Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones is Yale University's most secretive senior society, founded in 1832, which selects 15 Yale seniors annually. Its alumni include three US presidents (William Howard Taft, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush), CIA directors, Supreme Court justices, and a disproportionate number of the American foreign policy and intelligence establishment. The 2004 presidential election featured two Skull and Bones members, George W. Bush and John Kerry, as the candidates of both major parties.
Skull and Bones was founded by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft (father of President William Howard Taft) after Russell returned from studying in Germany and was reportedly inspired by German secret societies. It operates from a windowless building on the Yale campus called the Tomb, selects 15 new members ('taps') each year from among the most promising Yale juniors, and maintains strict secrecy about its rituals and activities.
Its documented alumni list is extraordinary. In addition to three presidents, Skull and Bones members have included: CIA founding director Allen Dulles, CIA director Porter Goss, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of War Henry Stimson (who approved the Hiroshima bombing), Time magazine founders Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, and hundreds of senior figures in banking (Morgan Stanley, Brown Brothers Harriman), law, academia, and media. The roster reads like a reconstruction of the 20th-century American establishment.
The significance Predictive History attaches to Skull and Bones is structural: it demonstrates that a 15-member-per-year network, consistently selecting for and promoting its members across generations, can achieve disproportionate control of a nation's institutions. The 2004 election, where both major party nominees were Bonesman, is treated as the cleanest evidence of this control. No matter who Americans voted for, a member of the same 172-year-old Yale secret society would become president. This is Game Theory's definition of a successful secret alliance: achieving desired outcomes regardless of nominal competition.
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What is Skull and Bones and why is it significant? ＋
Skull and Bones is Yale's most powerful senior secret society, founded in 1832, selecting 15 members annually. Its documented alumni include three US presidents (Taft, G.H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush), multiple CIA directors, and a disproportionate share of the American foreign policy and financial establishment. The 2004 presidential election featured two Bonesman as the candidates of both major parties, meaning the secret society had a member in the White House regardless of outcome.
How does Skull and Bones maintain its power? ＋
Through multi-generational network compounding. Members identify each other, prefer each other in hiring and promotion, and coordinate informally across institutions. The society's consistent selection of ambitious, well-connected Yale students, plus the bonds formed in its secretive rituals, creates loyalty that persists throughout careers. Over 192 years, this has placed members at the intersection of government, intelligence, finance, media, and law in numbers far exceeding what chance would predict.