The Order
Skull and Bones — officially "The Order of Death" and known internally as "The Order" or "322" — was founded at Yale in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft (father of President William Howard Taft). The origin mythology connects it to a German secret society (possibly a Masonic or Illuminati-connected order at the University of Mainz). 15 Yale seniors are tapped each year. They are known as "Bonesmen." Their meetings take place in "The Tomb" — a windowless brownstone building on High Street, New Haven owned by the Russell Trust Association, a Skull and Bones holding entity incorporated in Connecticut in 1856. The building is sealed from public access and from Yale University governance.
Documented Bonesmen in Power
Presidents
William Howard Taft (27th President), George H.W. Bush (41st President, also CIA Director), George W. Bush (43rd President). In the 2004 presidential election — the first time Skull and Bones membership was widely discussed — both major party candidates were Bonesmen: John Kerry (Democrat) AND George W. Bush (Republican). Both refused to discuss their membership in detail.
CIA and Intelligence
George H.W. Bush (CIA Director 1976-77). James Jesus Angleton (CIA Counterintelligence Chief 1954-75 — arguably the most powerful figure in the entire CIA history). William Bundy (CIA analyst, assistant secretary of state). The early CIA had an extraordinary concentration of Yale/Bones-connected officers in senior positions.
Banking and Finance
Harold Stanley (co-founder of Morgan Stanley). W. Averell Harriman (Brown Brothers Harriman, whose partners included Prescott Bush — George H.W.'s father — who helped finance Nazi Germany through Union Banking Corporation). Robert A. Lovett (partner at Brown Brothers Harriman, Secretary of Defense under Truman).
Media
Henry Luce (founder of Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated — the Time-Life media empire that was a primary CIA Mockingbird asset). William F. Buckley Jr. (founder of National Review, CIA officer 1951-52). The concentration of Bones alumni in CIA-adjacent media is extraordinary.
Prescott Bush and the Nazi Finance Connection
Prescott Bush (father of George H.W., grandfather of George W.) was a director of Union Banking Corporation — a New York bank that held assets on behalf of Nazi German industrialist Fritz Thyssen. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, Union Banking Corporation's assets were seized in 1942. Prescott Bush was managing director at the time. The seizure documents are part of the US National Archives. The Thyssen-Bush financial relationship — connecting Skull and Bones money to Nazi industrial financing — is confirmed by primary source documents, not speculation.
Order 322 — The Number
The "322" in Skull and Bones numerology is interpreted in two ways: it refers to Bones founder William Russell (class of 1833 — founded the second year after the referenced class of 1832); and it references Demosthenes, who died in 322 BC and whom the order honours as the embodiment of rhetoric as power. The skull-and-crossbones is not decorative — it is the symbol of the Knights Templar and appears on Masonic-tradition aprons in specific degree rituals. (See: Knights Templar)