The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

For all the efforts of Knight and Short, they failed to land a knockout blow on the body Freemasonic. That some smalltown burghers, that some coppers, that some bewigged judges give special deals to those who proffer the secret handshake was distinctly underwhelming: much the same charge, if to a lesser degree, could be levelled against golf club members everywhere. Both authors failed conspicuously to punch Freemasonry’s weakest spots: its racism and sexism. Although Lodges do not explicitly bar black and Asian members, Masons from ethnic minorities in Britain are rare, while in the US the Freemasons of the South are still tied into the KKK. No women are allowed to become Freemasons and, according to historian Jasper Ridley, Freemasons «also refuse to have any dealings with any other society that accepts women».

Anti-Masons might have less to fear from the Masons than they realize. Demographics are not on the Masons’ side. White, male and getting older, the Masons may simply die out.

International society of middle-aged men in sinister plot to take over society: ALERT LEVEL 3

Further Reading

Walton Hannah, Darkness Visible, 1952

Walton Hannah, Christians by Degrees, 1954

Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Christ, 1996

Stephen Knight, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, 1976

Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood: The Secret World of the Freemasons, 1984

Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, 1999

Martin Short, Inside the Brotherhood: Further Secrets of the Freemasons, 1989

Gemstone File

The Gemstone File is the granddaddy of the meta-conspiracy, redefining 20th-century history as a vast plot to take over America. Along the way its tentacles pull in everybody from JFK to Howard Hughes to Aristotle Onassis, the villain of the piece. The Gemstone File’s impact on popular culture can be seen in movies and TV shows from Oliver Stone’s JFK to Chris Carter’s The X-Files.

The Gemstone File first surfaced in the Bay Area of San Francisco in 1969, when Bruce Roberts claimed to have had his method of synthesizing rubies («gemstones») stolen by the Howard Hughes Corporation. When Roberts investigated the «theft» he stumbled upon a mega-conspiracy — and wrote up his investigation in the form of letters, which he sent to various parties. One recipient was Californian conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell, who had made a minor name for herself for researching the Kennedy assassination. Although Brussell dismissed Roberts as a crank, she let freelance journalist Stephanie Caruana use the «gemstone file» for articles in Playgirl and other publications in 1974. Caruana, much impressed by the «gemstone file» and Roberts himself, determined to summarize Roberts’s investigation. She called the precis A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File (or Files; versions vary) and issued 24 photocopies of it, which were passed around the campuses of California. On the last page the Key implored:

At present the only way to spread this information here in America is hand to hand. Your help is needed. Please make 1, 5, 10, 100 copies or whatever you can, and give them to friends or politicians, groups, media. This game is nearly up. Either the Mafia goes or America goes.

With its urgent tone and its alternative «underground» style of dissemination, the Skeleton Key became a phenomenon, not only in counter-cultural California but across the world. Its content, though, was somewhat less than its form.

According to the Skeleton Key, a «Mafia» (not to be confused with those other gangsters from Sicily or Russia) headed by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis kidnapped rival billionaire Howard Hughes, killed him, and replaced him with a double. The doppelgänger was used to control the Las Vegas gaming industry. While Onassis was not counting his illicit money, he was engineering the coup by which John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were removed from the American political scene. After JFK’s assassination, Onassis took Jackie Kennedy to be his trophy wife.

Intriguingly Roberts/Caruana proposed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the «patsy» in the JFK shooting, and that the real killers were Jimmy Fratianno, Johnny Roselli and Eugene Brading, all of whom had links with the Mafia. As for the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Key proposed that Sirhan Sirhan’s shots went wild and the actual executioner was Thane Cesar, who was «loaned» for the occasion by Onassis to act, supposedly, as Robert Kennedy’s guard. Cesar was right behind Kennedy when the latter died.