Bush, Bonesmen reportedly never saw him return to the Tomb for reunions or dinners, unlike his father who was at a Bones Tomb celebration as recently as 1998. In effect, if there had ever been some nefarious, anti-Christian plot cooked up within the “Tomb,” as the Skull and Bones building is called, it does not seem to have made much imprint in the Bonesmen of the late twentieth century.Īs for George W. They included McGeorge Bundy and none other than William Sloan Coffin, later to be a thorn in the flesh of freshman George W. Buckley, a Bonesman, denounced the socialist and atheistic leanings of much of the Yale faculty, even as several bonesmen from earlier classes vigorously defended the university against Buckley’s attack. In his important 1951 book, God and Man at Yale, William F. It focuses on stripping initiates of any pretense or barriers of reserve about who they really are-a process that, in its turn, is likely to reinforce a sense of bonding among the fifteen “knights,” as the newly tapped members are called, for the rest of their time at Yale and, for many Bonesmen, for the rest of their lives. The Skull and Bones initiation ritual-which appears never to have been fully and credibly penetrated by outsiders-does seem to involve some hocus-pocus ceremonials, but almost certainly not of any genuinely “spiritual” significance. It was a chance to make fourteen new friends.” is dutifully reticent, writing, “My senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society, so secret I can’t say anything more. Bonesmen traditionally are supposed to leave the room anytime a “barbarian” (i.e., non-Bonesman) even mentions the name of the society or the numeral by which it is also sometimes known, 322, In A Charge to Keep, George W. were an Orthodox Jew and a Jordanian Arab. But while the first century and more of the Skull and Bones tradition was heavily Waspish from the 1950s onward, both African Americans and foreigners were admitted.Īmong those tapped along with George W. Buckley, and of course Bush Senior’s father, Prescott Bush, later himself a U. Averill Harriman, Secretary of State Henry Stimson, Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential aspirant John Kerry, conservative political commentator and author William F. President and Supreme Court Justice Howard Taft, Ambassador W. The prestige of Skull and Bones membership and the fear of its alleged power among many of the society’s critics are products of the secrecy in which the society has operated from the outset and the unmistakable achievement of generation upon generation of Bonesmen. Since the intake is so small, there are only around eight hundred Bonesmen (women were admitted for the first time in 1992) at any time, and Yale being already an elite institution, it is hardly surprising that Bonesmen have risen to be United States cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, and even, on three occasions, presidents of the United States-most recently, Bush Senior and George W. Skull and Bones is the most famous of the Yale societies, which admit a dozen or so juniors as lifetime members.

was “tapped” (invited by existing membership) for Skull and Bones, the well-known Yale senior-year secret society that was founded in 1832 and has been the focus of wild, indeed sometimes paranoid, conspiracy theories ever since. The following is an excerpt from his book about George Bush’s involvement with Skull and Bones. When I was at Yale University, I passed by the building but never really knew much about the organization.įortunately, David Aikman (former Senior Correspondent for Time Magazine) has written a book A Man of Faith: The Spritual Journey of George W. From time to time we have received questions about this organization. Thank you for your question about Skull and Bones.

Kerby Anderson is a Yale University graduate, will he dismiss the Skull & Bones secret club on Yale University as just a frat house like all the others fraternities? Bush and John Kerry were asked about their involvement in Skull and Bones on the Tim Russert – Meet The Press show, both laughed it off as it was too secret to talk about… What are they hiding? Bush and John Kerry are members of a satanic secret society known as Skull and Bones.

Skull and bones cult