Hidden History: Secret Societies & Elite Networks

ANSWER KEY

Comprehensive answers with explanations for all fill-in-the-blank and true/false questions. Short answers and discussions will vary; look for evidence-based reasoning and biblical discernment.

Lesson 1: Freemasonry & the Founders

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 1731 — Franklin was inducted into St. John's Lodge, Philadelphia in 1731, making him one of the earliest documented Masons in the American colonies.
2. 1752 — Washington was initiated at Fredericksburg Lodge, Virginia on November 4, 1752 at age 20. This is documented in Grand Lodge of Virginia records.
3. Architect — Washington referred to the "Great Architect of the Universe" in his 1793 letter to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. This is a common Masonic term for God/Creator.
4. NOT — Thomas Jefferson was NOT a Freemason. Despite popular myths, no lodge records exist for Jefferson. He was sympathetic to Enlightenment ideals but never joined a lodge.
5. Anti — John Adams later aligned with the Anti-Masonic movement that arose after the William Morgan affair (1826), when a Mason who threatened to expose secrets disappeared.

True/False:

1. FALSE — Not all Founding Fathers were Masons. Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams were NOT Masons. This is one of the most persistent myths in American history.
2. TRUE — Franklin used Masonry as diplomatic leverage in France. He joined the prestigious Loge des Neuf Sœurs in Paris, which gave him access to French intellectual and political elites crucial for securing French support for the Revolution.
3. TRUE — Washington's 1793 letter praised Masonry's aim to "promote the happiness of the human race." This is primary source evidence of his Masonic philosophy.
4. FALSE — There are NO documented lodge records for Jefferson. Extensive searches of Grand Lodge archives have found zero evidence of his membership.

Lesson 2: The Great Seal — Myth vs. Documentation

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 3 (three) — Three successive design committees worked on the Great Seal from 1776 to 1782. The final design was a synthesis of multiple proposals.
2. Pierre Du Simitière — The Eye of Providence was proposed by non-Mason artist Pierre Du Simitière. This is documented in National Archives committee notes.
3. rejected — Franklin's proposal (Moses parting the Red Sea) was rejected by the committee. His Masonic affiliation did NOT translate to Masonic control of the final design.
4. Benjamin Franklin — Franklin was the ONLY confirmed Mason on any of the three committees, and his design was not used.
5. 1797 — The Eye of Providence became a standard Masonic symbol in 1797 when Thomas Smith Webb published The Freemason's Monitor—15 YEARS after the Great Seal was finalized (1782).

True/False:

1. FALSE — Charles Thomson, who finalized the Seal, was NOT a Freemason. No Masonic membership records exist for him.
2. FALSE — The pyramid was drawn by Francis Hopkinson, who was NOT a confirmed Mason.
3. TRUE — The Great Seal (finalized 1782) predates the official Masonic adoption of the Eye of Providence symbol (1797). The timeline proves Masons adopted the symbol AFTER it appeared on the Seal, not the reverse.

Lesson 3: Jekyll Island & the Federal Reserve

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 1910 — November 1910 was when Senator Aldrich, Frank Vanderlip, Henry Davison, Benjamin Strong, Paul Warburg, and others met secretly on Jekyll Island, Georgia.
2. aliases — Participants used fake names and traveled separately to avoid press detection. Vanderlip later confessed: "discovery… would have been fatal."
3. central — The meeting's purpose was to design central banking legislation that would eventually become the Federal Reserve Act.
4. 1913 — The Federal Reserve Act was passed in December 1913, on December 22–23 when many members of Congress were away for Christmas break.
5. 298 — The House vote was 298–60 in favor. The Senate vote was 43–25. It was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913.

True/False:

1. FALSE — Frank Vanderlip himself confirmed the meeting in a 1935 Saturday Evening Post confession: "I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System."
2. TRUE — Paul Warburg, a German-born banker representing the Rothschild banking interests, attended the Jekyll Island meeting. He is considered the principal architect of the Federal Reserve System.
3. TRUE — The Senate passed the Act on December 23, 1913. The House had passed it the day before (December 22). President Wilson signed it the same day (December 23).

Lesson 4: Skull and Bones — Dynastic Networking

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 1832 — Skull and Bones was founded at Yale University in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft.
2. 1948 — George H.W. Bush (41st President) was inducted in 1948. This is documented in Yale yearbooks and Sterling Library rosters.
3. 1968 — George W. Bush (43rd President) was inducted in 1968, exactly 20 years after his father.
4. Skull and Bones — Both major presidential candidates in 2004 were Skull and Bones members: incumbent George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry (inducted 1966).
5. Yale — Skull and Bones is a senior secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

True/False:

1. TRUE — The Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856, legally holds all Skull and Bones property and assets. This is public record in Connecticut corporation filings.
2. FALSE — Documentary rosters DO exist. Yale yearbooks and Sterling Memorial Library archives contain membership lists going back to 1833.
3. TRUE — Alphonso Taft (father of President William Howard Taft) was one of the co-founders in 1832.

Lesson 5: American Corporations & Nazi Germany

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. Enemy — Union Banking Corporation assets were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act (Vesting Order No. 248, October 20, 1942).
2. 248 — Vesting Order No. 248 specifically named Union Banking Corporation as a front for Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen.
3. Dehomag — Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft (Dehomag), IBM's German subsidiary, provided punch-card tabulating systems that enabled Nazi census operations and concentration camp logistics.
4. I.G. — Standard Oil had a cartel agreement (1929) with I.G. Farben, the German chemical conglomerate that produced Zyklon B gas for the death camps.
5. consent — The Truman Committee investigation (1942) pressured Standard Oil to sign a consent decree, breaking the cartel and releasing synthetic rubber patents for the U.S. war effort.

True/False:

1. FALSE — Prescott Bush (father of George H.W. Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush) was NOT prosecuted for treason. He was a director of UBC, which held shares in a company connected to Thyssen, but he was never charged. The government seized the assets but took no legal action against Bush personally.
2. TRUE — Dehomag punch-card machines were used to conduct the 1933 and 1939 Nazi censuses that identified Jews for persecution. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has documented this.
3. FALSE — The Standard Oil–I.G. Farben pact significantly hindered U.S. synthetic rubber production during WWII, forcing emergency rationing. Senator Truman called it bordering on treason.

Lesson 6: Operation Paperclip

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 1,600 — Approximately 1,600 German scientists and engineers were relocated to the United States between 1945 and 1959 via Operation Paperclip.
2. Sturmbannführer — Wernher von Braun held the SS rank of Sturmbannführer (Major). He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1940.
3. 1937 — Von Braun joined the Nazi Party in 1937, eight years before the war ended.
4. 120 — About 120 Paperclip scientists worked for NASA, with von Braun leading the Saturn V rocket program that put men on the moon.
5. sanitized — JIOA (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency) files were sanitized—Nazi Party membership and war crimes were deleted or downplayed—to bypass President Truman's directive that "ardent Nazis" be excluded.

True/False:

1. FALSE — Paperclip did NOT exclude Nazi Party members. Files were sanitized precisely to allow recruitment of scientists who were Party members and even SS officers.
2. TRUE — Von Braun visited the Dora-Mittelbau underground factory where V-2 rockets were assembled by slave laborers. Approximately 20,000 prisoners died there. Von Braun later claimed ignorance, but testimony from survivors contradicts this.
3. FALSE — Operation Paperclip continued until 1959, more than a decade after the war ended.

Lesson 7: MKULTRA — Verified Mind Control Program

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 1973 — MKULTRA officially ran from 1953 to 1973, spanning 20 years and multiple CIA directors.
2. 149 — The program had 149 documented subprojects involving LSD, hypnosis, electroshock, sensory deprivation, and other experimental techniques.
3. Helms — CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of MKULTRA files in 1973 when congressional investigations began.
4. 1975 — The Church Committee exposed MKULTRA in 1975. The Rockefeller Commission also investigated. Both found egregious violations of ethics and law.
5. 750,000 — Frank Olson's family received a $750,000 settlement in 1976 after it was revealed he had been dosed with LSD without consent in 1953. He died 9 days later after falling from a hotel window. A 1994 exhumation found evidence suggesting he may have been murdered.

True/False:

1. FALSE — Most MKULTRA experiments did NOT have informed consent. Subjects included prisoners, mental patients, and even unwitting civilians dosed in bars and public places.
2. TRUE — The only reason we know about MKULTRA is that approximately 20,000 financial documents survived because they were accidentally misfiled in a budget office and escaped Helms' 1973 destruction order.
3. TRUE — President Gerald Ford personally apologized to the Olson family in 1975 when the truth emerged.

Lesson 8: Bohemian Grove

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 1872 — The Bohemian Club was founded in San Francisco in 1872 as a gentlemen's club for artists, journalists, and businessmen. It now hosts powerful elites.
2. Manhattan — A 1942 meeting at Bohemian Grove is credited as one of the planning discussions for the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb development).
3. 40 — The owl statue at the Grove is 40 feet tall and made of concrete. It represents the "Owl of Bohemia" and is central to the "Cremation of Care" ceremony.
4. Walter — Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS news anchor, voiced the role of the Owl in the "Cremation of Care" ceremony for many years.
5. 1923 — The "Cremation of Care" ceremony script dates back to 1923, though the ritual concept is older.

True/False:

1. FALSE — The Manhattan Project planning discussion occurred at the Grove in 1942. This is documented in notes from J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence.
2. TRUE — The "Cremation of Care" involves burning an effigy called "Care" (representing worldly concerns), NOT a human sacrifice. It is theatrical ritual, not literal sacrifice.
3. TRUE — The Grove frames the ritual as allegorical theater—a performance to symbolically "cremate" the cares and worries of the outside world so members can relax for two weeks.

Lesson 9: Council on Foreign Relations & Trilateral Commission

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. 1921 — The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was founded in 1921 to provide a "continuous conference on international questions" among American elites.
2. 1973 — The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski to coordinate policy among North America, Europe, and Japan.
3. Rockefeller — David Rockefeller (banker, Chase Manhattan chairman, heir to the Rockefeller fortune) co-founded the Trilateral Commission and recruited members globally.
4. CFR — Nearly every U.S. Secretary of State since 1940 has been a CFR member, demonstrating the organization's deep influence on foreign policy.
5. 7 (seven) — Seven top Carter administration posts were held by Trilateral Commission members (1977–1981): President (Carter), VP (Mondale), National Security Advisor (Brzezinski), Secretary of State (Vance), Secretary of Defense (Brown), Secretary of Treasury (Blumenthal), and UN Ambassador (Young).

True/False:

1. FALSE — CFR publishes an annual membership roster and the journal Foreign Affairs. Membership is not entirely secret, though meetings are private.
2. FALSE — The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973, nearly 30 years AFTER World War II ended.
3. TRUE — Zbigniew Brzezinski was the founding director of the Trilateral Commission (1973–1976) before becoming National Security Advisor under President Carter.

Lesson 10: Verified Facts vs. Myths

Fill-in-the-Blank:

1. fabrication (or myth/falsehood) — The Woodrow Wilson "I have unwittingly ruined my country" quote is a complete fabrication. No such statement appears in Wilson's papers or any verified source.
2. myth (or fabrication/falsehood) — The "Masonic Great Seal" claim is a myth. The designers were NOT Masons, and the Seal predates Masonic use of the Eye symbol by 15 years.
3. Church — MKULTRA was exposed by the Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975.
4. primary — Distinguishing fact from fiction requires primary sources: government archives, congressional hearings, participant confessions, membership rosters, court records—not anonymous internet memes.
5. Masons — Not all Founding Fathers were Masons. Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams were NOT lodge members, despite popular myth.

True/False:

1. FALSE — Repetition does NOT equal truth. Many false claims spread precisely because they are repeated often without fact-checking.
2. TRUE — Primary documents are essential to verification. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not hearsay or third-hand accounts.
3. TRUE — Some rituals (like Bohemian Grove's "Cremation of Care") are verified through documentation and participant accounts, but they are theatrical/symbolic rather than literal human sacrifice.

Note: Short answer and discussion responses will vary. Evaluate student answers for:

• Use of specific evidence from the lessons
• Clear reasoning and logical connections
• Application of biblical principles (Luke 8:17, Ephesians 6:12, 1 Thess 5:21)
• Ability to distinguish verified facts from speculation