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Golden Lily Loot, Nazis, White Supremacists and Islamists

Com­ment: For years, we’ve accessed the mag­nif­i­cent work of Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave, whose land­mark text Gold War­riors is the defin­i­tive work on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of recov­ered World War II gold, Japan­ese Gold­en Lily trea­sure in par­tic­u­lar.

The focal point of decades of high-lev­el polit­i­cal intrigue on the part of intel­li­gence ser­vices, finan­cial insti­tu­tions and allied, pow­er­ful crim­i­nal and right-wing syn­di­cates, this World War II loot fig­ures promi­nent­ly in a tan­gled web that fur­ther con­nects the dots link­ing the post­war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al with the milieu of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its relat­ed ter­ror­ist off­shoots.

Michael Meir­ing (var­i­ous­ly described as a CIA oper­a­tive or a func­tionary on behalf of the post-Aparta­heid South African regime) under­took to locate some of Yamashita’s trea­sure in the Philip­pines. Meir­ing is one of a num­ber of Amer­i­can fas­cist and right-wing fig­ures to  have cropped up in the Philip­pines, look­ing for Gold­en Lily trea­sure.

Inter­est­ing­ly, some of these oper­a­tions appear to involve col­lab­o­ra­tion between Islamist  ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Al Qaeda/bin Laden.

“Pro­file: Michael Meir­ing”; historycommons.org/.

Excerpt: In 2002, a Philip­pine news­pa­per arti­cle will claim that “Philip­pine police have long been aware of oper­a­tional ties between local Islam­ic rad­i­cals and right-wing for­eign­ers.” Appar­ent­ly these ties become first notice­able in the ear­ly 1990s. The arti­cle is main­ly about a 1996 record­ed tes­ti­mo­ni­al by Edwin Ange­les, a Philip­pine under­cov­er agent who had posed as a leader of the Philip­pine mil­i­tant group Abu Sayyaf until 1995 (see 1991-Ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 1995). In his tes­ti­mo­ny, he claimed to have attend­ed meet­ings between Mus­lim mil­i­tants and Okla­homa City bomber Ter­ry Nichols, plus anoth­er right-wing Amer­i­can named John Lep­ney (see Late 1992-Ear­ly 1993 and Late 1994). The arti­cle notes that Philip­pine offi­cials believe such ties were not lim­it­ed to these cas­es. “Why the strange alliance exists remains a puz­zle to police and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agents. . . .

. . . Lep­ney had been seen in the rebel­lious areas of the south­ern Philip­pines since 1990 and occa­sion­al­ly boast­ed of his rebel ties. [Mani­la Times, 4/26/2002] Addi­tion­al­ly, Michael Meir­ing, a US cit­i­zen who may have been a CIA oper­a­tive with ties to Mus­lim mil­i­tant lead­ers (see May 16, 2002) and Decem­ber 2, 2004), peri­od­i­cal­ly appeared in the same region begin­ning in 1992 (see 1992–1993). He some­times stayed in Davao City, the same city where Lep­ney was based. Meir­ing claims to be a trea­sure hunter, but mil­i­tary offi­cials note that there are “ter­ror­ists and intel­li­gence oper­a­tives of all stripes about among trea­sure hunters’ cir­cles.” Meir­ing also had ties to at least one neo-Nazi fig­ure in the US. . . .

. . . Philip­pine offi­cials will lat­er iden­ti­fy a num­ber of oth­er sus­pi­cious right-wing West­ern­ers liv­ing in the rebel­lious south­ern region of the coun­try in the ear­ly 1990s. For instance, there is US cit­i­zen Nina North, whom acquain­tances claim has CIA con­nec­tions. From 1990 to 1992, she was report­ed­ly work­ing on busi­ness deals with bin Laden and oth­er Mid­dle East fig­ures involv­ing the trans­fer of gold bul­lion. . . .

Com­ment: Meir­ing is described as being of South African extraction–his exact rela­tion­ship with the apartheid regime being some­what ambigu­ous. Alleged­ly a refugee from the apartheid regime, Meir­ing was sup­pos­ed­ly work­ing for the Man­dela regime in his attempts to recov­er Gold­en Lily trea­sure.

Meir­ing is also described as hav­ing been a physi­cian for the South African regime, itself an off­shoot of the Third Reich. One might well won­der if Meir­ing was in any way con­nect­ed to Project Coast, the apartheid regime’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit, itself aid­ed by Amer­i­can right-wing and fas­cist ele­ments. Some of those ele­ments held forth in the Neva­da area, with evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning in the direc­tion of the anthrax attacks that fol­lowed 9/11.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that Meir­ing may well have been oth­er­wise than “as adver­tised” is sug­gest­ed by the fact that, in addi­tion to the alleged U.S. intel­li­gence con­nec­tions, Meir­ing appears to have been oper­at­ing on behalf of a milieu of Amer­i­can and Euro­pean right-wing and fas­cist ele­ments.

“Trea­sure Hunter Had White Suprema­cists for Asso­ciates” by Dori­an Zumel Sicat; The Manil­la Times; 5/30/2002.

Excerpt: . . . Meir­ing was for­mer­ly a cit­i­zen of South Africa, of British descent. He fled to the Unit­ed States, sources said, towards the end of South Africa’s apartheid regime.

While the same sources said Meir­ing was a doc­tor for the South African police, they also stressed his ties to the African Nation­al Con­gress of Nel­son Man­dela, and hint­ed that he fled because of pur­suit by state secu­ri­ty offi­cials.

Amer­i­can David Hawthorn, a close friend of Meir­ing, claimed the blast vic­tim had con­fessed pass­ing to Mandela’s gov­ern­ment the pro­ceeds of a box of old US fed­er­al notes. That box was one of 12, con­tain­ing an esti­mat­ed $500-mil­lion worth of notes.

Hawthorn said Meir­ing showed him a let­ter from the South African gov­ern­ment and a US Trea­sury per­mit to back his claim. Hawthorn also saw a “pack­ing list” that had a cov­er sheet print­ed with the words “US Army,” the Army seal, some num­bers and a group of upper case let­ters. Meir­ing, he said, claimed the list rep­re­sent­ed the ser­i­al num­bers of the miss­ing notes, dat­ing back to 1937. . . .

. . . The group, they told The Times, was con­nect­ed to a long-time Meir­ing financier, James Rowe of Neva­da, who joined the vic­tim dur­ing a 1993 vis­it.

Rowe is exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of Wild Rose Pro­duc­tions, an inde­pen­dent film and video doc­u­men­tary com­pa­ny based in New Green Val­ley, Neva­da, near Las Vegas. One of the projects of Wild Rose was to do a doc­u­men­tary on Yamashi­ta trea­sure alleged­ly hid­den and recov­ered by high­land tribes in parts of Min­danao.

Amer­i­can intel­li­gence ana­lyst Dan Craw­ford said Rowe had links to a right-winged, white suprema­cist and tax revolt group in Neva­da that is linked with the neo-Nazi par­ty of the Unit­ed States and the “Fifth Reich” in Ger­many. . . .

Com­ment: More on the nomen­cla­ture of this milieu:

“Spies, Ter­ror­ists Attract­ed to Trea­sure Hunters’ Cir­cles” by Dori­an Zumel-Sicat; The Manil­la Times; 5/31/2002.

Excerpt: . . . There are oth­er names that come up in the trea­sure hunter game. Intel­li­gence offi­cers allowed The Mani­la Times to pub­lish only the names of those involved dur­ing the 1990s, say­ing “cur­rent” names of the list were being mon­i­tored for links to a strange cir­cle of white suprema­cists and Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists:

Bob Gould (in the Philip­pines in March of 1990 and June of 1991) came from Hay­ward, Cal­i­for­nia. His con­nec­tion was a Fred­er­ick Oba­do, Fil­ipino-Amer­i­can, who was linked to a group of Kodar Kiram, son of the late Sul­tan Jumalul Kiram and younger broth­er of Rodin­od Kiram. Gould and oth­ers in Davao City made plans in 1990 and 1991 to invade Sab­bah and claim it for the Sul­tanate of Sab­bah-Sulu. Gould has con­nec­tions with a Lib­er­tar­i­an group in Cal­i­for­nia and is the sub­ject of an Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion on tax eva­sion.

Nina North. A close friend of Gould. Her acquain­tances claim she has con­nec­tions to the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, but those con­nec­tions are too vague. In 1990, 1991, and 1992, she main­tained con­tact with Oba­do and was deal­ing with high offi­cials in the Mid-East, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Khadaffy and Bin Laden, with regard to trans­fer of gold bul­lion from the Philip­pines, through the “back door.” North is from Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia.

Andy Gould (no rela­tion to Bob), an Aus­tralian and John Lawrence, a Brit, both hang­ers-on in Ermi­ta (back in the ear­ly  ’90s). They also had deal­ings with Oba­do, Bob Gould, and Swi­hart with regard to gold bul­lion and the Yamashita trea­sure.

“Tinoy” Sim­ba­hon of Mag­pet, North Cota­ba­to. A trea­sure guide. His wife had met with Oba­do and Gould on sev­er­al occa­sions in the Mani­la Pen back in 1990. He had met with Oba­do and a cer­tain De Lara, in late 1991 in Mag­pet to make a deal for the pur­chase of gold bul­lion. Sim­ba­hon had admit­ted to Gould that he was secret­ly work­ing for Swi­hart to help Mus­lim inde­pen­dence in Min­danao.

Fred Eder, Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii. He is a tai­lor. But he has a cor­po­ra­tion reg­is­tered under the name of Rose Min­ing and Explo­ration Com­pa­ny, with head­quar­ters some­where in Gen­er­al San­tos City. Sim­ba­hon is a part­ner. This is the group that enticed Oba­do and Gould to look for trea­sure. Eder is also some­how con­nect­ed with a Fil-Am group that once sup­port­ed the defunct Move­ment for Inde­pen­dent Min­danao (MIM). On radio sta­tion KNDY, Hon­olu­lu, as late as 1999, Eder was heard advo­cat­ing inde­pen­dence for Mus­lim Min­danao. . . .

Discussion

2 comments for “Golden Lily Loot, Nazis, White Supremacists and Islamists”

  1. This top­ic of gold theft is a real spy sto­ry. Remem­ber the James Bond movie Goldfin­ger? It is cer­tain­ly one of the major aspects of WWII that was over­looked, with­out a doubt volon­tar­i­ly, by his­to­ri­ans and the media. Where all that gold, stolen or tak­en from the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries dur­ing WWII went? Off­shore banks, shell coun­tries like Switzer­land, Lux­em­burg, Liecht­en­stein, par­adise tax havens like Turks and Caicos, Bahamas and the like? One rumor on the inter­net is that the gold at Fort Knox was stolen. I don’t have a clue but it is inter­est­ing to see how pre­cious this met­al becomes in an era where paper mon­ey tends to lose val­ue day by day. Almost all coun­tries are bank­rupt. They owe almost more mon­ey than their Gross Nation­al Prod­uct some­times. Some inter­ests on the inter­na­tion­al scene might be tempt­ed to go after that gold to save local cur­ren­cies and their sit­u­a­tion.

    Posted by Claude | November 28, 2010, 10:45 am
  2. Russ Bak­er, in his book on the Bush­es (Fam­i­ly of Secrets) has some inter­est­ing stuff tying gold and the Philip­ines to Bush Jr’s involve­ment with Harken ener­gy.

    Posted by popolvuh | November 29, 2010, 6:22 pm

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