“It's So Secret We Can't Talk About It”

Asked directly about Skull and Bones on national television, a prominent political figure responds that it is so secret he cannot talk about it - then deflects, grows visibly uncomfortable, and moves on. The number 322, the Order's identifying marker, goes unaddressed.

Randall uses this moment to draw a distinction that rarely gets made in public conversation. Skull and Bones produces presidents, senators, and CIA directors, operates out of Yale University, and when asked about it on camera, its members visibly struggle to respond. Freemasonry, by contrast, is an organisation whose meetings are listed in local newspapers, whose members wear rings and lapel pins in public, and which has been broadly accessible for centuries.

Yet it is Freemasonry that attracts the conspiracy theories, the suspicion, and the cultural blame for shadowy influence over world events. Randall's point is a simple one. The organisation whose members cannot discuss it on television is not the one people are writing books about.