---
aliases:
- Skull and Bones
- Skull & Bones
- Order of Skull and Bones
- Skull and Bones Society
- Russell Trust Association
- The Russell Trust
- RTA Incorporated
- The Order
- Bones
category: Private Organization
created: 2026-10-26
location: New Haven, Connecticut
relations:
- fn: 48
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1948
  type: member_of
  with: '[[George H.W. Bush]]'
- fn: 48
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1968
  type: member_of
  with: '[[George W. Bush]]'
- fn: 56
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1940
  type: member_of
  with: '[[McGeorge Bundy]]'
- fn: 41
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1917
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Prescott Bush]]'
- fn: 41
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1917
  type: member_of
  with: '[[E. Roland Harriman]]'
- fn: 40
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1913
  type: member_of
  with: '[[W. Averell Harriman]]'
- fn: 36
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1888
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Henry L. Stimson]]'
- fn: 69
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1918
  type: member_of
  with: '[[F. Trubee Davison]]'
- fn: 73
  reverse: true
  role: B.A. 1898
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Payne Whitney]]'
- fn: 53
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1920
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Henry Luce]]'
- fn: 58
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1950
  type: member_of
  with: '[[William F. Buckley Jr.]]'
- fn: 62
  reverse: true
  role: member, Class of 1966
  type: member_of
  with: '[[John Kerry]]'
- fn: 1
  reverse: true
  start: '1832'
  type: founded
  with: '[[William Huntington Russell]]'
- fn: 16
  reverse: true
  role: president of the Russell Trust Association
  start: 1856
  type: head_of
  with: '[[William Huntington Russell]]'
- fn: 1
  reverse: true
  start: '1832'
  type: founded
  with: '[[Alphonso Taft]]'
summary: Yale senior society chartered in Connecticut in 1856 as the Russell Trust
  Association and reincorporated in 1961 as RTA Incorporated, with members including
  Taft, Stimson, the Harrimans, Luce, Buckley and two Presidents Bush.
tags:
- Organization
- SeniorSociety
- SkullAndBones
- RussellTrustAssociation
- YaleUniversity
- CentralIntelligenceAgency
- OfficeOfStrategicServices
- BrownBrothersHarriman
- Geronimo
- PoliticalDynasties
title: Skull and Bones
updated: 2026-10-26
---

Skull and Bones is a senior society at [Yale University](/organizations/yale-university/) in New Haven, Connecticut. Its members are chosen in their junior year, spend one year on campus as initiates, and remain members for life as patriarchs. The society meets in a windowless sandstone building on High Street. Its corporate affairs run through three Connecticut entities: the Russell Trust Association, chartered by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1856; RTA Incorporated, a nonstock corporation formed in 1961 and recognized as a tax-exempt educational organization supporting Yale; and the Deer Island Club Corporation, formed in 1907 to operate the society's island retreat in the St. Lawrence River.

### Founding and the tomb

David A. Richards wrote in the Yale Alumni Magazine in May and June 2015 that "The society had been founded in 1832."[^1] Richards wrote that the conception "seems to have been that of the 1833 valedictorian, class orator, and secretary of Phi Beta Kappa, [William Huntington Russell](/people/william-huntington-russell/)," and named Alphonso Taft, father of [William Howard Taft](/people/william-howard-taft/), as a cofounder.[^1] He wrote that the members first called their club the Eulogian Club, and that a skull and crossbones over the number 322, on a meeting notice posted by one member in the first year, gave the society its name and badge.[^1] Graduate members are called patriarchs and initiates are called knights.[^1]

[Antony C. Sutton](/people/antony-c-sutton/) dated the founding to 1833. His chart is titled "Hypothesis Number One: A Secret Society Dominated By Old Line American Families And New Wealth Has Existed From 1833 To The Present Day."[^2] Sutton wrote that the American chapter "was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft."[^3]

Bagg wrote in *Four Years at Yale* (1871) that the modern society system at Yale "began in 1832 when a strictly senior society called 'Skull and Bones' was established," and that "The society was originated in 1832 by fifteen members of the class which graduated the following year. General Russell, the valedictorian of that class, is its reputed founder, and the best known of his associates is Judge Alphonso Taft of Cincinnati. Some injustice in the conferring of Phi Beta Kappa elections seems to have led to its establishment, and apparently it was for some time regarded throughout college as a sort of burlesque convivial club."[^4] Bagg wrote that "the popular college tradition, that it was transplanted from a German university, is scouted by old neutral graduates as absurd," that the faculty once broke in on a meeting and was persuaded to spare the society "by the intercessions and explanations of its founder, then serving as tutor among them," and that the members knew the society as "Eulogia," or the "Eulogian Club."[^4] He noted that the society's catalogue places the founders in the "third decade of the second period," which "may seem to make in favor of the German university theory, in the minds of many," and that "the blank space in place of the eleventh man's name in the list of the founders, may perhaps be thought a straw in the same direction."[^4]

The catalogue of the Connecticut Alpha chapter of Phi Beta Kappa (August 1838) lists six of the fourteen names in the Skull and Bones roster for 1833 as members of the class: John Campbell Beach, Noah Bishop, Robert Robertson, William Huntington Russell, Alphonso Taft and George Ingersoll Wood. It names "William H. Russell, M.D." as the chapter's corresponding secretary for 1837 and 1838.[^5]

An anonymous pamphlet on the 1876 break-in at the hall, which Sutton reprints, names the founder as "General R[...] (Russell)" and states that he "was in Germany before Senior Year and formed a warm friendship with a leading member of a German society. He brought back with him to college, authority to found a chapter here."[^6] Sutton's comment on the pamphlet is that the society "is not American at all. It is a branch of a FOREIGN secret society."[^6]

The Yale Obituary Record gives the degree of Alphonso Taft as B.A. 1833, with service as a tutor at Yale from 1835 to 1837 and as a member of the Yale Corporation from 1872 to 1882.[^7]

Before 1856 the society met in a low-studded back room on the third floor of the building opposite the college yard that became the Courant building.[^8] Richards wrote that the alumni built a hall on High Street in 1856, near the corner of Chapel Street. The name "Tomb" attached to it at that time, and Richards wrote that "a tomb is what it resembled": "a single forbidding, windowless block in Egypto-Doric style."[^1] Its cost was later estimated at about $30,000.[^1] Lyman Bagg's description of the building in *Four Years at Yale* (1871), which Sutton reprints in an appendix, gives its iron doors, its roof plates of 1867 and the value of the premises as "upwards of $30,000."[^9]

The Yale obituary record and Franklin Bowditch Dexter's sketches of Yale graduates give the family of William Huntington Russell. He was the son of Matthew Talcott Russell (Yale 1779), a Middletown lawyer who served sixteen years as city treasurer, and of Mary Huntington Russell, eldest daughter of Rev. Enoch Huntington of Middletown.[^10][^11] Dexter wrote that the couple had seven daughters and six sons and that "The fifth son was graduated here in 1833."[^10] Samuel Russell (1789 to 1862), who founded [Russell and Company](/organizations/russell-and-company/) at Canton, was a Middletown Russell of the same colonial family. The Hamlin genealogy of 1900 records Samuel Russell, born at Middletown on August 25, 1789, and William Huntington Russell as second cousins, both descended from William Russell, a son of the Rev. Noadiah Russell (1659 to 1713), one of the founders of Yale College.[^12] The National Historic Landmark nomination for Samuel Russell's house traces him through Noadiah Russell and the Rev. William Russell (born 1690) to his grandfather Captain Samuel Russell (born 1727) and his father Captain John Russell (1765 to 1801), and records that Jeremiah Wadsworth, the Commissary General, was his great uncle by marriage to the Rev. William Russell's daughter Mehitable.[^13] The Yale sketch of the Rev. William Russell lists the Rev. Noadiah Russell (Yale 1750), the father of Matthew Talcott Russell, among his sons.[^14] Millegan calls Samuel Russell William Huntington Russell's cousin in two passages, his second cousin in a third and his uncle in a fourth.[^15]

### The 1856 charter and RTA Incorporated

Richards wrote: "The first step was to incorporate the club in the State of Connecticut as a trust; they called it the Russell Trust Association." The purpose, in his account, was to let "a proper corporation" hold "fee-simple title" to the building.[^1] Sutton states that the Order "was incorporated as The Russell Trust in 1856," and writes that Daniel C. Gilman became treasurer of the association and Russell its president; Gilman was assistant librarian at Yale in the fall of 1856 and was appointed librarian in 1858.[^16]

The special act of the General Assembly, a certified copy of which the Connecticut Secretary of the State issued on March 28, 2001, resolved that William H. Russell, John S. Beach, Henry B. Harrison, Daniel C. Gilman, Henry T. Blake and Henry D. White, "and all such other persons as may be from time to time associated with them," were constituted "a body corporate and politic" under the name of the Russell Trust Association, "for the purpose of the intellectual and moral improvement of its members, and for that only." The act capped the real and personal estate the association could hold at fifteen thousand dollars, fixed its first meeting at New Haven on the last Wednesday of July 1856, and reserved to the General Assembly the power to alter, amend or repeal it.[^17] A resolution approved in July 1870 amended the charter to raise the ceiling on the property the association could hold to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A resolution approved on March 24, 1887 validated a meeting held in November 1885 and the by-laws adopted there. An act approved on July 9, 1943 raised the ceiling to seven hundred thousand dollars; the members accepted it unanimously at New Haven on November 12, 1943, and the certificate was sworn by Morris Hadley as president.[^17] Sutton's index lists Hadley under the class of 1916.[^18] Bagg listed the same names with their class years and wrote that "the first of whom has since acted as president, the one next to the last as treasurer, of the association"; the next-to-last name in the act is Henry D. White, and Sutton wrote that Gilman became treasurer.[^4]

On April 14, 1961 the Connecticut registry shows the incorporation of RTA Incorporated, a nonstock corporation.[^19] Its certificate of incorporation states that it is formed "for exclusively educational purposes," including the intellectual and moral improvement of its members and "the support of education at Yale University." All members of the Russell Trust Association became members of the new corporation, together with undergraduates at Yale elected under its by-laws; the activities of the corporation were to be managed by a board of six directors, two elected each year. On dissolution, the assets after the payment of lawful claims were to "be paid to Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, to be by it used for its general educational purposes."[^20] The oath on the certificate was sworn by Henry B. Van Sinderen, John W. Hincks, Howard S. Weaver, H. P. Baldwin Terry and Sidney Lovett. The same names appear in Sutton's index of members, under the classes of 1911, 1952, 1948, 1935 and 1950.[^20][^21]

The October 1983 membership catalogue that Sutton reproduces tells members to send corrections and changes of address to the secretary of RTA Incorporated at a post office box in Yale Station, New Haven.[^22] In November 1983 the members voted an amending certificate that increased the board from six to eight directors (nine when the term of the president would otherwise have expired), lengthened terms to four years, let the president continue as a director, and deleted the section of the 1961 certificate that required a two-thirds vote of members for fundamental changes. The certificate records 35 members as the quorum, 71 present in person or by proxy and 48 as the vote required.[^23] Kris Millegan, who reprinted the filings, quoted the New Haven Register of September 27, 1991 as reporting that "almost 700 of the club's approximately 800 surviving members narrowly voted to admit women."[^24] Ron Rosenbaum reported in [Esquire](/organizations/esquire/) in 1977 that when a class of the 1970s proposed tapping Yale women, the officers of the Russell Trust Association threatened to bar that class from the tomb and change the locks.[^25]

The Connecticut business registry lists "RUSSELL TRUST ASSOCIATION, THE" as a domestic business of the type "Special Chartered," with status "Active" and account number 0269315. It lists RTA INCORPORATED as an active nonstock corporation, account number 0059060, registered on April 14, 1961, with a billing address at 64 High Street in New Haven and a post office box in the 06520 postal district.[^19]

Sutton wrote that "the Russell Trust Association is run entirely by Patriarchs," and that the organization, both as the association and as the Deer Iland Corporation, is "essentially geared towards the post graduation world."[^26] Rosenbaum wrote that the File and Claw break-in pamphlet was among the papers he found in a box in the manuscript room of the Yale library, filed "under Skull and Bones's corporate name, Russell Trust Association."[^25] Sutton lists three nineteenth-century publications about the society: the student paper The Iconoclast, published October 13, 1873; an anonymous pamphlet on an 1876 break-in at the society's hall; and an anonymous satire titled The Order, The Fall of Skull and Bones (New Haven, 1876).[^27] He wrote that the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, which has "major holdings" of the society's records, had refused researchers further access to "Russell Trust papers."[^28]

### Finances and the island

The Internal Revenue Service lists RTA Incorporated (employer identification number 06-0768741, post office box in New Haven) as a section 501(c)(3) organization with a ruling date of February 1966.[^29] Its annual return for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021 gives its mission as "To provide structured programs of intellectual inquiry, sensitivity training and personal development for students of Yale University focusing on topics of intellectual, political or cultural importance." The return describes the corporation as a Type III functionally integrated supporting organization under section 509(a)(3), with Yale University as the one supported organization; states that the organization has members who vote for the board; reports 13 officers and directors, ten of them voting; and reports four employees and twenty volunteers. Of total expenses of $575,657, occupancy accounted for $199,381 and conferences and meetings for $74,195.[^30] Its Schedule R lists the Deer Island Club, a post office box in Alexandria Bay, New York, as a related organization with the activity "Social Club" under section 501(c)(7).[^30]

The Internal Revenue Service return data for fiscal years ending in June show the following. In fiscal 2011, total assets of $4,229,513. In fiscal 2017, total assets of $3,906,458, with contributions of $163,612. In fiscal 2018, contributions of $5,133,725 and total assets of $8,922,229. In fiscal 2019, contributions of $5,061,958 and total assets of $13,791,929. In fiscal 2021, contributions of $693,165 and total assets of $16,127,481. In fiscal 2022, total assets of $17,182,221, and in fiscal 2023, $17,146,085. The 2025 entry in the exempt-organization master file lists assets of $17,071,890.[^29][^31]

Millegan wrote in 2003, from the corporation's returns of the preceding years, that investment earnings were sometimes over $400,000 a year, that the corporation reported $4,000 to $10,000 a year as "rental of facility for educational programs" for the island, that it spent about $50,000 a year on conferences, conventions and meetings and renovation costs of more than a quarter of a million dollars in 1998, and that its only charitable gifts in the returns he read were $5,000 to the Yale scholarship fund in each of 1999 and 2000. He wrote that contributions fell from $164,000 in 1997.[^24] Rosenbaum reported in 1977, citing "one source," that each initiate received "a no-strings, tax-free gift of $15,000 from the Russell Trust Association."[^25] Jacques Leslie, a Yale student of the class of 1968 who was asked to join the society, wrote in Salon in March 2000 that students heard rumors that the society's assets made it "the largest corporation in Connecticut," and that each member was guaranteed a lifetime annual stipend of $20,000. Leslie added: "Nobody knew whether the rumors were true."[^32] Rosenbaum wrote that one could ask J. Richardson Dilworth, "the Bonesman who now manages the Rockefeller fortune," "just how wealthy the Bones society is and whether it's true that each new initiate gets a no-strings gift of fifteen thousand dollars cash and guaranteed financial security for life."[^25]

Sutton writes that the society meets once a year, with patriarchs only, on Deer Island in the St. Lawrence River at Alexandria Bay, where the Deer Iland Club operates; the island was donated in 1906 by George Douglas Miller (listed in Sutton's index under the class of 1870), and the club was established in 1907.[^33] Rosenbaum described it as a "private resort island owned and maintained by the Russell Trust Association."[^25] The Connecticut registry lists the Deer Island Club Corporation as an active nonstock corporation, account number 0053733, registered and organized on February 20, 1907, with its billing address in care of the New Haven law firm Wiggin & Dana; it lists a separate specially chartered nonstock corporation, The Deer Island Association, registered on May 19, 1915 (account number 0269028).[^19]

### Membership in government, intelligence and finance

Sutton reproduces entries from a 1971 membership catalogue and an index of members arranged by class year.[^34] The class years below come from that index unless another source is cited. Printed records of the period give the same affiliations for several members, as noted.

The Yale Obituary Record for 1929 to 1930 lists among William Howard Taft's undergraduate societies "Linonia, Delta Kappa, Phi Theta Psi, He Boule, Psi Upsilon, Skull and Bones, and Phi Beta Kappa."[^7]

[Henry L. Stimson](/people/henry-l-stimson/) is listed under the class of 1888.[^35] A 1897 catalogue of the Phillips Academy society H.A.E. lists his Yale degree of 1888 with Skull and Bones among his Yale societies.[^36] The Yale Obituary Record for 1950 to 1951 lists among his undergraduate honors "He Boule, Psi Upsilon, Skull and Bones, Chi Delta Theta, Phi Beta Kappa."[^37] Rosenbaum named Stimson among the members in 1977.[^25] Leslie also named Stimson, as a member of the class of 1888.[^32] Sutton writes that Stimson married Mabel White, the daughter of Charles A. White, a member of the society, and that Stimson "proved he was capable in the law." When William Howard Taft, also a member, was looking for a Secretary of War in 1911, Sutton writes, he appointed Stimson.[^38] William Howard Taft is listed under the class of 1878.[^39] Sutton also gives Alphonso Taft's tenure as Secretary of War in 1876, under President Grant.[^3]

[W. Averell Harriman](/people/w-averell-harriman/) is listed under the class of 1913, and [E. Roland Harriman](/people/e-roland-harriman/), his brother, under the class of 1917.[^40] The class history of 1917 prints Edward Roland Noel Harriman's biographical entry with the statement that he is "a member of Psi Upsilon and Skull and Bones."[^41] Rosenbaum named Averell Harriman among the members in 1977.[^25] Sutton writes that Harriman and his fellow investment bankers "have dominated the direction of The Order."[^42] E. Roland Harriman appears in the [Union Banking Corporation](/organizations/union-banking-corporation/) record discussed below.[^43] Sutton wrote that the Harriman brothers and two other members, E.S. James and [Knight Woolley](/people/knight-woolley/), "through the Union Bank (in which they held a major interest) were prime financial backers of Hitler."[^44] The same class history prints entries for William Ellery Sedgwick James and Knight Woolley that state membership in Skull and Bones, as it does for Prescott Sheldon Bush and [Henry Neil Mallon](/people/neil-mallon/).[^41] The 1979 company history of Dresser Industries by Darwin Payne states that Harriman, Bush, Woolley and Mallon had been fellow members of the society.[^45]

[Prescott Bush](/people/prescott-bush/) is listed under the class of 1917. The class history of 1917 states of him: "He belongs to the Whiffenpoofs, Psi Upsilon, and Skull and Bones."[^41] The 1971 entry in Sutton's catalogue gives his offices as Yale Corporation member from 1944 to 1958, United States Senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1963, and former partner of [Brown Brothers Harriman](/organizations/brown-brothers-harriman/).[^46] Anthony L. Kimery's article in the CIA reading room states that Prescott Bush and a Yale classmate named Mallon were "Yale classmates and initiates of Skull and Bones," and describes Prescott Bush as "a managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman and major benefactor of Yale."[^47] Kimery wrote that Mallon, as longtime chairman of the board of Dresser Industries, "personally offered Bush the IDECO job," and that Mallon "steered prospective candidates for spy work to Dulles and often provided cover employment to CIA operatives."[^47]

On October 20, 1942 the Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order No. 248 concerning the Union Banking Corporation, a New York corporation. The order vested "all of the capital stock" of the corporation, 4,000 shares of $100 par value, held for the benefit of Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart of Rotterdam, which the order describes as "owned or controlled by members of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and/or Hungary." The registered owners were E. Roland Harriman (3,991 shares), Cornelius Lievense (4), Harold D. Pennington (1), Ray Morris (1), Prescott S. Bush (1), H. J. Kouwenhoven (1) and Johann G. Groeninger (1). The order was published in the Federal Register on November 7, 1942.[^43]

[George H.W. Bush](/people/george-hw-bush/) is listed under the class of 1948, and [George W. Bush](/people/george-w-bush/) under the class of 1968.[^48] The index also lists Jonathan James Bush under the class of 1953.[^49] The 1971 entry for George H.W. Bush gives his service as a United States congressman from 1966 to 1970, and the entry for George W. Bush gives his service as a lieutenant and pilot in the United States Air Force from June 1968 to June 1970.[^50] Kimery writes that George H.W. Bush joined the society in his junior year.[^47]

[Robert A. Lovett](/people/robert-a-lovett/) is listed under the class of 1918.[^51] Sutton writes that Judge Robert Scott Lovett, a friend and attorney of E. H. Harriman and general counsel for the Union Pacific Railroad, handled $250,000 that Harriman gave the Republican National Committee in 1904 after a request from President Theodore Roosevelt, citing [George Kennan](/people/george-kennan/)'s biography of Harriman. Sutton writes that the judge's son, Robert Abercrombie Lovett, went to Yale and was initiated with the two Harriman brothers.[^52]

[Henry Luce](/people/henry-luce/) is listed under the class of 1920.[^53] Rosenbaum named Luce among the members in 1977, together with Averell Harriman and Stimson.[^25] Leslie named Luce as well.[^32] Sutton's name index lists fourteen members of the class of 1920, among them "Hadden, Briton" and "Luce, Henry Robinson."[^54] Briton Hadden co-founded [Time Inc.](/organizations/time/) with Luce in 1923. The Harvard Crimson of May 16, 1919 printed a special dispatch from New Haven dated May 15 listing the men elected to Skull and Bones: DeForest Van Slyck, James McHenry, Joseph Weir Sargent, L. G. Adams, Daniel R. Winter, Henry R. Luce, John M. Hincks, Harry P. Davison, Theodore L. Safford, Morehead Patterson, Briton Hadden, Alfred C. Schermerhorn, Frank P. Hefflefinger, Francis T. Hobson and David L. Ingalls. The same dispatch lists the Scroll and Key and Wolf's Head elections for 1919.[^55]

[William P. Bundy](/people/william-p-bundy/) is listed under the class of 1939, and [McGeorge Bundy](/people/mcgeorge-bundy/) under the class of 1940.[^56] Sutton writes that William P. Bundy held key positions in government while his brother McGeorge was in the White House. Sutton presents the brothers' positions as a possible control of the information reaching the President on Vietnam, and writes: "We are not saying this happened. We believe it to be a hypothesis worthy of examination."[^57]

[William F. Buckley Jr.](/people/william-f-buckley-jr/) is listed under the class of 1950.[^58] William Sloane Coffin is listed under the class of 1949.[^59] An FBI memorandum of October 20, 1950 records that Buckley "graduated at Yale in 1950, and was chairman of" the Yale Daily News.[^60] Potter Stewart is listed under the class of 1937, and Rosenbaum named him among the members in 1977.[^61] [John Forbes Kerry](/people/john-kerry/) is listed under the class of 1966.[^62] Archibald MacLeish is listed under the class of 1915 and Richard A. Moore under the class of 1936.[^63] The Library of Congress lists MacLeish as Librarian of Congress from 1939.[^64] Sutton wrote that the constitution of UNESCO "was written largely by The Order, i.e., member Archibald MacLeish."[^65]

Percy Avery Rockefeller is listed under the class of 1900.[^66] Harry Payne Whitney is listed under the class of 1894.[^67] Payne Whitney is listed under the class of 1898; Sutton's text gives the two brothers as 1894 and 1898, and his chart table prints the years in reverse.[^68] Sutton's chart places the Payne family and the [Rockefeller family](/people/rockefeller-family/) under [Standard Oil](/organizations/standard-oil/), and the Davison family under J. P. Morgan.[^34]

### The Yale Unit and the Central Intelligence Agency

The Yale Alumni Magazine reported in 2006 that [F. Trubee Davison](/people/f-trubee-davison/) co-founded the Yale aviation group that grew into the first squadron of the Naval Air Reserve, and that of the two dozen Yale students he recruited before the United States entered the war, five were Bonesmen. Davison crashed during a training flight and was disabled for life; the magazine reported that while he recovered at home, fellow members wrote to him about candidates for membership, initiations abroad and other society business, and that the yearbook entries for Davison, Winter Mead and Charles C. Haffner Jr. confirmed that each was a member.[^69] Sutton's index lists Davison under the class of 1918.[^70] The Air Force biography dates the crash to July 28, 1917, over Huntington Bay, New York, and Ralph D. Paine's 1925 history records that the injury was a fractured vertebra with injury to the spinal cord.[^71]

The Yale News account of the First Yale Unit states that on April 19, 1917, Tap Day in New Haven, two representatives from Yale arrived in Florida, where the unit was training, to tap students at noon. Davison was the first tapped for the society, and eleven other members of the unit were tapped with him.[^72]

The Yale Obituary Record for Payne Whitney, B.A. 1898, who died on May 25, 1927, lists "Skull and Bones" among his undergraduate activities.[^73] A Yale Obituary Record entry for a member of the Yale Aviation Corps says the corps was "formed by Payne Whitney, '98, in June, 1916," and that Aerial Coast Patrol Unit No. 1 was organized by Davison.[^74]

An Associated Press item in the CIA reading room reports that "Brig. Gen. Trubee Davison, former Assistant Secretary of War for Air," would join the [Central Intelligence Agency](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) on July 16, 1951, as "a principal assistant" to Walter Bedell Smith, and that he "probably would do personnel work." The item adds that Davison had been president of the American Museum of Natural History since 1933 and assistant chief of the Army Air Force air staff during part of World War II.[^75] A memorandum of September 11, 1951 from Davison to the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence appears on a routing slip addressed to the Assistant Director (Personnel).[^76] The Covert Action Information Bulletin reported in 1990, citing the New York Times of July 5, 1951, that Davison was the CIA's Director of Personnel in 1951, and that two of his sons, Endicott Peabody Davison and Daniel Pomeroy Davison, were also Bonesmen.[^77] The New York Times obituary of November 16, 1974 states that he left the post the following April, when it was announced that he had completed his mission of organizing the personnel of the Agency; CIA committee minutes of October 1951 and January 1952 list him as Assistant Director for Personnel and chairman of the Career Service Committee.[^78]

The same article in the Covert Action Information Bulletin listed other members it connected to intelligence work. It reported that Hugh Cunningham, of the class of 1934, a Rhodes Scholar, served in the CIA from 1947 to 1973 in positions that included the Board of National Estimates and the Director of Training from 1969 to 1973, citing Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks.[^77] CIA documents released to the reading room name Hugh T. Cunningham as Director of Training in 1968, 1969 and 1972.[^79] Sutton's index lists a Hugh Terry Cunningham under the class of 1934.[^80] The article reported that William P. Bundy began in the [Office of Strategic Services](/organizations/office-of-strategic-services/) during World War II and worked at the CIA from 1951 to 1961, including the Office of National Estimates; that Dino Pionzio, of the class of 1950, was CIA deputy chief of station in [Santiago](/places/santiago/), [Chile](/places/chile/) in 1970 and later a vice president at Dillon, Read & Co.; and that Richard A. Moore served as a special assistant to the chief of military intelligence in World War II and later as special assistant to President [Richard Nixon](/people/richard-nixon/).[^77] Sutton's index lists Dino John Pionzio under the class of 1950.[^81]

Rosenbaum wrote in 1977 that "Bill Bundy or Bill Buckley, both of whom went into the C.I.A. after leaving Bones," could be asked whether Skull and Bones was useful training for "the clandestine trade," and that George Bush "ran the C.I.A."[^82] He wrote that Coffin "headed for the C.I.A. not long after graduation from Bones," and that "the man Coffin tapped for Bones, William F. Buckley Jr., was himself tapped by the C.I.A. the following year."[^82] The Covert Action Information Bulletin reported that, according to "several experts on the CIA," Buckley began cooperating with the Agency in [Mexico City](/places/mexico-city/) in 1952, where his friend [E. Howard Hunt](/people/howard-hunt/) was station chief, and that his older brother James L. Buckley, also a member in the bulletin's account, was Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology in 1981 and 1982. It cited Donald Freed and Fred Landis, *Death in Washington* (1980), for the statement that on September 14, 1976, a week before the assassination of [Orlando Letelier](/people/orlando-letelier/), [Michael Townley](/people/michael-townley/) and [Guillermo Novo](/people/guillermo-novo/) visited Senator Buckley's office in New York.[^77]

Kimery's article cites Robin W. Winks's account of Yale's ties to the intelligence services and quotes Winks that Yale "influenced the CIA more than any other institution."[^47]

### Communications

Sutton wrote that the society had "a significant penetration into communications," and gave as its first example that "Henry Luce of Time-Life is in The Order."[^83]

### Sutton's hypothesis

Sutton's book, first published in 1983 as America's Secret Establishment, sets out three hypotheses. The first is that "a secret society comprising members of old line American families and representatives of financial power" has existed since 1833.[^3] The chart renders the hypothesis visually, placing "THE ORDER" at the center of a wheel of families.[^34]

The chart gives settlement dates for the old-line families: Whitney (1635, Watertown, Massachusetts), Stimson (1635, Watertown), Perkins (1631, Boston), Taft (1679, Braintree), Phelps (1630, Dorchester), Bundy (1635, Boston), Wadsworth (1632, Newtown), Lord (1635, Cambridge) and Gilman (1638, Hingham).[^34] The chart's new-wealth families are the Rockefeller and Payne families (Standard Oil), the Harriman family (railroads), the Davison family (J. P. Morgan), the Weyerhaeuser family (lumber), the Pillsbury family (flour milling) and the Sloane family (retail).[^34]

In the text Sutton describes "old line American families who arrived on the East coast in the 1600s, e.g., Whitney, Lord, Phelps, Wadsworth, Allen, Bundy, Adams and so on," and "families who acquired wealth in the last 100 years, sent their sons to Yale and in time became almost old line families, e.g., Harriman, Rockefeller, Payne, Davison."[^3] He adds that "Some families, like the Whitneys, were Connecticut Yankees and acquired wealth in the nineteenth century."[^3] Sutton writes that active members "have enough influence to push their sons and relatives into The Order," and that there is "significant inter-marriage among the families."[^3]

### Other writers

Jacques Leslie's 2000 article in Salon named John Hersey and William Sloane Coffin among the members, along with Stimson, Stewart, Harriman and Luce. Leslie also recounted Bill Minutaglio's biography of George W. Bush, which records that Bush considered joining a society called "Gin and Tonic" and was swayed when his father, then a congressman, conducted the tapping himself.[^32]

Alexandra Robbins published Secrets of the Tomb in 2002, with the subtitle "Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power."[^84]

Millegan issued Fleshing Out Skull & Bones through Trine Day in 2003. The book includes a chapter titled "Geronimo's Bones" by Howard Altman, dated July 2003, and Millegan's own chapter on RTA Incorporated, with certified copies of the corporation's filings.[^24][^85]

### The Geronimo skull claim

The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library's file FOIA 2009-0116-F describes its contents as records "related to the Skull and Bones Society at Yale University, of which George H. W. Bush and his father Prescott Bush were both members."[^86] The file contains correspondence from President Bush to William F. Buckley Jr. and Thomas W. Ludlow Ashley about a Buckley article in [National Review](/organizations/national-review/), which had answered Pat Buchanan's description of Bush's foreign policy as "Skull and Bones foreign policy" in the 1992 campaign. It also contains administrative forms for a Skull and Bones tea at the White House on October 20, 1989.[^86] The library's description states that "Several of the articles address the rumor that Prescott Bush and a group of Skull and Bones members had disinterred and taken Apache leader Geronimo's skull."[^86]

The Yale Alumni Magazine reported in May 2006 that Marc Wortman, researching Davison's war years in the F. Trubee Davison Papers at Sterling Memorial Library, found a letter of June 7, 1918 from Winter Mead '19 to Davison '18, about an exhumation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It reads (with the magazine's expansions of the letter's abbreviations): "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K[night] Haffner, is now safe inside the T[omb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn." The magazine reported that Haffner's yearbook entry places him at the artillery school at Fort Sill between August 1917 and July 1918, that Mead was not at Fort Sill, and that Judith Schiff, chief research archivist at Sterling, said the letter "adds to the seriousness of the belief" and "has a very strong likelihood of being true, since it was written so close to the time." It reported that the rumor had reached public attention in 1986, when Ned Anderson, then chair of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, received an anonymous letter from a writer who claimed to be a member, with a photograph of a skull in a display case and a copy of what appeared to be a centennial history of the society by F. O. Matthiessen (class of 1923). In that history, which quotes a society log book of 1919, six members unearthed the skull; the history names three of them, all at Fort Sill in early 1918: Ellery James, Neil Mallon and Prescott Bush, all of the class of 1917. The magazine reported that Anderson met Jonathan Bush '53 and Endicott Peabody Davison '45, who showed a display case containing a skull that they said was a child's and offered it to him; he declined. It also reported that the historian David H. Miller of Cameron University said the grave at Fort Sill was unmarked and overgrown until the 1920s and doubted that the Bonesmen found Geronimo's grave, and that Alexandra Robbins told the magazine that members spoke to her of "a skull in a glass case by the front door that they call Geronimo."[^69] The Yale Alumni Magazine also reported that Ron Rosenbaum, in 2001, recorded on videotape what appeared to be an initiation in the society's courtyard in which members carried skulls and "femur-sized bones."[^69]

Altman's chapter reports that a man who said he was "Geronimo's great-great grandson" came to the New Haven Advocate office in the late summer of 1989 and described the bones as dug up by Prescott Bush and taken to the society's building.[^85] The chapter's principal source for the claim is Anderson. Anderson told Altman that a former Bonesman, referred to as "Pat," had tipped him off, and that the Bonesman had given him a picture of what Anderson said were Geronimo's bones in New Haven.[^85] Anderson said that the bones were dug up in 1918 by Prescott Bush and others, and that he had arranged a meeting with Jonathan Bush: "Bush was taken aback when confronted with the evidence," Anderson told Altman.[^85] Altman wrote that when he later tracked down Bush, Bush was cordial but would not discuss the meeting.[^85] The Mescalero Apache leader Wendell Chino, who represented the family, called Anderson's bid to move the remains "a publicity stunt to attract tourists."[^85]

The complaint in Geronimo et al. v. Obama et al. was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on February 17, 2009, the hundredth anniversary of Geronimo's death.[^87] It was brought by a group of twenty descendants of Geronimo and named [Barack Obama](/people/barack-obama/), Robert M. Gates, Peter Geren, Yale University and the Order of Skull and Bones as defendants.[^88] The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Ramsey Clark, told the Yale Alumni Magazine that the principal defendant was the United States Army, as owner of Fort Sill, and that the society received one paragraph of the 32-page complaint; a university spokeswoman said that Skull and Bones is not part of the university and is legally independent of it.[^87] The court's account of the complaint states that Geronimo was buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, "in the dress of a chief with his possessions," and that "a group of Yale University students who were members of the organization named the Order of Skull and Bones opened the tomb of Geronimo and removed his skull, other bones, and items that were buried with Geronimo's body."[^88]

In its July 27, 2010 memorandum opinion, the court wrote that "the only alleged discovery or wrongful removal described by the complaint occurred in or around 1918." Judge Richard W. Roberts held that the statute the complaint invoked applies only to discoveries after November 16, 1990, that the alleged 1918 removal fell outside it, and that the United States had not waived sovereign immunity.[^88] The court granted the federal defendants' motion to dismiss and wrote that the complaint "will be dismissed as to all defendants."[^88] Intervenor plaintiffs, who were other lineal descendants of Geronimo, had argued that the gravesite should not be disturbed under Apache custom.[^88]

### The Pancho Villa skull suit

A complaint filed pro se in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Corpus Christi Division, on October 31, 2017, *Madrigal v. Russell Trust Association*, No. 2:17-cv-00340, named the Russell Trust Association, George H.W. Bush, Willard Mitt Romney and Yale University as defendants. The magistrate judge summarized it: the plaintiff alleged that the society possesses the skull of Pancho Villa, which was stolen from his grave in 1926, that the defendants know of its presence in the society's headquarters on the Yale campus, and that Romney is a member; he asked that the skull be returned so that it could be buried with Villa's body in Mexico City.[^89] On November 13, 2017 the magistrate judge, Jason B. Libby, ordered a more definite statement on the plaintiff's standing and the court's jurisdiction. In a memorandum and recommendation of November 21, 2017 he recommended dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction: the complaint presented no federal question, complete diversity was lacking because the plaintiff, of Corpus Christi, and Bush, of Houston, were citizens of Texas, and no amount in controversy was alleged. None of the defendants had appeared. Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos adopted the recommendation and entered final judgment on December 18, 2017; she denied a motion for reconsideration and a request for a refund of the filing fee on January 23, 2018, and the Fifth Circuit dismissed the plaintiff's appeal (No. 18-40008) on February 28, 2018. The docket records the return of service on the Russell Trust Association as executed on December 21, 2017.[^89]

The magistrate judge's memorandum states that "the Russell Trust Association is the governing body of the Society," citing Robbins. It cites the Washington Post of August 11, 1988, which reported that a group of Mexican nationals in El Paso, Texas wished to sue the society in 1988 to reclaim Villa's skull but had difficulty establishing standing, and Mark Singer, "La Cabeza de Villa," The New Yorker, November 27, 1989, and it cites the Geronimo suit as another action over remains attributed to the society.[^89]

[^1]: David A. Richards, "The origins of the tomb," *Yale Alumni Magazine*, May/June 2015, with editors' note on the author's listing among Skull and Bones members in the Class of 1967 graduation book. https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4072-the-origins-of-the-tomb
[^2]: Antony C. Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones* (1983), chart "Hypothesis Number One," after the text on the three hypotheses. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^3]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), opening chapter and the passage that sets out Hypothesis One, with the old-line and new-wealth families. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^4]: Lyman Bagg, *Four Years at Yale* (New Haven: Henry Holt, 1871), p. 52 ("modern system, which began in 1832"), pp. 145 to 147 (the Russell Trust Association, the society, its founders and catalogue) and p. 153 ("Eulogia"). https://archive.org/details/fouryearsatyale00baggrich
[^5]: *Catalogue of the Connecticut Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa*, August 1838, officers for 1837-8 and list of members of 1833, compared with the roster of the class of 1833 in Sutton (1983). https://archive.org/details/catalogueofconne00phib
[^6]: Anonymous pamphlet on the 1876 break-in at the hall, as quoted in Antony C. Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), Memorandum Two, and reprinted in Kris Millegan, *Fleshing Out Skull & Bones* (2003). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones ; https://archive.org/details/fleshing_out_skull_and_bones
[^7]: Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1929-1930 (New Haven: Yale University, 1930), entry "William Howard Taft, B.A. 1878," pp. 69 to 72, including the entry for his father ("Alphonso Taft (B A. 1833, LL.D. 1867) ... tutor at Yale 1835-37; member of Yale Corporation 1872-1882"). https://web.archive.org/web/2024/http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_record/1925_1952/1929-30.pdf
[^8]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), nineteenth-century description of the hall reprinted in the appendix, passage on the earlier meeting room in the Courant building. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^9]: Lyman Bagg, *Four Years at Yale* (New Haven: Henry Holt, 1871), pp. 145 to 146, description of the hall, its doors and roof plates and its value, reprinted in the appendix to Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983). https://archive.org/details/fouryearsatyale00baggrich
[^10]: Franklin Bowditch Dexter, *Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College*, vol. IV (1778-1792), sketch of Matthew Talcott Russell (Yale 1779), pp. 125 to 126. https://archive.org/details/biographicalsket04dextuoft
[^11]: *Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University, deceased from June, 1880, to June, 1890*, entry for William Huntington Russell, born in Middletown, August 12, 1809, pp. 241 to 242. https://archive.org/details/1880t90obituary00yaleuoft
[^12]: *The Hamlin Family: A Genealogy of Capt. Giles Hamlin of Middletown, Connecticut, 1654-1900* (1900), entries [302], [307] and [638] (Capt. John Russell; Matthew Talcott Russell; Samuel Russell, born at Middletown August 25, 1789). https://archive.org/details/hamlinfamilygene00andr
[^13]: National Park Service, National Historic Landmark Nomination, "Samuel Wadsworth Russell House," Middletown, section 8, pp. 8-11. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/70000688_text
[^14]: Franklin Bowditch Dexter, *Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College*, vol. II (1745-1763), sketch of the Rev. William Russell of Middletown, p. 90. https://archive.org/details/biographicalsket02dext
[^15]: Kris Millegan (ed.), *Fleshing Out Skull & Bones* (2003), opening article and pp. 151 to 152 ("cousin"), p. 313 ("second cousin") and p. 52 ("uncle"). https://archive.org/details/fleshing_out_skull_and_bones
[^16]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), passages stating that the Order "was incorporated as The Russell Trust in 1856" and on Daniel C. Gilman's role as treasurer, his appointment as assistant librarian in 1856 and as librarian in 1858. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^17]: Connecticut Secretary of the State, certified copies (March 28, 2001) of "An Act incorporating Russell Trust Association" (1856); resolution amending the charter (July 1870); resolution confirming the by-laws (approved March 24, 1887); and "An Act amending the charter of The Russell Trust Association" (approved July 9, 1943) with the certificate of acceptance of November 12, 1943 sworn by the president and secretary, as reprinted in Kris Millegan, "RTA, Incorporated, a Shell Game," in Millegan (ed.), *Fleshing Out Skull & Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society* (Trine Day, 2003), pp. 693 to 696. https://archive.org/details/fleshing_out_skull_and_bones
[^18]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1916 (Hadley, Morris). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^19]: Connecticut Secretary of the State, Connecticut Business Registry (data.ct.gov dataset n7gp-d28j), business master records for account numbers 0269315 (The Russell Trust Association; Special Chartered; Active), 0059060 (RTA Incorporated; Non-Stock; Active; registered April 14, 1961; organization meeting February 28, 1962; billing street 64 High Street, New Haven), 0053733 (The Deer Island Club Corporation; Non-Stock; Active; registered February 20, 1907) and 0269028 (The Deer Island Association; Non-Stock Specially Chartered; Active; registered May 19, 1915). https://data.ct.gov/resource/n7gp-d28j.json?accountnumber=0059060
[^20]: Certificate of Incorporation of RTA Incorporated (1961), under the Nonstock Corporation Act of Connecticut, sections 3 to 6 and oath of the signers, as reprinted in Millegan, "RTA, Incorporated, a Shell Game," in *Fleshing Out Skull & Bones* (2003), pp. 697 to 700. https://archive.org/details/fleshing_out_skull_and_bones
[^21]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year: Van Sinderen, Henry B. (1911); Hincks, John Winslow (1952); Terry, Henry Porter Baldwin (1935); Weaver, Howard Sayer (1948); Lovett, Sidney (1950). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^22]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), description of the October 1983 membership catalogue, whose inside title page directs corrections to "The Secretary, RTA Incorporated, P.O. Box 2138, Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520." https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^23]: Certificate amending the Certificate of Incorporation of RTA Incorporated (December 1983), with the vote of the members, as reprinted in Millegan, "RTA, Incorporated, a Shell Game," in *Fleshing Out Skull & Bones* (2003), pp. 701 to 702. https://archive.org/details/fleshing_out_skull_and_bones
[^24]: Millegan, "RTA, Incorporated, a Shell Game," July 2003, in *Fleshing Out Skull & Bones* (2003), pp. 691 to 693, quoting the New Haven Register, September 27, 1991. https://archive.org/details/fleshing_out_skull_and_bones
[^25]: Ron Rosenbaum, "The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones," *Esquire*, September 1977. https://archive.org/details/print-article-the-last-secrets-of-skull-and-bones-esquire-september-1977
[^26]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), concluding passage on the Russell Trust Association and the Deer Iland Corporation as organizations geared to the post-graduation world. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^27]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), notes on nineteenth-century publications: *The Iconoclast* (New Haven, October 13, 1873); an anonymous *Skull & Bones* pamphlet on the 1876 break-in; *The Order, The Fall of Skull and Bones* (New Haven, 1876). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^28]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), passage on access to the Russell Trust papers at the Sterling Library, Yale University. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^29]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, organization record for RTA Incorporated, EIN 06-0768741, New Haven, Connecticut (Internal Revenue Service return data, fiscal years 2011 to 2023; ruling date February 1966). https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/60768741
[^30]: RTA Incorporated, IRS Form 990 for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021 (e-file object 202241189349302124), Part I, Part III, Part VI, Part IX, Schedule A (supporting organization, Yale University, EIN 06-0646973), Schedule O and Schedule R (Deer Island Club, EIN 13-1897694). https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/60768741
[^31]: Internal Revenue Service, Exempt Organizations Business Master File extract for Connecticut (eo_ct.csv), entry for RTA Incorporated, EIN 060768741, tax period 2025-06 (asset amount 17,071,890; income amount 2,178,912; revenue amount 808,538). https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-organizations-business-master-file-extract-eo-bmf
[^32]: Jacques Leslie, "Smirk from the past" ("Yale"), *Salon*, March 1, 2000. https://www.salon.com/2000/03/01/yale/
[^33]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), Deer Iland Club entry (island donated in 1906 by Patriarch George Douglas Miller; club established 1907; 76th season in 1983) and index of members by class year, class of 1870 (Miller, George Douglas). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^34]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), chart of families, October 1983 membership catalogue (living members) and index of members by class year. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^35]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1888 (Stimson, Henry Lewis). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^36]: *A Catalogue of the Members of H. A. E. of Phillips Academy, Andover* (New Haven: T. M. & T. Press, 1897), entry 25, Henry Lewis Stimson ("Yale, 1888, A.B." with the society list that includes Skull and Bones). https://archive.org/details/catalogueofmembe00pial
[^37]: Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Year 1950-1951 (New Haven: Yale University, 1951), entry "Henry Lewis Stimson, B.A. 1888," p. 11. http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_record/1925_1952/1950-51.pdf
[^38]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), passage on Henry Stimson's career, his marriage to Mabel White and his 1911 appointment. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^39]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1878 (Taft, William Howard). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^40]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1913 (Harriman, William Averell) and class of 1917 (Harriman, Edward Roland N.), and the passage that reads "William Averell Harriman (113) and Edward Roland Noel Harriman (17) joined The Order." https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^41]: George Mosher Murray and others, *History of the Class of Nineteen Hundred and Seventeen, Yale College*, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917), biographical entries for Prescott Sheldon Bush (pp. 105 to 106), Edward Roland Noel Harriman, William Ellery Sedgwick James, Henry Neil Mallon and Knight Woolley. https://archive.org/details/historyofclassof00murr
[^42]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), chapter on the Harriman family and the investment bankers, passage ending "have dominated the direction of The Order." https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^43]: Office of the Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order No. 248 (executed October 20, 1942), 7 Fed. Reg. 9097-9098 (November 7, 1942), F.R. Doc. 42-11568. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1942-11-07/pdf/FR-1942-11-07.pdf
[^44]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), passage on Averell Harriman, Roland Harriman, E.S. James, Knight Woolley and the Union Bank. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^45]: Darwin Payne, *Initiative in Energy: Dresser Industries, Inc., 1880-1978* (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), chapter "New Command in a Troubled Era." https://archive.org/details/initiativeinener00payn_0
[^46]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), 1971 membership catalogue entry "BUSH, 1917, Prescott S." (Yale Corporation, U.S. Senator, former partner of Brown Brothers Harriman). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^47]: Anthony L. Kimery, "George Bush and the CIA: In the Company of Friends," CIA Reading Room, document CIA-RDP99-01448R000401570011-0, sections "The Early Years: Waltzing with Spooks" and the passage on Henry Neil Mallon, citing Robin W. Winks, *Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961* (William Morrow, 1987), ch. 1. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp99-01448r000401570011-0
[^48]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), 1971 membership catalogue entries "BUSH, 1948, George Herbert Walker" and "BUSH, 1968" (George Walker Bush), and class index. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^49]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), 1971 membership catalogue entry "BUSH, 1953, Jonathan James" (investments). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^50]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), 1971 membership catalogue entries for George Herbert Walker Bush ("U.S. Congressman, '66-70") and George Walker Bush ("Lieut., Pilot, USAF, June '68-June 70"). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^51]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1918 (Lovett, Robert Abercrombie), and the passage on the Lovett family ("The Order '18"). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^52]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), passage on Judge Robert Scott Lovett, citing George Kennan's biography of E. H. Harriman, and on Robert Abercrombie Lovett's initiation. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^53]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1920 (Luce, Henry Robinson). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^54]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), name index, class of 1920. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^55]: "Tap Day Results!," special dispatch from New Haven, May 15, 1919, *The Harvard Crimson*, May 16, 1919. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1919/5/16/tap-day-results-pnew-haven-conn/
[^56]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1939 (Bundy, William Putman) and class of 1940 (Bundy, McGeorge). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^57]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), passage on the Bundy brothers and Vietnam, where the book states its own hypothesis. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^58]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1950 (Buckley, William Frank Jr.). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^59]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1949 (Coffin, William S. Jr.). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^60]: FBI headquarters file on William F. Buckley Jr., part 1, memorandum L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, October 20, 1950. https://archive.org/details/foia_Buckley_William_F.-HQ-1
[^61]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1937 (Stewart, Potter). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^62]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1966 (Kerry, John Forbes). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^63]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, classes of 1915 (MacLeish, Archibald) and 1936 (Moore, Richard Anthony). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^64]: Library of Congress, "Librarians of Congress" (Archibald MacLeish and Luther Harris Evans, 1939-1953). https://guides.loc.gov/librarians-of-congress
[^65]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), closing section on education, "UNESCO - Constitution, Archibald MacLeish ('15)." https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^66]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1900 (Rockefeller, Percy Avery). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^67]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1894 (Whitney, Harry Payne). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^68]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1898 (Whitney, Payne), and the Whitney table and text. https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^69]: Kathrin Day Lassila and Mark Alden Branch, "Whose Skull and Bones?," *Yale Alumni Magazine*, May/June 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060614215733/http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2006_05/notebook.html
[^70]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1918 (Davison, Fredrick Trubee). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^71]: United States Air Force, "Brigadier General Frederick Trubee Davison," official biography. https://web.archive.org/web/20250401000815/https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/3928479/frederick-trubee-davison/ ; Ralph D. Paine, *The First Yale Unit* (1925), chapter "Trubee, the Crippled Leader." https://archive.org/details/firstyaleunit0000ralp
[^72]: Yale News, "Defending Allied skies: Yale's pioneering pilots form first naval aviation unit" (August 17, 2014), text on Tap Day, April 19, 1917. https://news.yale.edu/2014/08/17/defending-allied-skies-yale-s-pioneering-pilots-form-first-naval-aviation-unit
[^73]: Yale University, *Obituary Record of the Graduates of the Undergraduate Schools, Deceased During the Year Ending July 1, 1927*, entry for Payne Whitney, B.A. 1898, pp. 171 to 172 (listing "member Hé Boulé, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Skull and Bones"). https://archive.org/details/obituaryrecordof00yale_4
[^74]: Yale University, *Obituary Record of the Graduates of the Undergraduate Schools, Deceased 1915 to 1920*, entry for Albert Dillon Sturtevant, Ph.B. 1916. https://archive.org/details/1915t20obituary00yaleuoft
[^75]: Associated Press item, "F. Trubee Davison to Join CIA in Personnel Post," CIA Reading Room, document CIA-RDP78-04718A000500180115-2 (released May 10, 2000). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp78-04718a000500180115-2
[^76]: Memorandum from F. Trubee Davison dated September 11, 1951, on CIA Official Routing Slip, CIA Reading Room, document CIA-RDP80R01731R003100090067-0. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003100090067-0
[^77]: "Bush's Boy's Club: Skull and Bones," *Covert Action Information Bulletin*, no. 33 (Winter 1990), pp. 20 to 22, citing the *New York Times*, July 5, 1951, Marchetti and Marks, *The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence* (1974), pp. 110 to 111, Payne and Dobson, *Who's Who in Espionage* (1984), and Freed and Landis, *Death in Washington* (1980), p. 168. https://archive.org/details/CAIB33
[^78]: "F. Trubee Davison Dies at 78," *New York Times*, November 16, 1974. https://web.archive.org/web/20240107180328/https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/16/archives/f-trubee-davison-dies-at-78-led-natural-history-museum-aviation.html ; "Minutes of 2nd Career Service Committee Meeting," October 1, 1951, CIA-RDP80-01826R000400090089-6, and "Minutes of 14th Career Service Committee Meeting," CIA-RDP80-01826R000400090006-7. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80-01826r000400090089-6 ; https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80-01826r000400090006-7
[^79]: CIA Reading Room, document CIA-RDP84-00780R003200020017-9 (letter of May 15, 1969 signed by Hugh T. Cunningham, Director of Training); CIA-RDP84-00780R003200020006-1 (Midcareer Executive Development Course correspondence, 1968); CIA-RDP80-00536A000300070001-5 (Midcareer Course No. 32, April to June 1972, listing Hugh Cunningham, Director of Training). https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80-00536a000300070001-5
[^80]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1934 (Cunningham, Hugh Terry). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^81]: Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment* (1983), index of members by class year, class of 1950 (Pionzio, Dino John). https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^82]: Rosenbaum, "The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones," *Esquire*, September 1977, passages on the C.I.A. careers of Bill Bundy, Bill Buckley and William Sloane Coffin. https://archive.org/details/print-article-the-last-secrets-of-skull-and-bones-esquire-september-1977
[^83]: Antony C. Sutton, *America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones* (1983), section "Communications." https://archive.org/details/americas_secret_establishment-skull_and_bones
[^84]: Alexandra Robbins, *Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power* (Little, Brown, 2002). https://archive.org/details/secretsoftombsku00robb
[^85]: Howard Altman, "Geronimo's Bones," in Kris Millegan, *Fleshing Out Skull & Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society* (Trine Day, 2003), pp. 33 to 37. https://archive.org/details/fleshing_out_skull_and_bones
[^86]: George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, "Records on Skull and Bones Society," FOIA 2009-0116-F, scope and content note, processed August 2009. https://www.bush41library.gov/download/file/4777
[^87]: Carole Bass, "Apaches sue to recover Geronimo's skull," *Yale Alumni Magazine*, May/June 2009. https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/2421-apaches-sue-to-recover-geronimo-s-skull
[^88]: *Geronimo et al. v. Obama et al.*, No. 09-303 (RWR) (D.D.C. July 27, 2010), memorandum opinion of Judge Richard W. Roberts, background, discussion and conclusion. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-dcd-1_09-cv-00303/pdf/USCOURTS-dcd-1_09-cv-00303-0.pdf
[^89]: *Madrigal v. Russell Trust Association*, No. 2:17-cv-00340 (S.D. Tex.), docket entries 1 (complaint, October 31, 2017), 4 (order for more definite statement, November 13, 2017), 6 (memorandum and recommendation, November 21, 2017, with footnotes 1 to 3), 7 and 8 (order adopting and final judgment, December 18, 2017), 9 (return of service on the Russell Trust Association, executed December 21, 2017), 16 (order of January 23, 2018) and 17 (Fifth Circuit dismissal, February 28, 2018, No. 18-40008). https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.txsd.1463674


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