Secrets from Yale
Michael Vestey
Ajou can make a conspiracy out of any thing, I suppose, and a programme on Radio Four last Thursday, Club Class, had a good go but failed to convince me that Skull and Bones, the secret society on Yale university campus, was a threat to the world. If anything, I found this documentary almost a laugh a minute. Some contributors even implied members were somehow responsible for the dropping of the atomic bomb, the war in Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis. As details of its barmy rituals unfolded, I found it utterly hilarious. We even heard about a former member whose name was Coffin.
It's only come to prominence because President George W. Bush is a member and so is his Democratic challenger, John Kerry. Both were at Yale, which appears to be the main qualification for joining; that, and coming from what passes in America for an aristocratic family, a wealthy elite. Kerry's first wife's brother was a Bonesman, as they're called, so, too, was his second wife's late husband, the Heinz billionaire. Complete with sinistersounding background music, the presenter Simon Cox said that, if Kerry wins the presidential election, three out of the last four presidents will have been Bonesmen — George Bush senior was a member as were indeed George W.'s two grandfathers. It appears to run in certain influential families who send their offspring to Yale.
They never talk about it to outsiders, whom they refer to as barbarians, enjoying the pleasure of having something truly secret between them which only they know about. While it's true that no named person has spilled the beans, you only have to look it up on the Internet to discover that anonymous Bonesmen have revealed details of what goes on inside their headquarters, a windowless building (on the outside) called the Tomb, and the nature of their rituals. Each year, 15 students are invited to join and take part in an initiation ceremony during which they chant and scream, 'The Devil equals death!' or 'Death equals death!' Or something of the sort. Lefties hate it, of course, except for those who've been members. Cox interviewed an earnest and humourless researcher called Peggy Adler who'd been investigating the club for 20 years. She'd been part of a team who'd secretly recorded — it wasn't explained how — part of the initiation ceremony. 'It was disgusting!' she spluttered. 'It was gross! They were pretending to murder people ... It was sick.'
At this point in the programme I had to remind myself that those taking part would have been undergraduates. 1 could imagine them thinking that all this mumbo-jumbo about death might be rather fun, particularly if it remained your little secret and might lead to a Masonic-like helping hand later in life. We have something like it here, of course, minus the skull and crossbones: it's called Oxbridge. As it happens, there are seven other secret societies at Yale, though Skull and Bones seems to be the most influential in government, business, law and the media, though at any one time there are only 800 living members. It was formed 172 years ago by a Yale student called William Russell who'd seen something similar during a visit to Germany.
Members regard the number 322 as sacred. This is said to come from the date of the death of the Greek orator and statesman Demosthenes who died in 322 BC. According to legend, the goddess Eulogia then rose to the heavens and didn't return until 1832, just in time for Russell to start his club. Members worship her, calling themselves the knights of Eulogia, apparently standing before her painting and recounting their sexual experiences. Sounds like one for Indiana Jones. Were he to break into the Tomb and remove the painting, would Bonesmen — and women — everywhere shrivel up into nothing or self-combust?
Enter the perfectly named William Sloane Coffin, the late American cleric who's espousal of progressive causes made him a hero of the Left. A historian, Warren Goldstein, interviewed him for a biography and found that he was happy to talk about being indicted for conspiracy, his two divorces, his membership of the CIA and knocking about his wife, but he drew the line at discussing his membership of Skull and Bones.
Adler is clearly paranoid about the club that she's been trying to penetrate for so long. She was upset about the fact that there were ten Bonesmen in the Bush administration, which she cited as an example of how they stick together. You couldn't tell her, she said indignantly, that these ten men were the most qualified for their jobs. Another obsessive, Alexandra Robbins, who's written a book about the society, believed it countered and damaged democracy by putting something else above the interests of the American people. There's quite a lot of tosh like this on the Internet, I notice, including the suggestion that new members are meant to come up with nicknames for themselves. According to one website, George W. was unable to think of one so he was called 'Temporary', which is said to have stuck. Let's hope he doesn't live up to it come the presidential election.
Previous page
