Bush

This essay is excerpted from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.”

On January 20, 2004, I took a seat in the gallery of the House of Representatives to hear President Bush deliver his State of the Union address. The seat came courtesy of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Ten months earlier, Bush had made the decision to invade Iraq after his administration’s historic campaign of lies convinced the American people that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. We would not extricate ourselves from that costly conflict for another seventeen years. Much of his speech that night was a further attempt to sell to the nation the justification for his war. “Had we failed to act, the dictator’s weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day,” Bush said. He characterized the Patriot Act, which had unleashed a new magnitude of spying on American citizens, as “one of those essential tools” in the war on terror.

“Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” by Gavin Newsom

(Penguin Press)

The rest of his speech was standard fare, ho-hum really, until he reached a section near the end about American values and the need for us to “work together to counter the negative influences of the culture and to send the right messages to our children.” He said he was troubled by activist judges in activist states who were threatening to undo the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by his predecessor, President Bill Clinton. We had to “defend the sanctity of marriage” as the union of one man and one woman, he said. If need be, he would seek a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

As I was leaving the chamber, a middle-aged couple next to me was talking about how pleased they were that their president was finally confronting the “homosexual agenda.” The word homosexual came out of their mouths bent by contempt. I was supposed to head downstairs for a reception with Congresswoman Pelosi and a delegation of California Democrats, but I needed a breath of fresh air. Outside the Capitol, I kept walking and muttering to myself. “These are my people Bush is attacking. My constituents. My staff. My closest advisers.” In the cold and dark of Washington, I called one of my aides back in San Francisco and pledged that I was “going to do something about it” as soon as I returned home.

The law in our state was no different from the law in every other state. Same-sex unions could not be recognized by the local assessor-recorder’s office. They were illegal. As I explained to aides my willingness to now defy that law, I held up a copy of the California Constitution. In Article I, the first section promises that “all people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights.” Among these rights are pursuing and obtaining “safety, happiness and privacy.” It was not until Section 7.5 that these rights were then abridged: “Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” This not only contradicted the first section but was discriminatory on its face.

My top staff didn’t disagree with my reading, but almost to a person they were opposed to my taking on the issue. Steve Kawa, my chief of staff, a gay Bostonian whose accent cut through all nonsense, pulled me aside and spoke from his heart. His father had renounced him for being gay, and he wanted nothing more than to live in an America where homophobia was no longer the norm. But swinging open the doors to the city clerk’s office and inviting gay men and lesbian women to the marriage altar was political suicide, he argued. We were new to office, for one thing. And polls showed that less than one third of Californians supported gay marriage.

The “go it slow” admonition was the mother’s milk of Democratic politics. In the endless battle for the hearts and minds of moderates, it seemed the only feasible way for a Democrat to get elected and govern. But this was San Francisco, and we were talking about equal protection under the law for a class of people whose ostracism by family, friends, and community had brought them to San Francisco in the first place. If not here, where? Eric Jaye, one of my campaign consultants, could see my quandary. I was caught between my conscience and the sound political advice of the people closest to me. We had several late-night conversations on the phone. “What the f— are you doing here? Why did we work so hard to win if you can’t do something bold?” he asked. “This is a short life, Gavin. Your time as a politician to get things done is just a blip.”

I thought back to my model for the wine store. The entire purpose was to turn the staid on its head and create a new reality. I called Joyce Newstat, my policy director, who was also gay. “We need to do this,” I told her. She could hear in my voice that I had made up my mind. “OK, but we can’t afford to take a wrong step,” she said. “Gays and lesbians have a history of being blindsided, and you don’t want to become part of that narrative. Give me a week or two to reach out to the community.” Joyce sat down with Kate Kendell, the brilliant executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, based in San Francisco. “Who is this guy?” Kendell wondered. “He can’t just come waltzing in here and upset the delicate balance we’ve taken years to achieve.” Joyce told her I couldn’t be talked out of it, that it had become internalized after I had gone to Washington and heard the words of bigotry ring out in the Capitol. “Well, OK. But if he’s going to do it, he has to do it right,” Kendell said. She directed her attorneys at the center to work with our team on fashioning a plan.

I then went to Mabel Teng, my former colleague on the board of supervisors who was now the assessor-recorder of San Francisco. I asked her what complications would be presented to her official duties if we allowed same-sex marriages at city hall. Mabel, who began her career in politics as an activist with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, did not surprise me with her reply. “It would be no problem at all, Mayor.” The marriage of a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, would require hardly any change to the paperwork. Rather than “man and wife,” they would show up in her computer as “Applicant One” and “Applicant Two.”

Alarmed by my plans, my father and Uncle Brennan and their close friend Joe Cotchett — each one steeped in law and politics but only Joe standing six foot four and a former Special Forces paratrooper —attempted a last-minute intervention. They lured me to the Balboa Cafe for dinner and wine. They weren’t the kind to beat around the bush. Did I realize that I was about to torpedo my political career?

Joe got right in my face. “Why are you doing this, Gavin?”

“I’ll tell you why I’m doing this,” I said defiantly. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

I could not have given him a more simple and true answer, and it seemed to hit Joe, who had built his career out of representing the underdog, right in the gut.

“OK,” he said in a different voice. “Then let’s do it.”

With that, my father and uncle went quiet. Not another word was said about it. I left there that night thinking that even my Newsom kin, the ones who had my best interests at heart, could get it wrong from time to time. While I was open to skepticism and second-guessing, indeed I welcomed such a process, in the end I had to trust my own gut. On the matter of civil rights for all Californians, there was no turning back. As for big Joe Cotchett, he ended up joining the ranks of lawyers fighting for the legal right to same-sex marriage.

From “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” by Gavin Newsom, published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Gavin Newsom.

Where are the statesmen when the state is under siege by the current head of state?

I’ve been mulling that question, hardly for the first time, but on three occasions just in the last few days.

On Monday, the federal holiday celebrating George Washington’s birth, former President George W. Bush posted an essay on the first U.S. president as part of a civic project commemorating the nation’s 250th year. Simply by hailing Washington for traits that Donald Trump utterly lacks — humility, integrity, dignity, self-restraint, willingness to forfeit power — the piece was widely read as a sneak attack on the current president. Bush never named Trump. He thus maintained his years-long, stupefying silence about the man who’s trashed him, his family, his party, his legacy PEPFAR program and, most of all, his country.

As Jonathan V. Last wrote for the right-of-center, anti-Trump Bulwark, if Bush’s words were a veiled attack on Trump, “the veil is so powerful that even light can’t escape it.”

Bush’s essay came two days after former President Obama finally responded to Trump’s week-old racist post that caricatured the first Black president and his wife as apes, thereby mainlining into the body politic one of the most toxic tropes against Black Americans. Asked about it in a podcast interview, Obama was, as usual, too cool. He called Trump’s behavior “deeply troubling” and said “there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office.”

But, like Bush, he never named Trump. And it’s not even clear that Obama was referring to him. Certainly Trump never was one of those who, as Obama put it, “used to feel … some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office.”

Then there was the third trigger for my musings about America’s M.I.A. statesmen.

On Friday — ahead of the holiday honoring Washington, who as the first president and military commander established the indispensable tradition of a nonpartisan military — Trump yet again violated Washington’s precedent. At Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, he essentially pushed uniformed young troops to violate the military codes enshrining Washington’s legacy of nonpartisanship. Trump treated them like props at a MAGA rally, lauding Republican candidates and officeholders on hand, mocking past presidents and urging the troops to vote Republican in November.

“You have to vote for us,” the commander in chief ordered them.

This is unprecedented, except by Trump himself. In October, he prodded sailors at Norfolk, Va., to boo “Barack Hussein Obama.” In September, he told commanders summoned from around the world that the fight is here at home, a “war from within” American cities. In June, also at Ft. Bragg, Trump damned Democrats and sold MAGA merch, over Army objections.

There’s a darn good reason for the wall that Washington built between the military and civilian government. As the Army Field Manual instructs troops: “Nonpartisanship assures the public that our Army will always serve the Constitution and our people loyally and responsively.” Not just Republicans, and not just Trump.

But as multiple officers told the website Military.com, “holding troops to account when goaded by the president, who is ultimately the boss, would be impossible.” Commanders themselves are mute because, after all, Trump is the commander in chief. They’ve watched as one Pentagon purge has followed another, starting with Trump firing the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top military officer. He chose instead an officer who, he often claims, once donned a MAGA cap and said, “I love you, sir. … I’ll kill for you, sir.”

It’s understandable that active-duty officers don’t make a stand. But what about America’s roughly 7,500 retired generals and admirals? As veteran ML Cavanaugh wrote in the Los Angeles Times after Trump’s Ft. Bragg performance last year, “The military profession’s nonpartisan ethic is at a breaking point.” Sure, individuals have spoken out. But as the military knows better than anyone, there’s strength in numbers.

It’s past time for a large, united front of veteran commanders to challenge Trump. Why wait for him to make good on his talk of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops at the polls in this midterm election year, based on trumped-up conspiracies about Democrats’ fraud?

You know who could give the veteran and active commanders some political cover? The former commanders in chief.

Even more conspicuous than the brass by their silence and virtual invisibility in the face of Trump’s assaults — on the rule of law, civil rights, elections, foreign alliances and America’s global reputation — are the nation’s four living former presidents: Democrats Joe Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton, and Republican Bush.

It’s past time for the not-so-fab four to come together to publicly demand that Trump honor the oath of office that each man took, and to school the electorate on the many ways in which he’s dishonoring it — including by continuing to justify his refusal to peacefully transfer power in 2021. But each man is so observant of the norm that former presidents should not publicly criticize the incumbent one — again, a precedent from George Washington — that they self-muzzle.

This is Americans’ quandary in these Trump times: Presidents and high-ranking veterans who could speak truth to power are so constrained by their devotion to norms and traditions that they won’t confront a president who’s daily shattering the norms, traditions and laws that form the foundation of this democratic nation.

“This is the master alarm flashing for our democracy,” Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and veteran, said last week of Trump’s targeting of him and other critics.

That takes us back to my original question: Where are the statesmen to answer that alarm?

Answer: They’re following ordinary rules despite these extraordinary times. And they must stop.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

WASHINGTON — President Bush marked Black History Month Saturday with a promise to deliver big funding increases to black colleges “even in a time of recession and war.”

Bush, who won less than 10% of the black vote in the 2000 election but has seen his popularity soar since the Sept. 11 attacks, used his weekly radio address to urge Americans to “reflect on the contributions of African Americans.”

Bush sought to assure black leaders he would not renege on a promise to increase funding for historically black colleges and Latino-serving institutions by 30% by 2005.

He also touted the education reforms enacted last month to help narrow the achievement gap between low-income students and their wealthier counterparts. “We have come far, and we have a way yet to go,” Bush said.

“Today we are fighting for freedom in a new way and on new battlefields. And we continue to press for equal opportunity for every American here at home. We want every American to be educated up to his or her full potential,” Bush said.

According to some polls, Bush’s support from blacks more than doubled after the Sept. 11 attacks. Eager to hold on to these gains, the White House has stepped up its outreach to black leaders.

But Bush has come under fire from Democrats, including prominent black lawmakers, for proposing deep cuts in job training and other domestic programs in his fiscal 2003 budget in order to fund more tax cuts and the biggest military buildup in two decades. The 2003 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), in the Democrats’ weekly radio address, said Congress will “stand shoulder to shoulder” with Bush to fight terrorism, but he blasted Bush’s proposed budget for bringing back deficits.

“Part of national security is economic security,” Conrad said. “The problem with the president’s budget is that his plan will return us to deficit spending–not just today, but for years to come.”

Comparing Bush’s budget to collapsed energy giant Enron Corp., Conrad accused Bush of making “the Enron mistake: underestimating our debt and endangering retirement benefits.”

Many Democrats charge that the $1.35-trillion, 10-year tax cut Bush pushed through Congress last year was too costly, imperiling the Social Security retirement program and the Medicare health care program for the elderly as the baby boom generation nears retirement.

The Bush administration defended its proposed cutbacks as part of an effort to shift federal resources away from what the White House deemed wasteful programs.

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidates are stepping up their assault on President Bush’s handling of Iraq, increasingly faulting the White House for failing to anticipate or avert the tumult that has engulfed the war-torn nation.

The Democrats have urged Bush to rely more on allies to help stabilize Iraq, reviving past criticism that the administration is too reluctant to work with the international community. And they have questioned Bush’s credibility after White House officials conceded this week that part of his case for going to war was based on incomplete intelligence.

The escalating attacks signal a sense among the Democratic campaigns that Bush may be vulnerable on a front that has been his strength — national security.

Bush couched the conflict with Iraq as crucial to America’s war on terrorism and basked in the quick overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Violence Continues

But since Bush triumphantly flew aboard the aircraft carrier Lincoln off San Diego and declared the end of major conflict in Iraq, U.S. occupational forces have been plagued by continuing violence.

Since Bush’s May 1 speech, 31 Americans have died as a result of hostile fire.

On Thursday, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. Tommy Franks said U.S. troops are facing 10 to 25 attacks a day by Iraqi insurgents.

Franks, the commander of the war, was grilled by lawmakers about problems — and rising costs — confronting the U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq. He warned that American troops could be there for years.

Franks’ remarks followed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s estimate on Wednesday that monthly military costs in Iraq total about $3.9 billion — almost double the administration’s projection in April.

These developments — along with the White House’s acknowledgment on Monday that there was insufficient support for Bush’s claim in January that Hussein had tried to buy uranium in Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program — have fueled the growing Democratic criticism of the president on Iraq.

“We lack sufficient forces to do the job” of restoring order in Iraq, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts said Thursday. “It is time for the president to step forward and tell the truth: The war is con- tinuing and so are the casual- ties.”

Kerry, who like several other Democratic presidential candidates supported the congressional resolution last fall that authorized Bush to use force against Iraq, released his own four-point plan for reconstructing the country.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, campaigning in New Hampshire on Thursday, berated Bush for making the claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy uranium.

Resignations Sought

Dean, whose rise in the Democratic race has been based largely on his opposition to the war, called for the resignation of any administration official responsible for the mistake.

“Anyone who deliberately misled the president about a matter as serious as sending our troops to war should resign — whoever that might be,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee sent an e-mail to activists seeking donations to pay for a television ad questioning Bush’s credibility on Iraq.

Democrats in Congress joined in the criticism of Bush’s postwar policy.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, backed by other Democrats, sponsored a measure that urged Bush to seek military support from NATO and the United Nations in the occupation of Iraq.

The measure passed 97 to 0; because it was nonbinding, few saw it as an accurate measure of likely divisions among lawmakers over how far Bush should go in seeking international aid.

But Biden said there was broad bipartisan anxiety about the rockiness of the postwar period.

“Find me somebody on the floor who says, ‘This is going great,’ ” Biden said.

The barbs from Democrats have intensified as a recent poll indicated that the pub- lic has an increasingly nega- tive view of the situation in Iraq.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found fewer than one-quarter of those surveyed in June and July thought that the U.S. effort was going “very well” — down from 61% in mid-April.

Still, the poll found little sign that those anxieties had seriously hurt Bush’s political position — 63% of those surveyed said there was a “good” chance or “some” chance they would vote for him in 2004.

The Democrats “need a lot more than some screwed-up intelligence report to really be able to peck at the president on foreign policy,” said a Republican political consul- tant close to the Bush cam- paign.

But he added: “If three months from now things aren’t any better [in Iraq], people are going to be asking: ‘What’s the plan, Stan?’ ”

The more pointed Democratic criticism of Bush stands in contrast to the wartime posture of most candidates.

Among the party’s major candidates, only Dean and Sen. Bob Graham of Florida opposed the decision to attack Iraq.

Along with Kerry, those supporting the war were Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Sens. Joe Lieb- erman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Caro- lina.

Coalition Urged

The emerging critique among the candidates of Bush’s handling of Iraq echoes the argument some used against him before the war: that he has been too reluctant to build a coalition of allies to share cost and responsibilities.

“The United Nations, European Union, NATO — all have to be involved,” Ed- wards said at a recent town hall meeting in New Hamp- shire.

“We should welcome their involvement. It gives us a chance to re-engage in the international community.”

Kerry, in the plan he unveiled, called on the administration to increase troop strength in Iraq by adding coalition soldiers.

He also proposed more rapid training of Iraqi troops for security functions, development of a clear plan for transferring power to Iraqis and increased efforts to improve basic services such as electricity and water.

“The administration went to war without a thorough plan to win the peace,” said Kerry.

“It’s time to face that truth and change course.”

This week Lieberman mounted a similar attack in an opinion article in the Washington Post.

“Enough time has passed to conclude that what we are doing is not working,” said Lieberman. “The administration has … mishandled the efforts to get key allies on board….”

Erik Smith, a spokesman for Gephardt, said the congressman and other candidates have been arguing for some time that the presi- dent had not adequately pre- pared a postwar strategy for Iraq.

The criticism “takes on a new urgency in light of unfolding events,” said Smith.

“Voters are increasingly concerned about it.”

*

Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak and Ronald Brownstein contributed to this report.

In the last several months, Tim Russert of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” one of TV’s toughest interviewers, struck out with two of his biggest “gets”:

In August, he quizzed Sen. John F. Kerry, “You both were members of Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale. What does that tell us?”

Kerry: “Not much, because it’s a secret.”

In February, he asked President Bush, “You were both in Skull and Bones, the secret society?”

Bush: “It’s so secret we can’t talk about it.”

Such coyness on the part of grown men! And yet, their recalcitrance does prove one thing: The guys can keep a secret.

But is that good? Secrecy, after all, leads to rumors. And the rumors about Skull and Bones — naked confessions of sexual conquests, grave robbing, free money and, of course, plans for world domination — don’t look good on the presidential resume. Those rumors received a boost when it became apparent that, for the first time in history, two Bonesmen will face off for the presidency in November.

“It’s certainly a coincidence that lends itself to attention,” said the historian Kevin Phillips, whose recent work, “American Dynasty,” explores how the Bushes have benefited from what he calls “crony capitalism.” “Is it nefarious? I guess it’s a little insidious.”

Journalist and author Ron Rosenbaum (Yale ‘68), who wrote the seminal article on Skull and Bones for Esquire in 1977, thinks the Bush-Kerry coincidence should be treated thoughtfully. “Obviously, it’s part of what shaped the character of the two presidential candidates, and yet there’s a lot of overblown conspiracy theory that has outweighed the seriousness.”

Indeed, a serious political discussion might examine the meaning of both presidential candidates maintaining an inherently undemocratic affiliation and refusing to address an important aspect of their university lives. Instead, discussions on the Internet, talk radio and cable TV, generally turn on suspicions that Skull and Bones has attempted to mastermind a “new world order” in which only a handful of wealthy, old-line families control the planet.

“Is this a satanic cult? No. Is this a group that operates as a shadow government? No. Is this a group that has an institutionalized superiority complex? Yes,” said Alexandra Robbins, a 27-year-old journalist and Yale alumna whose book “Secrets of the Tomb” explores the 172-year-old club based on interviews with 100 anonymous Bonesmen. Bones, she said, has “a power agenda” that “prioritizes its own elitism and its own members above other concerns.”

Rosenbaum disputes that there is a specific “power agenda” at work. “I would say the best way of describing it is by analogy to the old boys’ network in England, where graduates of Eton and Oxford and Cambridge form a network of influence and power and share a mind-set. They know each other, they trust each other and they bonded at an early age.”

If nothing else, Skull and Bones has produced some odd bedfellows. “I am a liberal Democratic criminal defense attorney who voted for George Bush, and I will vote for him again,” said Bush’s fellow Bonesman Donald Etra, an Orthodox Jew who lives in L.A. and was appointed by Bush to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Etra, who called himself “a strong Zionist,” said one of his closest Bones friends is a Jordanian-born Muslim. “Most of us,” he said, “put friendship first and politics a far, far second.”

Next month, an eclectic group of 15 juniors will be tapped for Skull and Bones by this year’s seniors. There have never been specific criteria for membership, which in generations past might have included some standard campus types: the editor of the Yale Daily, an outstanding athlete, a son of a Bonesman etc. Women were admitted in 1991, after a rancorous 20-year battle.

Bones members spend each Thursday and Sunday of their senior year in the Tomb, the group’s clubhouse on High Street in the middle of the Yale campus. It is windowless, ersatz Greco-Egyptian temple, readily identified on Yale maps.

“It’s kind of foreboding looking,” said a 48-year-old Toronto writer who sneaked into the Tomb with her boyfriend during spring break 1975. “They made it into this big mystery thing. But it wasn’t. It’s just like a big clubhouse, but it’s not in a tree.” There was a large dining room with a long table, and she recalled a room full of license plates. “They were always ripping things off with ‘322’ on them.”

The number 322 is a variation on the year (1832) that the club was founded by William H. Russell, a Yale student who modeled it after one he’d encountered in Germany. At its inception, said Dr. Alan Cross, one of Kerry’s classmates and a third-generation Bonesman, the club was “basically a debating society, where members of the senior class would get together and discuss important topics of the day.” (Bonesmen have a special regard for Demosthenes, the famed Greek orator who died in 322 BC.)

In later generations, the conversations became not just confessional but confrontational in the manner of group therapy, according to some reports. There was always security, said Cross, a professor of social medicine and pediatrics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the knowledge that “what goes on inside, what people reveal about themselves … would stay inside the building.”

Not surprisingly, given Yale’s lofty status in the firmament of American universities, Bonesmen often have occupied positions of power and prestige as adults. Three have become president (both Bushes and William Howard Taft). A partial roster of the famous includes diplomat Averill Harriman, poet Archibald MacLeish, financier Dean Witter Jr., Time magazine founder Henry Luce, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, writers William F. Buckley and Christopher Buckley, former Sen. David Boren and FedEx founder Frederick Smith.

Not every Bonesman has loved the club unconditionally. As an adult, William Sloane Coffin, the Yale chaplain known for his opposition to the Vietnam War, developed a distaste for it. “He thought it was inappropriate,” said Cross. “A snobby thing. We were discouraged from gathering in groups around campus because it would perpetuate the notion that this was an elitist group.”

But of course, it is an elite group. Members can’t apply for membership — they are secretly elected. They have lifelong access to Deer Island, a private 40-acre sanctuary in the St. Lawrence River, which is owned by Skull and Bones’ corporate parent, the Russell Trust Assn. And they are accorded other, less tangible benefits for life, not the least of which are their connections to the well-connected.

The Bush family has a long history with Skull and Bones. George W. Bush’s father tapped him in 1967, as a favor to the seniors who nominated him. The president’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was a U.S. senator, supposedly boasted in a journal that he stole the skull of Geronimo in 1918 for display among the many osseous relics in the Tomb, according to Robbins.

The current college generation of Bushes may represent a break in family tradition: Barbara Bush, a Yale senior, reportedly rejected an invitation to join the club.

Kerry, tapped in 1965, has no family history with Bones, although David Thorne, the twin of his first wife, Julia, is a member, as was his current wife’s first father-in-law, John Heinz.

Whether the president and his challenger are influenced by their Skull and Bones associations is, in a general sense, a matter of record. Both men have close friends and political contributors who are Bonesmen. Bush’s early forays into business were helped along by older Bonesmen. Bush has appointed several of his clubmates to government positions, including William H. Donaldson, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tales from a ‘savage’

The general goings on in the Tomb — particularly of eras past — are not truly secret anymore. This is due, mostly, to the investigative efforts of the two Yalie journalists, Rosenbaum and Robbins.

Robbins was an editorial assistant in the Washington bureau of the New Yorker when she first wrote a story about Skull and Bones for the Atlantic in 2000, which she expanded into a book two years later. Her own membership in a Yale secret society, Scroll and Key, helped open doors. “I got a lot of hang-ups and a lot of gruff voices saying, ‘I’m not talking to you about that!’ ” But when she identified herself as a “savage” — Bones-speak for a member of another secret society — it worked as an entree. (Regular folks are “barbarians.”)

Robbins has revealed that all Bonesmen receive lifelong nicknames, some handed down. (The president’s father, she writes, was “Magog,” a name given to the most sexually experienced Bonesman. George W. never got around to choosing a nickname and was dubbed “Temporary.”)

Like Rosenbaum (who has participated in covert taping operations of Bones rituals with infrared equipment), Robbins has written about the Tomb’s initiation rites. Bonesmen dress up as a variety of characters — “right out of Harry Potter meets Dracula” — and conduct what she has described as “a cross between haunted-house antics and a human pinball game.”

“World domination aside,” she writes in “Secrets of the Tomb,” the most pervasive rumors about Bones are that initiates must masturbate in a coffin while recounting their sexual exploits and that their candor is ultimately rewarded with a no-strings gift of $15,000.”

No Bonesmen interviewed for this article would comment on the nature of the confessional conversations. But Cross and Etra laughed at the idea that there was a monetary gift. “There was no check,” said Cross. Another Bonesman who graduated from Yale in 1975 and lives in Los Angeles, agreed: “That’s ridiculous! I never got any money.”

‘Somewhat laughable’

Despite the fact that the presidential race has kindled interest in Skull and Bones, many believe the club has been in a long decline. Admitting women may have struck a blow for equality, but the Tomb just hasn’t generated much juicy buzz since then.

These days, wrote Franklin Foer in an April 2000 issue of the New Republic, Yale’s secret societies are “high temples of political correctness” where women outnumber men and “conservatives are scarce.”

While Kerry has said that he favored admitting women, the Bush position is not known. However, rumors have it that some older Bonesmen have forsaken the club now that it is coed.

“Once upon a time there was something called the Eastern Establishment, and Skull and Bones was a significant institution feeding into it,” said Jacob Weisberg, 39, editor of the online magazine Slate. “There is the residue of it, but it is not the same kind of network, not the same kind of career path.”

Weisberg should know.

In spring 1986, Weisberg, a Yale student interning at the New Republic, was invited to Kerry’s office. “I was writing about politics, so I thought maybe he was going to give me a scoop or something,” Weisberg said. But when Weisberg showed up, Kerry tapped him for Skull and Bones.

“I said, ‘Sen. Kerry, as a liberal, how do you justify supporting this club that doesn’t admit women?’ ”

Kerry was taken aback. According to Weisberg, Kerry said: “I’ve marched with battered women.”

Weisberg declined the tap and has no regrets.

“The institution is somewhat laughable at this point,” he said. “That we’re having a presidential race with two alumni of this club tells you something, but it tells you more about what’s changed, because it’s inconceivable that in 20 years we’ll have an election where two candidates are from Skull and Bones. This is the last time this could plausibly happen. I think it’s sort of the last gasp.”

CHICAGO — President Bush said Tuesday that he welcomed a Justice Department investigation into whether White House officials illegally disclosed the identity of a CIA agent in an effort to discredit or punish her husband, an administration critic.

Bush also dismissed calls by Democrats for the appointment of a special counsel to look into the matter. Administration critics argued that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is too partisan to preside over an impartial investigation.

On a campaign fund-raising trip through the Midwest, Bush said he is “absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job.”

“I want to know the truth,” Bush said. “If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.”

The remarks were the president’s first on the burgeoning scandal, which burst into view over the weekend when it was disclosed that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate whether senior administration officials deliberately unmasked a CIA agent married to former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of Bush’s handling of intelligence before the war in Iraq.

The Justice Department said Tuesday that it was conducting a formal investigation into who leaked the agent’s identity to conservative columnist Robert Novak, an apparent violation of a 1982 law designed to protect intelligence operatives.

The allegations are serious; exposing the identity of a CIA operative is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. And the charges have handed Democrats a juicy political opportunity, enabling them to accuse the hawkish Bush administration of playing fast and loose with national security.

In the Senate, a resolution sponsored by about two dozen Democrats was introduced Tuesday calling for a “fair, thorough and independent investigation into a national security breach.”

Democrats took to the Senate floor to liken the leak to President Richard Nixon’s enemies list and to “kneecapping” the CIA agent in retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the administration’s policies.

“This is not just a leak; this is a crime, plain and simple,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

The politically charged nature of the case was underscored Tuesday when Wilson, who has portrayed himself as defending the CIA career of his wife, Valerie Plame, confirmed on CNBC that he has been in contact with a number of Democratic campaigns, in particular that of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Wilson said he had donated money to Kerry’s presidential campaign and is considering endorsing him, although he said he also had contributed to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000.

Wilson has agreed to meet today with Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Justice officials said they weren’t ruling out the possibility of acceding to the demands for a special counsel. Some former prosecutors said they believed the facts of the case were so murky that appointing a special counsel seemed premature.

For now, the politically delicate task falls to a low-profile group of Justice professionals. The team is headed up by John Dion, chief of the counterespionage section of the department’s criminal section, a 20-year spy catcher who has won department awards during Republican and Democratic administrations for his work investigating turncoats and security breaches.

“John is a very aggressive prosecutor who will call it as he sees it,” said Eric Dubelier, a Washington lawyer and former federal prosecutor who worked with Dion several years ago. “He will make a decision based on the facts and the law. Then, the question will be, ‘Who is the final arbiter?’ ”

But some members of Congress said there was already evidence that the investigation was going off-track.

They cite a heads-up the Justice Department gave the White House on Monday night that it had decided to launch a formal investigation, and that it would be sending out a letter Tuesday morning explaining which documents it wanted preserved.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House counsel’s office asked whether staff should be notified immediately; the Justice officials said it could wait until the next morning.

McClellan rebuffed a question asking whether the evening phone call could be seen as advance warning, calling it a “silly suggestion.”

Schumer said the notice created an opportunity for mischief, essentially giving White House staff an opportunity overnight to destroy evidence.

“If there were a special counsel, it is extremely doubtful that the White House would have been allowed to delay the request to preserve documents and other evidence,” Schumer said. “After all, every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence.”

Legal experts said the White House probably was already obliged under the law to preserve documents, given the widespread publicity the case had generated over the weekend. Others said they thought the White House should have acted more aggressively in ensuring that the documents be preserved.

“I think a conscientious lawyer would have done it immediately. We are not dealing with a rural D.A.’s office,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics specialist at New York University law school. Gillers said he thought that White House counsel Alberto Gonzales’ own preservation order was “incredibly vague” and might have confused some employees.

Later Tuesday, Gonzalez expanded his notification to White House staff members by specifying that they preserve records of any contacts with members of the news media, including columnist Novak and Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce.

Phelps and Royce were apparently named because a story they wrote about Novak’s column in July disclosed that Plame was an undercover operative, which Novak’s column didn’t say.

Their story also quoted Novak as saying that an administration official had sought him out with the information about Plame. Novak now tells it differently, saying that the information emerged in an interview that he requested with the administration official. The Newsday account suggests a more aggressive role by the unidentified leaker.

Under Justice Department regulations, Ashcroft has full discretion in whether to appoint a special counsel, unlike the post-Watergate independent counsel statute, which ascribed that authority to a panel of judges. Congress allowed the counsel statute to expire in 1999 amid recriminations over the expense and scope of the Whitewater investigations.

In its place, then-Atty. Gen. Janet Reno enacted guidelines for when the department should veer from its normal rules in cases where officials have conflicts of interest. Those rules remain in effect.

“The attorney general is absolutely free to structure any special investigative appointment within the Department of Justice that he wishes. That has been done repeatedly as needed throughout history,” said John Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University law school in New York, and a former member of the independent counsel team that investigated the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration.

Ashcroft himself has exercised the prerogative, setting up a special task force to scrutinize Enron after recusing himself from the investigation because he had once taken campaign contributions from the fallen energy trader.

Barrett said even if the independent counsel law were still in effect, the investigation would be going through a sorting-out process, trying to zero in on suspects, before deciding whether a conflict existed warranting an outside prosecutor.

“Even in the independent counsel model, the preliminary work was to be done by the Department of Justice. Someone has to do the initial spade work,” he said.

On Capitol Hill, such legal distinctions were buried under political rhetoric from both sides.

“If we need an independent counsel to investigate a private real estate deal,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), referring to the independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton’s and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Whitewater land venture, “certainly a breach of national security deserves the same level of scrutiny.”

California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, were among those supporting calls for an outside counsel. Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: “Clearly, a well-respected special counsel from the outside — Democrat or Republican — is the only option to ensure a fair and thorough investigation that will have the confidence of the American people.”

But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said of the Democrats’ call for a special counsel: “Surprise, surprise.”

DeLay said the appointment of a special counsel “makes no sense.”

“You have special counsels if you think the administration is trying to cover up or obstruct justice,” he said. “The White House is very upset about this … They’re trying to get to the bottom of this.”

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) ridiculed Democrats’ call for an outside counsel, noting they were among critics of the independent counsel statute in the past.

“We killed the independent counsel because it was used for politics by both sides of the aisle,” Santorum said.

Times staff writer Richard Simon in Washington contributed to this report. Reynolds reported from Chicago and Schmitt from Washington.