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But it’s something I’ve been investigating off and on for a quarter of a century now. The whole phenomenon is rarely looked into beyond the exotic ritual trappings (although Evan Thomas and Walter Isaacson talk about the world-wide web of Bones foreign policy mandarins in The Wise Men ). The initiation ceremony begins the process of inculcating into the elect of the elite (just 15 out of 1,300 in every Yale class) the same mystical sense of mission that allowed the British Old Boy network to rule a worldwide empire. The unspoken understanding, the comfort level with the clandestine, the nods and winks with which power is exercised. and the C.I.A., as well as several Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors–the men who made the decision to drop the Hiroshima bomb, invade the Bay of Pigs and plunge us into Vietnam, the Tafts, the Bundys, the Buckleys, the Harrimans, the Lovetts–all took part in this initiation ritual may have something to do with the real world power of those bonds. But the relationships are first forged by the rituals and fact that the founders of Time Inc. The rituals are less important than the relationships–the bonds of power and influence that develop between Skull and Bones initiates after they graduate. Of course, there is more to Skull and Bones than the mystical mumbo-jumbo of its rituals. And he wanted to know if we’d be interested in an attempt to videotape it this time.Īnd so one afternoon last December, shortly after the Bush electoral victory had been certified, I met with the intrepid fellow he booted up his laptop and let me listen to the sounds of a ceremony that had been the subject of fevered speculation for nearly two centuries now. Adler said she had been approached by a member of the Yale community who wanted to share with us a remarkable coup of his own: He had found a way last year, in April of 2000, to audiotape the Skull and Bones initiation ceremony. Their immense power and wealth allow this elite to control America to an even greater degree than the Templars once dominated Europe.Ms. Now Steven Sora reveals in alarming detail how secretive societies continue to wield power even today as organizations such as Yale's Skull & Bones unite America's modern ruling families as strongly as Masonic Lodges once connected the Astors, Livingstons, and Roosevelts. From the Sons of Liberty and the Essex Junto to the Ku Klux Klan, secret societies have played critical roles in building the fortunes of America's elite. These secret cells did not hesitate to sponsor the assassination of a president and even attempted to break up the union on several occasions when it was deemed expedient. While these secret associations of merchants, smugglers, occultists, gamblers, spies, and slavers succeeded in freeing the United States from foreign domination, the dark side is that the elite used their secret connections to further their own wealth and power. The alliances formed in secret societies such as the Knights Templar, the Knights of Christ, and the Freemasons transcended patriotism and religious beliefs and had a powerful influence on the establishment of the United States of America. Elite and secret societies have always been a major force in the history of Western civilization. * Shows how the secret Masonic cells that smuggled in the democratic ideals inspiring the American Revolution also enabled the future elite of the new society to build huge fortunes. * Reveals the enormous influence secret societies still have on contemporary American life. An expose of the dark and critical role secret societies play within the ruling families in America and their influence on American democracy, current events, and world history.