Bohemian Tragedy - 2009-05-01

Bohemian Tragedy May 1, 2009, Alex Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair

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Members of the ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club—2,500 of America's richest, most conservative men, including Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush, and a passel of Bechtels, Basses, and Rockefellers—are known to urinate freely against the ancient redwoods that cover their 2,700-acre property. Have they been chopping down the trees as well? According to one former member turned whistle-blower, the San Francisco-based society may have logged some of its old-growth forest. Drawing on his own Ivy League ties, ALEX SHOUMATOFF investigates, with a daring sortie into the ceremonial kickoff of the Bohemians' annual encampment

Is this really what I want to be doing? Sneaking into the exclusive Bohemian Grove, on the Saturday night when roughly 2,500 of America's richest, mostly right-wing Republicans are kicking off their annual July "encampment"? The members of the San Francisco-based Bohemian Club are mostly all here, partying boisterously in this primeval stand of gargantuan redwoods 75 miles north of the city, or will be during the next 16 days. Over the years all the usual suspects have made appearances: Rumsfeld, Kissinger, two former C.I.A. directors (including Papa Bush), the masters of war and the oilgarchs, the Bechtels and the Basses, the board members of top military contractors—such as Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Carlyle Group—Rockefellers, Morgans, captains of industry and C.E.O.'s across the spectrum of American capitalism. The interlocking corporate web—cemented by prep-school, college, and golf-club affiliations, blood, marriage, and mutual self-interest—that makes up the American ruling class. Many of the guys, in other words, who have been running the country into the ground and ripping us off for decades.

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | first = Alex | last = Shoumatoff | title = Bohemian Tragedy | url = https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/5/bohemian-tragedy | work = Vanity Fair | date = May 1, 2009 | accessdate = July 1, 2023 }}