardener, what you learn about "Ivy" is that if you don't control it, don't trim it back, it will CHOKE every beautiful tree growing on your property! Thus spoketh Granny!
This is such an informative, comprehensive and helpful fabulous series of articles. Thank you!