Skull and Bones, Bilderberg, CFR: What These Groups Really Are

Do a handful of private clubs secretly run the world? That is the question behind Secret Societies: The String Pullers, a documentary we shared here in 2013 about Yale’s Skull and Bones, the Bilderberg meetings, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission. The short answer from the public record is more ordinary and more interesting: these are real groups that bring powerful people together, and some of them are deliberately discreet, but there is no solid evidence that any of them controls governments or elections.

The film itself has since been removed from YouTube, so this page now works as a guide. It explains what each group actually is, what is known about how it operates, why it attracts suspicion, and how to tell the difference between documented influence and an unproven plot.

What the documentary asked

The film framed its subject as a choice between two pictures. In one, members of elite networks are ordinary people unfairly smeared by conspiracy theorists. In the other, they are an untouchable class steering world events from behind closed doors. Documentaries of this kind were hugely popular online in the late 2000s and early 2010s, often mixing verifiable history with speculation and dramatic music.

Neither extreme fits the evidence well. A more useful approach is to look at each organisation in turn: when it was founded, who belongs, what it publishes and what critics, including mainstream ones, have said about it.

The image above is a widely shared meme (watermarked by a Facebook page called The Truth Booth) built on a photo of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney at one of their 2012 presidential debates, with the moderator seated between them. Its caption calls the contest the world’s most expensive puppet show. It captures the mood many viewers brought to these films: a feeling that elections offer only a choice between two faces of the same establishment. That feeling is widespread and worth taking seriously, but it is a political argument, not proof of a hidden hand.

Skull and Bones: a Yale society with famous alumni

Skull and Bones was founded at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft. Each spring, on Yale’s “Tap Day”, it chooses fifteen students from the junior class, who become members in their final year. It admitted only men until 1992.

Its reputation comes from two facts. First, its rituals and meetings in its windowless building, known as “the Tomb”, are secret. Second, its alumni include three US presidents, William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, along with 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry. Claims that the society runs the CIA or is a branch of the Illuminati circulate widely but have never been backed by documents or credible insiders.

A simpler explanation fits the record: an elite university selects ambitious students, and some of them go on to powerful careers. The network can open doors, as old-school ties do everywhere. That is a fair concern about privilege, not evidence of a coordinated plan.

Bilderberg: a private conference with a public guest list

The Bilderberg Meeting began in 1954 at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, in the Netherlands. It was proposed by Polish exile politician Józef Retinger and backed by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to strengthen ties between Western Europe and North America during the Cold War. Each year roughly 120 to 150 politicians, business leaders, academics and journalists attend.

Discussions follow the Chatham House Rule: participants may use what they hear but may not say who said it. The group states that no votes are taken, no resolutions are passed and no policy statements are issued. In recent years it has published the list of participants and the main topics on its website, which undercuts the idea of total secrecy.

Critics on the left see Bilderberg as a forum where business interests get private access to politicians; critics on the right see it as a step toward world government. Both concerns about transparency are legitimate questions. What is missing is evidence that the meetings themselves produce binding decisions.

The CFR and the Trilateral Commission: think tanks in plain sight

The Council on Foreign Relations was incorporated in New York in 1921. It is a nonpartisan nonprofit think tank, publishes the journal Foreign Affairs (first issue 1922) and has several thousand members, including former officials, academics and journalists. Its reports and events are largely public. Critics argue that it reinforces a narrow establishment consensus on US foreign policy, which is a reasonable debate about influence.

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973, principally by banker David Rockefeller, with political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski as its first director. It links members from North America, Europe and Japan (now the wider Asia-Pacific). Its 1975 report The Crisis of Democracy, which warned of an “excess of democracy”, drew sharp criticism from writers such as Noam Chomsky. Even Antony C. Sutton, a fierce critic, noted that the Commission is not a conspiracy because its membership is published.

Influence versus control: how to weigh the claims

All four groups have something in common: they give powerful people a place to meet, talk and form relationships. That is real influence, and it is worth scrutiny. Shared membership, however, only proves that people know each other. To show control, you would need to connect named people to a specific decision and show how the group made it happen.

Researchers who study conspiracy belief point out several warning signs. A strong conspiracy theory tends to explain every event as planned, treats missing evidence as proof of a cover-up, and assumes near-perfect secrecy among thousands of people. Real conspiracies, like Watergate, were exposed by journalists, documents and insiders, and they rarely ran smoothly. Psychologists also describe a “proportionality bias”: the instinct that big events must have big, deliberate causes.

Questions to ask when watching a documentary like this

• Does it name sources you can check, such as documents, records or on-the-record interviews?
• Does it separate facts (who attended) from interpretation (what they supposedly decided)?
• Does it explain events with ordinary causes before reaching for hidden ones?
• Would any evidence change the film-maker’s mind?

The “Jefferson” quotation and other myths

The original version of this post quoted Thomas Jefferson on whether people will govern themselves or be ruled by a small elite. The line is often attributed to Jefferson and appears on countless posters, but we could not trace it to any of his letters or published writings, so it is best treated as unverified. Jefferson did write a great deal about self-government and the dangers of concentrated power; his genuine letters are freely searchable online.

• Myth: secret means sinister. Many groups keep meetings private for candour, from therapy circles to business boards.
• Myth: the same elites pick every president. Elections are shaped by money, parties and media, which can be studied openly without assuming a single hidden committee.
• Myth: dismissing a theory means defending the elite. You can criticise lobbying, inequality and revolving doors between government and business while rejecting claims that lack evidence.

The healthiest takeaway is to keep asking who has access to power and how it is used, and to demand evidence before accepting either the official story or the dramatic alternative.

Sources: Wikipedia: Skull and Bones; Wikipedia: Bilderberg Meeting; Wikipedia: Council on Foreign Relations; Wikipedia: Trilateral Commission; Wikipedia: Conspiracy theory.

• Documentaries: Esoteric Agenda (2008) - Kymatica (2009)
• Apologies of an Economic Hitman: A Documentary Viewing Guide
• NOT Seen on TV!
• The Money Masters (Documentary): How Banks Create Money Out Of Thin Air
• The Corporation: A Documentary's Argument About Corporate Power
• Owned & Operated - A film about Humanity and the World we've built for Ourselves
• The American Dream - The Story of Your Enslavement
• DEBTOCRACY International Version (Documentary)
• CATASTROIKA Privatization goes public (Documentary)