Skull and Bones

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For the pirate flag, see Jolly Roger. For the international poison symbol, see Skull and crossbones. For the Cypress Hill album, see Skull & Bones (album).

The Order of Skull and Bones, once known as The Brotherhood of Death,[1] is a senior or secret society based at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. The society's alumni organization, which owns its properties and oversees all the organization's activity, is known as the Russell Trust Association (R.T.A.), and is named after one of Bones' founding members.[2] In conversation, the group is known as "Bones," and members have been known as "Bonesmen."[citation needed]

Skull and Bones is known for its secrecy. Mid-nineteenth century Yale enjoyed the presence of freshmen, sophomore and junior societies. Undergraduates then, with their fickle allegiances, would share the rites and practices of their class society upon elevation within the undergraduate ranks. When seniors departed campus, little verifiable information was left about the rites and practices of the senior or secret societies, particularly Bones, then Scroll and Key, then Book and Snake, and then Wolf's Head.[3] George W. Bush, in his autobiography, states "[in] My senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society, so secret, I can't say anything more."[4] When asked what it meant that he and Bush were both Bonesmen, former presidential candidate, and current U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry said, "Not much because it's a secret."[5]

Contents

[edit] History

"The Order" was formed in 1832 as an outcome of the old debating societies, Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and Calliope. The direct cause was a dispute over the Phi Beta Kappa awards.[6] By reputation, "Bonesmen" tapped the current football and heavyweight rowing captains, as well as notables from the Yale Daily News, Yale Lit, and eventually the Yale Political Union. The group's decision, after much dispute, to admit women helped diversify the membership to reflect current undergraduate demographics. Numerous undergraduate constituencies are better represented among the recently tapped membership compared to the Skull and Bones "cohorts," or "delegations," that included the 27th, 41st and 43rd Presidents of the United States.[citation needed]

Other notable members include: Benjamin Silliman Jr., the first to produce gasoline, and the first American oil company, Pennsylvania Rock Oil; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Morrison R. Waite's informal commentary regarding Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company was interpreted as legitimizing corporate personhood; members played a key role in founding and setting the direction for the Carnegie Institution, the Peabody Foundation, Slater Foundation, and Russel Sage Foundations, as well as the American Economic Association, the American Historical Association, and the American Psychological Association. The first president or chancellor of the University of California, Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, and Washington University in Saint Louis were members.[citation needed]

The Skull and Bones tomb in the 19th century, before adjacent Yale buildings and tree growth.
The Skull and Bones tomb in the 19th century, before adjacent Yale buildings and tree growth.

On October 22, 1945, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson created the Lovett Committee, chaired by Robert A. Lovett to develop a new U.S. intelligence apparatus.[citation needed] This resulted in the creation of the CIA, which has reputedly been an alumni association within the R.T.A. (see below "Bones and the U.S. Intelligence Community").[citation needed]

The Skull & Bones tomb today
The Skull & Bones tomb today
Another vantage of the historic Bones tomb.
Another vantage of the historic Bones tomb.
Bones tomb showing A.J. Davis' towers, right rear facade.
Bones tomb showing A.J. Davis' towers, right rear facade.

Members meet in the "tomb" on Thursday and Sunday evenings of each week over the course of their senior year. As with other Yale societies, the sharing of a personal history is the keystone of the senior year together in the tomb. Members are assigned a nickname.

[edit] Architecture

Main building, attribution in dispute. Possibly Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892) or Henry Austin (1804–1891). (1856: first wing; 1903: second wing; 1911: addition of relocated Davis-designed Neo-Gothic towers at rear garden. Front and side facades brownstone Egypto-Doric style.)

Evarts Tracy and Edgerton Swartwout, Tracy and Swartwout, New York. (1912, Bones' adjacent "secret garden" described as an "Oxfordesque cloister".)[7] Evarts was not a Bonesman, but his paternal grandmother Martha Sherman Evarts and maternal grandmother Mary Evarts were the sisters of William Maxwell Evarts (S&B 1837).

Architectural historian Patrick Pinnell includes an in-depth discussion of the dispute over the identity of the architect in his 1999 history of Yale's campus. Pinnell relates how first the left-side block (1856), then forty-seven years later the right-side block, and ultimately the gothic towers salvaged from A. J. Davis' 1851–53 Alumni Hall on Old Campus were added at the time of the creation of their cloister[8].

Pinnell speculates whether the re-use of the Davis towers was evidence of an architectural "filial piety" suggesting that Davis did the original building; conversely, Austin was responsible for the atmospherically similar brownstone Egyptian Revival gates, built 1845, of the Grove Street Cemetery, on the opposite side of campus. Also discussed by Pinnell is the tomb's aesthetic place in relation to its neighbors, including the Yale University Art Gallery.[9] Additional data can be seen here. New Hampshire landscape architects Saucier & Flynn designed the wrought-iron fence that currently surrounds a portion of the complex in the late 1990s.[10]

[edit] Bonesmen

Main article: List of Skull and Bones members
Skull and Bones 1947, with George H.W. Bush just left of clock
Skull and Bones 1947, with George H.W. Bush just left of clock

Judy Schiff, Chief Archivist at the Yale University Library, has written: "The names of (S&B's) members weren't kept secret, that was an innovation of the 1970s, but its meetings and practices were. The secrecy seems to have attracted fascination and curiosity from the start."

The first exposé of Skull and Bones, published in 1871 by Lyman Bagg in his book Four Years at Yale, noted that "the mystery now attending its existence forms the one great enigma which college gossip never tires of discussing."[11]

Notwithstanding that resourceful researchers could assemble member data from these original sources, renewed attention may have been paid to leading families in Skull and Bones because in 1985 an anonymous source leaked rosters to a private researcher, Antony C. Sutton, who wrote a book on the group titled America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. This leaked 1985 data was kept privately for over 15 years, as Sutton feared that the photocopied pages could somehow identify the member who leaked it. The information was finally reformatted as an appendix in the book Fleshing out Skull and Bones, a compilation edited by Kris Millegan, published in 2003.[12]

Both 2004 Presidential Nominees — Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and now two-term President George W. Bush — were members of Skull and Bones. The nominees were interviewed separately by Meet the Press's Tim Russert. When asked about the organization both declined to give any details.[13]

[edit] Bones and the U.S. Intelligence Community

In May 2007, CIA historians publicly released an article that rebutted inaccurate but enduring beliefs that Skull & Bones was an incubator of the U.S. Intelligence Community.[14]

The CIA article noted that movies such as The Good Shepherd perpetuated in the public mind the notion that entry into CIA's upper echelons hinged on membership in Bones. The reality depicts a different story, however. Referring to characters depicted in the film, CIA historians pointed out that CIA Counter-Intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton attended Yale, but was not a Bonesman. Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), the main character in the film, was Scroll and Key member Tracy Barnes; Keysman Tracy Barnes is believed to have devised the Bay of Pigs invasion. Richard Bissell declined the offer of a Tap to join (he was an Elizabethan Club member, although his brother was a Bonesman). Richard Helms (DCI 1966–1973) attended Williams College. Allen W. Dulles (DCI 1953–1961) attended Princeton. McGeorge Bundy, senior adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and strong advocate for increased intervention in Vietnam was a Bonesman. Recent former CIA Director Porter Goss, Yale '60, was a member of Book and Snake, and Goss and classmate John Negroponte, the first Director of National Intelligence, who was a member of the Elihu secret society, were both in Fence Club, Yale's name for the Psi Upsilon fraternity.

While Bones may not in actuality have been the cradle for future CIA operatives, or the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the predecessor to the CIA), it is accurate to note that a disproportionate number of Yale graduates have led and staffed the intelligence community; for example, George H. W. Bush, Director of Central Intelligence, January 30 1976–January 20, 1977. It is said[who?] that the term 'spook' -- once designating a Yale senior or secret society member -- is the colloquial term for anyone in espionage. (For more on Yale graduates' and faculty influences on the formation of the intelligence agencies, see the book Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961 by historian Robin W. Winks.)

[edit] Asset Management & Financial Associations

In 1943, by special act of the Connecticut state legislature, its trustees were granted an exemption from filing corporate reports with the Secretary of State, which is normally a requirement.[citation needed] From 1978-1988, business of the Russell Trust Association was handled by a single trustee, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. partner John B. Madden, Jr.[citation needed]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sutton, Antony C. America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. 2003.
  2. ^ The New York Times, "Change In Skull And Bones. Famous Yale Society Doubles Size of Its House - Addition a Duplicate of Old Building", published September 13, 1903
  3. ^ Yale: A History. Brooks Mather Kelley, Yale University Press, Ltd., 1974
  4. ^ George W. Bush, A Charge to Keep, (1999) ISBN 0-688-17441-8
  5. ^ washingtonpost.com: Bush, Kerry Share Tippy-Top Secret
  6. ^ The New York Times, "Change In Skull And Bones. Famous Yale Society Doubles Size of Its House - Addition a Duplicate of Old Building," published September 13, 1903
  7. ^ "Yale University" 1999 Princeton Architectural Press, ISBN 1568981678 [1]
  8. ^ http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_03/popup/landmarks/10.html
  9. ^ "Yale University" 1999 Princeton Architectural Press, p.42, ISBN 1568981678 [2]
  10. ^ Fence information
  11. ^ http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_09/old_yale.html
  12. ^ Fleshing Out Skull and Bones
  13. ^ Meet the Press[3]
  14. ^ Historical beliefs

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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