On a chilly February morning in 2026, the world got a rare peek inside one of America’s most secretive institutions: Bohemian Grove. For nearly 150 years, the all-male Bohemian Club has drawn presidents, billionaires, tech moguls, and celebrities into its redwood-shrouded retreat in Sonoma County, California. But the club’s ironclad privacy was shattered when independent journalist Daniel Boguslaw published a leaked 2023 membership list, naming more than 2,200 attendees and exposing a hidden social network that has long fueled speculation, suspicion, and outright conspiracy theories.
The story behind the leak reads like something out of a spy novel. According to The San Francisco Standard and The California Post, Boguslaw spent weeks tracking down a Bay Area club member, even relocating from Massachusetts to San Francisco and then to West Oakland. Persistence paid off one night at Eli’s Mile High Club, when a courier handed over two manila envelopes containing the explosive roster. After The Intercept reportedly declined to run the story, citing its sensitivity, Boguslaw published the list on his Substack on February 25, 2026. Within days, the story had spread to outlets like the New York Post, San Francisco Standard, and ZeroHedge, igniting a firestorm of debate about the true nature of the Bohemian Club.
So, who made the list? The answer, as it turns out, is a veritable who’s who of American power. The roster includes Paul Pelosi (venture capitalist and husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), late musician Jimmy Buffett, comedian and TV host Conan O’Brien, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, political heavyweight Henry Kissinger, and conservative donor Charles Koch. Other notable names: former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese III, retired Admiral Bobby Inman (ex-NSA director), and Federal Judge Carlos Bea. While Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is rumored to be a frequent guest, he was not explicitly listed in the 2023 document. According to The California Post, the list is organized by “camps” — social fraternities within the club with whimsical names like Hill Billies, Mandalay, Silverado Squatters, Poison Oak, Abbey, Better ‘Ole, and Camels. Each camp functions as a self-contained social circle during the club’s two-week July retreat.
What exactly goes on in these camps? That’s where the Grove’s allure (and notoriety) comes into play. According to a member who authenticated the list for reporters, “It is an accurate list but it’s just a list of members in the camps to which they belong. This is a list of camp members and is pretty complete as of 2023. We don’t publish a list. There is a list of members but we don’t disclose it as it is a private organization.” The club’s official spokesperson, Sam Singer, echoed this stance, declining to confirm or deny any names and repeating the club’s privacy-centric motto: “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here.” The phrase, borrowed from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is meant to keep business dealings out of the Grove. As the insider told The California Post, “You are forbidden to speak about business. Nobody solicits business at the club. You’d be thrown out.”
Despite these rules, the club’s reputation as a shadowy cabal persists. The Stupiracy podcast, which recently devoted an episode to Bohemian Grove, described it as a place where “presidents, billionaires, media titans, and captains of industry gather in strict secrecy beneath a 40-foot owl statue in Northern California.” The club’s annual retreat is a blend of “global power, summer camp energy, theatrical rituals, whiskey, frog skits, and the legally celebrated freedom to pee on redwood trees.” The most infamous of these rituals is the “Cremation of Care” ceremony, where robed members gather before the giant owl and burn an effigy called “Care” to symbolically cast off worldly burdens. While conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones have claimed the ritual is evidence of something nefarious, others — including those who have attended — describe it as more of a “theatrical arts camp fever dream.”
The Grove’s history is peppered with both fact and folklore. Founded in 1872 (or 1878, depending on the source), the Bohemian Club has always been male-only, a policy it still maintains despite growing criticism. “There aren’t any plans to allow women in currently. I can’t tell you why. I think it would be a good idea, it’s just been that way forever,” an insider told The California Post. Over the decades, the club has counted among its members and guests a staggering array of influential figures: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, the Rockefellers, William Randolph Hearst, Clint Eastwood, Walter Cronkite, and more. According to Stupiracy, the Grove even played a role in 20th-century history — most notably, a 1942 meeting that helped lay the groundwork for the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.
Yet for all its mystique, the club’s culture is, in some ways, surprisingly mundane. “The reality is it is no different than being in any other club. There’s liquor, there’s music, there’s a fellowship,” the insider explained. Members are fiercely protective of their privacy, and the club enforces strict rules: no electronics, no nudity, and absolutely no business talk. Break the rules, and you risk suspension or expulsion. “One man was thrown out of the club for jumping and swimming in the lake in front of the owl shrine. He was suspended for a year. I know someone got suspended for having electronics,” the source told The California Post.
The fallout from the leak has been swift but strangely quiet. The Bohemian Club has refused to comment on the list’s authenticity, and its legal team has not challenged the publication. As The San Francisco Standard noted, there’s no legal recourse for being named as a member, and Boguslaw’s sources remain protected. The leak is the largest exposure of the club’s membership since a 1981 Mother Jones investigation first documented the Grove as a place “where men who make decisions affecting all of us gather quietly.”
So, what does this all mean? Is Bohemian Grove a sinister cabal, a summer camp for the elite, or simply a relic of a bygone era clinging to tradition? The answer, as always, is complicated. The Grove’s blend of secrecy, spectacle, and socializing has made it a lightning rod for speculation, but the newly revealed membership list offers a rare, unvarnished glimpse into a world that, until now, existed only in rumor and shadow. Whether this leak changes the club — or merely fuels its legend — remains to be seen. For now, the redwoods keep their secrets, but the world is watching a little more closely.