Recorded March 21, 2004
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Pur­su­ing the sub­ject of the fab­u­lous amount of wealth stolen by the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II under Golden Lily (the for­mal name of the Japan­ese loot­ing pro­gram), this broad­cast sup­ple­ments dis­cus­sion pre­sented in other ‘For The Record’ pro­grams. Hav­ing secreted over $100-billion (in 1940’s dol­lars) worth of pre­cious met­als and gems in the Philip­pines alone, the Japan­ese post­war eco­nomic largess was founded largely on the plun­der gar­nered from their rape of Asia. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Richard Nixon’s deci­sion to turn one of the aggre­gates of Golden Lily over to Japan­ese war crim­i­nal (and later Prime Min­is­ter) Kishi Nobo­suke. Nixon agreed to turn the M-Fund over to Kishi in exchange for kick­backs to Nixon’s 1960 pres­i­den­tial bid. In addi­tion, the pro­gram describes a num­ber of gold recov­ery pro­grams under­taken in the Philip­pines in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pres­i­dent Mar­cos: the Japan­ese recov­ered much of the buried wealth in the 1960’s and 1970’s; pri­vate right-wing ele­ments in the U.S. recov­ered a lot of the gold; much of the gold appears to have been recov­ered by off-the-shelf intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als (the “Enter­prise” of Iran-Contra fame). The admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush also appears to have recov­ered Japan­ese war gold early in 2001. One of the major focal points of dis­cus­sion con­cerns the prob­a­bil­ity that Nixon’s rap­proche­ment with Red China (“the China Man­date”) was accom­plished through the clan­des­tine trans­fer of $68 bil­lion in gold from the Philip­pines to Chi­nese banks in the early 1970’s.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The John Birch Society’s inten­tion of using Golden Lily trea­sure to finance their own pri­vate vig­i­lante mili­tia; the efforts of “The Enter­prise” to use Japan­ese war gold to finance off the shelf covert oper­a­tions and their intent to finance their own, pri­vate national secu­rity estab­lish­ment; the pres­ence of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of then Pres­i­dent Ford and for­mer Pres­i­dent Nixon in meet­ings with Mar­cos devoted to the sub­ject of recov­er­ing Japan­ese war gold; the alleged chan­nel­ing of some of the Golden Lily trea­sure into George W. Bush’s pri­vate blind trust.

1. This descrip­tion begins with a chill­ing look at the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and other books. (This pas­sage was not read in the actual broad­cast.) “Many peo­ple told us this book was his­tor­i­cally impor­tant and must be published—then warned us that if it were pub­lished, we would be mur­dered. An Aus­tralian econ­o­mist who read it said, ’ I hope they let you live.’ He did not have to explain who ‘they’ were.“
(Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peggy Sea­grave; Verso [HC]; Copy­right 2003 by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peggy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–85984-542–8; p. X.)

2. The pro­gram relates the ret­ri­bu­tion vis­ited on whistle-blowers who had dis­closed that gold belong­ing to Holo­caust vic­tims was left in Swiss banks. Note that Carla del Ponte, who charged Jean Ziegler with trea­son, is a law partne of Pier Felice Barchi, rthe lawyer for Bank Al Taqwa’s Youssef Nada. (For more about Nada, see—among other programs—FTRs 343, 352, 354, 356, 357, 359, 377, 378, 382, 413, 415, 417, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435. FTR#359 high­lights Carla del Ponte at some length.) “Japan’s loot­ing of Asia, and the hid­ing of this war-gold in Amer­i­can banks, is closely linked to the issue of Holo­caust gold hid­den in Swiss banks. Reveal­ing the secrets of either is a dan­ger­ous busi­ness. Jean Ziegler, a Swiss pro­fes­sor and par­lia­men­tar­ian, did much to expose five decades of offi­cial amne­sia in his book The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead. After pub­lish­ing it and tes­ti­fy­ing in 1998 before the U.S. Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee about Jew­ish assets in Swiss banks, he was charged with ‘trea­son’ by Swiss Fed­eral Pros­e­cu­tor Carla del Ponte. The charge was brought by twenty-one financiers, com­mer­cial lawyers, and politi­cians of the far right, many of them major stock­hold­ers in large Swiss banks. They accused Ziegler of being an accom­plice of Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions who ‘extorted’ vast sums of money from Switzer­land.” (Idem.)

3. “Ziegler is only one of many who have been per­se­cuted for putting ethics before greed. Christophe Meili, a Union Banque Suisse (UBS) secu­rity guard, was threat­ened with mur­der and the kid­nap­ping of his wife and chil­dren after he tes­ti­fied before a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee about doc­u­ments he res­cued from UBS shred­ders. He and his fam­ily were given asy­lum in Amer­ica.” (Idem.)

4. The Sea­graves relate the threats and harass­ment they received over the author­ship of some of their pre­vi­ous books. “We have been threat­ened with mur­der before. When we pub­lished The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA offi­cial that a hit team was being assem­bled in Tai­wan to come mur­der us. He said, ‘I would take this very seri­ously, if I were you.’ We van­ished for a year to an island off the coast of British Colum­bia. While we were gone, a Tai­wan hit team arrived in San Fran­cisco and shot dead the Chinese-American jour­nal­ist Henry Liu.” (Idem.)

5. “When we pub­lished The Mar­cos Dynasty we expected trou­ble from the Mar­cos fam­ily and its cronies, but instead we were harassed by Wash­ing­ton. Oth­ers had inves­ti­gated Mar­cos, but we were the first to show how the U.S. Gov­ern­ment was secretly involved with Mar­cos gold deals. We came under attack from the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment and its Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, whose agents made threat­en­ing mid­night phone calls to our elderly par­ents. Arriv­ing in New York for an author tour, one of us was inter­cepted at JFK air­port, pass­port seized, and held incom­mu­ni­cado for three hours. Even­tu­ally the pass­port was returned, with­out a word of expla­na­tion. When we ran Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion queries to see what was behind it, we were grudg­ingly sent a copy of a telex mes­sage, on which every word was blacked out, includ­ing the date. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion given for this cen­sor­ship was the need to pro­tect gov­ern­ment sources, which are above the law.” (Ibid.; pp. X, XI.)

6. “Dur­ing one harass­ing phone call from a U.S. Trea­sury agent, he said he was sit­ting in his office watch­ing an inter­view we had done for a Japan­ese TV network—an inter­view broad­cast only in Japan­ese, which we had never seen. After pub­lish­ing The Yam­ato Dynasty, which briefly men­tioned the dis­cov­ery that is the basis for Gold War­riors, our phones and email were tapped. We know this because when one of us was in a Euro­pean clinic briefly for a med­ical pro­ce­dure, the head nurse reported that ‘some­one pos­ing as your Amer­i­can doc­tor’ had been on the phone ask­ing ques­tions.” (Ibid.; p. XI.)

7. “When a brief extract of this book was pub­lished in the South China Morn­ing Post in August 2001, sev­eral phone calls from the edi­tors were cut off sud­denly. Emails from the news­pa­per took 72 hours to reach us, while copies sent to an asso­ciate nearby arrived instantly. In recent months, we began to receive veiled death threats.” (Idem.)

8. “What have we done to pro­voke mur­der? To bor­row a phrase from Jean Ziegler, we are ‘com­bat­ing offi­cial amne­sia.’ We live in dan­ger­ous times, like Ger­many in the 1930’s when any­one who makes incon­ve­nient dis­clo­sures about hid­den assets can be branded a ‘ter­ror­ist’ or a ‘trai­tor. . . .’” (Idem.)

1. “Despite the best efforts of the Amer­i­can and Japan­ese gov­ern­ments to destroy, with­hold, or lose doc­u­men­ta­tion related to Golden Lily, we have accu­mu­lated thou­sands of doc­u­ments, con­ducted thou­sands of hours of inter­views, and we make all of these avail­able to read­ers of this book on two com­pact discs, avail­able from our web­site so they can make up their own minds. We encour­age oth­ers with knowl­edge of these events to come for­ward. When the top is cor­rupt, the truth will not come from the top. It will emerge in bits and pieces from peo­ple like Jean Ziegler and Christophe Meili, who decided they had to ‘do some­thing.’ As a pre­cau­tion, should any­thing odd hap­pen, we have arranged for this book and all its doc­u­men­ta­tion to be put up on the Inter­net at a num­ber of sites. If we are mur­dered, read­ers will have no dif­fi­culty fig­ur­ing out who ‘they’ are.” (Idem.)

9. The broad­cast itself began with dis­cus­sion of then Vice Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon’s give-away of the M-Fund. Note that Nixon returned the M-Fund not to the nation of Japan but to war crim­i­nal Kishi Nobo­suke. This trans­ac­tion was part of a quid pro quo, in which Kishi and the LDP would kick back some of the money to back Nixon’s bid for the pres­i­dency. (For more about the M-Fund, see FTRs 290, 428, 446.) “Amer­ica lost con­trol of the M-Fund in 1960 when it was given away by Vice Pres­i­dent Nixon, in exchange for Tokyo’s secret finan­cial sup­port of his bid for the U.S. pres­i­dency. For more than forty years since then, the M-Fund has remained the illicit toy of seven LDP politi­cians who have used it to keep them­selves in power. Nixon effec­tively gave them the ulti­mate secret weapon, a bot­tom­less black bag.” (Ibid.; p. 120.)

10. “Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower was going to Tokyo to con­clude revi­sions to the Mutual Secu­rity Treaty, but his trip was can­celed after vio­lent protests in Japan. Instead, Prime Min­is­ter Kishi Nobo­suke flew to Wash­ing­ton, where the Secu­rity Treaty nego­ti­a­tions were con­ducted by the vice pres­i­dent. Nixon was obsessed by his crav­ing to become pres­i­dent, and was will­ing to turn over con­trol of the M-Fund, and to promise the return of Oki­nawa, in return for kick­backs to his cam­paign fund. Kishi, an indicted war crim­i­nal, a key fig­ure in the wartime regime and in hard drugs, muni­tions and slave labor, thereby gained per­sonal con­trol of the M-Fund. Accord­ing to Takano Hajime and other well-informed sources, Nixon jus­ti­fied the deal with the dubi­ous excuse that Tokyo needed an emer­gency covert source of money in the event that war broke out in North­east Asia. In the­ory, Japan’s post-war con­sti­tu­tion pre­vented it from cre­at­ing a new army, so Tokyo could not allo­cate a huge defense budget—at least not pub­licly. Nixon argued that full LDP con­trol of the M-Fund would accom­plish the same thing covertly. In 1960, the M-Fund was said to have an asset base worth 12.3 tril­lion Yen ($35-billion). It is impor­tant to note that Nixon did not turn the M-Fund over to the gov­ern­ment of Japan, but to Prime Min­is­ter Kishi per­son­ally, putting the lie to his grandiose jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. So a few months later, when Kishi ceased to be prime min­is­ter, he and his clique con­tin­ued to con­trol the M-fund. It goes with­out say­ing that they never used it for the des­ig­nated pur­pose, instead turn­ing it into a pri­vate source of per­sonal enrich­ment. . . .” (Idem.)

11. The M-Fund at this point in time included monies from both the Yot­suya and Keenan funds, which had been folded into it. (For more about these funds, see FTRs 428, 446.) “Until Nixon inter­fered, the M-Fund was con­trolled and admin­is­tered by a small group of Amer­i­cans in Tokyo close to MacArthur. In 1950, when the Korean War started, most U.S. forces in Japan were rushed to Korea, cre­at­ing a secu­rity vac­uum. Because the post­war con­sti­tu­tion pro­hib­ited set­ting up a new army, the M-Fund secretly pro­vided over $50-million to cre­ate what was char­ac­ter­ized as a self-defense force. When the occu­pa­tion ended in 1952 and Wash­ing­ton and Tokyo con­cluded their joint secu­rity treaty, admin­is­tra­tion of the M-Fund shifted to dual con­trol, staffed by U.S. Embassy CIA per­son­nel and their Japan­ese coun­ter­parts, weighted in favor of the Amer­i­cans. The Yot­suya Fund and Keenan Fund were folded into it. The M-Fund’s asset base was being invested in Japan­ese indus­try and finance, and the returns were used for polit­i­cal induce­ments. The M-Fund coun­cil inter­fered vig­or­ously to keep Japan’s gov­ern­ment, indus­try, and soci­ety under the tight con­trol of con­ser­v­a­tives friendly toward Amer­ica. This meant block­ing or under­min­ing Japan­ese indi­vid­u­als or groups who wished to lib­er­al­ize Japan­ese pol­i­tics, or unbuckle what Dr. Miyam­ato Masao called Japan’s ‘strait­jacket soci­ety.’” (Ibid.; p. 121.)

12. “In 1956, for exam­ple, the Eisen­hower Admin­is­tra­tion labored long and hard to install Kishi as head of the newly-merged Liberal-Democratic Party and as Japan’s new prime min­is­ter. This was the same Kishi who had been a mem­ber of the hard-core rul­ing clique in Manchuria with Gen­eral Tojo Hideki and Hoshino Naoki, head of the nar­cotics monop­oly. Kishi had also signed Japan’s Dec­la­ra­tion of War against Amer­ica in Decem­ber 1941. Dur­ing World War II, he was vice min­is­ter of muni­tions and min­is­ter of com­merce and indus­try, actively involved in slave labor. Along the way, he made a per­sonal for­tune in side-deals with the zaibatsu. Fol­low­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der, he was one of the most promi­nent indicted war crim­i­nals at Sug­amo, where he was a cell­mate of Kodama. In 1948, when his release from prison was pur­chased by Kodama, Kishi began orga­niz­ing the finan­cial base of the LDP, using Kodama’s black gold and injec­tions of M-Fund cash. For ten years, Kishi was groomed as America’s Boy by Harry Kern, Eugene Dooman, Comp­ton Pack­en­ham and other mem­bers of Averell Harriman’s group at the Amer­ica Coun­cil for Japan (ACJ). They worked tire­lessly to improve Kishi’s mousy image, tutored him in Eng­lish, and taught him to like Scotch. To them, Kishi was America’s ‘only bet left in Japan.’ All this was done covertly, for if the Japan­ese pub­lic learned that Wash­ing­ton was using the M-Fund to replace one prime min­is­ter with another, the democ­racy fic­tion would col­lapse.” (Ibid.; pp. 121–122.)

13. “Dur­ing Kishi’s term as prime min­is­ter (1957–1960) the LDP received $10-million each year directly from the CIA, chiefly from the M-Fund and many other oper­a­tions in Japan from 1955 to 1958, said: ‘We financed them,’ because the CIA ‘depended on the LDP for infor­ma­tion.’ When the party’s cof­fers were depleted by the mon­u­men­tal effort to get Kishi named prime min­is­ter, Finance Min­is­ter Sato Eisaku (Kishi’s brother) appealed to Ambas­sador Dou­blas MacArthur II (the general’s nephew) for addi­tional secret funds. In July 1958, Ambas­sador MacArthur wrote to the Depart­ment of State, pro­vid­ing details of this request: ‘Sato asked if it would not be pos­si­ble for the United States to sup­ply finan­cial funds to aid the con­ser­v­a­tive forces in this con­stant strug­gle against Com­mu­nism . . . This did not come as a sur­prise to us, since he sug­gested the same gen­eral idea last year.’” (Ibid.; p. 122.)

14. “A few months later, when Nixon rene­go­ti­ated the Mutual Secu­rity Treaty in 1959–1960, he not only gave Kishi the M-Fund, he also promised that when he became pres­i­dent he would give Oki­nawa back to Japan, while retain­ing mil­i­tary base rights there. Accord­ing to sources close to for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Tanaka, ‘Nixon told Kishi that if Japan would assist him in becom­ing pres­i­dent, he would see to it that the U.S. with­drew from its role in man­ag­ing the M-Fund, and upon his being elected, Nixon would return Oki­nawa to Japan.’ Accord­ingly, when Nixon and Kishi con­cluded the revi­sion of the secu­rity treaty in 1960, the M-Fund was turned over to Kishi. And in 1973, when Nixon at last was elected pres­i­dent, he returned Oki­nawa to Japan. . . .” (Idem.)

15. In the con­text of Nixon’s dirty deal, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pated in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tainly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Communist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Communist League) were involved. Nixon him­self was in Dal­las on 11/22/1963 and left shortly before Kennedy was killed. When inter­viewed by the FBI in Feb­ru­ary of 1964, he claimed he left on 11/20/1963, despite the fact that a UPI inter­view that ran in sev­eral papers on 11/22/1963 was con­ducted with Nixon on 11/21 in Dallas—a day after he claimed he left. (For more about the JFK assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing the Nazi and fas­cist links to the assas­si­na­tion, see—among other programs—The Guns of Novem­ber, RFAs 11, 12, 13, 15, 37—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTRs 19, 47, 104, 107, 120, 188, 190, 246, 253, 288. For more about Nixon in Dal­las, see The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 3 and Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M59, both avail­able from Spit­fire.) ” . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . .I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Nazi’s [sic], and that is who is in power in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­ica is also full of these Nazi’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­rior motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .“
(The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Dick Rus­sell; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 684.)

16. Much of the Japan­ese Golden Lily loot that was stashed in the Philip­pines was even­tu­ally recov­ered by Japan­ese fas­cists, work­ing in tan­dem with Fer­di­nand Mar­cos. “Only in the mid-1960’s, when Fer­di­nand Mar­cos began mak­ing onshore and off­shore recov­ery deals with the Japan­ese, was offi­cial hos­til­ity relaxed, and Japan­ese began com­ing back to the Philip­pines in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers to hunt for trea­sure. Small groups came to the Cagayan Val­ley every year. One team searched around the Bam­bang ceme­tery that included Tunnel-8 and Tunnel-9. Ben did not rec­og­nize any­one in the group. One day they were gone. Vil­lagers found a tree by the ceme­tery that had been cut down dur­ing the night with a chain saw, expos­ing the inside of the tree trunk. There they clearly saw where sev­eral gold bars had been hid­den, leav­ing their impres­sion in the wood as the tree grew around the bars.” (Ibid.; p. 158.)

17. “At the end of 1968, Pres­i­dent Mar­cos sent a team to Tokyo to make a deal for more effec­tive joint recov­er­ies. The team included Lieu­tenant Colonel Flo­rentino Vil­lacru­sis, a senior intel­li­gence offi­cer; Brigadier Gen­eral Onofre T. Ramos, comp­trol­ler of the Philip­pine armed forces; and two other offi­cers. Their mis­sion was to acquire a set of Golden Lily trea­sure maps in return for a share to Japan of what­ever Mar­cos recov­ered. If Tokyo did not coop­er­ate, Mar­cos warned that he would close down Japan­ese com­pa­nies all over the islands.” (Idem.)

18. In his first two years as pres­i­dent, Mar­cos had autho­rized off­shore recov­er­ies by a syn­di­cate of Japan­ese and Korean gang­sters, headed by Kodama and Machii Hisayuki, head of the Tosei-kai. Another part­ner was bil­lion­aire fixer Sasakawa Ryoichi, another of Kodama’s Sug­amo Prison cell­mates, who staged speed­boat races, one of Japan’s favorite bet­ting sports and a con­ve­nient way to laun­der money. His true wealth came from secret deals with Pres­i­dent Sukarno and Pres­i­dent Mar­cos to share in the recov­ery of war loot in Indone­sia and the Philip­pines. ‘I was very close to Mar­cos,’ Sasakawa told jour­nal­ists, ‘long before he became pres­i­dent.’ He pointed Mar­cos at sev­eral sites, includ­ing the sunken cruiser Nachii in Manila Bay, and in return was allowed to build ceme­ter­ies and memo­ri­als for Japan­ese war dead in the Philip­pines, on prop­erty that just hap­pened to include Golden Lily sites. ‘I per­son­ally donated the biggest cul­tural hall in [the Philip­pines]’, Sasakawa boasted, ‘as well as sup­plied the cement.’ Forty thou­sand sacks, to be pre­cise.” (Ibid.; pp. 158–159.)

19. In the decades fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of hos­til­i­ties in the Pacific, there have been peri­odic reports (and dis­cov­er­ies) of Japan­ese sol­diers con­tin­u­ing to resist in some of the islands in the Pacific. One of those sol­diers was a Japan­ese lieu­tenant who had been specif­i­cally instructed to pro­tect Golden Lily trea­sure sites on the island of Lubang. “In 1974, Takeda flew to the Philip­pines when a Japan­ese strag­gler, Sec­ond Lieu­tenant Onoda Hiroo, was dis­cov­ered hid­ing on 74-square-mile Lubang Island, 70 miles south­west of Manila Bay. Back in 1945, all but three Japan­ese sol­diers on Lubang had been killed or sur­ren­dered dur­ing a four-day bat­tle with the Amer­i­cans. Onoda and two com­rades fled into the jun­gle and for the next thirty years kept up spo­radic guer­rilla war­fare. In the 1950’s, leaflets were dropped telling them the war was over, but they thought it was a trick. Both of Onoda’s com­pan­ions even­tu­ally died of trop­i­cal dis­eases, and Onoda him­self was declared legally dead in Japan. Lubang vil­lagers said oth­er­wise. When a young Japan­ese named Suzuki Norio tracked Onoda down in the jun­gle in Feb­ru­ary 1974, he still car­ried his rifle, 500 rounds of ammu­ni­tion, and sev­eral hand grenades.” (Ibid.; p. 166.)

20. “Onoda refused to sur­ren­der unless released from duty by his com­mand­ing offi­cer. Ben heard all about Onoda from tele­vi­sion news. He knew Onoda per­son­ally, hav­ing spent weeks on Lubang dur­ing the war with Prince Takeda, clos­ing a trea­sure vault. Ben knew it was Takeda who had ordered Onoda to guard the site at Lubang, so only the prince him­self could rescind the com­mand. A few weeks later, a group of Japan­ese offi­cials arrived in the Philip­pines to per­suade Onoda to sur­ren­der. Atten­tion was focused on Major Taniguchi Yoshima, who was pre­sented to TV audi­ences as Onoda’s com­mand­ing offi­cer. But among the Japan­ese del­e­ga­tion in the back­ground, Ben saw Prince Takeda’s unfor­get­table face and knew that he had come per­son­ally to release Onoda from his oath. A few days later, Onoda returned to Japan. (Claim­ing that he could not adjust to life in mod­ern Japan, Onoda was then sent to Brazil, to a big Japanese-owned ranch in the Mata Groso. There body­guards made sure nobody came to quiz him about the Lubang trea­sures, until they were recov­ered.)” (Idem.)

21. “The Lubang recov­ery was done by Sasakawa, under the guise of devel­op­ing Lubang into a resort for wealthy Japan­ese tourists. Sasakawa said he was doing this ‘at the request of Mar­cos.’ Even­tu­ally, when hotels and golf courses had been built, the resort was stocked with African wild game and exotic birds for rich Japan­ese hunters, who were pro­vided with young male or female ‘pri­vate com­pan­ions’ for sex­ual sport. At the same time, Pres­i­dent Mar­cos made Sasakawa an hon­orary cit­i­zen of the Philip­pines, in recog­ni­tion of his many dona­tions to Imelda’s highly-publicized relief projects, and for his efforts to pave over resid­ual ill-feeling about the war by estab­lish­ing the Japan-Philippines Friend­ship soci­ety. Noth­ing ws said of Sasakawa shar­ing war loot with Mar­cos.” (Idem.)

22. Even­tu­ally, Mar­cos enlisted an Amer­i­can min­ing engi­neer and metallurgist—Robert Curtis—to help with the recov­ery of Golden Lily trea­sure. In one of the encoun­ters dur­ing which the recov­ery was planned, Cur­tis saw rep­re­sen­ta­tives of for­mer Pres­i­dent Nixon and then-President Ford in atten­dance. It was not clear whether these rep­re­sen­ta­tives were act­ing in a pri­vate or a pub­lic capac­ity. “On March 11–12, 1975, he [Mar­cos] took [Robert] Cur­tis and other guests on a night cruise aboard the pres­i­den­tial yacht, a con­verted minesweeper. The ship took a hun­dred guests around Manila Bay while there was a ban­quet, fol­lowed by a dance. When the dance ended at mid­night, the guests were dropped at the bay front, and the yacht cruised out into Manila Bay again with only the core mem­bers of the Leber Group and sev­eral for­eign vis­i­tors. In addi­tion to Robert Cur­tis, Olof Jon­s­son, and Nor­man Kirst, Cur­tis remem­bers ‘an aide [for­mer] Pres­i­dent Nixon’ and ‘an aide to Pres­i­dent Ford’ who took part in these secret meet­ings about the recov­ery of war loot. Nixon had resigned seven months ear­lier, suc­ceeded by Ford. The Repub­li­can Party seemed likely to lose the 1976 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion because of the Water­gate scan­dal. From the pres­ence of the two aides, Cur­tis guessed that both Nixon and Ford some­how were par­tic­i­pat­ing in Mar­cos gold recov­er­ies. Cur­tis won­dered whether the two aides were gov­ern­ment agents, or rep­re­sent­ing Nixon and Ford pri­vately.” (Ibid.; p. 171.)

23. One of the most inter­est­ing and impor­tant of the avenues of inves­ti­ga­tion opened by the Sea­graves in their remark­able book con­cerns the alleged use of Golden Lily loot to pre­cip­i­tate the rap­proche­ment between the US and China. The Sea­graves relate that (allegedly) some of the Philip­pines loot was used to shore up the fal­ter­ing econ­omy of the Peo­ples Repub­lic of China, staving off the pos­si­bil­ity of war with the US and lead­ing to Nixon’s China Mandate—the resump­tion of diplo­matic rela­tions between the US and China. “One deal said to have resulted is the so-called China Man­date. Our Mar­cos fam­ily source insists that in 1972 Pres­i­dent Nixon and Henry Kissinger made a secret deal with Pre­mier Chou En-lai to keep China out of con­flict with the United States over Tai­wan, in return for access to a large quan­tity of gold pro­vided by Mar­cos. We have not been able to con­firm the polit­i­cal details. How­ever, bank doc­u­ments that have sur­faced over the years clearly demon­strate that large quan­ti­ties of gold bul­lion were moved into Chi­nese main­land banks dur­ing this period, includ­ing bul­lion accounts in the names of Santa Romana, Fer­di­nand and Imelda Mar­cos, and other mem­bers of their fam­ily and cir­cle of rich cronies. Since all these peo­ple were loudly anti-communist, there is no plau­si­ble rea­son for them to trans­fer gold bul­lion to Chi­nese banks in the midst of the Cold War. For that rea­son alone, the story may well be true.” (Ibid.; p. 192.)

24. “Accord­ing to this source, in 1971–72 the econ­omy of the People’s Repub­lic was in very bad shape, its for­eign cur­rency reserves were flat, aggra­vated by the world-wide oil cri­sis and famine in the coun­try­side, all of which is cor­rect. As pres­sure mounted on the Polit­buro, party hawks gained a stronger voice, push­ing for inva­sion of Tai­wan to gain con­trol of its assets, and as a much-needed dis­trac­tion. CIA and Pen­ta­gon ana­lysts con­cluded that Bei­jing was about to invade, while Amer­ica had its hands full in Viet­nam. This could lead to nuclear war. A way had to be found to defuse the sit­u­a­tion, and a novel solu­tion pro­posed by a CIA ana­lyst was to help Bei­jing sta­bi­lize its econ­omy with a huge infu­sion of black gold from Mar­cos, reduc­ing the pres­sure for war. If Amer­ica helped China out of this domes­tic cri­sis, it could bring a period of peace that would ben­e­fit the Philip­pines as well.” (Ibid.; pp. 192–193.)

25. “As our source tells it, Nixon and Kissinger secretly offered Bei­jing $68-billion in gold (an amount they knew Mar­cos had), to be moved into PRC banks in a num­ber of tranches over sev­eral years. This would not be an out­right gift. It would be deposited incre­men­tally in var­i­ous PRC banks in Hong Kong and major cities inside China. There the bul­lion would remain as an asset base, ear­marked for var­i­ous pur­poses nego­ti­ated in advance. The Chi­nese banks would be strength­ened, the PRC econ­omy would be sta­bi­lized, mod­er­ates in the Polit­buro would regain their lever­age, and hawks push­ing for an inva­sion of Tai­wan would be silenced. No U.S. funds were involved.” (Ibid.; p. 193.)

26. ” ‘It was only Japan­ese war loot,’ our source said, ‘recov­ered by Mar­cos, being put to good use.’ Chou En-lai, ever a prag­ma­tist, report­edly pushed it through. The temp­ta­tion for Mar­cos to agree was great; he would be fully sup­ported by Wash­ing­ton, and rewarded in many ways. The White House sweet­ened the deal by assur­ing Mar­cos that he and Imelda could make state vis­its to Bei­jing, which would enhance their stature through­out the world. Addi­tion­ally, Bei­jing would rec­i­p­ro­cate by pro­vid­ing agri­cul­tural aid to the Philip­pines.” (Idem.)

27. “In 1974, Imelda and her son Bong-Bong did make a state visit to Bei­jing, where they were pho­tographed grin­ning goofily with a star­tled and frail Mao Tse-tung clamped between them, one of the strangest pho­tographs of Mao ever made. Fer­di­nand went to Bei­jing the fol­low­ing year, a curi­ous thing for him to do as an out­spo­ken Cold War­rior. In a sub­sidiary devel­op­ment, Imelda’s brother Kokoy Romualdez, noted more for his loy­alty than for his intel­li­gence, became Manila’s ambas­sador to Bei­jing.” (Idem.)

28. “Our Mar­cos source insists the China Man­date was the foun­da­tion for Nixon’s his­toric visit to China and estab­lish­ment of diplo­matic rela­tions with the Peo­ples Repub­lic. Doc­u­ments do show that begin­ning in 1972 and con­tin­u­ing over a period of years, Mar­cos gold was moved to PRC-owned banks includ­ing Po Sang Bank and Bank of China in Hong Kong, and to other Chi­nese banks in Xia­men. Doc­u­ments from those banks show very large accounts in the names of Santa Romana, Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Imelda Mar­cos and oth­ers. Among related doc­u­ments we repro­duced on our CD’s are let­ters from gold bro­kers ask­ing for com­mis­sions to be paid after these trans­fers were suc­cess­fully car­ried out. The Mar­cos fam­ily and wealthy friends sub­se­quently trav­eled to Xia­men to inau­gu­rate a new build­ing for the PRC bank hold­ing these accounts. Xia­men is adja­cent to Amoy, home of the Hokkien dialect group long asso­ci­ated with the nat­ural father of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos.” (Idem.)

29. “Fur­ther evi­dence came in 2000, when Imelda was accused by Hong Kong gov­ern­ment author­i­ties of hir­ing a Chi­nese woman to obtain access to some of these gold accounts by brib­ing bank offi­cials. In Decem­ber 1999, accord­ing to Hong Kong gov­ern­ment pros­e­cu­tors. Imelda agreed to pay the bounty hunters 35 per­cent to recover $2.5 bil­lion from accounts at Bank of China, HSBC, and PRC banks in Xia­men. Imelda’s lawyers said she was only try­ing to raise money to help the poor. When news then came of yet another secret Mar­cos bul­lion account at UBS in Switzer­land, con­tain­ing $13.4-billion, Imelda sighed, ‘I wouldn’t be sur­prised. I know we used to have money.’” (Ibid.; pp. 193–194.)

30. “When the exis­tence of these bul­lion hold­ings in China was revealed, nobody seemed at all curi­ous how they came to be there, some since the early 1970’s when the Cold War was still on. Nobody con­nected them to Nixon’s 1972 state visit to Bei­jing.” (Ibid.; p. 194.)

31. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the role of the John Birch Soci­ety in recov­er­ing Golden Lily trea­sure from the Philip­pines in tan­dem with the above-mentioned Robert Cur­tis. Note that the funds were going to be used to finance a pri­vate, right-wing vig­i­lante force. (For more about the John Birch Soci­ety, see RFA#11, avail­able from Spit­fire.) “When the Hunt Broth­ers were try­ing to cor­ner the world’s sil­ver pro­duc­tion in the early 1970’s,’ Cur­tis told us, ‘they sent Colonel Her­bert F. Buc­choltz to me . . . later came Jerry Adams . . . Robert Welch, founder of the Birch Soci­ety; Con­gress­man Larry McDon­ald, and Jay and Dan Agnew, and Floyd Pax­ton.’” (Ibid.; p. 174.)

32. “The Birch Soci­ety was started in 1958 by a group of wealthy busi­ness­men and far right politi­cians con­vinced that every closet in Amer­ica con­tained com­mu­nists, Jews, wet­backs, Afro-Americans, lib­er­als and homo­sex­u­als. The Birchers also were ded­i­cated gold and sil­ver bugs. They had a long­stand­ing grudge against U.S. pres­i­dents, start­ing with FDR, who had inter­vened to make pri­vate own­er­ship of gold in Amer­ica a crime, with penal­ties of heavy fines, con­fis­ca­tion and impris­on­ment. They also believed that Nixon had sold the United States down the river twice—first by tak­ing Amer­ica off the gold stan­dard, sec­ond by his recog­ni­tion of Red China. On the other hand, Nixon’s actions made it pos­si­ble for the first time since 1933 for Amer­i­cans to pur­chase and own gold legally. So Nixon opened up avenues for the Birch lead­er­ship to acquire gold over­seas, and sneak it into Amer­ica through the back door of Canada, where it added to the Society’s fund for anti-communist activ­i­ties. Like other ultra-conservative groups in Amer­ica and indi­vid­u­als like Gen­eral Lansdale—one of their own—who had been forced out of the CIA and Pen­ta­gon by lib­er­als, the Birchers had a long-term strat­egy to cre­ate their own right-wing vig­i­lante force. Not some­thing crude like Hitler’s Brown Shirts or Gestapo. More like a pri­vate FBI, assisted by elite pri­vate mil­i­tary forces. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. This would cost money, hence the need for large amounts of pri­vately held gold.” (Ibid.; pp. 174–175.)

33. “Although he was a con­ser­v­a­tive, and a patriot, Cur­tis was not a Bircher. But he shared their fas­ci­na­tion with pre­cious met­als. Once he joined the Mar­cos gold hunt, Cur­tis told the Birch Soci­ety board con­fi­den­tially about the hid­den Japan­ese loot. He described his role in the Leber Group, and his par­tic­i­pa­tion with Mar­cos in sanc­ti­fy­ing the gold, and in find­ing dis­creet chan­nels to mar­ket it.” (Ibid.; p. 175.)

34. “Cur­tis did not real­ize that the inner cir­cle of the Birch lead­er­ship already knew about the Santa Romana recov­er­ies, and the role of Robert B. Ander­son and John J. McCloy in set­ting up the Black Eagle Trust. They also knew about the roles of Gen­er­als MacArthur, Whit­ney and Willoughby in the M-Fund, and all the finan­cial manip­u­la­tions in post­war Tokyo. They knew this because one of the found­ing mem­bers of the Birch Soci­ety was Colonel Lau­rence Bunker, a humor­less fel­low who had suc­ceeded Gen­eral Bon­ner Fellers on MacArthur’s per­sonal staff in Tokyo. Bunker became MacArthur’s chief aide and spokesman in Tokyo from 1946–1951—the years of witch-hunting in Japan that made the McCarthy witch-hunts in Amer­ica look bland.” (Idem.)

35. “The Birch Soci­ety money men who arranged the loan for Cur­tis were Wash­ing­ton State sen­a­tor Floyd Pax­ton and his son Jerry, who ran Kwik Lok cor­po­ra­tion, mak­ers of the ubiq­ui­tous plas­tic clips used to close plas­tic bags in super­mar­kets. Another par­tic­i­pant, Cur­tis said, was Jerry Adams of Atlanta, head of the Great Amer­i­can Sil­ver Cor­po­ra­tion, a pre­cious met­als com­pany asso­ci­ated with the Hunt broth­ers. Cur­tis said he was informed by Con­gress­man McDon­ald and Robert Welch that the loan for Cur­tis to work with Mar­cos had been ‘cleared’ by them per­son­ally. They told Cur­tis he was to deal directly with multi-millionaire Samuel Jay Agnew, who sat on the national coun­cil of the Birch Soci­ety.” (Idem.)

36. In addi­tion to the Birch Soci­ety, it appears that other pri­vate right-wing inter­ests also recov­ered large amounts of Golden Lily loot from the Philip­pines. “Pri­vate” is a ques­tion­able term, how­ever, because the inter­ests described below are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with ele­ments of the National Secu­rity Estab­lish­ment. It is of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance that peo­ple asso­ci­ated with the Enter­prise were involved with this appar­ent recov­ery. (The Enter­prise was at the epi­cen­ter of Reagan/Bush covert oper­a­tions of the 1980’s, includ­ing the Iran-Contra and Iraq­gate affairs.) Many peo­ple from this milieu are in promi­nent posi­tions in the admin­is­tra­tion of the sec­ond George Bush. It is worth not­ing that the Golden Lily trea­sure may well have been a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the growth of pri­vate mil­i­tary firms and pri­vate intel­li­gence organizations—one of the major con­stel­la­tions in the con­tem­po­rary national secu­rity fir­ma­ment. “Once it was proved in U.S. courts that mas­sive gold ship­ments did come out of the Philip­pines dur­ing the twenty years Mar­cos was president—gold that did not orig­i­nate in the Cen­tral Bank, or in mines like Benguet—the remain­ing mys­tery is where did it go?” (Ibid.; p. 186.)

37. “To be sure, the gold was shipped covertly, usu­ally after re-smelting in Manila by Johnson-Mathey Chem­i­cals, using equip­ment Mar­cos stole from Robert Cur­tis. Before it left Manila, some was re-papered by Johnson-Mathey Bank, then made its way to buy­ers through­out the gold pools in New York, Zurich and Lon­don. Other black bul­lion was sold pri­vately to Saudi princes, and Mid­dle East­ern syn­di­cates, or to dis­creet groups of Euro­peans through Lux­em­bourg and Liecht­en­stein.” (Idem.)

38. “Doc­u­ments includ­ing way­bills show that some ship­ments went to Amer­ica aboard com­mer­cial ships and planes, while oth­ers went out on CIA air­craft to Hong Kong or to an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary base in Aus­tralia. So far as any­one can tell, the gold that went to Amer­ica did not end up in Fort Knox. If it did, the U.S. Gov­ern­ment is not admit­ting it. So where did it go? Who was shield­ing and help­ing Mar­cos, other than the CIA and Pen­ta­gon? Who else ben­e­fited from all this recov­ered plun­der? Was the lever­age of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment used to get some of this gold bul­lion into pri­vate hands?” (Idem.)

39. “The answer is that Mar­cos had con­nec­tions beyond the CIA, to a shad­owy net­work called The Enter­prise, a clus­ter of pri­vate intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tions (PIO’s) and pri­vate mil­i­tary firms (PMF’s). These were staffed by for­mer CIA and Pen­ta­gon offi­cers who saw them­selves as Pal­adins of the Cold War. Many PIO’s and PMF’s got their start in the 1970’s dur­ing shake­ups at the CIA. They mush­roomed in the 1980’s after Jimmy Carter stirred up the anthill, and strongly moti­vated men had to con­tinue their careers else­where.” (Idem.)

40. “At the end of 1972, when he replaced Richard Helms as CIA direc­tor, James Schlesinger made it clear that he intended to forcibly retire hun­dreds of agents who were dead wood, or part of a Dirty Tricks clique under Helms long engaged in oper­a­tions that vio­lated Amer­i­can laws, includ­ing assas­si­na­tions. When it then became known that the CIA was involved in the Water­gate break-in and other domes­tic break-ins, Schlesinger ordered an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and prepa­ra­tion of a com­plete list of all Agency projects that might embar­rass the gov­ern­ment. The result­ing 693-page report, called ‘the Fam­ily Jew­els’, led to leaks about assas­si­na­tion pro­grams like Mon­goose, death squads like Phoenix, and other wet-work hid­den by national secu­rity. Over a thou­sand CIA agents were sacked or obliged to take early retire­ment.” (Ibid.; pp. 186–187.)

41. “When Nixon resigned, Pres­i­dent Ford set up the Rock­e­feller Com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate CIA wrong­do­ing, but staffed it with hard­line con­ser­v­a­tives who would avoid reveal­ing things that would ‘blacken the name of the United States and every pres­i­dent since Tru­man.’” (Ibid.; p. 187.)

42. “Con­gres­sional hear­ings into Phoenix, the Lock­heed bribery scan­dal, and later Iran-Contra, resulted in addi­tional house­clean­ing at CIA and the Pen­ta­gon. Added to these purges were dis­putes between CIA offi­cials like Ray Cline and Pres­i­dent Nixon over rap­proche­ment with China, and between Jimmy Carter and top mil­i­tary offi­cers like major Gen­eral John Singlaub, and Air Force Gen­eral George Kee­gan. When Carter got rid of so many pro­fes­sional sol­diers and spooks, he does not appear to have given much thought to what they might do to keep busy in pri­vate life. No Roman emperor would have been so care­less in dis­band­ing a legion.” (Idem.)

43. “Many of these clever and aggres­sive men regrouped pri­vately, with fund­ing from hard-right orga­ni­za­tions like the Birch Soci­ety, Moonies, World Anti-Communist League, and wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive tycoons. Like Santy’s Umbrella orga­ni­za­tion, The Enter­prise grew into a pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial net­work dur­ing the late 1980’s. Although they were now pri­vate cit­i­zens, these men con­tin­ued to have close ties to serv­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers, to top men in the CIA and the armed ser­vices. This over­lap made it nearly impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish between offi­cial U.S. Gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions and those that had pri­vate objec­tives. This was espe­cially true because so many of these indi­vid­u­als had long expe­ri­ence in covert oper­a­tions, decep­tion, and the clan­des­tine use of gov­ern­ment resources and secret funds. They were accus­tomed to work­ing with CIA pro­pri­etaries that had every appear­ance of being legit­i­mate com­pa­nies in pri­vate indus­try but were actu­ally Tro­jan Horses for the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and, by exten­sion, for the armed forces. In fact, some of the PMF’s were lit­tle more than fronts set up so that gen­er­als, admi­rals, and for­mer spooks could con­tinue to draw salaries and pen­sions as if they had never left gov­ern­ment ser­vice. Many CIA agents spent years or even decades under var­i­ous cov­ers, so it was hard to estab­lish beyond any doubt whether they ever left the Agency, or merely went under­ground.” (Idem.)

44. The authors allege that William Casey may well have been a recip­i­ent of these monies. Casey was a major player in the post­war intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and a piv­otal fig­ure in the Rea­gan and first Bush admin­is­tra­tions, and was par­tic­u­larly close to the Bush fam­ily. “A per­fect exam­ple is William Casey. Casey was one of the orig­i­nal OSS crowd. After law school, he went to work for an account­ing firm but kept in touch with fel­low lawyer John ‘Pop’ How­ley, who worked for Wild Bill Donovan’s law firm, Dono­van Leisure New­ton & Irvine. When Dono­van became head of OSS, Casey and How­ley joined him. Casey was John Singlaub’s case offi­cer in the war, while Paul Hel­li­well was Singlaub’s direct supe­rior. Casey also was a close friend of Allen Dulles and John Fos­ter Dulles, worked with Ray Cline, and became involved with Lans­dale as Santa Romana’s tor­ture of Major Kojima was bear­ing fruit. This put Casey in a posi­tion to know a great deal about the Black Eagle Trust, and one source insists that Casey’s finan­cial skills made him one of the key play­ers, along with Paul Hel­li­well and Edwin Pauley, in imple­ment­ing the Black Eagle Trust under the guid­ance of Robert B. Ander­son and John J. McCloy. Fol­low­ing the war, Casey and his old friend How­ell founded their own Wall Street law firm. But what made Casey really wealthy was his involve­ment with other for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cers in set­ting up the media hold­ing com­pany Cap­i­tal Cities, in 1954. Accord­ing to many inves­ti­ga­tors, dur­ing this period the CIA poured mil­lions into set­ting up front com­pa­nies for covert oper­a­tions in broad­cast­ing and pub­lish­ing, and it is alleged that Casey fun­neled some of these funds into Cap­i­tal Cities to acquire fail­ing media com­pa­nies and turn them around. It is likely that Casey never left the Agency, but only moulted into one of its finan­cial but­ter­flies. It would not be the first time a senior CIA agent has had a dou­ble career on Wall Street, Allen Dulles being but one of many oth­ers. From 1971–1973, Casey ws Nixon’s appointee as chief of the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, where he worked closely with SEC attor­ney Stan­ley Sporkin (later appointed by Casey as CIA gen­eral coun­sel, and involved in the Schlei case.) Casey also served as Nixon’s Under-Secretary of State for Eco­nomic Affairs, and chair­man of the Export-Import Bank. In 1978, Casey founded a think tank called the Man­hat­tan Insti­tute that absorbed a num­ber of for­mer CIA offi­cers, and fun­neled money from con­ser­v­a­tive foun­da­tions to con­ser­v­a­tive authors. When Casey left Cap­i­tal Cities to head the Rea­gan pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and then to become Reagan’s direc­tor of the CIA, he is said to have been its biggest sin­gle stock­holder with $7.5-million in Cap­i­tal Cities stock. He was still its biggest stock­holder, and CIA direc­tor, in 1985 when Cap­i­tal Cities bought ABC.” (Ibid.; pp. 187–188.)

45. “A man who was involved in covert finan­cial oper­a­tions through­out his entire career, Casey had links to all the key play­ers in this book; his DNA is all over the place, from pre-Santy to post-Marcos. He was one of the men who dreamed up the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the CIA, and as CIA direc­tor he showed Pres­i­dent Rea­gan how to imple­ment it.” (Ibid.; p. 188.)

46. “One of Reagan’s first acts was to sign Exec­u­tive Order 12333, which autho­rized the CIA and other gov­ern­ment agen­cies to enter into con­tracts with PMF’s, ‘and need not reveal the spon­sor­ship of such con­tracts or arrange­ments for autho­rized intel­li­gence pur­poses.’ This put Casey back in har­ness with Cline, Singlaub, Shack­ley, Lans­dale and many oth­ers purged ear­lier, while obscur­ing their activ­i­ties keep­ing them—theoretically at least—in the pri­vate domain. Simul­ta­ne­ously, Casey per­son­ally took over han­dling Pres­i­dent Mar­cos, press­ing him to pro­vide black gold for covert pur­poses, and finally mas­ter­minded the down­fall and removal of Mar­cos, and his bul­lion.” (Idem.)

47. Con­clud­ing the broad­cast, we look at indi­ca­tions that Golden Lily gold may well have been recov­ered in the early months of George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion. Some of this gold allegedly was used to shore up the U.S. gold reserves—in and of itself a com­mend­able use for this Axis loot. “In March 2001, only weeks into the new Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, two U.S. Navy ship arrived in the Philip­pines car­ry­ing teams of SEAL com­man­dos. Accord­ing to a source at the U.S. Embassy, they were sent to the Philip­pines to recover gold as part of a plan to enlarge America’s reserves. This gold, the embassy source said, would come from two places:–New exca­va­tions of Yamashita Gold vaults, and the pur­chase (at a deep dis­count) of Japan­ese loot already recov­ered and held in pri­vate vaults by wealthy Fil­ip­pinos. One of the two ships sailed on to Min­danao to take on a load of bul­lion the embassy source said was owned by the fam­ily of the new pres­i­dent, Glo­ria Maca­pa­gal Arroyo. Pres­i­dent Bush, the source said, was ‘being aggres­sive.’” (Ibid.; p. 235.)

48. Unfor­tu­nately, some of the gold may have been appro­pri­ated by agents oper­at­ing on behalf of George W. Bush. The broad­cast con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­ity that some of the gold was included in George W. Bush’s blind trust. That trust is man­aged for him by William Stamps Farish—a close asso­ciate of the Bush fam­ily and the descen­dant of one of the Stan­dard Oil mag­nates who arranged some of that company’s agree­ments with I.G. Far­ben. (For more about this, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11—avail­able from Spit­fire. FTR#370 exam­ines the inclu­sion in W’s blind trust of funds derived from the Bush family’s involve­ment with the Nazis.) “The buzz among gold hunters in Luzon was that asso­ciates of Pres­i­dent Bush and his fam­ily were pri­vately in the mar­ket to buy some of the bul­lion still being recov­ered from Golden Lily sites. One of the names were being dropped by gold­bugs in Manila was that of East Texas oil bil­lion­aire William Stamps Far­ish, an inti­mate friend and fish­ing com­pan­ion of the Bush fam­ily. Will Far­ish, who raises horses in Ken­tucky and is board chair­man of Churchill downs where the Ken­tucky Derby is staged, had just been nom­i­nated by Pres­i­dent Bush to be America’s new ambas­sador to the Court of St. James’s, where he was a per­sonal friend of Queen Eliz­a­beth. The buzz had spe­cial res­o­nance because Will Far­ish is said to be the man­ager of Pres­i­dent Bush’s blind trust.” (Idem.)