Recorded March 21, 2004
Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

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. (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. “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. “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. ” . . . 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. “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. (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.)