Bohemian Grove: More Than a Getaway for Our War Machine Elites

Dozens of former senior national security and military officials are members of a secret society known as the Bohemian Grove, according to membership lists obtained by Responsible Statecraft.

The Bohemian Grove is an exclusive men-only club that hosts a two-week summer retreat for the rich and powerful at a 2,700-acre compound tucked away 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.”

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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, which one club member confirmed to The San Francisco Standard as authentic, includes two former national security advisers, three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two former directors of the National Security Agency.

A 2017 roster, which lists all dues-paying members of the club, included three former directors of the CIA, among other former national security personnel. That list, reported here for the first time, was obtained by RS in 2022 and confirmed by cross-referencing members with previously leaked versions of the club’s membership rolls.

The Grove has long served as the meeting place where critical paths in U.S. foreign policy are charted. The nucleus of the Manhattan Project was formed below the Northern California redwoods when Robert Oppenheimer met with the S-1 Committee in 1942 and was appointed to develop the atomic bomb the very next month. In 1988, the CIA director briefed members on the CIA’s exploits abroad. (Some of this information was apparently safe for club members but not the American public; large portions of former director William Webster’s speech are still redacted in the CIA archive.)

Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has been a public critic of informal relationships within the arms industry, Congress and the Pentagon — sometimes referred to as the “iron triangle” — because they elevate special interests over the national interest. In 2008, McMaster wrote that “leaders should understand how informal relationships between and among the ‘iron triangle’ of defence contractors, military establishments and governments can undermine the ability to think clearly about future conflict.”

As an attendee of the 2023 Bohemian Grove retreat, McMaster might know. The Bohemian Grove, whose members frequently cycle between government and industry, may well be the epitome of these informal relationships. Each club member is assigned to one of 130 separate “camps” inside the compound, which act as different fraternities for attendees to party together. The most elite camp is called Mandalay; its members in 2023 included Henry Kissinger; GOP Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa.; and Riley Bechtel, the billionaire heir of Bechtel Corp. A visitor once said of Mandalay, “You don’t just walk in there — you are summoned.”

The camp Wayside Log appears to be another watering hole for revolvers between the national security community and defense contractors. Its members include former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, who went on to join the boards of Northrop Grumman and United Technologies Corp., which merged with Raytheon in 2020. Wayside Log is also home to J. Michael Myatt, a Marine Corps major general who became an executive for Bechtel after leaving government. McMaster is also a member of Wayside Log. After leaving government and his tumultuous time in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, he too joined the boards of several Pentagon contractors, including C3AI and Elroy Air. It turns out he isn’t that averse to the “iron triangle” after all.

A Quincy Institute study found that 80% of retired four-star admirals and generals between 2018 and 2023 accepted lucrative positions in the defense industry. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has warned that government officials cashing in on their public service can lead to questions about whether “special interests gain access to key decision makers, undermining public officials’ integrity and casting doubt on the fairness of government contracting.”

While the Bohemian Grove’s motto is “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here” — meaning leave your business outside — this rule is often ignored. More recently, McCormick enlisted over a dozen high-dollar donors from among fellow club members ahead of announcing his successful Senate bid in 2023. And a team of high-powered real estate brokers, many from the same camp, teamed up to quash affordable housing ballot measures in San Francisco.

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.

The 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 that “everyone drink — and that everyone drink all the time.” Longtime member and musician Peter Arnott wrote in a 2009 edition of the club magazine that every camp in the Grove is “competing to pour drinks down your throat.”

RS reached out to many of the national security officials who are members of the Bohemian Grove, but none responded to a request for comment.

Aside from the “revolvers” between government and national security, the Bohemian Grove offers summer solace to plenty of defense contractor executives and financiers. Military tech investor Eric Schmidt, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, co-chairman of the defense-focused private equity firm Carlyle Group David Rubenstein, and several members of the Bechtel family all participated at the 2023 camp. Tex Schenkkan, the former director of National Security Innovation Capital, also made it to the 2023 celebration after years overseeing a Defense Department office that funds dual use defense/consumer startups.

In 1967, Richard Nixon gave a lakeside talk at the Bohemian Grove that he would later claim was instrumental to launching his second bid for the presidency. Before the assembled club members composed of moneyed elite and aristocratic four-stars, Nixon made clear that it was they, and not the American public, who were the rightful masters of America’s destiny:

“Never has a nation had more advantages to lead. Our economic superiority is enormous; our military superiority can be whatever we choose to make it. Most important, it happens that we are on the right side — the side of freedom and peace and progress against the forces of totalitarianism, reaction and war.”