Aired February 5, 2004 - 20:00 ET
PAULA ZAHN NOW
ZAHN: President Bush and John Kerry, the front-running Democrat who'd like to replace him, may be different political animals, but both men are graduates of Yale and both belong to a secret society called Skull and Bones. It's a 170-year-old club dedicated to -- well, it's difficult to say, as Bruce Morton reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The building called the Tomb squats on the Yale campus, headquarters of a secret society called Skull and Bones.
ALEXANDRA ROBBINS, AUTHOR, "SECRETS OF THE TOMB": Skull and Bones is America's most powerful secret society and probably its most elite alumni network.
MORTON: Alexandra Robbins, a Yale graduate, has written a book about the society and the power it wields.
ROBBINS: This is a tiny society. There are maybe only 800 living members at any one time, 15 people tapped per year. And yet, so many members have gone on to positions of prominence and power.
MORTON: President William Howard Taft, Henry Luce, who founded "Time" magazine, Ambassador Averill Harriman. Bizarre initiation rituals telling your fellow Bonesmen your sexual history, but serious stuff, too. Graham Boettcher, who studied the society, thinks it's Yale that makes the difference.
GRAHAM BOETTCHER, YALE PH.D. CANDIDATE: Even if Skull and Bones didn't exist, I think that those people would have risen to those positions by virtue of the fact that they graduated with a Yale degree.
MORTON: Robbins disagrees.
ROBBINS: I think part of it is this secret society's specific agenda is to get members into positions of power and then to encourage those members to hire others.
MORTON: They're good at it. The first President Bush and the current President Bush were both Bonesmen. So was a man who wants his job, Democrat John Kerry. If he's their nominee, it would be the first ever Bonesman-versus-Bonesman presidential election. Bruce Morton, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN: Let's try to peel back some of the layers of secrecy now. Joining me from Austin is Bill Minutaglio. He wrote "First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty." Also with us tonight, Ron Rosenbaum, who was in Yale's class of '68 with George W. Bush. Rosenbaum has written extensively about Skull and Bones. He's the author of "Explaining Hitler," and he writes a column for "The New York Observer." Welcome, gentlemen.
RON ROSENBAUM, COLUMNIST "NEW YORK OBSERVER": Thank you.
BILL MINUTAGLIO, AUTHOR, "FIRST SON: GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE BUSH FAMILY DYNASTY": Thank you.
ZAHN: Now, you also happen to dovetail with John Kerry, who was a student there in 1966. Were both of these men likely candidates for Skull and Bones?
ROSENBAUM: Well, Kerry was a little earlier than me, but I was there at the same time. And they're very different Skull and Bones guys. I mean, Kerry was marked from the beginning, or marked himself, as an ambitious comer. He styled himself JFK. I was a scholarship student. In the library when he came in, there was an aura around him. People whispered about him. He was one of the people who would be naturally selected for Skull and Bones, who like to choose the best and the brightest.
ZAHN: And George W. Bush, other than his family lineage, was not...
ROSENBAUM: George W....
ZAHN: ... such an obvious choice?
ROSENBAUM: ... did not show obvious skills like that, except for tapping a keg at Deke and that sort of thing, but -- so I think it's fair to say he was a legacy candidate.
ZAHN: Now, Bill, you've written extensively about the Bush family, as we pointed out. And you actually are very familiar with a story that happened the night that George W. Bush was actually tapped for Skull and Bones. What happened that night?
MINUTAGLIO: Around 8:00 o'clock, on tap night, there was a knock at George W.'s door at the room he was living at on campus. And completely surprising him, his father was there. And his father essentially was telling him, I'm summoning you to do the right thing. You've got to follow your family's legacy. You've got to inherit your legacy and join Skull and Bones. George W. had been leaning in another direction. He was thinking of joining another, almost kind of mock society, a less, quote, "important" society called Gin and Tonic, of all things. And George W., you know, in his father's estimation, did the right thing and followed him and his grandfather, actually, into Skull and Bones.
ZAHN: Ron, is there anybody who's been a waste who ends up in the Skull and Bones or ends up not accomplishing anything in life? I know you've done a lot of research on who ultimately got in.
ROSENBAUM: Well, I think they're looking for people. I think what they look to do is to inculcate a sense of mission into people who may not ordinarily -- you know, particularly with legacy candidates, as, you know, Bill was saying, or don't seem to be on the path for national leadership. For George W., I think, the sense of mission kicked in a little late. I mean, he sort of drifted until his 40s, at which point -- it's interesting. I mean, there may be a number of factors, but I think that one of the things that Skull and Bones tried to -- tries to do is give people like George W. a sense that they have a larger mission than living off their family's money and prestige.
ZAHN: So Bill, what are the obvious ties, then, between these two men, if their circumstances of getting into Skull and Bones were so drastically different?
MINUTAGLIO: I think, you know, ultimately, as we lead up to a possible political confrontation between these two guys, it's what they got out of Skull and Bones. And I think, particularly for George W., he got a sense of direction, a purpose, the kinds of things that Ron said. And it began steering him toward you know, what people in the Bush family would say his rightful place in the family and even in history. And it's just amazing to me. It really is something out of Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, poetry that you would have this convergence of these two men who might be facing each other later this year. ZAHN: Ron, a final thought tonight, and a brief one, on all the legend and mystery surrounding Skull and Bones. You looked at the Tomb. You interviewed a lot of people who were familiar with members. There's great secrecy surrounding it. What do they do?
ROSENBAUM: Well, I think the important thing to say is that it's not a cult conspiracy ruling the world from a basement of a crypt in New Haven. On the other hand, it's not merely a frat house. I think it's -- for me, as an investigative reporter, it's an underexamined network of influence and power that has really -- I think I say at one point that the people who shape the American character have had their character shaped in the Tomb of Skull and Bones.
ZAHN: Ron Rosenbaum and Bill Minutaglio sharing some thoughts and some Skull and Bone secrets with us tonight.
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