The backbone cabal was an informal organization of large-site news server administrators of the worldwide distributed newsgroup-based discussion system Usenet.
[2] Mary Ann Horton recruited membership in[3] and designed the original physical topology of the Usenet Backbone in 1983.
[4] Gene "Spaf" Spafford then created an email list of the backbone administrators, plus a few influential posters.
[5] Other prominent members of the cabal were Brian Reid, Richard Sexton, Chuq von Rospach and Rick Adams.
The result of this policy was an aura of mystery, even a decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988 following an internal fight.