-Caveat Lector-
The Boodle Boys.
Om
K
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George Bush,
Skull & Bones
and the New World Order
Paul Goldstein
Jeffrey Steinberg
George Bush,
Skull & Bones
and the New World Order
A
NEW AMERICAN VIEW—
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
WHITE PAPER
April 1991
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction .................,................
.............................ii
The Order of Skull & Bones...........................................2
Initiation and Ritual......................................................7
The Spartan Model .......................................................10
Henry Stimson: Master Bonesman.................................13
Stimson's Kindergarten and the Cold War....................16
Vietnam:The Bonesmen's Debacle................................ 19
Bush in Profile.............................................................23
The Order's Network....................................................25
The New World Order...................................................28
The Persian Gulf War...................................................31
Implications for Japan ................................................34
* *
Bibliography................................................................38
Some Prominent Members.............................................39
Selected Quotations......................................................43
Photographs..................................................................4
7
INTRODUCTION
This special report is intended to assist the Japanese audience in more
fully understanding the present policies of the United States under the
administration of President George Bush. It explains the thinking behind
America's military adventure in the Persian Gulf and its current attitudes
toward the Middle East region.
In so doing, we provide a glimpse into the most powerful organization in
America—the Order of Skull & Bones. This secret fraternity is based at Yale
University in New Haven, Connecticut, where many of the leading members of the
U.S. govemment and the American intelligence community received their formal
education. The Order, as it is referred to by its members, is a bastion of
White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture, which is at the core of the
American 20th century outlook.
The reader will learn that President George Herbert Walker Bush's
concept of the New World Order is an old idea, one which has its origins in
the philosophy and beliefs of the secret Skull & Bones fraternity. Today in
particular, this is the prevailing outlook of the U.S. government, many of
whose most influential members, like the president himself, are part of the
Skull & Bones network. These men seek to recreate the American imperium of the
immediate post-World War II period, an era which President Bush frequently
refers to as "the American Century."
The powerful men of Skull & Bones genuinely believe that they have a
strategic and moral "right" to control world affairs. Consequently, they take
upon themselves the authority to crush any rivalrous threat to U.S. imperial
leadership, whether by current allies, such as Japan, Germany or Great
Britain, or by Cold War adversaries, like the Soviet Union. The members of the
Order, due to their narrow WASP upbringing, view with particular suspicion the
maneuverings of Zionist Israel and its affluent, influential lobby in the
United States.
Bush, his fellow Bonesmen and their like-thinking elitist allies in the
American Establishment see themselves as New World Order warriors, an American
samurai caste of sorts, whose mission is restoring Ameriean greatness. They
intend to utilize the institutional networks of the U.S. government and key
private agencies, such as the New York Council on Foreign Relations. to
advance their purpose.
The Skull & Bones mernbers believe in the idea of "construclive chaos".
By keeping their true policy intentions secret, by constantly sending out
mixed signals on all critical policy issues, they consciously seek to sow
confusion among both their nominal "friends" and "enemies alike.
The fulcrum for the policy of constructive chaos is, at present, the
Middle East situation. Although U.S. military action in the region has for the
time being subsided, America's military power will remain a critical
determinant in the future of that vital zone of conflict. American military
power is aimed at securing undisputed control over the vast reservoir of
oil—not at necessarily fostering any permanent alignment of local states or
combinations of regional interests.
If President George Bush and his fellow true believers are successful.
the United States will be first among equals in the New World Order. This is
their goal. It is also the quest of the Bonesmen of the Order of Skull &
Bones-America's warrior aristocracy.
iii
George Bush,
Skull & Bones
and the New World Order
THE ORDER OF SKULL & BONES
Skull & Bones was founded at Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut in
1832. It is the oldest and most prestigious of Yale's seven secret societies.
Among the others are: Scroll & Key, Book & Snake, Wolf's Head, Eliahu, and
Berzelius. 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.
Unlike the Greek fraternities on most other American university
campuses, Skull & Bones and its similar secret societies exist exclusively at
Yale. They are not part of any nationwide public association. The other elite
Ivy League colleges, Harvard and Princeton have similar e~clusive 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.
According to some accounts, the Skull & Bones secret society at Yale
has an underground affiliation with two other societies which were
simultaneously founded at two other locations. The number "322" that appears
under the skull and crossbones on the Order's emblem is believed 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.
If the members of Skull & Bones were to select a Hall of Fame from
among their own elite ranks, some of the people whose names would almost
certainly appear at the top of the list would be:
o Alphonso Taft, a founding member of the Order who served as the
Secretary of War under President Rutherford B. Hayes (1876-1880).
o William Howard Taft, the only man to ever serve as both the President
of and Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
o Henry Lewis Stimson, 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).
o Averell Harriman, 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, Krushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov.
o Robert Lovett, partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, Assistant
Secretary of War for Air (1941-1945), Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary
of Defense (1950), leading member of the New York Council on Foreign
Relations.
o Harold Stanley, investment banker, founder of Morgan Stanley.
o Robert A. Taft, United States Senator (1938-1950).
o Prescott Bush, investment banker and partner in Brown Brothers
Harriman, United States Senator from Connecticut, father of George Herbert
Walker Bush
o 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 Ageney (1975-1977). Vice President
of the United States (1980-1988), President of the United States (1988- ).
o John Thomas Daniels, agro-industnalist, founder of Archer Daniels
Midland.
o Hugh Wilson, foreign service officer, Counsellor 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 intentionallv 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 & Bon~s is an uniquely American institution which adopted some of the
rituals of European freemasonry, but 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 biographical data 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 Bankt (Toward the closing decades of the l7th 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 clipper ships and
became in many cases fabulously wealthy as the result of their asscoiation
with the British East India Company. Among these key New England merchant
families were; Cabot, Coolidge, Forbes, Higginson, Sturgis, Lodge, Lowell,
Perkins and 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 intemarried and became, in effect, one extended power
grouping.
William Huntington Russell incorporated Skull & Bones as the Russell
Trust Association. Throughout the 20th century, the Russell Trust Association
listed the New York City headquarters of Brown Brothers Harriman as its
address.
Russell was valedictorian of his class at Yale in 1833. He and his Skull
&
Bones comrades considered themselves to be a special elite among the merchant
banking and Puritan pilgrim elite of Yale. They took the Puritan beliefs of
the early New England settlers, that they were "elected by God," and pre-
ordained to rule North America.
The founding of Yale College in 1701 pre-dates the Amencan Revolution by
several generations. Many of the founders of Yale were righteous men of the
Puritan heritage who devoutly believed in God and country. Some of these
patriotic souls later made up the core of Benjamin Franklin's political
coalition which ultimately broke with the mother country, Great Britain. Many
graduates of Yale were active in the American Revolution and the founding of
the United States.
Two critics of the Order, historian Antony Sutton and investigative
journalist Ron Rosenbaum (himself a Yale graduate), both concluded that Skull
& Bones has degenerated since its founding and has taken on more of the occult
and ritualistic trappings of the majority of European freemasonic and
illuminati secret societies. Sutton charges that the Order is secretly known
among its initiates as the "Brotherhood of Death" and has become an evil
instrument in the hands of America's secret power elite. Rosenbaum claims that
the society's Germanic origins are inherently wicked and pre-Nazi.
In a long 1977 article in Esquire magazine, Rosenbaum charged that the
Skull & Bones building on the Yale campus houses remnants from Hitler's
private collection of silver. While these stories cannot be dismissed out of
hand, it must be noted that authors Rosenbaum and Sutton may be biased. As a
young Jewish student at Yale, Rosenbaum was almost automatically excluded on
religious grounds from the inner sanctum of the campus's secret societies.
Sutton, a British-born eccentric historian, proudly admits his strong British
biases, frequently citing philosopher John Stuart Mill as the spiritual mentor
in his book on the Order.
Despite the possible personal biases in these two accounts of the
history of the Order of Skull & Bones, it must be acknowledged that the
membership of the society has tended over generations to converge upon a small
group of New England families who have intermarried and then sponsored their
sons and nephews into the Order. This kind of inbreeding always tends to
produce narrow-mindedness and prejudice against outsiders, which can be a
serious shortcoming, particularly among individuals responsible for charting
the course of a nation as powerful as the United States.
It can be documented by comparing the family charts of the early
Bonesmen that there is today a core group of no more than 20 to 30 families
who form the nucleus of the Order. The majority are old-line Puritan families
who came to North America in the very first wave of settlers in the 17th
century. Among these prominent families are: Whitney, Lord, Phelps. Wadsworth,
Allen, Bllndy, Adams, Stimson, Taft, Gilman and Perkins. A second group of
families in the Skull & Bones core earned fabulous fortunes during the 18th
and 19th centuries and thus won a rite of passage into the New England elite,
even though they were not among the earliest settlers. The leading Skull &
Bones families in this second category are: Harriman, Rockefeller, Payne,
Davison, Pillsbury and Weyerhauser.
A few of the Jewish banking families who made their way from Germany to
the United States during the 18th and l9th centuries were eventually granted
limited access to the WASP inner sanctums. Some families, like the Schiff,
Warburg, Guggenheim and Meyer families, were unofficially designated as
intermediaries between the New England WASPs and their cousins in London. This
was especially true after the Rothschild interests supplanted the Anglican
Baring group as the most powerful financial cabal in the City of London. Some
of these German Jewish families became so absorbed into the WASP or Anglican
society that they eventually converted from Judaism to Protestantism and were
gradually ostracized from the Jewish aristocracy.
The WASP families, however, never saw the prominent Jewish investment
banking families of America as equals. The Jews were considered politically
and cultrally different by the WASPs, and have never been accepted into the
latter's inner circle. For the most part, these Jewish merchant bankers are
viewed with suspicion and distrust by the members of the Order. Moreover, the
Jewish fraternal societies, such as B'nai B'rith, were formed out of the
British-based Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Their sponsors in America, the
Rothschilds and the Cecil Rhodes Trust (also known as the British Round Table
Group), are connected with the British Foreign Office and its secret
intelligence apparatus.
INITIATION AND RITUAL
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. According to author Rosenbaum, in recent years, the Order has
inducted members of homosexual rights groups on the campus into its ranks.
Among the criterion 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.
The first ordeal is boarding school. The overwhelming majority of
Bonesmen, given their wealthy bueblood family pedigrees, attend one of the
prestigious New England preparatory schools, i.e, private high schools.
(Whereas a large number of the most elite of the Harvard University students
attend Groton, a school with close ties to the Anglican-Episcopal Church,
where they receive a thoroughly Anglophilic education, the preferred prep
schools for the future Bonesmen are the two Puritan Calvinist-sponsored
Phillips Academies.)
The second of the ordeals is that of nature. The prospective Bonesmen
are judged on their skills as outdoorsmen. Hunting in the New England
countryside or, better yet, traveling to distant locations like Africa, the
jungles of South America or even the American badlands of the Plains states,
is a prerequisite for admission to the Spartan elite ranks of the Order.
The third of the ordeals is war. The experience of combat during
wartime is considered to be of special significance for the Bonesmen, who see
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 thc U S Navy. During 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.
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 coffln—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."
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 Ihe Yale campus and
become officials of government, the intelligence community, the military or
the private sector.
A careful study of the often confusing and self-contradictory behavior
and public statements of President Bush and his closest advisers throughout
the months of the Persian Gulf crisis of last year and war that followed
offers a valuable example of how ambiguity and secrecy are applied by
Bonesmen.
For the initiates of the Order, the question of whether secrecy and
ambiguity are used for the purpose of accomplishing "good" or "evil" is of
secondary importance. Secrecy and ambiguity are essential instruments for
wielding power. The effective wielding of power is one of the overarching
goals of all Bonesmen. The secret ties built up during the Bonesmen's senior
year of active membership in the Order are maintained for life. Those ties
link each Bonesman to every other initiate, especially to those initiates who
were members of the Order in the same year.
Thus, every member of Skull & Bones is, in real and practical terms,
part of a small elite group of young Yale graduates—most from wealthy and
powerful WASP families—who enter the world of politics, business, finance,
intelligence or education and who proceed to make their mark on the world.
According to several sources, President George Bush to this day
frequently consults with several of his fellow Yale Bonesmen, and has, on
occasion, called upon Skull & Bones members to carry out secret diplomatic
missions for the White House.
THE SPARTAN MODE
These rites of passage into the upper ranks of the WASP Establishment
are capped by the expeirence the Bonesmen go through in their final year at
Yale—the year in which they actively participate in the Order. For the vast
majority of the initiates, the process of inculcation with the ideas of WASP
supremacy, an American Calvinist version of what British imperialist writer
Rudyard Kipling called the "White Man's Burden," began at prep school.
According to the biographical accounts of a number of the leading
Bonesmen, the prep school experience is paramount. At prep school,
intellectual pursuits are encouraged, but special emphasis is also placed on
athletic performance. Future Yale Bonesmen are expected to excel in some team
sport, such as baseball and football, both American inventions. (Members of
Skull & Bones were involved in the development of both games.) Team sports
supposedly prepare the future Bonesman to accept leadership responsibility,
and more importantly, teach him to "respect the rules of the game."
According to one biographer, when George Bush was a Yale undergraduate
he was a member of the university baseball team. Although he was apparently
not a very good baseball player, he eventually became captain of the Yale
team. One day during the Yale baseball season, he excitedly visited his mother
to proudly proclaim that he had hit his first home run. She reportedly looked
back at him with patrician coolness, and asked, "Yes, George, but did your
team win the game?"
The particular emphasis on team sports during the prep school and Yale
years is, according to several historians, part of the Spartan training that
is so essential to the Skull & Bones philosophy. In the world of Skull &
Bones, one of the greatest virtues is the ability to steer the nation into war
and to successfully prosecute the war.
To the Bonesmen, the use of military power is a natural and essential
corollary to political power. The Bonesmen are taught that, although ideas
have their place, to truly transform history, military force is almost always
required. Critics of the Order have pointed out that this philosophy of power
and the imperial use of military force comes straight from the chronicles of
the Roman Empire—especially the Roman Empire during its phase of decline and
collapse.
The criticism may prove to be most prophetically true of the current
generation of Bonesmen who are leading the United States under the presidency
of George Bush. During the final phase of the Roman Empire, legions were
deployed out around the world to conquer and subjugate vast territories, while
back in Rome, there was a breakdown, a crisis in which the entire social and
cultural fabric of the early Roman republic was eroding and giving way to
something akin to the drug, rock-sex counterculture of today. The Roman
imperial policy of attempting to gloss over the decadence at home-by engaging
in constant wars of expansion led ultimately to the total collapse of Rome.
In this regard, the Spartan-Roman imperial outlook of the American WASP
warrior caste, exemplified by Skull & Bones, cannot be precisely compared to
the Japanese samurai code of Bushido. The Japanese Bushido code emphasized
honor among the warriors and presumed a fundamentally moral or ethical vision
of the world.
No such emphasis on morality and honor exists in the code of Skull &
Bones. On the contrary, the Skull & Bones philosophy, according to several of
its most astute critics and historians, emphasises the "double-cross system."
The "double-cross" is symbolically represented by the crossbones on the emblem
of the Order. According to this philosophy, anyone who is not an initiate is
inferior, and can be lied to and manipulated to further the power of the WASP
Establishment. To the extent that Japanese leaders view their American WASP
counterparts as men of honor whose word is sacred and wbose intentions are
presumed to be virtuous, they will miss the fundamental character of the
American imperium. This is of special importance today, with a leading member
of the Skull & Bones system occupying the White House.
Skull & Bones philosophy first manifested itself at the American
national political level in the late l9th century. At that time, the men of
the Order adopted all the critical features of the British imperial system,
especially the belief in the Anglo Saxon God-given right to rule over all the
other races. Even countries like Japan, which were never colonial possessions
of the Anglo-American combination, were viewed as inferior nations to be
treated no differently from the colonies in Africa. India or Latin America.
In 1898, President William McKinley, one of the last of the American
presidents to manifest any of the early republican (anti-British imperialism)
traditions of the Founding Fathers, was under enormous pressure from the Skull
& Bones-led American imperialists Eventually, he went to war against Spain to
"free" Cuba and seize the Philippines This was the first time that the United
States entered a war through devious manipulation and purely in order to
expand its territories It marked the beginning of a new epoch in American
history which would forever alter the vision of the United States. It was the
first evidence that the men of the Order were at the helm of the ship of state
President McKinley's capitulation to the WASP warriors would prove to be
fatal to himself and, some would say, for his country, too. The Spanish-
American War of 1898 catapulted the Skull & Bnes crowd into a position of
dominance within the Republican Party. At the 1900 party presidential
nominating convention, McKinley was forced to accept Teddy Roosevelt as his
vice presidential running mate. The McKinley-Roosevelt slate was swept into
office, in part as the result of the jingoist climate built up by the just-
concluded Spanish-American War Those circumstances were not all that-different
from the mood that prevails in America in the aftermath of the Gulf War of
1991
Within months of his inauguration of 1901, President McKinley was
assassinated by an anarchist while traveling through Buffalo, New York. Thus,
Teddy Roosevelt became president, and the Order of Skull & Bones for the first
time moved into the White House. Roosevelt surrounded himself with Bonesmen.
His successor in 1908, William Howard Taft, was himself a second generation
member of Skull & Bones.
HENRY STIMSON: MASTER BONESMAN
According to a January 1991 article by the Washington syndicated
columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, when President George Bush was
making his final decision to use military force to crush Saddam Hussein and
decimate Iraq, he spent most of the Christmas holidays closeted at Camp David
reading a newly published biography of one of his true heroes, fellow Skull &
Bones initiate Henry Stimson. While most White House advisers thought that the
gulf crisis would be ultimately resolved through diplomacy, unbeknownst to
them, President Bush had already decided on the use of devastating military
force—regardless of what measures the world community or the Iraqi leaders
took to avert war. Intimate Bush advisers described the president as being in
a "mesmerized" state of mind as he walked around the presidential retreat in
the Maryland mountains with his Stimson biography, The Colonel: The Life and
Wars of Henry Stimson, under his arm at all times.
Indeed, for most contemporary Bonesmen, Henry Lewis Stimson, the
quintessential WASP warrior, was the very personification of the Order's full
ascent to power during the period of World War II.
A member of the Order's class of 1888, Stimson served seven U.S.
presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft (a fellow Bonesman),
Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Harry S Truman. As the Secretary of War under FDR and Truman, Stimson oversaw
the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. Stimson personally
decided on the use of that devastating weapon against the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Years earlier, as the chairman of the American
delegation at the London Naval Conference and as Secretary of State under
President Hoover (1929-1933), Stimson had played a pivotal role in restricting
the size of the Japanese Imperial Navy. He would be an architect of the FDR 's
administration's economic provocations against Japan which ultimately helped
induce Japan into the attack at Pearl Harbor, thus bringing the United States
formally into World War II.And Stimson was also ultimately responsible for the
FDR administration's decision to intern the Nisei (Japanese-Americans) after
Pearl Harbor.
Yet, it was also Stimson who ordered American bombers to refrain from
attacking the old Japanese imperial capital of Kyoto, a city rich in religious
and historical tradition and artifacts. And, according to at least one of
Stimson's
biographers, it was also "the Colonel" who decided at the close of the war
that the Japanese emperor should not be deposed. His sensitivity to Japanese
culture and the importance of allowing Japan to retain honor even in defeat is
widely to his close adviser, Joseph Grew, a longtime U.S. ambassador to Japan
and an accomplished historian. Whether this report of Stimson's involvement in
the decision to maintain the emperor is accurate or whether it underplays the
role of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the fact remains certain that Stimson was the
key policymaker overseeing the postwar occupations of both Japan and Germany.
To fully understand President George Bush's attitudes and policies
toward Japan, one must first appreciate the overarching influence that Stimson
had on the current occupant of the White House.
According to his British biographer Geofrey Hodgson, Sdmson's membership
in Skull & Bones was "the most important educational experience in his life."
Unlike most of his fellow Bonesmen, Stimson earned his membership solely on
the basis of his achievements at Yale—not through family money. His parents
were not wealthy, although his forefathers did come to America as early
Puritan colonists. But Stimson made up for his lack of financial credentials
by his fierce competitive spirit. As he himself put it, the "idea of a
struggle for prizes, so to speak, has always been one of the fundamental
elements of my mind, and I can hardly conceive of what my feelings would be if
I ever was put in a position or situation in life where there are no prizes to
struggle for."
Although Stimson did not come from classic blueblood background, he
married into wealth and power. His wife, Mabel White, came from a prominent
Establishment family with longstanding ties to the Order. Thus, upon
graduation from law school, Stimson became a partner in the law firm of Eliahu
Root, President Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of War.
Although Stimson and Roosevelt would have a falling out in later years,
early on Roosevelt and Root provided "the Colonel" with the critical
sponsorship and training required to succeed in the world of Establishment
politics. According to Stimson's biographers, Roosevelt would frequently taunt
the young Bonesman about the fact that he, unlike the president, had never
been-in the military or fought in any wars. (Roosevelt had resigned as Under
Secretary of the Navy to go off and fight in the Spanish-American War.) Thus,
at the ripe old age of 44, Stimson joined the Army during World War I and
served in the American Expeditionary Force in Europe.
Among the other lasting interests that Roosevelt would pass on to
Stimson was his deep passion for the Pacific. Roosevelt was convinced that
America's imperial destiny was dependent upon its domination of the Pacific
Ocean and the Far East. The Spanish-American War, which marked the beginning
of Ameriea's imperial phase—and the virtual abandonment of the republican
principles upon which the nation had been founded—began the U.S. colonial
occupation of the Philippines, which would continue through half of the next
century. Ultimately, Stimson would himself serve as the American Governor
General of the islands.
In 1900, Roosevelt wrote to Stimson: "Our people are neither craven nor
weaklings, as we face the future high of heart and confident of soul, eager to
do the great work of a great power . . . ~ wish to see the United States the
dominant power on the Pacific Ocean."
STIMSON'S KINDERGARTEN
AND THE COLD WAR
Henry Stimson's towering influence on C;eorge Bush and many other
current members and like-thinking allies of the Order was based not only on
"the Colonel's" lifetime of achievements. It was also rooted in the fact that
Stimson used the World War II period to groom a successor generation of young
WASP warriors who would dominate American policymaking during thc Cold War and
beyond. Although not every member of what came to be known as the "Stimson's
Kindergarten" was a member of Skull & Bones, or even a Yale graduate, many
were. All were inculcated with the Skull & Bones philosophy and methodology of
wielding power. It is through this alliance and patronage system that the
influence of the Order has been extended far beyond its small membership
roster.
Among the leading members of the "Stimson Kindergarten" were:
o John J. McCloy, who was Assistant Secretary of War and later served as
the High Commissioner for Germany during the postwar occupation.
o Robert Lovett, a member of Skull&Bones and a partner in the Order's
preeminent Wall Street investment house Brown Brothers Harriman. He became
Stimson's Assistant Secretary of War (Air Section). Lovett remained an
influential policymaker through the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
o Harvey Bundy, another Bonesman, who became Stimson's special assistant
at the War Department. Haryvey Bundy's two sons, McGeorge and William fresh
out of Yale University and Skull & Bones, joined their father on Stimson's
personal staff. McGeorge Bundy would co-author Stimson's memoirs In Active
Service in Peace and War.
o Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary of State, Yale graduate (he was not
a member of the Order, but, rather, of one of the other Yale secret societies,
Scroll Key) and senior policy adviser to FDR and Truman, who ultimately made
him Secretary of State.
o Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the armed forces during
World War II and later Truman's Secretary of State.
This group of high-powered policymakers of World War II and immediate
post war period were known as the "Stimson-Marshall-Acheson Circle." They
shaped America's Cold War containment policy against the Soviet Union and
Communist China, including the involvement of the United States in the Korean
War. It was also this group which, for better or worse, directed the postwar
reconstruction programs in Germany and Japan.
Another influential member of Skull & Bones, Averell Harriman, was
personally responsible for the sacking of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It was
Harriman, a banker, intriguer and former American Ambassador to Moscow, who
convinced President Truman to fire MacArthur.
The predominant role that Averell Harriman would play over the course of
40 years of postwar Amencan policymaking underscores the fact that not all
leading members of Skull & Bones share the identical policy outlook. While
some members of the Stimson inner circle were critical of Harriman, whom they
considered to be too personally ambitious (he was also a liberal imperial
Democrat in a secret fraternity dominated historically by moderate
Republicans), Harriman nevertheless stands out as one of the Order's most
active figures. The fact that he was a business partner and social intimate
throughout his adult life of fellow Bonesm~n and Republican Sen. Prescott Bush
Sr., the father of the current president underscores that point.
Henry Stimson died in 1950, leaving behind a core group of political
offspring led by members of his old secret society, Skull & Bones. In the
final years of his life he was involved in helping to shape a number of
postwar government agencies which would become bastions of power and influence
for the Order for years to come. Through this active role in shaping the key
institutions of the Cold War era, Stimson was able to establish a continuity
of power that would more than compensate for the fact that no single figure
among his "kindergarten" emerged as a clear successor, and that several, like
McGeorge Bundy, would prove ultimately to be rather disappointing students.
The National Security Act of 1947 transformed Stimson's old War
Department into the Department of Defense, a sprawling civilian bureaucracy
which would in future years house many of the most important members of the
Order. Robert Lovett, for example, would become the Secretary of Defense in
1950. The 1947 act also established the Central Inte!ligence Agency (CIA) as
the permnent successor to the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In
the early 1950s, the State Department's Office of Policy Coordination was
merged into the CIA, giving the secret agency total control of America's
clandestine operations Th National Security Agency (NSA) also was established,
under the direction of the Department of Defense, vastly expanding America's
signal intelligence capability.
Of all these agencies of the Cold War era, the CIA would stand out as a
singular power center for Yale University alumni in general and Skull & Bones
initiates in particular. The term "spooks," the well-known CIA term for a
clandestine operator, was originally Yale campus argot for a secret society
member. According to a recently published article in the Covert Action
Information Bulletin, there is reportedly a "Bones club" within the CIA which
helps promote the intelligence careers of members of the Yale secret society.
It should be pointed out that bureaucratic standing is not a real
measure of power within the CIA. Very often, individuals in relatively
insignificant positions within the organizational chart wield tremendous clout
and maintain access to the most sensitive information and policy. Thus, for
example, the present U.S. Ambassaclor to Beijing, James Lilley, a member of
Skull & Bones and a career CIA man, is being suggested to replace William
Webster as Director of Central Intelligence. For Lilley to step in as director
of CIA would at this moment represent a demotion for the senior field
operator. It is, however, a demotion he might accept as a personal favor to
fellow Bonesman and longtime intimate pal George Bush.
The predominance of Yale graduates inside the CIA is also a part of the
Stimson legacy. During World War II, many Yale students and even severai
leading faculty memhers entered the OSS. The X-2 Branch of OSS, the
counterintelligence unit, was dominated by Yale students, as well as Yale
English Literature professor Norman Holmes Pearson. One of the Yale men in
X-2, James Jesus Angleton, went on to a legendary career as director of the
CIA's counterintelligence staff.
Yale Skull & Bonesman and Stimson "Kindergartener" William Bundy assumed
a senior post at CIA during the 1950s, as did Yale graduates Richard Bissell
and Cord Meyer, and Yale professor Sherman Kent,
VIETNAM: THE BONESMEN'S DEBACLE
According to author David Halberstam's best-selling critique of the
Kennedy years, The Best and the Brightest, the JFK presidency marked the high
point of Skull & Bones postwar power. But it also marked the beginning of the
secret fraternity's fall from the position of unchallenged power, and the
beginning of America's precipitous decline as a world power. All these factors
are summed up in one word: Vietnam.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy's Cabinet was largely handpicked by Skull &
Bones elder statesman Robert Lovett, who was personally approached by Joseph
Kennedy, the president's father, and asked to shape the direction of the new
administration Lovett had been one of the architects of the World War II
industrial mobilization under President Franklin Roosevelt, which helped bring
the United States out of the Great Depression. He had been a factional
opponent of Averell Harriman within the Skull & Bones circles, initially
opposing the Cold War containment doctrine and pushing the idea of Atoms for
Peace during the early years of the Eisenhower presidency (l952-1960).
Kennedy had personally asked Lovett to join his Cabinet, but Lovett, a
partner in Brown Brothers Harriman, preferred to shun formal government
service. Instead, he placed a number of younger Bonesmen into the critical
posts. McGeorge Bundy was appointed Kennedy's National Security Adviser.
Averell Hamman was made Under Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, a position
that placed him in charge of many of the most critical decisions along the way
to disaster in Vietnam. William Bundy remained in a senior post at CIA.
The decision to escalate the American military involvement in Vietnam—a
rejection of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's prophetic warning that the United States
should never engage in a ground war in Asia was made by members of the Order.
According to some accounts, President Kennedy began to have senous second
thoughts about escalating the war, particularly after several private Oval
Office discussions with MacArthur.
With Kennedy's assassination, American soldiers began pouring into
Southeast Asia. Harriman remained a fixture of Vietnam policy under President
Lyndon Baines Johnson. McGeorge Bundcy remained on as LBJ's National Security
Adviser untill , when he left government service to assume the presidene; of
theF ord Foundation, the largest tax-exempt philanthropic agency in the United
States. The Ford Foundalion annually dispenses of nearly $3 billion in grants.
In his capacity as president of the Ford Foundation, Bundy helped
finance the anti-Vietnam War movement. The National Student Mobilization
Committee, the umbrella group for the entire New Left of the late 1960s and
early 1970s, was led by David Dellinger, a Yale graduate. Episcopal Church
activist William Sloan Coffin, a Bonesman, a second leading figure in the
anti-war protest movement, had previously served as a CIA officer.
Thus, the Order had its hands in two critical elements of the policy
debacle of the second half of the 1960s. Some leading Bonesmen helped shape
the disastrous limited war strategy in Vietnam, while other members of the
Order, at least tacitly, contributed to the growth of the drug-rock-sex
counterculture by nourishing the New Left soil from which it sprang.
As a result of the Vietnam debacle, the "Stimson Kindergarten"
literally drove itself out of the corridors of power which it had occupied
without challenge for the previous 20 years. With the election of Richard
Nixon as president of the United States in November 1968, a different team
came into prominence. The politics of that team were personified by Henry A.
Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.
In a May 1982 speech in London at the Chatham House headquarters of the
Royal Institute for International Affairs, Kissinger boasted that he was an
enthusiastic follower of the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
and that throughout his years in senior government posts under Presidents
Nixon and Gerald Ford (1974-1976), he had always consulted more frequently
with his counterparts in the British Foreign Office than he had with officials
of his own government.
Although Kissinger had enjoyed early patronage from McGeorge Bundy, when
the Bonesman was Dean of Harvard University and Kennedy's NSC adviser, the
Kissinger era marked a low point in Skull & Bone's government power. The
Central Intelligence Agency, a hub of the Order's clout, was decimated by
scandals that only compounded the damage done to the Agency as the result of
its role in the Vietnam disaster.
According to some respected writers, for example, Jim Hougan, author of
Secret Agenda), the CIA attempted to reverse the route by helping to bring
down Richard Nixon in Watergate. There is significant evidence to bolster some
of these accounts.
When Gerald Ford became president in August 1974 following Nixon's
resignation, Skull & Bones made a brief comeback. In what came to be known as
the "Saturday Night Massacre," Ford, in the autumn of l975, removed Henry
Kissinger from his post as NSC Adviser, replacing him with Gen. Brent
Scowcroft. Kissinger ally James Schlesinger was fired as Secretary of Defense
and replaced by Donald Rumsfeld. And CIA Director William Colby, who had
dueled with Angleton, was fired and replaced by Skull & Bones member George
Bush.
If these maneuvers were intended to be the first step in a more
ambitious comeback by the WASP warrior faction, the plan was short-circuited
with the election in November 1976 of Jimmy Carter as president. It would
really not be until the inauguration of George Bush as president in January
1989—a dozen years later—that Skull & Bones would resurface with the same
degree of governmental power that it had enjoyed during the Stimson years.
George Bush's selection as Ronald Reagan's vice presidential running mate in
the 1980 and 1984 elections was the transition back to that power.
Many things had gone wrong in the years since Vietnam to drive the
Bonesmen off the center stage. With more than a little input from Bonesmen
like McGeorge Bundy and Averell Harriman, the United States had gone into a
period of scientific, technological and industrial retreat. The Nixon decision
on August 15, 1971 to remove the dollar from a fixed, gold-backed exchange
rate system, had triggered a move toward double-digit inflation, urban decay,
rising unemployment and soaring interest rates. The Kissinger-orchestrated
Iranian-Middle East oil crisis in the early l970s had contributed to a rate of
deindustrialization that ultimately transformed the United State from the
biggest creditor nation in the world to the world's biggest debtor nation.
According to estimates compiled around the time of George Bush's inauguration
as president, the total U.S. internal indebtedness had skyrocketed to more
than $12 trillion.
Moreover, the period of the 1970s and l980s had given rise to a new and
powerful political-financial combination demanding a share of government
clout. This new grouping, with its principle power bases in the U.S. Congress,
in Hollywood and on Wall Street, was known as the Zionist lobby.
Although Jewish names had been prominent in the legal profession and on
Wall Street since the founding of the American republic, in the aftemath of
the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and her Arab neighbors, Zionist power took
on a whole different proportion. Again, Henry Kissinger~s position in the
Nixon administration symbolized the fact that the pro-Israel lobby had moved
in with a vengeancs. to the corridors of power in the nation's capital. Even
on Wall Street the 1970s and 1980s had seen a new generatian of Jewish
financiers come into power, replacing their more cultured and Anglicized
predecessors. The WASP Establishment had developed a tolerance of and working
relationship with the largely German Jewish bankers known among themselves as
"Our Crowd." The new upstart Wall Street Zionists, however, were viewed by the
WASPs as a collection of gangsters.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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