Through these doors pass the members of the Order of Skull & Bones, a small secret society founded at Yale University in 1832 that has risen to the top of American political and economic power. Three U.S. Presidents, two Chief Justices of the United States, over twenty U.S. Senators, and many congressmen, cabinet officers, judges and state officials are testimony to the power, privilege and prestige of Bones.

What do these elite secret society members have over us regular folks? Who are they? What do they do? Did members of Skull & Bones really finance Hitler? Do they hold the bones of Geronimo in their Tomb? This book is your chance to investigate these questions and more.

“These secret societies are behind it all,” my father told me many years ago, During the early ‘50s he was a CIA branch chief, head of the East Asia intelligence analysis office. “The Vietnam War,” he said soberly, “is about drugs.” Many years later I finally had some understanding of what Dad was talking about. I wish I had asked more questions. Such as, was he talking about the Order of Skull and Bones?

It’s a symbol used by pirates, poisons and the Nazis but it’s also a “fraternity” at Yale University. College kids having fun? Well, … ?

Fifteen juniors are tapped each year. Around 2,500 Yale graduates have been members, mostly white males from wealthy Northeastern families: Bush, Bundy, Cheney, Dodge, Ford, Goodyear, Harriman, Heinz, Kellogg, Phelps, Pillsbury, Rockefeller, Taft, Vanderbilt, Weyerhaeuser and Whitney are some of the names on its roster. Minorities were brought into membership in the 1950s, and the first women were admitted in 1991,

The Order of Skull and Bones is a secret society begun at Yale by William Huntington Russell. His cousin Samuel Russell’s family enterprise was the largest American opium smuggler. When Russell & Co. worked with the world’s largest smuggler, the Scottish firm Jardine-Matheson, they were known as the Combination.

Many New England and Southern families in the “China Trade” sent their sons to Yale, and many were tapped into Skull and Bones. From Yale, Bonesmen went into and were very influential in the worlds of commerce, communications, diplomacy, education, intelligence, finance, law and politics.