Two of the last three American presidents have been members of Skull and Bones. In this program, we ll be exploring this strange society, and trying to answer the key question: How does one tiny club provide both presidential candidates? Is it a coincidence, a conspiracy, or something else altogether?
00:00:42.000Well, Skull & Bones like to keep it that way.
00:00:44.000After new members go through an occult initiation ceremony, they swear to a strict code of secrecy that forbids them from ever speaking about what goes on inside the club.
00:00:57.000I'm the only people each year who receive the invitation of 15 students from America's most aristocratic university, Yale.
00:01:06.000In this program, we'll be exploring this strange society, and trying to answer the key question.
00:01:11.000How does one tiny club provide both presidential candidates?
00:01:16.000Is it coincidence, conspiracy or something else altogether?
00:01:19.000Say John Kerry wins this presidential election, that will mean that three of the last four American presidents come from this one small secret society.
00:01:35.000you There are nearly ten members of the administration, whom George W. Bush appointed, who are members of Skull and Bones.
00:02:03.000He even talked about his time in the CIA.
00:02:06.000and he would not talk about Scull and Bubs. - When I see it, is it fairly obvious that-- It's fairly obvious that it's a strange building.
00:02:28.000My search for the secrets of Skull & Bones begins on a wet spring afternoon on the Yale campus.
00:02:34.000My guide is Peggy Adler, a tenacious researcher who helped investigate the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, and has been probing into Skull & Bones for almost 20 years.
00:02:44.000We're on the way to Skull & Bones headquarters, the intriguingly named tomb on one of Yale's main thoroughfares.
00:03:36.000It's Sunday, when the 15 members of Skull & Bones normally meet, and it's their last chance before the university breaks up for the summer.
00:03:43.000We waited for the chance to see the Bonesmen and ask them what actually goes on inside.
00:04:02.000Just coming up these steps and there are these huge double black doors that must be, I'd say, about 15 feet high, surrounded by concrete pillars, and then there's two big padlocks, obviously saying.
00:06:06.000Fifteen new members of the club are being introduced into the macabre rituals of skull and bones by the senior students who are about to graduate.
00:06:15.000The club has what some might see as a strange fascination with death, skulls and bones.
00:06:20.000There's the chants too, difficult to hear first of all, but including "The Devil Equals Death" and "Death Equals Death".
00:06:27.000These rituals have been honed over centuries, giving the society a weird set of traditions, rules and secrets.
00:06:42.000For example, Initiates are known as Neophytes, Outsiders are called Barbarians and the number 322 is sacred.
00:06:51.000Alexandra Robbins is a Yale graduate who's written one of the few books to investigate the society, The Secrets of the Tomb.
00:06:58.000According to Skull and Bones legend, in 322 BC, when the Greek orator Demosthenes died, there was a goddess Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence, who arose to the heavens and didn't happen to come back down again until 1832, when she took up residence with Skull and Bones.
00:07:14.000So now everything within this society is geared toward this goddess Eulogia.
00:07:20.000They have a shrine to her that they open for meetings.
00:07:23.000They call each other the Knights of Eulogia.
00:07:25.000So we have running as our presidential contenders two Knights of Eulogia.
00:07:30.000Anyone who's heard Kerry or Bush speak may find it hard to believe that the goddess of eloquence has been listening to their prayers.
00:07:38.000The society was set up in 1832 by a Yale student called William Russell.
00:07:44.000While studying in Europe, Russell became friendly with the head of a German secret society that also used a skull as a symbol.
00:07:51.000When he returned to Yale, Russell established Skull & Bones, only choosing the most promising students at Yale from the best families.
00:07:59.000The Russells made their fortune from the Chinese opium business, and we've discovered that their partners were none other than the Forbes family, including the great-grandfather of John Kerry.
00:08:11.000Nowadays, members are chosen, or tapped to use the society's term, either because their campus hotshots tip for greatness like John Kerry, or because they come from one of the families with long skull and bones traditions, like George W. Bush.
00:08:25.000For nearly 200 years, the great and the good have gone through the same bonding processes.
00:08:31.000I believe that the year in the Skull and Bones tomb is meant to forge such fast friendships between the 15 strangers that after graduation they'll be less likely to spill the secrets of Skull and Bones because to do so would mean to betray their new best friends.
00:08:48.000Well, spilling your innermost confidences is a good start.
00:08:51.000Each member of Skull and Bones spends between one and three hours standing in a dimly cozy lit room in front of a painting of a woman recounting his sexual history for the other 14 members.
00:09:02.000That's something that George W. Bush would have done and something that John Kerry would have done.
00:09:06.000Scull & Bones has used this intimacy to bind its members to secrecy and its work to great effect.
00:09:12.000No one has ever gone public to reveal the club's secrets.
00:09:16.000When the historian Warren Goldstein wrote a biography of a famous bonesman, William Sloane Coffin, he found out how seriously the vow of secrecy is taken.
00:09:36.000He even talked about his time in the CIA.
00:09:39.000And he even talked about dreadful things inside his own family.
00:09:43.000He talked even about an incident of family violence.
00:09:47.000And he would not talk about Skull and Bones.
00:09:50.000It says something about Skull and Bones when Sloane Coffin will talk about beating his wife, but not about his club.
00:09:57.000Skull and Bones isn't the only Yale secret society, but what's different about being a bonesman is its power kicks in when students leave university.
00:10:07.000They can then tap into one of the most powerful, well-connected and of course secret networks in the country.
00:10:14.000There have been bonesmen at the top of America's media, law, business and government since the 19th century.
00:10:20.000But it's in diplomacy, defence and espionage that the Skull & Bones Network has most clearly flourished.
00:10:26.000In the post-war period, some of the key players in American foreign policy have been Bonesman, the Defense Secretary when the atomic bomb was dropped, the National Security Advisor during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the President's top advisor when America went to war in Vietnam.
00:10:42.000And when they had the power, these men used it to surround themselves with other bonesmen.
00:10:48.000In a world where who you know is far more important than what you know, connections to these kind of people are invaluable.
00:10:57.000They know that they can call up any other member of Skull and Bones and ask for favours.
00:11:01.000The code phrase used to be, do you know General Russell?
00:11:04.000I spoke to a member of Skull and Bones who called up a complete stranger who was another member of Bones, asked him for money and the guy invested six figures in his company.
00:11:13.000So the connections are there and they work.
00:11:15.000What evidence do we have of how those networks actually operate once they leave Yale?
00:11:20.000Well, for example, there are nearly 10 members of the administration whom George W. Bush appointed who are members of Skull & Bones.
00:11:30.000There are maybe 800 living members at any one time, so you can't tell me that these 10 men happen to be the most qualified men for the job.
00:11:37.000We contacted countless members of Skull & Bones and spoke to many of them, but none would be interviewed.
00:11:44.000It's without a doubt the most tightly knit of the elite clubs we've investigated.
00:11:48.000They make the Bilderberg Group and the Masons look like gossips.
00:11:52.000One of the Bonesmen we contacted, a top Los Angeles lawyer, left us a message which showed just how tight the Skull and Bones ties are, even after three decades.
00:12:21.000When we called him back, he was happy to talk to us, but not about skull and bones.
00:12:26.000It was, of course, no surprise that George W. became a bonesman.
00:12:30.000Generations of his family, including his dad and both his grandfathers, spent time in the tomb.
00:12:36.000The two different Bush administrations were littered with Bonesmen, and just as importantly, so were their donor lists.
00:12:43.000Left-wing critics of Skull and Bones used Bush's links to the club as evidence of his elitist credentials, but there's just as compelling evidence of the influence of Bonesmen on the man who would be president, John F. Kerry.
00:12:56.000If George Bush wants to make national security the central issue of this campaign, I have three words for him.
00:13:12.000John Kerry left Yale in 1966 to begin his rapid rise through American politics.
00:13:17.000But the fact that he'd been tapped for skull and bones and asked to join the club clearly meant a lot to him.
00:13:24.000Journalist Jacob Weisberg found out just how much in the mid-1980s, when he'd taken a break before his final year at Yale to work in Washington.
00:13:32.000And there I was, minding my own business, writing articles about politics, when I got a call from the office of then-Senator John Kerry.
00:13:59.000I had really no idea what it was about, but you don't pass up a meeting like that.
00:14:02.000And there I was, sitting in his office the next morning.
00:14:05.000He was making small talk, and I was really wondering what this was about.
00:14:10.000And eventually he got to the point, which was that he was tapping me, to use the term of art for Skull and Bones, the secret society at Yale.
00:14:19.000And we went around a little bit about it and he asked me to think about it.
00:14:22.000And I did think about it for a while and then I decided, in fact, not to join.
00:14:26.000Wasn't that really strange, though, the idea of, this is a senator, his time is quite precious, that he would be bothering to tap people for a university club?
00:14:34.000Well, I was impressed, and I think the object was for me to be impressed, and it occurred to me that if my politics had been conservative rather than liberal, the same thing might have happened with then-Vice President George Bush.
00:14:46.000And what did that tell you about the club?
00:14:48.000I mean, it seems quite an amazing thing that senators, twenty years after they left the university, are still trying to get people involved in it.
00:14:55.000I was amazed really at how seriously he took it and how a lot of people still seem to take it.
00:15:01.000I was impressed at their ability to have tentacles that powerful reaching to Washington to do something like this.
00:15:09.000The fact that Senator Kerry was recruiting for Skull & Bones some 20 years after leaving Yale isn't so surprising when you consider how deeply connected important parts of Kerry's life have been to the club.
00:15:22.000Both his marriages have had Bones connections.
00:15:24.000His first wife's brother was a Bonesman and is still a key confidante.
00:15:29.000And his second wife, the heiress to the Heinz fortune, was the widow of a Bonesman.
00:15:33.000David Greenberg is a political scientist at Yale University who's written about the importance of Skull & Bones to both Kerry and the Bush family.
00:15:42.000They did treat it as an important honour to have received as Yale students.
00:15:49.000Someone I know who had been through some of the papers of George Bush Senior found a letter from John Kerry to Bush Senior that was signed Yours in 322, or something to that effect, which is the standard Skull and Bones number, the secret number.
00:16:09.000And if that's true, if Kerry is writing to the then President of the United States using this Skull and Bones mumbo-jumbo, it does suggest that he still places a kind of importance on this college experience that many of us wouldn't.
00:16:26.000The passing of such codes between senior politicians is uncomfortable for voters who pride themselves on America's commitment to a free and open democracy.
00:16:36.000Alexandra Robbins is one of a growing number of commentators who have expressed unease about politicians running for the highest office in America and still being members of Skull & Bones.
00:16:47.000I don't think any member of the US government, especially the President, should be allowed to hold an allegiance to a secret society, because doing so automatically means they're putting something else above the interests of the American people.
00:16:59.000I think it's damaging to our interests, and I don't think either of them should maintain ties with Skull & Bones.
00:17:05.000We would have liked to have questioned John Kerry and George Bush about their affiliation to Skull & Bones, but it's not a subject they'll happily talk about.
00:17:14.000Kerry and Bush have hardly ever been asked about the club and its eccentricities, like its reverence of the number 3-2-2.
00:17:21.000When the President was asked about Skull & Bones on American television, he could hardly have been less forthcoming.
00:17:27.000It's so secret we can't talk about it.
00:18:01.000There are all kinds of secrets, Tim, but one thing is not a secret.
00:18:03.000I disagree with this President's direction that he's taking the country.
00:18:07.000We can do a better job... That is as much as either of the two men running for the most powerful office in the world will say about their Skull & Bones membership.
00:18:16.000But then Skull & Bones members, no matter who they are, are notoriously reluctant to talk about virtually any aspect of the club.
00:18:24.000After countless calls and emails to club members, we finally found one who would talk, not about the secrets of Skull & Bones, but about why politicians don't like talking about the club.
00:18:35.000Dana Milbank is White House correspondent for the Washington Post and a member of Skull & Bones who I caught up with on the election trail.
00:19:21.000I know people have said it's just an anomaly, but there's only 15 people a year, sitting on 800 or 900 living members of Skull and Bones, and out of that small number you get two people running for president.
00:19:32.000That does seem to say something about the American political system.
00:19:39.000I'm sure that In your report, you'll figure out the answer to that question, but I don't know what it is.
00:19:47.000It is strange, though, the whole notion of the secrecy.
00:19:51.000I can understand maybe when you're at university and it gives you a bit more kudos, maybe, but once you graduate, it seems slightly strange.
00:19:59.000Look, I mean, you know, I think you understand.
00:20:02.000The whole interview, I'm not very interested in talking about the details of how these things function.
00:20:10.000The secrecy is not really for secrecy's sake.
00:20:14.000I mean, it's really quite sensible, and that is, what's secret about this is what you say and do in confidence with your friends.
00:20:24.000So people resisting talking about it, it's just, you know, I mean, If you were to ask the President and John Kerry what they've said to their psychiatrist, they would probably resist telling you that, too.
00:20:40.000So there's a very sensible reason for the secrecy.
00:20:43.000That's a very different relationship, presumably.
00:20:55.000In the whole 15-minute interview, Dana Milbank didn't say the words skull and bones once.
00:21:01.000One of the questions that he found so hard to answer is how can a club as small as Skull and Bones produce both presidential candidates in one year?
00:21:13.000But inevitably, others have seen the sinister signs of a conspiracy.
00:21:18.000A satanic society cloaked in secrecy that chooses who will be president.
00:21:23.000Warren Goldstein, a Yale graduate who now teaches history at the nearby University of Hartford, says conspiracy theories mask what Skull & Bones is really about.
00:21:32.000The conspiracy that is there is the conspiracy that's really pointed to by Skull & Bones, if not actually represented by it.
00:21:39.000And that is the American conspiracy of class.
00:21:43.000Because the people who run for president, by and large, come from the highest reaches of the American establishment.
00:21:52.000We always tend to think of America over here as a great classless society.
00:22:28.000There's no home for rent, so we may pitch a tent in the backyard of Morris.
00:22:33.000George Bush and John Kerry's aristocratic credentials go back generations.
00:22:39.000Bush went to Andover, Kerry went to St Paul, America's equivalent of Eton and Harrow, before moving on to Yale, just like their fathers before them.
00:22:49.000Let's not forget they also share the distinction of both families owning their own private islands.
00:22:55.000They try their best to play this down, George W. with his cowboy image and Texan ranch, and John Kerry by promoting his Vietnam War record.
00:23:03.000But there's no hiding their aristocratic pedigree.
00:23:07.000Even Bush and Kerry's middle names, Walker and Forbes respectively, aren't what they seem.
00:23:12.000They're double-barrel names, reminders of their family's place in America's aristocracy.
00:23:18.000If they were British, Kerry and Bush would probably be sitting in the House of Lords rather than running for top elected positions.
00:23:24.000It's graduation day at Yale when thousands of proud parents see where their hard-earned money has been spent.
00:23:37.000Getting a Yale education doesn't come cheap.
00:23:40.000On average, it costs around £80,000 to send your child here, unless you're lucky enough to get a scholarship.
00:23:47.000For current Yale students, Skull & Bones isn't that different from the other secret campus societies.
00:23:56.000Since the 90s, it stopped being an all-male preserve and allowed women to join.
00:24:00.000Outside the tomb, I meet Scott, the third generation of his family to go to Yale.
00:24:06.000Scott's well-connected on campus, with a third of the current crop of Skull & Bones as friends.
00:24:11.000From what I understand of Skull and Bones and the bigger societies is that they no longer really pick the people that they think are going to be tomorrow's leaders.
00:24:18.000I think in those days they really could tell, and they did a much better job of picking them.
00:24:22.000These days I think that the big societies don't really judge for future success.
00:24:26.000It's more to make sure you have a diverse group of people, make sure that everyone, you know, you gotta have someone from different, like, ethnic groups.
00:24:34.000Later, after many hours of waiting, we finally get some evidence of this apparent change when we see a member of Skull & Bones emerging from the windowless tomb.
00:24:43.000I'm from the BBC, I was just wondering, I'm trying to find out, we're doing a piece about Yale about this building, what it is.
00:24:49.000Um, you should find out from someone else.
00:25:10.000What was striking, though, about actually meeting a current Skull & Bones member, apart from the fact that she's probably on the phone telling the people inside not to come out of this exit, ...is that she was totally against the image one has of Skull and Bones members of being white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males.
00:25:27.000She was a young Muslim woman who was wearing a hijab and who clearly was a member.
00:25:34.000Some believe that making the club less elitist, coupled with the changes in American society, will see Skull & Bones influence Wayne.
00:25:41.000But its demise has been predicted before.
00:25:44.000Ron Rosenbaum, a journalist who first investigated the club in the late 1970s, says it'd be foolish to write it off too soon.
00:25:52.000When I first began to investigate Skull and Bones back in 1977, everyone was saying that the Eastern Establishment and institutions like Skull and Bones were in decline.
00:26:03.000But say John Kerry wins this presidential election, that will mean that three of the last four American presidents come from this one small secret society at Yale.
00:26:14.000And even if Kerry loses, it will mean that the White House has been occupied for three of its last five Clearly, you don't have to be a bonesman or an American aristocrat to make it to the presidency.
00:26:27.000Clearly, the eastern establishment and institutions like Skull and Bones still have a way of boosting its members into leadership positions.
00:26:37.000Clearly, you don't have to be a bonesman or an American aristocrat to make it to the presidency.
00:26:43.000Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan prove that.
00:26:45.000But while American politics runs on big money and connections, it will always be easier for people from the right background to make it to the top.
00:26:54.000This is proved not just by Kerry and the Bush family, but by other blue-blood presidential candidates like Al Gore and Howard Dean.
00:27:02.000For a British politician, having a blue-blooded background has been a liability in recent years.
00:27:07.000But in America, a silver spoon in your mouth and a skull and bones pin in your lapel can definitely help get you to the top.
00:27:15.000Daddy is a Yale man, and Yale both sounds divine.
00:27:22.000I don't think so much of a tin rabbit hatch that's been perched on the 50-yard line.
00:27:28.000This fine young lad from Harvard has a treehouse at home that's for sale.
00:27:34.000So I'm going to get lost in that wild town of Boston.
00:27:51.000The presenter was Simon Cox and the producer Richard Varden.
00:27:54.000Next week's Club Class will explore one of the most powerful groups in Britain today, the press barons.
00:28:01.000Well, Peter Day's here in just a moment with a return of In Business, but first a word from Paul Lewis on a subject that's exercising a lot of people at the moment.