Episode 220: Satanists Expose Bohemian Grove

All the secrets of Bohemian Grove are revealed, including the fact that these guys reveal themselves way, way too often.

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• From I Obtained the Attendance List For Bohemian Grove, Dan Boguslaw, Responsible State Craft, 2026: Bohemian Grove is an exclusive mens-only club that hosts a two-week summer retreat for the rich and powerful at a 2,700 acre compound in the redwoods of Northern California. With a $25,000 initiation fee and a decades-long membership waiting list, the hideaway was described in a 1989 Spy article as “the most exclusive frat party on earth.” The club serves as a popular destination for national security officials and defense industry executives to fraternize and party, far from the public eye. The 2023 camp attendance list includes two former national security advisors, three former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two former directors of the NSA. A 2017 roster, which lists all dues-paying members of the club, included three former directors of the CIA. Each club member is assigned to one of 130 separate “camps” inside the compound, which act as fraternities for attendees to party together. “Mandalay” is seen as the most elite camp, whose members in 2023 included Henry Kissinger, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and Riley Bechtel, the billionaire heir of the Bechtel corporation. A visitor once said of Mandalay, “you don’t just walk in there — you are summoned.” “Wayside Log” appears to be another watering hole for the national security community and defense contractors. Its members include former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and J. Michael Myatt, a Marine Corps Major General who became an executive for Bechtel after leaving government. 
  • Bohemian Grove also serves as a place for these buttoned-up generals turned defense executives to let loose. While the rule of not talking business is widely ignored, another unwritten rule is “everyone drinks all the time.” Longtime member and musician Peter Arnott wrote that every camp in the Grove is “competing to pour drinks down your throat” in a summer 2009 edition of the club magazine. While the Bohemian Grove’s motto is “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” meaning leave your business outside, this rule is often ignored. More recently, Sen. McCormick wracked up over a dozen high dollar donors from fellow club members ahead of announcing his successful senate bid in 2023. In 1967 President Nixon gave a lakeside talk at the Bohemian Grove that he would later claim was instrumental to launching his bid for the presidency. According to Spy magazine, the practice of flagrantly flouting the Club’s only public rule has been going on since at least 1989, though likely much longer; State Department cables published by Wikileaks indicate that longtime member Kissinger — who attended the 2023 retreat just months before his death — discussed business at the retreats in the 1970s. We reached out to many of the national security officials who are members of the Bohemian Grove, but none responded to a request for comment. https://substack.com/@drboguslaw/p-190622651 
• From Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club, Peter Martin Phillips, UC Davis, 1994: For over 150 years private men’s clubs have existed as a place of personal retreat for socio-economic elite men in American society. U.S. elite men’s clubs are seen by some social scientists as the American equivalent to European aristocracy. Defining a gentleman was one of the essential characteristics of U.S. men’s clubs and a mark of success in American Society. Elite men’s clubs tend to be introspectively oriented: Major activities, events and interactions tend to occur within club boundaries primarily for the members’ and guests’ own self-gratification. Clubs tend to establish traditions and maintain an internal culture to which new members receive some form of indoctrination before or after joining. Finally, elite men’s clubs offer their members a safe sanctum that meets personal needs away from less ordered environments. A man is an aristocrat within the confines of his club: He has supportive staff to wait on him and other aristocrats with similar interests. An elite men’s club is a system of ordered civility in what is perceived as an otherwise chaotic and disorderly world. Elite men’s clubs are actually a relatively rare phenomenon, with perhaps fewer than two hundred in the United States. Given the ubiquitous Rotary, Elks and Lions clubs in every small town in American, two hundred elite clubs is a rare phenomenon indeed. London’s West End men’s clubs, the prototype for American clubs, originated as regular gatherings of men with similar interests in taverns or coffee shops. Sir Walter Raleigh is reported to have founded the Friday Street Club which met at the Mermaid Tavern. Club life in London represented the collective alliance of men with similar tastes and perspectives. Scientific and literary clubs were some of the more honorable associations while gambling and drinking organizations abounded. 
  • Organized in 1872, the Bohemian Club was established in San Francisco as a gathering place for newspaper reporters and men who like arts and literature. (The origin of the term bohemian comes from the French artistic movement of the 1830’s and represented the mutual supportive companionship of artists and intellectuals.) By the 1880’s, businessmen had joined the Club in large numbers, as the original Bohemians found that admitting men of wealth helped pay the expenses. Club activities included poetry recitations, performances by musicians, lectures, and frequent plays. Bohemians liked to publicize their prominence by releasing news reports of important guests attending the Grove or Club functions. Oscar Wilde was entertained at the Bohemian Club in 1882 and is said to have drunk his guests under the table. The San Francisco Chronicle gave first page coverage to the opening of the new clubhouse on November 13, 1910. It was even common for the Bay Area newspapers to report on Bohemian elections and present the platforms of the various candidates for office. In the eleven-year period between 1904 and 1915, the Chronicle ran 331 stories on the Bohemian Club. This represented a yearly average of thirty articles, making Bohemia one of the most highly publicized club in the San Francisco Bay Area. 
    •  In 1878, several dozen Bohemians held a gathering in the forest in Sonoma County near what is now known as Camp Taylor. This was the start of a long Bohemian tradition of trekking to the Sonoma County redwoods during July and August for camping and self entertainment. By 1882, Bohemians were doing regular midsummer weekend campouts under the stars at various locations in Sonoma County. They rented what is now known as the Bohemian Grove from the Sonoma Lumber Company. The Bohemia’s symbol is an owl, which has been in use since the first year the Club started. The owl has come to symbolize the wisdom of life and companionship, that allows humans to struggle with and survive the cares and frustration of the world. A forty foot concrete owl stands at the head of the lake in the Grove, built in 1929 to serve as a ceremonial site. The Cremation of Care Ceremony was produced as a play in 1920, wherein a High Priest is confronted by “Dull Care,” wrapped in the chains but not dead because Bacchus, the only warrior Care fears, is dead. (The 18th Amendment was passed in 1919). Care is burned, thereby purging the “sacred Grove.” This ceremony has been rewritten on several occasions but the theme is still the same, and Care is still dispatched yearly in a fiery death that symbolizes the initiation of Bohemian fellowship.
• From Masters of the Universe Go to Camp, Philip Weiss, Spy Magazine, 1989: Monte Rio is a depressed Northern California town of 900 where the forest is so thick that some streetlights stay on all day long. Every summer for more than a century, the Bohemian Club has led a retreat into this redwood forest. The religion they consecrate is right-wing, laissez-faire and quintessentially western, with some Druid tree worship thrown in for fun. For me, the trick was getting in. A guest card was out of the question: club bylaws have stated that a member-sponsor’s application “shall be in writing and shall contain full information for the guidance of the Board in determining the merits and qualifications of the proposed guest.” And my attempts to get a job as a waiter or a valet in one of the camps failed. In the end I entered by stealth. Some observers of the Grove had warned that security was too good and they’d put me in the Santa Rosa jail for trespassing. Lowell Bergman, a producer with 60 Minutes who used to hunt rabbits in the nearby hills, remembered a fire road leading into the site near the Guerneville waste-treatment plant but said they’d spot me sneaking in. Others mentioned barbed wire and electronic monitoring devices. Finally, a mountain guide demanded only that I keep the methods he devised for me confidential. He had a keen geographical sense and a girlfriend who described a plan to seed magic crystals at the Grove gates to make them open of their own accord so that Native American drummers could walk in. We didn’t do it that way, but it turned out that Grove security isn’t quite what it’s reputed to be. The sociologists who had studied the place were right; there was no real security. I told everyone I was a guest of Bromley camp, where unsortable visitors end up. At 33, I was one of the youngest Bohemians, but I was welcome almost as a policy matter. “We looked around and saw we were becoming an old-men’s club,” a member said, explaining recent efforts to recruit fresh blood. I used my real name. No one inside acted suspicious. One day a member asked if I was related to a Bohemian named Jack Weiss. “No, but I’ve heard a lot about him and I’d like to meet him.” “You can’t,” he said. “He’s dead.” After that I began working a dead West Coast relative’s promise to have me out to the Grove one summer into a shaggy-dog story about my invitation. I was able to enjoy most pleasures of the Grove, notably the speeches, songs, elaborate drag shows, endless toasts, pre-breakfast gin fizzes, round-the-clock “Nembutals” and other drinks — though I didn’t sleep in any of the camps or swim naked with likeminded Bohemians in the Russian River at night.
  • One reason for the Bohemian Club’s poor public relations is the name it gave to the yearly opening ceremony: The Cremation of Care. The cremation is intended to put the busy men of the club at ease and banish the stress of the outside world, but it arouses critics of the encampment because they interpret it to mean that Bohemians literally don’t care about the outside world. Cremation of Care, they fear, means the death of caring. Demonstrations outside the Grove a few years back often centered around the “Resurrection of Care.” The club says it serves as a “refuge” from the strivings of the marketplace, and though it’s true that actual deal-making is discouraged, I heard business being done on all sides. A tenet of Grove life is noncompetitive egalitarianism: all men are equal here. But in fact, class and status differences among camps are pronounced. Just as you have to be sponsored for membership, you have to be sponsored for a camp. The sexism and racism were of a peculiar sort: Black jokes are out because there are a handful of black members — though one day near the Civic Center I did hear a group of old-timers trying to imitate Jesse Jackson. As for Jews, old membership lists suggest that they have taken a very small part in the club for decades. That leaves women and Hispanics. When Ronald Reagan came to the green parasol one day, the organ player broke into “California, Here I Come.” Reagan said that it was good to be back. The Grove had been a major factor in his “homesickness… when you are forced to be away, as I was, for eight years.” The speech was canned and courtly. Though he cursed now and then, he seemed uncomfortable with the word damn. It was my last hour at the Grove. My bags were packed — a camera in one pocket, a tape recorder in the other. I’d tried to grab one of the free Bohemian Club walking sticks from the museum, something I could lean against my office wall as a reminder that this had not been just a dream. But there were none left; Bohemians had taken them all hiking.
• From Transcript of the Cremation of Care, Graham Hancock, 2007: O Beauty’s vassals Who keep, in this gray autumn of the world, Her springtime in your hearts, I charge ye all: For lasting happiness we lift our eyes To one alone, and she surrounds you now, Great Nature, refuge for the weary heart And only balm for breasts that have been bruised, Her counsels are most wise. But ye must come As children, little children that believe, Nor ever doubt her beauty or her faith, Nor dream her tenderness can change or die! Nay, thou mocking Care, it is not all a dream. We know thou waitest for us when this our sylvan holiday shall end. And we shall meet and fight thee as of old, and some of us prevail against thee, and some thou shalt destroy. But this, too, we know: year after year, within this happy Grove, our fellowship has banned thee for a space, and thy malevolence that would pursue us here has lost its power beneath these friendly trees. So shall we burn thee once again this night and in the flames that eat thine effigy we’ll read the sign: Midsummer set us free. No fire, if it be kindled from the world Where Care is nourished on the hates of men Shall drive him from this Grove. One flame alone Must light this pyre, the pure eternal flame That burns within the Lamp of Fellowship Upon the altar of Bohemia. Great Owl of Bohemia, we thank thee for thy adjuration. Well should we know our living flame Of Fellowship can sear The grasping claws of Care, Throttle his impious screams And send his cowering carcass From this Grove. Begone, detested Care, begone! Once more we banish thee! Let the all potent spirit of this lamp By its cleansing and ambient fire Encircle the mystic scene Hail Fellowship; begone Dull Care! Once again Midsummer sets us free!
• From PROPOSED REMARKS BY WILLIAM H. WEBSTER DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AT THE BOHEMIAN GROVE LAKESIDE TALK JULY 22, 1988, CIA.gov Reading Room: THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I’VE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO TELL YOU ABOUT SOME OF MY RESPONSIBILITIES AT THE CIA, AND THERE IS A CERTAIN IRONY IN THIS FOR ME. AT THE FBI. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME TELLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT WHAT THE FBI WAS ALL ABOUT WAS LAW ENFORCEMENT. NOT SPYING. NOW. I FIND MYSELF SPEAKING TO GROUPS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY REVERSING ALL OF THAT — ASSURING AUDIENCES THAT AT THE CIA WE ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT. BUT AS FASCINATED AS AMERICANS ARE BY SPYING. THEY ARE OFTEN SKEPTICAL–AS WELLAND WANT TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM THE HARSHER ASPECTS OF INTELLIGENCE. MY GOOD FRIEND, GENERAL VERNON WALTERS. FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE CIA AND NOW OUR AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS, DESCRIBES THE VIEW MANY HAVE OF THE WHOLE INTELLIGENCE BUSINESS: “AMERICANS.” HE OBSERVED, “HAVE ALWAYS HAD AN AMBIVALENT ATTITUDE TOWARD INTELLIGENCE. WHEN THEY FEEL THREATENED. THEY WANT A LOT OF IT, AND WHEN THEY DON’T. THEY TEND TO REGARD THE WHOLE THING AS SOMEWHAT IMMORAL.” BUT THROUGH TIMELY INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS, THE AGENCY HAS PROVIDED ADVANCE WARNING OF WEAPONS AND WEAPONS SYSTEMS ACQUIRED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. FOR EXAMPLE, WE GAVE ADVANCE WARNING OF THE MOST RECENT IRAQI OFFENSIVES IN THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR, CORRECTLY ANALYZING THE INCREASED RELIANCE ON CHEMICAL WEAPONS. OF PARTICULAR CONCERN JUST NOW IS THE SITUATION IN THE PERSIAN GULF — A SITUATION MADE EVEN MORE VOLATILE BY THE RECENT INCIDENT INVOLVING THE IRANIAN AIRBUS. WE ARE NOW — AND HAVE BEEN PROVIDING DAILY TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT TO NAVAL FORCES OPERATING WITH THE U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND. OUR SUPPORT HAS INCLUDED REPORTS ON IRANIAN ANTISHIP CRUISE MISSILE SITES, NAVAL BASES. AIRFIELDS. AND COASTAL DEFENSE INSTALLATIONS. WE HAVE HAD A NUMBER OF MAJOR SUCCESSES THIS YEAR [the following page redacted] WE WILL BE MONITORING AND REPORTING ON THE SOVIET WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN AND ITS EFFECTS ON THAT COUNTRY. WE WILL ALSO ВЕ PROVIDING INSIGHT INTO WHAT GORBACHEV’S EMPHASIS ON “NEW THINKING” IMPLIES FOR HIS OWN COUNTRY AND FOR THE WORLD. [paragraph redacted] AMONG THE INCREASINGLY INTRICATE ARSENALS ACROSS THE WORLD.. INTELLIGENCE IS AN. ESSENTIAL WEAPON. PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT. BUT IT IS, BEING SECRET, THE MOST DANGEROUS. SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT ITS ABUSE MUST BE DEVISED, REVISED. AND RIGIDLY APPLIED. BUT AS IN ALL ENTERPRISE. THE CHARACTER AND WISDOM OF THOSE TO WHOM IT IS ENTRUSTED WILL BE DECISIVE.
• From Inside Bohemian Grove, Alex Jones, 2000: I personally am a Christian but even an atheist should be concerned about the information we’re about to bring forth. People travel to Bohemian Grove to engage in bizarre ancient Canaanite luciferian Babylon mystery religion ceremonies–at least that was the rumors. And so I went to the library and got on the internet and saw many of the mainstream news articles admitting that world leaders do indeed go there and they fly into San Francisco uh and other surrounding cities and drive out into the rural uh hills and mountains of Northern California and that these stories have been coming out that they worship some 45ft Stone owl God and then I began to read some of the documentation on this Moloch character of the Old Testament mentioned many times in Leviticus that’s in the Bible. Why are world leaders traveling to the middle of nowhere to worship this thing, well I had to check it out for myself. I successfully infiltrated through the Secret Service uh through the guards through the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department we were inside 4 hours and I hope that our hidden cameras uh can give you at least a small piece of what I witnessed. To have world leaders engaging in this type of sickening behavior just shocks the very foundations of what Americans believe their leaders to be, and then to have it intimately connected with World Governmen–it doesn’t make a lot of sense until you research history, all throughout history spanning back into the midst of the beginnings of civilization we see world leaders uh from the empires of old from the Aztec Kings and priest uh to Babylonian leaders to ancient Rome engaging in Twisted Behavior. Could it be that when you have all the power and all the women and all the money and all the land and all the art you have to do something new you have to go against the basic grain of humanity you have to get off in a sick way; that’s what we witnessed in Northern California.
• From Bohemian Grove: Facts & Fictions, Mark Dice, 2016: A staff of several hundred people help run the place during the summer encampment, most of them local high school kids from nearby towns who have no idea the identities of the men they are serving. For almost a hundred years only men and teenage boys were allowed to work inside. But as powerful as Bohemian Grove is, it’s not strong enough to prevent the feminists from crashing their party. In 1978 the club was charged with discrimination by the state Department of Fair Employment & Housing for not hiring female employees. The club fought the charge and in 1981 a judge dismissed the case, but it was only a temporary victory. The judge’s decision was based on the members ‘freedom to associate and included a statement that since the men “urinate in the open without even the use of rudimentary toilet facilities” the presence of women would infringe on the men’s right to privacy. The feminists didn’t give up and continued to pursue the case. Another judge overruled the previous decision and ordered the club to begin hiring women. To be clear, the court didn’t say they had to allow women as members, but it did force them to hire women as employees. The State Civil Rights Act states “all persons within the jurisdiction of California are free and equal, no matter their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, or disability and are entitled to full and equal accommodations.” So how is the Bohemian Grove able to legally discriminate against women? Men’s country clubs and organizations like the Girl Scouts can turn down people of the opposite sex for membership without being sued because these clubs are considered private. It’s called the “private club exemption.” from civil rights legislation. Mercy Frost, an employment attorney, says, “The answer is generally yes, they have the right of freedom of association. So at least for now, membership at the Grove means exclusively rereserved for men. Back in 2008, when Hillary Clinton was running for president, Bill Clinto was speaking that at an event when a Heckler began shouting at him about Bohemian Grove. Bill responded, “The Bohemian Club? That’s where those rich Republicans go and stand naked against redwood trees right? I’ve never been, but you ought to go–you’d get some fresh air.”
• From Late Night with the Devil Is Inspired by a Real-Life Secret Society, Trevor Talley & Benjamin Vieira, Comic Book Resources, 2024: David Dastmalchian plays the host of the fictional late night show Night Owls. Dastmalchian’s character, Jack Delroy, is a member of a secret society, and while the film is fiction, what fans of Late Night with the Devil may or may not be aware of is that the “Culte Du Grove” of the film is based on a real-world private organization. The film explores Delroy’s association with a secret society that promises him everything, telling the story of Jack Delroy’s drive to become the top late-night show. The host is failing at this goal. The film goes on to say that The Grove was established in the 1800s, has politicians and major businessmen among its members and that it’s known for its arcane rituals and for making and breaking careers. The Grove visited by Jack Delroy parallels the very real Bohemian Grove, where the Bohemian Club of San Francisco holds its yearly meeting, founded in 1872, back when the American West was still considered wild. In Late Night with the Devil a person in a robe drinks from a chalice in front of a person in an owl suit and other people in robes. The owl statue in Late Night with the Devil is very similar to that of Bohemian Grove. While many accounts of the real Grove say that the event is mostly silly machismo, with a heavy focus on getting hammered and performing jokey or overserious songs and plays, there is also a creepy side to the goings-on, including paintings of naked women and many symbols representing the demand for secrecy, often repeating the motto “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here.” Though it was left out of the Oppenheimer biopic, the Manhattan Project met at the Grove during the 1942 event, including Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and members of the S-1 Executive Committee. It is said that this meeting led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb, something Bohemian Club members hold as a point of pride but which has caused critics much concern that such a world-shaking thing could happen at a private men’s club with no oversight. https://www.cbr.com/late-night-with-the-devil-real-life-inspiration-is-horrifying/ 
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