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The official name for the Order of Skull and Bones is RTA, Incorporated. Daniel Coit Gilman first incorporated the Order of Skull & Bones in 1856 as the Russell Trust Association. The name was changed in 1961 to RTA, Incorporated.
In November 1983, the members voted positively on an Amending Certificate. The proper papers filed in December increased the Board of Directors from six to eight members and the President was given more power among other changes.
Whether this was at all in reaction to the release of Antony Sutton’s first Bones book, An Introduction to the Order, isn’t known. What is interesting about the amendment is the voting record presented. There is just enough information in the documents, to satisfy the legal filing requirements, so one cannot form a definite answer about all of the group’s rules for voting, but it is interesting that they list as the members required for a quorum as 35 with 71 as being “Present in Person or by Proxy and Entitled to vote.” The vote required for adoption is stated as 48. Now that is the two-thirds of 71 and in RTA’s Certificate of Incorporation of 1961, Section 8 (Which the amendment of 1983 negates.) it states that “any action may be taken only after a two-thirds majority vote of members.” But then it goes on to state, “the vote of majority of the voting power of members shall be sufficient.” This suggests that if 15 get together eight votes wins.
So who all gets to vote and what does it take to get things done in the organization? In section 5 it states, “[t]he Corporation shall have members, all of whom shall be of the same class. All persons who are at the date hereof members of the Russell Trust Association, … are members of the corporation, together with such other persons who are undergraduate students at Yale University … who may be elected from time to time pursuant to the by-laws of the corporation.” We do not have copies of RTA’s bylaws so we do not know what the “voting power of the members” consists of and if every Bones member has voting rights in RTA, Incorporated or what. But we do find it interesting that an amendment change was accomplished by such small numbers. In the September 27, 1991, the New Haven Register reported “almost 700 of the club’s approximately 800 surviving members narrowly voted to admit women.”
Should The Order get a Tax Free Ride on it’s Four Million Dollar Nest Egg?
The question of their taxes is also very interesting. RTA Incorporated tax statements are available online at www.guidestar.com. If you can look at these documents, you will find the tax forms are quite revealing in what they say … and do not say. There are required questions, boxes, and blanks to fill in that they just leave empty or write “not available.” The most blatant and egregious action is their use of the tax code to pay no taxes on their investment earnings of sometimes over $400,000 a year and that members may take their donations to Bones as deductions off of their personal income tax liabilities.
RTA Incorporated is a non-profit 501(c) 3 corporation carrying no tax burden at all. It does all this, while spending yearly $4,000 to $10,000 renting their private island for “[r]ental of facility for educational programs,” and $50,000 a year on “[c]onferences, conventions, and meetings,” plus another $40,000 to $60,0000 thousand a year in occupancy expenses. The Order has also been spending money on renovations and improvements, spending over a quarter of a million dollars in 1998. Did they add a women’s locker room to their fabled underground swimming pool or just fancy his and hers coffins?
The only charitable donations listed in their tax returns are in the years 1999 and 2000. A $5,000 donation, each of those years, to the Yale Scholarship Fund. The majority of all the expenses are declared in the tax form’s Program Service Expenses column as “Educational Programs.” There is no discussion of achievements, no number of clients served, nothing but “Educational Programs.” The Order of Skull & Bones skirts both the spirit and letter of the law by claiming to be an educational support organization for Yale University. The 1961 Certificate of Incorporation papers give some window dressing and cover some of the 501(c)3 requirements but the activities of the group do not seem to be educational but fraternal and secret. How can a secret society, which does not divulge its purpose, history or even its members be considered an educational non-profit? Maybe in some of their lawyers’ minds the organization is defined as an alumni organization. Or are they claiming to come under Yale Universities educational tax umbrella because RTA, Incorporated gives whatever assets it has left after obligations if Bones dies to Yale? At best, what they are doing a tap-dance on the Federal Tax code for the society’s gain and shame.
Historically and in reality, The Order of Skull & Bones is a fraternal organization and should be classified as a 501(c)(10) organization that should be paying taxes on the Order’s investment income. A lawyer friend of mine said that the Order’s tax returns, are, “skillfully prepared to look bland and innocuous.” At least from the listing of the officers and board members gathered from the RTA Incorporated state corporate and federal tax records have allowed us to at least fill in some of the holes in the membership lists “dark” years.
There is no publicly held listing of members after 1972 or privately proffered list of “Bonespersons” after 1985. The only semi-confirmed list after that is 2000 when the Rumpus, at Yale printed a copy of the Bones printed materials. We cannot be 100% about it though, considering Rumpus’s known irrelevancies and tabloid predilections. We have not seen the original and with today’s digital methods, one could be created. Over fifteen years of members are unknown. What influence these 20 and 30-somethings are having on our current affairs is unknown.
Another item gleaned from the tax returns is that contributions have gone from $164,000 in 1997 to $45,00 in 2000. Whether the drop in contributions is part of some dissension or just a reflection of the economy is as are many things about the Order … in the dark. I have been told in several phone conversation with one researcher, who claims to have interviewed the 1967 member of Bones who tapped George W. Bush, of a war going on in Bones. That there are some members who are switching monetary support from Bush to Kerry. Whether this is for real or just Hegelian flim-flam of a Bonesian Wizard of Oz ploy is yet to be seen.
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The Russel Trust Association’s and RTA Incorporated’s official filings submitted to the Connecticut’s Secretary of State’s office are presented in following pages. These are all the papers registered with the Secretary of State’s office for the two groups except for the yearly reports which, — as shown in the state records — begin after the name change in 1961. The earliest and latest available of these yearly reports are presented.
