Unearthing skull and bones.

ITEM: As if just having discovered something no one else knew, an October 22, 2004 article distributed by Reuters bared the fact that both Democrat John Kerry and Republican George W. Bush "joined the same secret society: Skull and Bones" when they were seniors at Yale University in the 1960s.

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: The first mention of this suspicious Yale "fraternity" in THE NEW AMERICAN appeared in our June 30, 1986 issue with a review of Antony Sutton's book, America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones. In our January 18, 1988 issue, we identified presidential candidate George H. W. Bush as a member of Skull and Bones and condemned the group as "a recruiting center for Insiders of international finance, intelligence, and politics." We first cited John Kerry's membership in the exclusive Yale group in our September 24, 1991 issue, where we pointed out that because he was a member, his work in the Senate would be "acceptable to the Bonesman occupying the White House," then George Bush the elder.

In our November 4, 2002 issue, we speculated: "The 2004 presidential race might involve two Bonesmen--President Bush and Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry." We also noted that the current president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, had himself been a Bonesman. And we pointed out that a September 1989 foreign aid bill containing an amendment authored by Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz, another Bonesman, permitted President George H. W. Bush to direct funds to Saddam Hussein. Bonesman Bush the elder did use the authority generated by Bonesman Heinz with the result that U.S. taxpayers' money went to Iraq approximately one year prior to American troops invading that nation. (In a separate eerie development, Teresa Heinz, the widow of Bonesman John Heinz who died in a plane crash, later married Bonesman John Kerry.)

Several other articles about Skull and Bones have appeared in THE NEW AMERICAN, leading up to our cover story, "Bipartisan Bonesmen," in our issue of March 8, 2004. Therein, we quoted Senator Kerry's response to an inquiry by NBC's Tim Russert about his and the president's membership in Skull and Bones. Kerry contended that nothing should be made of it "because it's a secret." And when the same NBC interviewer later asked President Bush to respond to the identical inquiry, Mr. Bush stated, "It's so secret we can't talk about it."