Ford Foundation's Skull & Bones Link

by bob feldman

A few years ago a movie called SKULLS--which seemed to draw its initial
inspiration from Yale University's secretive Skull and Bones
society--was shown in some theatres around the United States .
According to the 1998 edition of SHARING THE PIE: A CITIZEN'S GUIDE TO
WEALTH AND POWER IN AMERICA by Steve Brouwer:

"Skull and Bones is a small, secret society of Yale University. During
the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century
it was home to many rich, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant young men who
went on to run the country, including William Howard Taft, Republican
president from 1908 to 1912; Averell Harriman, the leading financier of
the Democratic Party from 1932 to 1992; Prescott Bush, the manager of
Harriman's bank, Republican senator, and father of George Bush; and
George Bush, Republican president from 1988 to 1992 [and the father of
the current U.S. president, George W. Bush]. The list could be filled
out with the names of scores of very influential Americans--for example,
Henry Stimson, Republican financier and two-time secretary of war, and
Henry Luce, the nation's leading publisher (TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE, etc.).

"In the first half of the twentieth century, George Bush's father and
his generation of Bonesmen were intimately involved in maintaining
family wealth, looking after the welfare of America's largest banks and
corporations, running the affairs of both political parties, and
directing U.S. foreign and domestic policies."

The 1990 book TELEVISION AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY by Douglas Kellner
also observed that former President George "Bush's father Prescott had
connections with the intelligence service, was involved in the secret
investment bank...and, like his son, was a member of the secret Skull
and Bones society at Yale..."

Like George W. Bush's father, the president of the Ford Foundation
between 1966 and 1979, McGeorge Bundy, was a member of the Skull and
Bones society. In addition, both the father [Harvey Bundy] and the
brother [William Bundy] of former Ford Foundation President Bundy were
members of Skull and Bones. According to NATION magazine contributing
editor Kai Bird's MacArthur Foundation, LBJ Foundation and Rockefeller
Foundation-subsidized book, THE COLOR OF TRUTH: MC GEORGE BUNDY AND
WILLIAM BUNDY--BROTHER IN ARMS:

"In his junior year Harvey [Bundy] was selected to the most exclusive
and ritualistic of fraternities, Skull and Bones. Only fifteen men were
tapped for membership each year in the secretive club. [Harvey] Bundy
was enormously pleased...

"Nothing affected him more at Yale than the people he met at Skull and
Bones. They met twice a week, and [Harvey]Bundy claimed the friendships
he formed were such that Skull and Bones `did more for us than any other
single experience in our lives.'...

"Skull and Bones had been founded in 1832...William H. Russell...endowed
Skull and Bones with a considerable fortune, managed by the Russell
Trust Association...The clubhouse and its dining facilities were one
thing, but the Russell Trust also owned a summer house on Deer Island, a
rustic retreat in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. The
Russell Trust also reportedly had a special fund from which any Bonesman
caould withdraw up to $15,000 in a lifetime for any purpose...

"Skull and Bones...reinforced the paridigm of the Bundy brothers' Boston
Brahmin upbringing..."

The Ford Foundation's Vice President for Educational Programs who also
chaired the Ford Foundation's Public Policy Committee when McGeorge
Bundy was Ford Foundation President--Harold Howe--was also a member of
Skull and Bones. Under Skull and Bones member Howe's chairmanship, the
Ford Foundation's Public Policy Committee "dispersed several million
dollars a year on projects which were seen as too far afield from Ford's
guidelines," according to THE COLOR OF TRUTH.

Another Skull and Bones member who has been playing a prominent role in
U.S. Establishment politics since the now-deceased McGeorge Bundy moved
out of his Ford Foundation office in 1978 is U.S. Senator John
Kerry--who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic Party
presidential candidate in 2004.

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