Alex Jones Show - September 12, 2004


20040912_SkullAndBones_Alex

Topics
Skull and Bones influence on politicians Skull & Bones connection to Kerry and Bush Skull & Bones and American political class Skull & Bones diversity Skull and Bones influence on U.S. presidency
Hosted by
Alex Jones David Knight Paul Joseph Watson Lee Ann McAdoo Owen Shroyer Millie Weaver Greg Reese
Mentioned
John Kerry George Bush Senior George W. Bush William Russell Simon Cox Bonesman Alexander Robbins Warren Goldstein Dana Milbank Peggy Adler Skull William Sloan Coffin David Green Jacob Weisberg Richard Varden Ron Rosenbaum Ronald Reagan Hillary Clinton Howard Dean Paul Lewis and 11 more
20040910_Hilton_Alex 20040913_Mon_Alex

Episode Stats


Length

28 minutes

Words per minute

167.52

Word count

4,713

Sentence count

298

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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?

Transcript

Transcripts from "Alex Jones Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:10.000 Now on Radio 4, Simon Cox presents the first in a new series of Club Class.
00:00:23.000 Skull & Bones has been called the most powerful and elite club in the world.
00:00:27.000 Two of the last three American Presidents have been members.
00:00:31.000 And it doesn't matter who wins this year's American election, as we already know, it'll be a Skull & Bones White House.
00:00:37.000 Both George Bush and John Kerry are bonesmen.
00:00:41.000 Never heard of it?
00:00:42.000 Well, Skull & Bones like to keep it that way.
00:00:44.000 After 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.
00:00:54.000 Like to join?
00:00:55.000 Well, you have to be invited.
00:00:57.000 I'm the only people each year who receive the invitation of 15 students from America's most aristocratic university, Yale.
00:01:06.000 In this program, we'll be exploring this strange society, and trying to answer the key question.
00:01:11.000 How does one tiny club provide both presidential candidates?
00:01:16.000 Is it coincidence, conspiracy or something else altogether?
00:01:19.000 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.
00:01:35.000 you There are nearly ten members of the administration, whom George W. Bush appointed, who are members of Skull and Bones.
00:01:44.000 Does it still exist?
00:01:46.000 I mean, the thing is so secret, I'm not even sure it still exists.
00:01:50.000 You can't tell me that these ten men happen to be the most qualified men for the job.
00:01:56.000 He talked about all sorts of difficult things.
00:01:58.000 He talked about being indicted for conspiracy.
00:02:01.000 He talked about two divorces.
00:02:03.000 He even talked about his time in the CIA.
00:02:06.000 and 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.
00:02:28.000 My search for the secrets of Skull & Bones begins on a wet spring afternoon on the Yale campus.
00:02:34.000 My 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.
00:02:44.000 We're on the way to Skull & Bones headquarters, the intriguingly named tomb on one of Yale's main thoroughfares.
00:02:52.000 On the left.
00:02:53.000 That's right.
00:02:54.000 I can see why it's called the Tube.
00:02:57.000 That's why it's called the Tube.
00:02:59.000 It seems very appropriate weather that we're in the middle of this storm.
00:03:03.000 There's, you know, thunder every now and then.
00:03:07.000 Look at this building, which does look, it's quite an imposing, quite a dark looking building really, isn't it?
00:03:12.000 Right in the middle of the campus.
00:03:14.000 Should we take a closer look?
00:03:17.000 You can if you want.
00:03:18.000 I'll stay here.
00:03:19.000 Why don't you want to come up?
00:03:21.000 I just feel that since I live locally and continue to be cited in articles by name, that I'll just stay on this side of the street.
00:03:30.000 You don't want to come up here and knock on the door?
00:03:32.000 Oh, no, no, no.
00:03:33.000 Wish me luck.
00:03:34.000 Good luck.
00:03:36.000 It'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.
00:03:43.000 We waited for the chance to see the Bonesmen and ask them what actually goes on inside.
00:03:48.000 And there was an added attraction.
00:03:50.000 A top Bonesman was in town.
00:03:52.000 None other than George W. Bush.
00:03:54.000 Here for his daughter's graduation the next day.
00:03:57.000 OK, well I'm just going to go inside.
00:04:00.000 Well, as close as I can to the tomb.
00:04:02.000 Just 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.
00:04:20.000 Let's have a check.
00:04:21.000 They are definitely locked.
00:04:22.000 There's no way of getting in here.
00:04:23.000 I'll knock the doors if anyone's in And looking through the door, you can't even see through the cracks.
00:04:38.000 This is a place where they definitely don't want anyone to know what's going on inside.
00:04:44.000 It's definitely trying to say, privacy, keep out.
00:04:49.000 The building is hard to miss.
00:04:50.000 A 50 foot high windowless mausoleum of grey stone squatting in the middle of Yale's campus.
00:04:56.000 The rules of the club forbid any non-member from ever going inside, but Peggy's come pretty close.
00:05:03.000 She was part of a team that successfully recorded part of the initiation ceremony that takes place in the tomb's courtyard.
00:05:11.000 You have the doorway here, then to the right you have a hedge, and then you have an evergreen tree.
00:05:16.000 If you follow that line straight back, the courtyard's in there.
00:05:20.000 So that's where they have the ceremonies?
00:05:21.000 The outdoor part of it.
00:05:23.000 Part of it was indoors.
00:05:23.000 So we only got to see the outdoor part.
00:05:25.000 Right.
00:05:26.000 We only got to listen to the outdoor part.
00:05:28.000 God only knows what went on indoors.
00:05:29.000 And what did you hear?
00:05:30.000 What was it you knew?
00:05:31.000 You managed to get this unique access to it. 0.75
00:05:33.000 Oh, it was disgusting! 0.85
00:05:35.000 It was gross. 0.98
00:05:36.000 I mean, they were pretending to murder people.
00:05:39.000 What was the tone of it, though?
00:05:40.000 Was it jokey?
00:05:42.000 Vicious.
00:05:42.000 No, it wasn't jokey at all.
00:05:44.000 It was... it was sick.
00:05:46.000 It's the only way I can describe it.
00:05:46.000 but it was sick.
00:05:47.000 - Get the bone, not one! 0.99
00:05:49.000 Not that one!
00:05:50.000 Get the bone! - What you're hearing is the first recording ever made of the skull and bones initiation ceremony.
00:05:59.000 It has never been broadcast before.
00:06:00.000 We're having fun!
00:06:01.000 We're having fun!
00:06:06.000 Fifteen 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.
00:06:15.000 The club has what some might see as a strange fascination with death, skulls and bones.
00:06:20.000 There's the chants too, difficult to hear first of all, but including "The Devil Equals Death" and "Death Equals Death".
00:06:27.000 These rituals have been honed over centuries, giving the society a weird set of traditions, rules and secrets.
00:06:42.000 For example, Initiates are known as Neophytes, Outsiders are called Barbarians and the number 322 is sacred.
00:06:51.000 Alexandra Robbins is a Yale graduate who's written one of the few books to investigate the society, The Secrets of the Tomb.
00:06:58.000 According 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.
00:07:14.000 So now everything within this society is geared toward this goddess Eulogia.
00:07:18.000 They sing sacred anthems to her.
00:07:20.000 They have a shrine to her that they open for meetings.
00:07:23.000 They call each other the Knights of Eulogia.
00:07:25.000 So we have running as our presidential contenders two Knights of Eulogia.
00:07:30.000 Anyone who's heard Kerry or Bush speak may find it hard to believe that the goddess of eloquence has been listening to their prayers.
00:07:38.000 The society was set up in 1832 by a Yale student called William Russell.
00:07:44.000 While studying in Europe, Russell became friendly with the head of a German secret society that also used a skull as a symbol.
00:07:51.000 When he returned to Yale, Russell established Skull & Bones, only choosing the most promising students at Yale from the best families.
00:07:59.000 The 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.
00:08:11.000 Nowadays, 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.
00:08:25.000 For nearly 200 years, the great and the good have gone through the same bonding processes.
00:08:31.000 I 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.
00:08:46.000 So how do you forge fast friendships?
00:08:48.000 Well, spilling your innermost confidences is a good start.
00:08:51.000 Each 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.
00:09:02.000 That's something that George W. Bush would have done and something that John Kerry would have done.
00:09:06.000 Scull & Bones has used this intimacy to bind its members to secrecy and its work to great effect.
00:09:12.000 No one has ever gone public to reveal the club's secrets.
00:09:16.000 When 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.
00:09:26.000 He wouldn't talk about it.
00:09:28.000 He wouldn't talk about it.
00:09:29.000 He talked about all sorts of difficult things.
00:09:32.000 He talked about being indicted for conspiracy.
00:09:34.000 He talked about two divorces.
00:09:36.000 He even talked about his time in the CIA.
00:09:39.000 And he even talked about dreadful things inside his own family.
00:09:43.000 He talked even about an incident of family violence.
00:09:47.000 And he would not talk about Skull and Bones.
00:09:50.000 It says something about Skull and Bones when Sloane Coffin will talk about beating his wife, but not about his club.
00:09:57.000 Skull 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.
00:10:07.000 They can then tap into one of the most powerful, well-connected and of course secret networks in the country.
00:10:14.000 There have been bonesmen at the top of America's media, law, business and government since the 19th century.
00:10:20.000 But it's in diplomacy, defence and espionage that the Skull & Bones Network has most clearly flourished.
00:10:26.000 In 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.
00:10:42.000 And when they had the power, these men used it to surround themselves with other bonesmen. 0.92
00:10:48.000 In a world where who you know is far more important than what you know, connections to these kind of people are invaluable.
00:10:55.000 And it still goes on today.
00:10:57.000 They know that they can call up any other member of Skull and Bones and ask for favours.
00:11:01.000 The code phrase used to be, do you know General Russell?
00:11:04.000 I 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.
00:11:13.000 So the connections are there and they work.
00:11:15.000 What evidence do we have of how those networks actually operate once they leave Yale?
00:11:20.000 Well, for example, there are nearly 10 members of the administration whom George W. Bush appointed who are members of Skull & Bones.
00:11:28.000 Skull & Bones is a tiny club.
00:11:30.000 There 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.
00:11:37.000 We contacted countless members of Skull & Bones and spoke to many of them, but none would be interviewed.
00:11:44.000 It's without a doubt the most tightly knit of the elite clubs we've investigated.
00:11:48.000 They make the Bilderberg Group and the Masons look like gossips. 0.99
00:11:52.000 One 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.
00:12:04.000 Yes, Simon.
00:12:05.000 I'm in Washington today, actually, with the President, but we'll be back in my office tomorrow, Wednesday, Los Angeles time.
00:12:16.000 Be happy to chat with you then.
00:12:19.000 The message will be erased.
00:12:21.000 When we called him back, he was happy to talk to us, but not about skull and bones.
00:12:26.000 It was, of course, no surprise that George W. became a bonesman. 0.55
00:12:30.000 Generations of his family, including his dad and both his grandfathers, spent time in the tomb.
00:12:36.000 The two different Bush administrations were littered with Bonesmen, and just as importantly, so were their donor lists. 0.98
00:12:43.000 Left-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.
00:12:56.000 If George Bush wants to make national security the central issue of this campaign, I have three words for him.
00:13:06.000 We know he understands.
00:13:09.000 Bring it on!
00:13:12.000 John Kerry left Yale in 1966 to begin his rapid rise through American politics.
00:13:17.000 But the fact that he'd been tapped for skull and bones and asked to join the club clearly meant a lot to him.
00:13:24.000 Journalist 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.
00:13:32.000 And there I was, minding my own business, writing articles about politics, when I got a call from the office of then-Senator John Kerry.
00:13:40.000 Well, still Senator John Kerry.
00:13:42.000 And his secretary said, Senator Kerry would like to see you.
00:13:44.000 And I said, oh, certainly.
00:13:46.000 Be happy to.
00:13:46.000 What does he want to see me about?
00:13:47.000 And she said, he won't tell me.
00:13:50.000 Could you be in his office in the morning?
00:13:53.000 And I thought, this is very interesting.
00:13:55.000 And maybe he was going to leak me a story.
00:13:58.000 I was working as a journalist.
00:13:59.000 I had really no idea what it was about, but you don't pass up a meeting like that.
00:14:02.000 And there I was, sitting in his office the next morning.
00:14:05.000 He was making small talk, and I was really wondering what this was about.
00:14:10.000 And 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.
00:14:19.000 And we went around a little bit about it and he asked me to think about it.
00:14:22.000 And I did think about it for a while and then I decided, in fact, not to join.
00:14:26.000 Wasn'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?
00:14:34.000 Well, 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.
00:14:46.000 And what did that tell you about the club?
00:14:48.000 I 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.
00:14:55.000 I was amazed really at how seriously he took it and how a lot of people still seem to take it.
00:15:01.000 I was impressed at their ability to have tentacles that powerful reaching to Washington to do something like this.
00:15:09.000 The 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.
00:15:22.000 Both his marriages have had Bones connections.
00:15:24.000 His first wife's brother was a Bonesman and is still a key confidante.
00:15:29.000 And his second wife, the heiress to the Heinz fortune, was the widow of a Bonesman.
00:15:33.000 David Greenberg is a political scientist at Yale University who's written about the importance of Skull & Bones to both Kerry and the Bush family.
00:15:42.000 They did treat it as an important honour to have received as Yale students.
00:15:49.000 Someone 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.
00:16:09.000 And 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.
00:16:26.000 The passing of such codes between senior politicians is uncomfortable for voters who pride themselves on America's commitment to a free and open democracy.
00:16:36.000 Alexandra 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.
00:16:47.000 I 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.
00:16:58.000 I think it counters democracy.
00:16:59.000 I think it's damaging to our interests, and I don't think either of them should maintain ties with Skull & Bones.
00:17:05.000 We 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.
00:17:14.000 Kerry and Bush have hardly ever been asked about the club and its eccentricities, like its reverence of the number 3-2-2.
00:17:21.000 When the President was asked about Skull & Bones on American television, he could hardly have been less forthcoming.
00:17:27.000 It's so secret we can't talk about it.
00:17:28.000 What does that mean for America?
00:17:31.000 The conspiracy theorists are going to go wild.
00:17:33.000 I'm sure they are.
00:17:33.000 I don't know.
00:17:34.000 I haven't seen the website.
00:17:35.000 Number 3-2-2?
00:17:37.000 Not convincing?
00:17:38.000 Wait till you hear John Kerry's attempt to make light of the matter when he was asked about Skull & Bones by the same interviewer.
00:17:45.000 You both were members of Skull & Bones, a secret society at Yale.
00:17:49.000 What does that tell us?
00:17:50.000 Uh, not much because it's a secret.
00:17:53.000 Is there a secret handshake?
00:17:54.000 Is there a secret code?
00:17:56.000 I wish there were something secret I could manifest.
00:17:59.000 322?
00:17:59.000 A secret number?
00:18:01.000 There are all kinds of secrets, Tim, but one thing is not a secret.
00:18:03.000 I disagree with this President's direction that he's taking the country.
00:18:07.000 We 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.
00:18:16.000 But then Skull & Bones members, no matter who they are, are notoriously reluctant to talk about virtually any aspect of the club.
00:18:24.000 After 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.
00:18:35.000 Dana Milbank is White House correspondent for the Washington Post and a member of Skull & Bones who I caught up with on the election trail.
00:18:43.000 What did you make, though, of...
00:18:45.000 When both Bush and Kerry have been asked about Skull and Bones.
00:18:48.000 I think their answers are they just wish the subject would change to the next one.
00:18:53.000 I mean, in Bush's case, that's a standard response.
00:18:55.000 It's just sort of his stock line that basically says, change the subject.
00:19:00.000 Kerry's is a little bit more, let's say, less refined.
00:19:04.000 He may come up with a new one, but his is essentially the same thing and says, next question.
00:19:08.000 What about when you were there?
00:19:09.000 Because you were a member of Skull and Bones, is that right?
00:19:14.000 How did John Kerry answer the question?
00:19:17.000 It's so secret we can't even talk about it.
00:19:19.000 It's something striking though.
00:19:21.000 I 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.
00:19:32.000 That does seem to say something about the American political system.
00:19:39.000 I'm sure that In your report, you'll figure out the answer to that question, but I don't know what it is.
00:19:47.000 It is strange, though, the whole notion of the secrecy.
00:19:51.000 I 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.
00:19:59.000 Look, I mean, you know, I think you understand.
00:20:02.000 The whole interview, I'm not very interested in talking about the details of how these things function.
00:20:10.000 The secrecy is not really for secrecy's sake.
00:20:14.000 I 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.
00:20:24.000 So 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.
00:20:40.000 So there's a very sensible reason for the secrecy.
00:20:43.000 That's a very different relationship, presumably.
00:20:45.000 Or is it?
00:20:46.000 That seems to be saying that it's like therapy sessions.
00:20:52.000 There are those who have said that.
00:20:55.000 In the whole 15-minute interview, Dana Milbank didn't say the words skull and bones once.
00:21:01.000 One 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?
00:21:09.000 It's a tricky subject.
00:21:11.000 Some argue it's just a coincidence.
00:21:13.000 But inevitably, others have seen the sinister signs of a conspiracy.
00:21:18.000 A satanic society cloaked in secrecy that chooses who will be president.
00:21:23.000 Warren Goldstein, a Yale graduate who now teaches history at the nearby University of Hartford, says conspiracy theories mask what Skull & Bones is really about.
00:21:32.000 The conspiracy that is there is the conspiracy that's really pointed to by Skull & Bones, if not actually represented by it.
00:21:39.000 And that is the American conspiracy of class.
00:21:43.000 Because the people who run for president, by and large, come from the highest reaches of the American establishment.
00:21:52.000 We always tend to think of America over here as a great classless society.
00:21:57.000 And that is a profound mistake.
00:22:01.000 Even though most Americans won't admit it, that is a profound mistake.
00:22:06.000 It is a deeply class-driven society.
00:22:09.000 You would definitely describe, wouldn't you, both the Bush family and Absolutely.
00:22:18.000 Not just American elite, but some of the elite of the elite.
00:22:22.000 Your daddy is a Yale man.
00:22:26.000 We may be married soon.
00:22:28.000 There's no home for rent, so we may pitch a tent in the backyard of Morris.
00:22:33.000 George Bush and John Kerry's aristocratic credentials go back generations.
00:22:39.000 Bush 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.
00:22:49.000 Let's not forget they also share the distinction of both families owning their own private islands.
00:22:55.000 They 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.
00:23:03.000 But there's no hiding their aristocratic pedigree.
00:23:07.000 Even Bush and Kerry's middle names, Walker and Forbes respectively, aren't what they seem.
00:23:12.000 They're double-barrel names, reminders of their family's place in America's aristocracy.
00:23:18.000 If they were British, Kerry and Bush would probably be sitting in the House of Lords rather than running for top elected positions.
00:23:24.000 It's graduation day at Yale when thousands of proud parents see where their hard-earned money has been spent.
00:23:37.000 Getting a Yale education doesn't come cheap.
00:23:40.000 On average, it costs around £80,000 to send your child here, unless you're lucky enough to get a scholarship.
00:23:47.000 For current Yale students, Skull & Bones isn't that different from the other secret campus societies.
00:23:52.000 It's just the most prestigious.
00:23:54.000 The club is changing.
00:23:56.000 Since the 90s, it stopped being an all-male preserve and allowed women to join.
00:24:00.000 Outside the tomb, I meet Scott, the third generation of his family to go to Yale.
00:24:06.000 Scott's well-connected on campus, with a third of the current crop of Skull & Bones as friends.
00:24:11.000 From 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.
00:24:18.000 I think in those days they really could tell, and they did a much better job of picking them.
00:24:22.000 These days I think that the big societies don't really judge for future success.
00:24:26.000 It'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.
00:24:34.000 Later, 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.
00:24:43.000 I'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.
00:24:49.000 Um, you should find out from someone else.
00:24:53.000 Sorry, is that Skull & Bones?
00:24:54.000 Yes, it is.
00:24:55.000 Right.
00:24:56.000 Oh, and you were inside?
00:24:58.000 I... I won't talk about it anymore.
00:25:01.000 Right.
00:25:02.000 You can't talk about it?
00:25:03.000 No.
00:25:04.000 Are you a member, then?
00:25:05.000 I'm actually on the phone.
00:25:06.000 Right.
00:25:07.000 OK.
00:25:10.000 What 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.
00:25:27.000 She was a young Muslim woman who was wearing a hijab and who clearly was a member. 0.88
00:25:34.000 Some believe that making the club less elitist, coupled with the changes in American society, will see Skull & Bones influence Wayne.
00:25:41.000 But its demise has been predicted before.
00:25:44.000 Ron Rosenbaum, a journalist who first investigated the club in the late 1970s, says it'd be foolish to write it off too soon.
00:25:52.000 When 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.
00:26:03.000 But 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.
00:26:14.000 And 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.
00:26:27.000 Clearly, the eastern establishment and institutions like Skull and Bones still have a way of boosting its members into leadership positions.
00:26:37.000 Clearly, you don't have to be a bonesman or an American aristocrat to make it to the presidency.
00:26:43.000 Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan prove that.
00:26:45.000 But 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.
00:26:54.000 This is proved not just by Kerry and the Bush family, but by other blue-blood presidential candidates like Al Gore and Howard Dean.
00:27:02.000 For a British politician, having a blue-blooded background has been a liability in recent years.
00:27:07.000 But 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.
00:27:15.000 Daddy is a Yale man, and Yale both sounds divine.
00:27:22.000 I don't think so much of a tin rabbit hatch that's been perched on the 50-yard line.
00:27:28.000 This fine young lad from Harvard has a treehouse at home that's for sale.
00:27:34.000 So I'm going to get lost in that wild town of Boston. 0.99
00:27:41.000 And to hell with your daddy and Yale! 1.00
00:27:45.000 To hell with your daddy and Yale! 1.00
00:27:51.000 The presenter was Simon Cox and the producer Richard Varden. 0.98
00:27:54.000 Next week's Club Class will explore one of the most powerful groups in Britain today, the press barons.
00:28:01.000 Well, 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.