by Texe Marrs
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Skull & Bones “Good Old Boys” Club—Not Just A Fraternity
The “Good Old Boys” Club of the Skull & Bones alumni have infiltrated every aspect of society. In four areas in particular, their influence is keenly felt—American foreign policy, Wall Street and money, education, and religion. An examination of the “Good Old Boys” network in these four arenas of power should, therefore, be an illuminating experience.
The Skull & Bones has an iron grip on American foreign policy. Its patriarchs have been able to gain impressive positions of influence in the two key Brotherhood groups that dictate U.S. foreign policy objectives: the Trilateral Commission (TLC) and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). From these positions of advantage, they have been able to grab for themselves high-level positions in Congress, the White House, and the foreign service. They have also been active in places of leadership for the liberal foundations—Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Russell Sage, etc. which consistently support the aims of the Brotherhood.
Skull & Bones and the Council on Foreign Relations
The bonesmen from the Tomb have especially been adept in controlling the Council on Foreign Relations. It is well-known in the Washington D.C. political community that the CFR provides the bulk of executives and politicians for the federal government. Without the CFR stamp of approval, a political candidate, ambassador hopeful, or cabinet post nominee has little chance of selection, appointment, or confirmation.
This power should be kept in mind when we observe that the President of the CFR elite is a Skull & Bones man, Winston Lord (class of ’59), of the aristocratic Lord family dynasty. Winston Lord is also on the steering committee of the Bilderbergers and was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as U.S. Ambassador to Red China.
The China connection is important. The Brotherhood has long had its greedy, green eyes on this plum of Asia. Its members get a little giddy and weak in the knees when they daydream of a market of a billion people for their products and when they consider the untapped natural resources of the vast wilderness land areas of China, Tibet, and Mongolia.
With dollar signs in their eyes, the Brotherhood first had President Nixon send Rockefeller associate and CFR/ TLC man Henry Kissinger to Red China in the 1970’s on a mission to open up diplomatic, financial, and trade relations. He was followed-up by bonesman George Bush, whom President Nixon made a special envoy to Peking. Then, bonesman Winston Lord was chosen for this same, important post.
Columnist William F. Buckley is on the CFR’s membership rolls. Buckley, who, as we have seen, is a Skull & Bones alumni, has also been honored as a participant in the secretive Bilderbergers Group.
Two other bonesmen high up in the CFR pecking order are H. J. Heinz (class of ’31), who’s also president of the American Friends of Bilderberg, Inc.; and William P. Bundy (class of ’39). Bundy is editor of the CFR journal, Foreign Affairs.
George Bush was himself a CFR and TLC member until 1980 (his father, Prescott Sheldon Bush, was a co-founder of the CFR). He supposedly resigned from both the CFR and TLC in 1980 during the heat of the campaign for the Republican Party nomination for President, after a concerned group of Americans ran a full-page ad in a Florida newspaper exposing Bush’s membership in these two firmly anti-American, pro-New World Order organizations. His resignation was due to political expediency.
But financial magnate and Bilderberger overseer David Rockefeller, in a recent interview, commented that George Bush has kept up his intimate relationship with his Trilateral/ CFR buddies. Moreover, Rockefeller revealed that President George Bush continues to maintain an “open door” at the White House for CFR and Trilateral Commission members:
He (George Bush) has since spoken to the Council and the Trilateral and has been fully supportive of their activities. Even though he has resigned, he hasn’t walked away from them. 1
The Trilateral Commission Link
The Trilateral Commission is a very popular stomping ground for bonesmen. J. Richardson Dilworth (Skull & Bones, class of ’38) is not only a trilateralist but as president of Rockefeller Family Associates, he manages the day-to-day operations of the vast Rockefeller financial empire. Dilworth operates out of Room 3600 of the famed Rockefeller Plaza building in New York City. As I’ve mentioned, Dilworth’s wealthy boss, David Rockefeller, founded the Trilateral Commission.
By holding key positions inside the influential CFR and TLC organizations the men of the Skull & Bones are well-positioned to push forward their New World Order invention. This, plus the Order’s current lock on the White House, gives the Brotherhood all the authority it needs to carry out sweeping changes in the international system of governance.
Skull & Bones and Wall Street
The Order’s influence in the top ranks of U.S. government is extended into the banking and money community. Bonesmen now hold the purse strings in key positions on Wall Street and have done so for decades. Examples include the investment firm of Brown Brothers Harriman, which has an astonishing nine members on the board who are alumni of Skull & Bones; also there’s Salomon Brothers, whose managing director is Tristan Brooks (class of ’62); Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb whose managing director is Stephen Schwarzman (class of ’69); Dillon Read, whose vice president is Dino Pianzio (class of ’50); and Morgan Stanley & Company, whose managing director is Vance Van Dine (class of ’61).
The Senior Bush and the Financing of Communist Tyranny
Prescott Sheldon Bush (Skull & Bones, class of ’17), father of President George Bush (class of ’47), was a partner in the Wall Street firm of Brown Brothers Harriman for 40 years. It was Brown Brothers Harriman that helped to finance—incredible though it may seem—the 1917 communist revolution in Moscow and the rise of Hitler and Nazism, through money made possible by it and the affiliated Guaranty Trust Company. For full documentation I refer you to the outstanding books by Dr. Antony Sutton, How the Order Creates Revolution and America’s Secret Establishment. Sutton especially unmasks the financial shenanigans of bonesman W. Averell Harriman and shows how an associate of Harriman’s, Max May of the American Bank Guaranty Trust, actually became the First Vice President, in charge of foreign operations, of Soviet Russia’s first commercial bank, Ruskombank.
Meanwhile, Averell Harriman, his brother Roland, and bones brother Knight Wooley (all alumni from Prescott Sheldon Bush’s Yale class of ’17) used America’s Union Bank to keep Adolf Hitler and his Nazi collaborators well greased with money.
W. Averell Harriman, now deceased, was considered the elder statesman of the Democrat Party. During his lifetime a string of Democrat presidents appointed him to numerous prestigious posts, even in spite of (or perhaps because of!) Harriman’s shady financial dealings with European dictators. In 1941 he was made U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union; in 1946, he became our Ambassador to Great Britain. Later that year, he was brought back to the continental United States to serve as Secretary of Commerce by his good friend and fellow 33rd degree Mason, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1955, his money bought Harriman the election and he became governor of the State of New York.
In 1983, “good old Averell” Harriman went to the Kremlin in Moscow to visit Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief who was by then the Soviet communist party boss. Could it be that it was Harriman, representing the hierarchy of the Secret Brotherhood, who gave the order to Andropov to set in motion the end of communism? We do know that the ailing Andropov, very soon after Harriman’s visit, brought Mikhail Gorbachev into high office and groomed Gorby to be his successor.2
In 1985, following Andropov’s death, Gorbachev assumed his mentor’s top party and government posts. Immediately came Perestroika and Glasnost and the wrenching changes in the Soviet Empire that spelled the end of communism and the opening of Russia and the republics to capitalist trade and influence.
Other Wall Streeters and money men who wear the Skull & Bones pin include C.E. Lord, brother of CFR Chairman Winston Lord and formerly the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency and Vice Cha
irman of the U.S. Export-Import Bank; and Richard T. Ely, who became the first head of the American Economic Association.
Education for the New World Order
Almost from its inception the Order of Skull & Bones has exerted an almost unbelievable degree of influence on the American educational process. One bonesman, Daniel Coit Gilman (class of 1849) not only served as the first president of two universities in succession—the University of California and Johns Hopkins University—but he also participated in the founding of four major foundations known to be linked with the goals of the Secret Brotherhood: the Peabody, Russell Sage, Carnegie, and Slater Foundations.
Although the Skull & Bones was founded at Yale in 1832, it was Daniel Coit Gilman who teamed up with General William H. Russell to officially incorporate the Order as a legal entity in 1856 under the name, “The Russell Trust Association.” Again we see the prima facie evidence that the 15 students chosen to be tapped each year at Yale for the Order are not in charge of the organization. It is the alumni who are the masters of the Skull & Bones establishment worldwide.
Every young man at Yale who is initiated into this devilish society knows full well that his future welfare depends entirely on the handful of much older men who run the Russell Trust Association. The new initiate recognizes that he has two choices: either he can prosper beyond his wildest dreams—or he can become a run-of-the-mill has been. It’s up to the Patriarchs, the old men and alumni who minutely oversee and evaluate each initiate’s progress throughout his lifetime and who provide rewards or punishments accordingly.
Andrew Dickson White, who was initiated into the Order in 1853, was the first president of a prestigious educational institution, Cornell University, and he was also appointed the first president of the American Historical Society. The rewriting and deceitful misinterpretation of American and world history is one of the main methods used to manipulate and shape public opinion. The establishment of the American Historical Society was no doubt an unprecedented step in instituting this diabolical plan to rewrite the past.
A third bonesman initiate who went on to influence the American educational process was Timothy Dwight (class of 1849). Dwight first became a professor of Yale Divinity School then was selected to serve as the 12th president of Yale University. Dwight, White, and Gilman were sent by the Order to Germany to study at the University of Berlin. It is reasonable to assume that in Berlin they developed a close working relationship with German secret societies that were the equivalent of Yale’s Skull & Bones.
General William H. Russell, founder of the Yale Order, was himself reportedly initiated into a German secret society. He promptly returned to New Haven, Connecticut and set to work putting things together for an American Freemason version, which was how the Skull & Bones got started.
Skull & Bones and the Religious Establishment
Religious heresy seems to be a staple of the alumni of Skull & Bones. From the very beginning, the Order’s membership was recruited almost solely from the liberal wing of the Episcopal Church and from the New Age-oriented Unitarian Church (now called Unitarian-Universalist). William H. Taft (bonesman class of 1878), who went on to become President of the United States, was at one time the president of the Unitarian Church Association.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the National Council of Churches (NCC), both of which are ultraliberal, pro-Marxist, and pro-Eastern religions, were each founded with money from the Secret Brotherhood. John D. Rockefeller even donated the triangle-shaped building that now houses the NCC. An affiliated arm of the WCC, called the American Friends of the World Council of Churches, is headquartered at the liberal Riverside Church at 475 Riverside Drive, New York City, where Vietnam war resister Rev. William Sloane Coffin (Skull & Bones class of ’49) pastored. 3
Another apostate religious organization with close ties to the Skull & Bones is the Union Theological Seminary. Founded in 1835, this seminary has long been a safe harbor and breeding ground for Marxist activists and supposed “Christian” professors who teach that all paths and all religions are the same, and that Christianity is not unique.
When, as president, George Bush became the first resident of the White House to officially invite such groups as the Gay and Lesbian Task Force to “Hate Crime” bill signings, he was thus following in the grand old tradition of his fellow bonesmen. The same is true for George Bush’s appointment and support of ultraliberal, pro-pornography spokesman John Frohnmayer to head the National Endowment for the Arts. (Frohnmayer was finally forced to resign in 1992 after years of protest by conservative Christian groups.)
The Brotherhood of Death
We have seen the immense influence of the Skull & Bones in every area of American society. But is this secretive group an integrated part of a network of organizations and secret societies founded and controlled from above by a concealed and even more secretive higher authority? Fritz Springmeier, an Oregon researcher who has spent years unraveling the connections between secret societies and internationalist groups, has discovered important links.
In his thoroughly documented book, Be Wise As Serpents, Springmeier states conclusively that not only is there close and cohesive coordination between these groups, but they all appear to be supervised by the same elite cabal of overseers. Of the Skull & Bones he ominously writes:
This group...is part of the larger “Brotherhood of Death.” Exactly 15 members are added each year...There are about 600 members currently. Some members, perhaps exceptions, have been initiated away from Yale. Most are descended from early Puritan families and are tied to the Unitarian/Universalist (church) movement. These older Skull & Bones families have formed blood alliances with wealthy families such as the Rockefellers. 4
CHAPTER TWELVE: They Worship a God Whose Name They Conceal
Many experts who have studied the political and economic aspects of the World Conspiracy are, unfortunately, totally oblivious to its spiritual aspect.
It is important that we recognize the true spiritual nature of the illuminist religion, for only then can we understand the underpinnings for many of the Secret Brotherhood’s most closely guarded hidden teachings.
Adam Weishaupt, when he founded the Illuminati in 1776, expressed surprise that he should become founder of a new religion. His was an atheistic and humanistic goal—to destroy the authority of monarchies and the church and thereby to raise his own small clique of men to leadership and riches in their place. The objective was the establishment of a new, secular order (Novus Ordo Seclorum). 1
Weishaupt’s motive was at first a crude and material one; but when he found that his conspiracy had garnered such tremendous support among those who professed a paganistic spiritual creed radically divergent from traditional Christianity—and when he discovered that these men could be inspired to fanatically support the Illuminati conspiracy only if their arcane (Masonic) religion could find expression, he, Weishaupt, quickly rethought his plan and mission.
He decided that the Masonic philosophy and religion so warmly embraced by his co-conspirators was, in fact, an ideal vehicle to inspire their cooperation and even their fanatical devotion to world revolution. Indeed, he was surprised to discover that their religion, the keystone of which was the enthronement of an elite as gods on earth, was remarkably compatible with his own atheistic tendencies.
Worship of a “God” of Forces
What therefore became entrenched as the essential doctrine of the illuminist spirituality and religion was an overwhelming belief in a “god of forces.” This god of forces is impersonal, yet possesses unlimited supernatural powers that can be accessed by illumined men—the gnostics—those who “know” the magical formulae. Such formulae include the powerful use of ritual, symbols, and allegory, all wrapped together with an acceptance of ancient pagan deities and mystery teachings.
At the core of illuminist belief was and is the unshakable conviction that “God,” the “Great Architect of the Universe,” has established a class and race system which can
best be described as the “natural order,” or simply “nature.” Nature (i.e. God), the illuminists teach, dictates that the world be organized into different classes of men.
Similar to the Hindu caste system and Hitler’s Aryan race theory (both of which, like the Illuminati religion, are based on ancient Masonic mythologies), this teaching includes the theory that certain men are, by divine prescription, superior to others. Eventually, the doctrine goes, as earth continues its cycles, all men will be found to be equal, to be brothers. But until that glorious day, some men are simply “better” than others—more enlightened, more noble, and more fit to rule.
What is it that marks and distinguishes the men who comprise the superior class of nobility? These men, illuminist doctrine holds, are those who are endowed with something called “Reason.” The man whose sole god is Reason has himself become a superman, a type of deity. The rites and initiation process of the Illuminati are all designed to develop this new type of man imbued with Reason. Thus, Adam Weishaupt revealed that in his secret society:
Reason will be the only code of man. This is one of our greatest secrets. When at last Reason becomes the religion of man, then will the problem be solved. 2
The Goddess of Reason
It was because of this warped and gnostic belief in divine Reason as the sublime guide for man’s own spiritual and moral perfection that the butchers of the French Revolution paraded through the streets their bare-breasted women declared to be exemplars of the “Goddess of Reason.” This was the ultimate in synthesis—the combining of the notion of man’s reason being enthroned as deity with the ultimate symbol of ancient paganism: the Goddess.