Date: 1872–Present
Location: San Francisco and Sonoma County, California
The Conspirators: The Bohemians
The Victims: Innocent civilians worldwide
Once a year, the Sonoma County Airport fills with a staggering collection of private jets, and the 2,700-acre Bohemian Grove fills with military members, former US presidents, and other members of the powerful elite. Welcome to the sixteen-day annual retreat of the Bohemian Club, held under tight security. Here, conspiracy theorists say, bizarre activities take place in the redwoods—everything from occult ceremonies to drag shows to skinny-dipping. But they believe that the world’s most powerful men (no women are allowed) aren’t just here to have a good time. They say the Manhattan Project to create the world’s first atomic bomb was planned in the Grove, and wars, corporate takeovers, military plots, and overall global domination are strategized inside. Some theorists say that the bohemians (sometimes called bohos) represent the most dangerous gathering of power brokers on the planet.
The bohemians are patrons of the arts and enjoy hobnobbing with well-connected associates who have similar interests. They get drunk in the woods, but aren’t planning to take over the world.
In the early days of the nineteenth century, San Francisco was home to a burgeoning theatrical arts community. It was also home to men who had made fortunes off the exploding West Coast economy. It was a match made in heaven. Artists are always looking for patrons, and patrons are always looking for more patrons to share the expense of supporting an active arts community. So a group of the social elite, including both leading artists and leading patrons, formed the Bohemian Club as a place where the two groups could mingle, and where the wealthy could buy a unique opportunity to hobnob with legendary musicians and artists. It quickly attained an exclusive reputation, exactly as its founders hoped, and it successfully cemented not only support for the arts community in San Francisco, but also personal relationships between its wealthy members.
The conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, say that it is also much more than a place to mingle. Why? Well, a sizable portion of San Francisco’s wealthiest industrialists in the late 1800s also happened to represent much of government and finance. That never changed. The bohemians have always strived to recruit the biggest names they could—including US presidents. But not all potential recruits are impressed. Richard Nixon came away from a Bohemian Grove retreat with some incredibly disparaging language directed at the boho arts community, many of whom were gay. But you don’t need to express Nixon-level homophobia to find some of the Grove activities odd. There are, indeed, other off-the-wall performances. Most famous is the ceremony held every year on the first day, a live fifty-minute dramatic play featuring a full orchestra and a six-figure budget. At its climax, cloaked figures perform a human sacrifice by burning a man in a coffin on an altar at the feet of the pagan god Moloch, a giant 30-feet-tall stone owl. An artificial lake and the world’s second-largest outdoor pipe organ are part of the show. Misinterpretation of the play’s imagery is what has led many critics to describe it as “occult.”
Whenever the rich, the powerful, or world leaders gather, a natural reaction among the more paranoid is that they’re up to something malevolent. Accordingly, given the impressive roster of Bohemian Grove attendees—and especially given the appearance of US presidents and the connection to the Manhattan Project—charges of planning world domination have always been leveled at the gatherings.
Although US presidents would sometimes visit, by itself that’s not quite enough to force us to conclude that the bohos are running the world. Each of the claims about the retreat falls apart under even modest scrutiny. For example, the “occult ceremony” is hardly as it’s popularly described. The play, called The Cremation of Care, is about letting go of the troubles of the daily grind in order to achieve freedom. The antagonist, named Dull Care (from a 1919 Oliver Hardy short film), is the one in the coffin, his death symbolizing freedom from monotonous daily tasks. The pagan god depicted by the owl represents knowledge and has always been the club’s mascot.
Although conspiracy theorists such as far-right radio personality Alex Jones have long charged that world leaders meet at the Grove to hold confidential talks and plan global domination, little evidence supports this. Members do present informal “Lakeside Talks” on various public policy issues throughout the retreat, but nothing confidential or surprising has ever been said. Contrary to the claims of Jones and others, security during the retreat is actually quite lax. Many reporters have found that they’ve been able to walk in and out and come and go without ever being stopped or questioned, and the goings-on inside the Grove have been extensively reported. Although we can’t prove a negative, the fact that no undercover reporter has ever caught a whiff of global domination being planned is telling.
What about the theory that the Manhattan Project was planned at Bohemian Grove? Well, the Grove is vacant most of the year, and members are allowed to rent it for private events. At the time the project was discussed, member Edward Teller (known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb”) had privately rented out the facility. The meeting was then run by J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence, who went on to head national laboratories working on the Manhattan Project. Other than Teller, no Bohemian Club members were present or allowed. Nevertheless, this one 1942 closed meeting is as close as the Bohemian Club ever came to “planning world domination.”
Now, you may be tempted to ask, if power brokers are going off to the woods, wouldn’t they be doing it for some reason more important than merely acting like drunken frat boys from the drama club? The Department of Sociology at UC Davis wrote a paper analyzing the Bohemian Grove encampment, and found that what happens there is essentially the same as team-building exercises popular in the corporate world. In essence, groups are more cohesive when they see themselves as high in status and when they interact in a relaxed and cooperative environment. Team building is an effective way for groups to learn to deal with problems more easily. So, in short, these men in positions of authority or status work better together in the outside world when they’ve developed camaraderie at the Bohemian Grove.
And this, it turns out, was one of the group’s founding principles: not to bring any business into the club itself. The club motto is “Weaving spiders come not here.” Leave the work outside. Become better friends inside.