henry kissinger bohemian grove

", Proudly Kissinger reeled off the names of some of his fellow campers: "Nick Brady and his brother is here." On hikes I'd taken, my impression had been that the only people patrolling the ten miles of Grove perimeter were a guy at the Guard House on Smith Creek Road who spent a lot of time whittling a walking stick and ancient Bohemians taking the daily 10:00 a.m. open-backed bus tour. A visitor once said of it: You don't just walk in thereyou are summoned.. Why, for example, areat least 80 percent of the Bohemians in a state of intoxication so advanced that many of them had fallen insensible among the ferns, gin fizz glasses gripped firmly till the last? The waiting lists for membership are so long it takes years for the novitiate to be admitted. The long tables are lit by gas pipes that spring from the ears of wooden owl silhouettes three feet above the table, a half dozen of these per table. Bohemian reminiscences describe such bizarre initiation rites as escorting new members to the redwood at which one of the founders "did his morning ablutions." It ends with the symbolic burning in effigy of a wooden skeleton in a coffin that represents the end of the cares of the world. Mr. Kissinger surprised everyone he did not speak, although he did spend time chatting with the members and their 200 guests (the number is strictly limited) about all manner of topics. Kissinger as "Soul Man," Bohemian Grove [includes correspondence] Dates 2000 Container box 783, folder 26 Physical Location Library of Congress They played golf, swam and went skeet shooting. It is here at a campground in Monte Rio, California surrounded by redwood trees where the secretive boy's club for the rich and powerful, whose members have included Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, have an unusual ceremony. Henry A. Kissinger papers, part II > Series V. Photographs > General > Kissinger as "Soul Man," Bohemian Grove includes correspondence. Of course, just about anybody could hate the Grove. This is not the first time Clinton, Powell or Kissinger have been linked to the Bohemian Grove. ", "Abby, now, she's the one who raised her fist at graduation? Who are the members, and how do they join the club whose reason for being is the Summer Encampment? "Oh thou, great symbol of all mortal wisdom, Owl of Bohemia grant us thy counsel!". I outfitted myself in conservative recreational wear -- a pressed plaid shirt, PermaPrest chinos, Top Siders, a sport jacket -- I always carried a drink, and I made it a point to have that morning's Wall Street Journal or New York Times under my arm when I surfaced (though television is against the rules, newspapers are sold at the Grove Civic Center). Toms day began at 5:30 a.m., preparing for break-fast. "I am a warrior and that is how I come to you today," he said. Visit some corporate suite in San Francisco in June or early July and if you see the CEO brooding thoughtfully before his plate-glass window overlooking the Bay Bridge, the chances are he is not thinking about some impending take-over or merciless down-sizing. Th encampment has become the primary watering hole for Republican administration officials, defense contractors, press barons, old-line Hollywood figures, establishment intellectuals and a handful of German speaking men in lederhosen. You know how many times we've been in someone's home, and we've wanted to go to the powder room, and we've maybe said, 'Excuse me, I've got to powder my nose.' Today AIDS has put a damper on the Grove's River Road pickup scene, which Herb Caen used to write about in his San Francisco Chronicle gossip column. Holding meetings in the back room of a San Francisco Barbary Coast bar called The Jolly Corks, the club later extended membership to artists of all kinds, but the club symbol, to this day, is an owl, typifying the nightworking journalists, as well as wisdom. Over the years, though, the artists' patrons assumed a larger percentage of the membership.. I would like to make the two-year congressman's term four years, to reduce the number of elections that we have, because I think that's one of the reasons that only about 53 percent of the people vote. Reagan didn't get the question the first time around. Several of the Hoots jokes were at the expense of the homeless. "Oh, I've had my hand off it for two minutes now," Richard protested. Reagan also came out in favor of four-year terms for congressmen. A high point of the middle weekend was the performance of The Low Jinks, the Grove's elaborate musical-comedy show. Kissinger's crusty performance was not appreciated by the men he'd cut in front of in line. Kevin McCarthy is No Edward Snowden, But He Should Find the Comparison Flattering, Assessing Nicaraguas Long Haul toward Liberation and Economic Democracy, A National Divorce? In 1982 reporters followed German chancellor Helmut Schmidt co the Grove gates, and the front page of the Christian Science Monitor termed the Grove "the West's hidden summit." ", "They're always an the periphery of radicalism. MONTE RIO, Calif.When Gerald R. Ford, Henry A. Kissinger and A. W. Clausen joined 2,000 of the richest and most powerful men in the country at the annual ritual known as the Summer Encampment at Bohemian Grove near this sleepy hamlet of 997 last month, did they make decisions that will shape America's destiny, or was It merely the greatest men's party on earth?. The hacks soon concluded that Bohemianism, in the sense of real poverty, was oppressive. My first full-strength dose of Bohemian culture took place two weeks earlier, the first Saturday night, when after a long day in the Grove I took a seat on the grassy lakeside among 1,500 ocher men for the encampment's famously surreal opening ritual. Membership in the Bohemian Club is by invitation only, and no women are allowed, either as members or guests, except for an occasional picnic for club wives. He looked bewildered and hung over, and I figured Bohemians were warmly and mysteriously saying to him what they were saying to me: "I can tell this is your first Grove.". A set of checkpoints like the Berlin Wall seemed to stretch out behind him. The Bohemian Grove belongs to the private San Francisco-based gentlemen's club The Bohemian Club. Mr. Ford and Mr. Kissinger this year were .guests of Mandalay, whose members include Stephen Bechtel Sr., Stephen Bechtel Jr., Leonard Case Firestone and Edgar F. Kaiser, among the industrialists; former C.I.A. "He's dead." The club's "men of talent" (i.e., artists and writers) included writers of a populist bent: Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Henry M. Stanley. "That Indian is here, Bajpai." Voyage to Sonoma County and muster against Secret World Government which, lets face it, isnt exactly secret. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was invited this summer and, according to club officials, had planned to attend, but he canceled. For example, at one point a Little League team came out that included Bohemians Bob Lurie and Peter O'Malley, the real-life owners of the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, in uniform. Then the beer brewer himself came out to sing: "Mandalay," the song based on the Kipling poem. A few years ago KGO radio, out of San Francisco, had an interesting talk show in which callers with first-hand Grove experience told their tales. Nearby, a young member of the cast dressed as a woman pulled apart purplish gossamer robes to pee. As time went on, however, the club became too elite for its own founders. The first thing I noticed was that he had finally let his hair go gray. "Speaker: To Be Announced," it said, raising the question of what dignitary might be thought more important than Prime Minister Rocard, who was listed as the speaker on the middle Saturday. No one was supposed to know that Rocard himself would be speaking the next day down at the lake, under the green speakers' parasol. Theres Not Being At Home with the wife. Theres endless dominoes the Groves board-game par excel-lence. "He bought some apple juice company for $1 million and he was fearful he would have to dip into his capital"). Then Nelson and David Rockefeller horned their way in, and the spotlight moved to the Trilateral Commisssion. A waiter in a red jacket dropped an uneaten chunk of the bright red cod into a waste bin, and the Bohemians at my table talked about presidents. The Grove's keenest adversary is Mary Moore, who lives in a counter cultural shantytown in nearby Occidental. Though I regularly violated Grove rule 20 ("Members and guests shall sign the register when arriving at or departing from the Grove"), I was never stopped or questioned. Although golf, skeet shooting and canoeing are available, merely relaxing in the physical splendor of the 2,700 acres of redwood trees and the camaraderie of the fraternity are sufficient entertainment for most of the grove's campers. Notable members over the years have included Clint Eastwood, Henry Kissinger, Walter Cronkite, Richard Nixon, Read More On the first weekend, for instance, Associated Press president Louis Boccardi, addressing his listeners as men of "power and rank," gave them more details than he said he was willing to give his readers about the plight of Terry Anderson, the Middle East correspondent held hostage since 1985. Here, of an evening, Grovers can hear a banker or a Treasury official wend his way through the intricacies of Third World debt rescheduling, or listen to a European leader who will offer himself up for inspection. Everywhere you hear what is Bohemian and what isn't Bohemian, One night I wandered into Fore Peak camp and got a lecture from a man named Hugh about Bohemian values as they concerned Fore Peak's famous drink, a mixture of rum and hot chocolate. The talent section is no doubt in acted in and staged each year by club members. The big improvement this year was to project a sort of hologram onto the owl's face so that its beak seemed to move. Former President Ford told us what he would do to save the country. How? Cremation of Care, they fear, means the death of caring. This was about the highest security I saw inside. Find home again in the Grove! Just the same, a man on his own often gets invited back to camps by gay Bohemians. They come by limousine through the woods or by corporate jet to the tiny Sonoma Airport, where they are met by waiting cars. "David Jr.'s going into the family business now. Other references aren't so subtle. When Seymour Hersh Strained to Keep Up With CounterPunch, Nichole Stephens, Administrative Assistant. ", "Come out Bohemians! The rest of the questions were about the world outside the Grove. The Bohemian Club, founded in 1872, was originally composed of journalists and musicians ("bohemians"). The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions In The U.S. Interlocking Directorates in the Corporate Community, The Power Elite's Foreign Policy in WWII & Vietnam, The Rise and Fall of Diversity at the Top, 2005-2015, Can Corporate Power Be Controlled? The physical aspect of Bohemian male bonding can't be overlooked. At Faraway camp a guy beckoned me into the camp to enjoy "a little orange juice." The Grove was still there. Care went up in blazes. "You got it too late." User ID: 78001158. At 9:15 p.m. a procession of priests carrying the crypt of Mr. Dull Care came out of the trees on the east side, along the Grove's chief thoroughfare, River Road. Being from New York was fine; the Grove limits retreat guests to out-of-staters (though clamoring by well-connected Californians to visit the forest has resulted in the rise of the June "Spring Jinks" weekend). I walked over to the Secret Service guy and asked if it was okay to meet the president. At his Lakeside Talk, Malcolm Forbes said that Khrushchev knows the Soviets "are in over their heads," and even as the name Gorbachev was murmured throughout the audience, Forbes rambled on, dotty and heedless, 25 years out-of-date. I repeated myself, and he said, "Yes, yes, that's true," in the famous furry voice. These men were interested in something more than pseudo-Druidic rituals. This button displays the currently selected search type. The club's famed annual gathering has been held for more than 100 years at the 2,700-acre Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, about 70 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. Jimmy Carter is a Liberal Saint Now, Was a War Criminal Then. It's only a matter of time before the club gets sued under either California's civil rights act or San Francisco's civil rights ordinance, both of which bar sex discrimination in business establishments. "Hey, knock it off, this is Bohemia," Hugh had to tell him. Industries PLC of England, a deal that could give Simon a toehold in Europe. From its beginning, in the year Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Two Bohemian Grove is a restricted 2,700-acre (1,100 ha) campground located in the forest of Monte Rio, California. Bohemian Club In the Bohemian Club at what is known as Bohemian Grove in the redwood forest of California's Sonoma county, an event that continued into the 21st century. Bohemian Grove is one of the most secretive places in the world, a Northern California campground that's a play land for the rich and powerful, with lore that claims it holds Illuminati meetings . One day a member asked if I was related to a Bohemian named Jack Weiss. "It was a free ride," the other friend explained. "You know, the press conferences were adversarial bouts -- they were there to trap me in something or other.". Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Part II (MS 1981). Among other things, it permits alcoholic failures to feel equal for a few days with their workaholic cousins. Tom fixed the early morning gin fizzes and kindred cobweb banishers. He sneered at nearby Abbey, a lowly place equipped merely with tents and believed to have a tradition of unmentionable prac-tices. My neighbor suggested that someone ought to "shoot the fucker down," flashing the press hatred that prevails in Bohemia. Bohemian GroveWhere Big Shots Go to Camp, https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/14/archives/bohemian-grove-where-big-shots-go-to-camp.html. ", "My son was in Santiago, and David sent him letters of introduction to seven leading bankers in seven countries. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Boho-member Wouk once got off a sententious paragraph about the Grove being the site of that purest of loves, the friendship that men can nourish between each other in noble surroundings. Moore's answering machine message asking friends not to call her at her vintage-clothing store in the town of Sebastopol included a denunciation of the Cremation of Care. For a while I thought the bar of salt bracketed on one tree by the lake was an experimental effort to neutralize uric acids before they hit the roots. Two of the buses bore vanity license plates commemorating the 1989 presidential inauguration -- they had the words Kinder and Gentler stamped on them. No one's saying for the recordthe camp:65 miles north of San Francisco operates very much in the tradition of Mark: Twain's blood brothers on the Mississippi or a college secret society. ", "You know, they've got a lot of liberal faculty. The Bohemian Club 's mascot is an owl, here cast in masonry, and perched over the main club entrance at 624 Taylor Street in San Francisco. The sociologists who had studied the place were right; there was no real security. Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Ford 2d, Robert Trent Jones, the golf course architect, and former California Lieutenant Governor Ed Reinecke have all been stage hands, and actors have included Bing Crosby, David Niven, Ray Bolger, Edgar Bergen, Phil Harris and Dan Rowan. He persisted in putting in too much rum to see how many guys would pass out. The club has a fa-mous motto, weaving spiders not come here, meaning No shop talk, but Tom laughs. The Bohemian Club's waiting list, which had first appeared away back in the 1920s, grew to ridiculous lengths. At the Bohemian Grove, he joined the Piedmont Camp to be with his close personal friends from Piedmontthe Witters, Dollars, etc.instead of joining a business camp. Why so many games of dominoes? "His method was to seize a large horse bucket, throw a hunk of ice into it, pour in several bottles of gin and a half a bottle of vermouth, and slosh it all around," goes one Grove recipe. As Oscar Wilde once remarked after a visit there, I've never seen so many welldressed, (although dress ranges from casual wear and athletic gear to suits and ties] wellfed, businesslikelooking Bohemians in the whole course of my life.. And they do talk to each othersometimes ignoring the injunctive to leave business behind. . Today the Grove is stocked with Reaganites. Bohemian Grove, 1991. More than 1,500 people are on the waiting list, and one man waited 10 years before becoming a member. That's the picnic scene at Russian River, where whitecaps and condoms meander down the foul brown estuary swirling amongst filthy young men who entertain disgusting Old Jew Pervs from Fire Island, Key West and West Hollywood. "We had jazz concert," Kissinger said. Here Nicholas Brady examined the history of the Jockey Club. Title. The Mandalay camp roster told the story, with its grizzled veterans of the Reagan-Bush years. For a while, in the early 1980s, Moore and BGAN thought they might actually liberate the redwoods. In sending his regrets by telegram, Mr. Nixon reportedly told the president of the club to continue to lead the people into the woods, while he, Mr. Nixon, would continue to lead the rest of the people out of the woods. The woman on the line now asked about the friend. The moderator studied the page and asked who I was and what camp I was in. It was at the Bohemian Grove that Americas nuclear weapons program was first devised by physicists such as Ernest O. Lawrence and Edward Teller, both members, meeting with other members who were then in govern-ment, all confident of the security of the redwood club-house built by Bernard Maybeck (one of our favorite American architects) in 1904. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. At the encampment last July, Al Haig was there, along with three other former secretaries of State: Kissinger, Shultz and William P. Rogers (Rogers as a guest of former national security adviser William P. Clark's). Bohemians rhapsodize endlessly about towering shafts and the inspiration they give men. Dick Cheneys a Grover. The girls were all played by men, and every time they appeared -- their chunky legs and flashed buttocks highly visible through tight support hose -- the crowd went wild. The size also variesonly 10 to 15 persons can be accommodated at some, while others range up to 150. This rule is strictly adhered to. The sudden appearance of men in striped jackets shows what a bouillabaisse of traditions the Grove is. When I got to Monte Rio, only a couple of signs of protest remained. "He really put the balls into it. The mood is reminiscent of high school. On July 21 of this year Henry Kissinger sat at one of them, chuffing loudly to someone -- Sunshine, her called her, and Sweetie -- about the pleasant distractions of his vacation in the forest. On the blackboard near the bootblack stand there were phone messages for corporate raider Henry Kravis and Bloomingdale's chairman Marvin Traub. I was told that if a Californian is not admitted before he is 30, he can despair of membership unless he achieves commercial or political prominence.

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