AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ORDER OF THE SKULL AND BONES
By Antony Sutton
Is There a Conspiracy Explanation for Recent History?
During the past one hundred years any theory of history or historical evidence that falls outside a pattern established by the American Historical Association and the major foundations with their grant-making power has been attacked or rejected -- not on the basis of any evidence presented, but on the basis of acceptability of the argument to the so-called Eastern Liberal Establishment and its official historical line.
There is an Establishment history, an official history, which dominates history textbooks, trade publishing, the media and library shelves. The official line always assumes that events such as wars, revolutions, scandals, assassinations, are more or less random unconnected events. By definition, events can NEVER be the result of a conspiracy, they can never result from premeditated planned group action.
We are going to argue and present detailed precise evidence (including names, dates and places) that the only reasonable explanation for recent history in the United States is that there exists a conspiracy to use political power for ends which are inconsistent with the Constitution... If there can be a conspiracy in the market place, then why not in the political arena?
Most CFR members are not involved in a conspiracy and have no knowledge of any conspiracy... However, there is a group WITHIN the Council on Foreign Relations which belongs to a secret society, sworn to secrecy, and which more or less controls the CFR [whose] meetings are used for their own purposes.
These members are in The Order. Their membership in The Order can be proven. Their meetings can be proven. Their objectives are plainly unconstitutional. And this ORDER has existed for 150 years in the United States.
There is an Establishment history, an official history, which dominates history textbooks, trade publishing, the media and library shelves. The official line always assumes that events such as wars, revolutions, scandals, assassinations, are more or less random unconnected events. By definition, events can NEVER be the result of a conspiracy, they can never result from premeditated planned group action.
We are going to argue and present detailed precise evidence (including names, dates and places) that the only reasonable explanation for recent history in the United States is that there exists a conspiracy to use political power for ends which are inconsistent with the Constitution... If there can be a conspiracy in the market place, then why not in the political arena?
Most CFR members are not involved in a conspiracy and have no knowledge of any conspiracy... However, there is a group WITHIN the Council on Foreign Relations which belongs to a secret society, sworn to secrecy, and which more or less controls the CFR [whose] meetings are used for their own purposes.
These members are in The Order. Their membership in The Order can be proven. Their meetings can be proven. Their objectives are plainly unconstitutional. And this ORDER has existed for 150 years in the United States.
The Order: What It Is and How It Began
Those on the inside know it as The Order. For legal purposes, The Order was incorporated as the Russell Trust in 1856. It was also once known as the "Brotherhood of Death". Those who make light of it...call it "Skull & Bones".
The American chapter of this German order was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft who, in 1876, became Secretary of War in the Grant administration. Alphonso Taft was the father of William Howard Taft, the only man to be both President and Chief Justice of the United States.
The Order is not just another campus Greek letter fraternal society. Chapter 322 is a secret society whose members are sworn to silence. It is not at all happy with prying, probing citizens -- known among initiates as "outsiders" or "vandals". Its members always deny membership (or are supposed to deny membership). Above all, The Order is powerful, unbelievably powerful. (see note E1)
The Order is a senior year society which exists only at Yale. Members are chosen in their Junior year and spend only one year on campus, the Senior year, with Skull & Bones. In other words, the organization is oriented to the post graduate outside world.
There are two other senior societies at Yale... Scroll & Key and Wolf's Head are supposedly competitive societies founded in the mid 19th century. We believe these to be part of the same network.
What is the significance of the "322" in Chapter 322?... [One] interpretation is that The Order is descended from a Greek fraternal society dating back to Demosthenes in 322 B.C. ...Bones records are dated by adding 322 to the current year, i.e. records originating in 1950 are dated Anno Demostheni 2272.
Each year 15, and only 15 [new members] are selected. In the past 150 years, about 2500 Yale graduates have been initiated into The Order. At any one time about 500-600 are alive and active. Roughly about one-quarter of these take an active role in furthering the objectives of The Order. The others either lose interest or change their minds.
The most likely potential member is from a Bones family, who is energetic, resourceful, political and probably an amoral team player... Honor and financial rewards are guaranteed by the power of The Order. But the price of these honors and rewards is sacrifice to the common goal, the goal of The Order.
Entry into The Order is accompanied by an elaborate ritual... The neophyte's name is changed...like a monk or Knight of Malta or St. John, [he] becomes Knight so and so. The old Knights are then known as Patriarchso and so. The outside world are known as Gentiles and vandals.
It is instructive to compare 1833 with 1983 and how, over the century and half span, a group of 20-30 families has emerged to dominate The Order. It seems that active members have enough influence to push their sons and relatives into The Order and there is significant inter-marriage among the families.
These families fall into two major groups.
- First, we find old line American families who arrived on the East coast in the 1600s (Whitney, Lord, Phelps, Wadsworth, Allen, Bundy, Adams and so on).
- Second, we find families who acquired wealth in the last 100 years, sent their sons to Yale and in time became almost old line families (Harriman, Rockefeller, Payne, Davison).
One example is the Lord family. The first Lord to be initiated into The Order was George DeForest Lord (1854), a New York lawyer [and founder of] the New York law firm of Lord, Day and Lord. In the next hundred years, five more Lords were initiated into The Order, [including] Winston Lord (1959). (see note E2)
How Much is Known About The Order?
Only one article is known to have been published within the last 100 years on The Order [as of 1983]. Unfortunately, it is a superficial, almost mocking, review and provides some enlightenment but little contribution to historical knowledge. The article is the "Last Secrets of Skull and Bones" by Ron Rosenbaum (Esquire, September 1977). Rosenbaum is a Yale graduate attracted by the fictional possibilities of a secret society out to control the world.
This author does however, possess copies of the "Address" books, which used to be called "Catalogues". These are the membership lists all the way back to 1832. With these we can reconstruct a picture of motives, objectives and operations.
The actions of individual members are already recorded in open history and archives. By determining when members enter a scene, what they did, what they argued, who they appointed and when they faded out, we can assemble patterns and deduce objectives.
Who Is In This Secret Society?
Most members are from the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Members are all males and almost all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. In great part they descended from English Puritan families. These families either intermarried with financial power or invited... money moguls whose sons became members of The Order.
A key family is the Whitneys, descended from English Puritans who came to the U.S. about 1635. Eight Whitneys have been members of The Order. William Collins Whitney (1863) and his two sons, W. Payne Whitney (1898) and Harry Payne Whitney (1894), are the core of Whitney influence in The Order which survives today through the Harriman family and intermarriage with Paynes and Vanderbilts.
Hypothesis Number One:
A Secret Society dominated by old line American families and new wealth has existed from 1833 to the present day.
|
William Collins Whitney (1841-1904) is a fine example of how members of The Order rise to fame and fortune. W.C. Whitney was initiated in 1863... In the last three decades of the century, he rolled up a massive fortune, became a power behind the throne in the Cleveland administration, and directed the often unscrupulous activities of a cluster of capitalists known as "the Whitney Group".
William C. Whitney married Flora Payne, daughter of Standard Oil Treasurer Oliver Payne. Their two sons, Harry Payne Whitney (1894) and Payne Whitney (1898), went to Yale and became members of The Order. After Yale, Harry Payne Whitney promptly married Gertrude Vanderbilt in 1896. [Their son] Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney married Marie Norton. After their divorce, Marie Norton Whitney married W. Averell Harriman (1913). It is these tightly woven family and financial interlocks that make up the core of The Order.
The elder Harriman, a prominent and not too scrupulous railroad magnate, sent both his sons to Yale. William Averell Harriman (1913) and Edward Roland Noel Harriman (1917) joined The Order. It may be that Harriman and his fellow investment bankers have dominated the direction of The Order in the past few decades.
In the 1930s, W.A. Harriman & Company merged with Brown Brothers. This was an older financial house whose partners were also members of The Order. By the 1970s the relatively unknown private international banking firm of Brown Brothers Harriman, with assets of about one-half billion dollars, had taken in so many of "the Brotherhood" that out of 26 individual partners, no fewer than 9 were members of The Order.
And to make it more interesting, Prescott Bush, father of vice president George H.W. Bush (both in The Order), was a partner in Brown Brothers Harriman for over 40 years. (see note E3)
No comments:
Post a Comment