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FTR #1106 Reflections on the Passing of Peggy and Sterling Seagrave

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: This broad­cast com­mem­o­rates the lives and pass­ing of Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave, inves­ti­ga­tors, jour­nal­ists, authors and heroes.

A periph­er­al inter­net search con­duct­ed while re-read­ing Gold War­riors yield­ed the sad news that both Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave had passed. Peg­gy passed away in 2016 and Ster­ling in the spring of 2017.

Authors of a num­ber of ground-break­ing and over­lap­ping historical/political expos­es, they cul­mi­nat­ed their remark­able careers with Gold War­riors, which Mr. Emory feels is as impor­tant a book as has ever been writ­ten and is a MUST read for any­one gen­uine­ly con­cerned with the state of world affairs, past, present and future.

More admirable than even their con­sum­mate inves­tiga­tive and lit­er­ary skills is the fact that they con­tin­ued their research and report­ing in the face of seri­ous death threats and attempts, as well as lethal con­se­quences vis­it­ed on some of the par­tic­i­pants in the “Black Gold” trans­ac­tions and, appar­ent­ly, on some of those inves­ti­gat­ing the machi­na­tions of the nations, com­mer­cial insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als involved with the oper­a­tions.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert oper­a­tions but under­wrote much of the post-war glob­al econ­o­my.)

In FTR #‘s 446 and 509, we high­light­ed and reviewed the death threats and hands-on inter­fer­ence expe­ri­enced by the Sea­graves in response to their inves­ti­ga­tions. In 509, we also not­ed the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of the hero­ic Iris Chang, who aid­ed the Sea­graves in their Gold War­riors project. Hav­ing authored a book on the Rape of Nanking and work­ing on anoth­er about the Bataan Death March, Ms. Chang had crossed the very pow­er struc­ture delin­eat­ed at length, depth and detail in the Sea­graves vol­ume.

In our last vis­it with the Sea­graves, a 2009 inter­view that was the focus of FTR #689Ster­ling expressed anx­i­ety about the prox­im­i­ty of their res­i­dence in South­ern France to the Span­ish bor­der and the for­mi­da­ble pres­ence of Opus Dei in Fran­co’s for­mer domain.

The Vat­i­can’s rela­tion­ship to fas­cism, includ­ing Opus Dei, is high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams AFA #17.

The remark­able Sev­eri­no San­ta Romana, prime mover in the Black Eagle Trust oper­a­tions in the Philip­pines and the gold recov­er­ies in those islands was, in addi­tion to his work for U.S. intel­li­gence, an oper­a­tive of the pow­er­ful Vat­i­can order Opus Dei. It appears that Opus Dei was San­ta Romana’s pri­ma­ry affil­i­a­tion and his U.S. intel­li­gence con­nec­tions were deriv­a­tive.

With strong con­nec­tions in Spain, dat­ing to the Fran­co fas­cist regime (which main­tains pow­er­ful pres­ence in con­tem­po­rary Spain), Opus Dei is a major fac­tor in the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal scene. Ster­ling opined in FTR #689 that his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to the Span­ish bor­der might expose them to vio­lence.

His fear turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors.

After detail­ing the attempt on his life, we set forth San­ta Romana’s rela­tion­ship with Opus Dei. San­ta Romana’s Opus Dei oper­a­tions were essen­tial for the fis­cal rein­force­ment of the Vat­i­can’s finan­cial insti­tu­tions, which ben­e­fit­ted from the Gold­en Lily-derived trea­sure from the Philip­pines.

1. The pro­gram begins by review­ing the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er books.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; pp. X‑XI.

. . . . 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. . . .”

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 www.bowstring.net [no longer online–D.E.] 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. . . .

2. Next, we excerpt FTR #689. The remark­able Sev­eri­no San­ta Romana, prime mover in the Black Eagle Trust oper­a­tions in the Philip­pines and the gold recov­er­ies in those islands was, in addi­tion to his work for U.S. intel­li­gence, an oper­a­tive of the pow­er­ful Vat­i­can order Opus Dei. It appears that Opus Dei was San­ta Romana’s pri­ma­ry affil­i­a­tion and his U.S. intel­li­gence con­nec­tions were deriv­a­tive.

With strong con­nec­tions in Spain, dat­ing to the Fran­co fas­cist regime (which main­tains pow­er­ful pres­ence in con­tem­po­rary Spain), Opus Dei is a major fac­tor in the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal scene. Ster­ling opined in FTR #689 that his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to the Span­ish bor­der might expose them to vio­lence.

3. Ster­ling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to the  turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors.

“Ster­ling Sea­grave, 1937–2017;” versobooks.com; 7/31/2017.

. . . . Sea­grave will be remem­bered warm­ly by Ver­so staff for his live­ly cor­re­spon­dence. In a 2011 email, he described an attempt on his life that fol­lowed the Span­ish pub­li­ca­tion of Gold War­riors: 

A hired thug tried to mur­der me on the ser­pen­tine road lead­ing up to our iso­lat­ed house on the ridge over­look­ing Banyuls-sur-Mer, and near­ly suc­ceed­ed.  (We’ve had sev­er­al seri­ous death threats because of our books.) The road was very nar­row in places, with tar­mac bare­ly the width of my tires. At 10 pm Christ­mas night, in 2011, after vis­it­ing Peg­gy at a clin­ic in Per­pig­nan, as I turned the final hair­pin, I clear­ly saw a guy sit­ting on a cement block path lead­ing up to a shed for the uphill vine­yard. He was obvi­ous­ly wait­ing for me because we were the only peo­ple liv­ing up there on that moun­tain shoul­der.  He jumped up, raised a long pole, and unfurled a black fab­ric that total­ly blocked the nar­row­est turn ahead of me. I tried to swerve to avoid him (not know­ing whether he also had a gun), and my right front dri­ve wheel went off the tar­mac and lost trac­tion in the rub­ble.

The car teetered and then plunged down through a steep vine­yard on my right side, rolling and bounc­ing front and rear, 100 meters into a ravine where it final­ly came to rest against a tree. Thanks to my seat­belt and air bag, I sur­vived. I don’t know how many con­cus­sions I got on the way down, but I man­aged to squeeze out the driver’s door and fell onto the rub­ble. I got up on my left hand and knees, but my right shoul­der caved in. (Turned out lat­er that I had frac­tured my right shoul­der, and all the lig­a­ments there had torn loose.) I passed out and remained uncon­scious for 14 hours.  After 12 hours, a vigneron dri­ving up the next morn­ing saw my wrecked car and body.

 He called the Gen­darmerie on his portable, and I was hoist­ed out uncon­scious by a chop­per and flown to an old Vic­to­ri­an-era hos­pi­tal in Per­pig­nan where they did noth­ing but keep me doped on mor­phine for two weeks — no X‑rays or seri­ous med­ical care.  Final­ly, friends in Banyuls got me (and Peg­gy) trans­ferred to a clin­ic on the beach there, where Peg­gy and I shared a room while we both recov­ered. I got my right shoul­der lig­a­ments fixed by an excel­lent sur­geon in Per­pig­nan.  (Peg­gy did not know it then but she had an ear­ly stage of can­cer.) I still have a hair­line frac­ture in my right shoul­der.

I attribute the event to stay­ing too long in one place, so the spooks even­tu­al­ly tracked me down.  We had been liv­ing for years on a sail­boat, mov­ing from Hol­land to Britain to Por­tu­gal to Spain and final­ly to France, where we found — in Cat­alo­nia — an ide­al vil­lage at the Mediter­ranean end of the Pyre­nees. In ret­ro­spect, I’m sor­ry I agreed to move ashore for Peggy’s sake, and sold the beau­ti­ful 43-foot boat I had  built from a bare hull. It was very com­fort­able, but Peg­gy want­ed a house. We nev­er did find the right house in Banyuls — so we spent 18 years restor­ing a 13th cen­tu­ry Tem­plar ruin on the shoul­der of the moun­tain.  Made me an easy tar­get. Def­i­nite­ly a bad deci­sion. I think it was the Span­ish edi­tion of Gold War­riors that made me the easy tar­get. 

4a. Next, we present the Sea­graves cov­er­age of San­ta Romana’s Opus Dei mem­ber­ship:

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; pp. 245–246.

. . . . Author­i­ta­ti­ave souces in Spain with strong ties to the Philip­pines have now con­firmed that San­ty was actu­al­ly a secret agent of the Vat­i­can. San­ty did have ties to the wartime U.S. under­ground in the Philip­pines, over­seen for Gen­er­al MacArthur by Gen­er­al Whit­ney, Gen­er­al Willough­by, and Colonel McMick­ing. After the war, San­ty did work in har­ness with Lans­dale and the CIA. But his real loy­al­ty was to the Vat­i­can. Sources close to the Mani­la arch­dio­cese always insist­ed that San­ty was “work­ing for the Vat­i­can,” and was not a CIA agent.

Our Span­ish sources have now told us that San­ty was “train­ing for the Church” before the war. Giv­en that he had been mar­ried twice already, with chil­dren from both mar­riages, in a coun­try where divorce was ille­gal, he was a bigamist. So he was clear­ly not train­ing for the priest­hood. Instead, long before the Japan­ese inva­sion, San­ty became a lay mem­ber of one of the Vatican’s mil­i­tant orders. There are a num­ber of these, the most promi­nent being the Jesuits, the Domini­cans, and Opus Dei. The sources refuse to be explic­it about which order San­ty direct­ly worked for, argu­ing that ulti­mate­ly he was work­ing for the bish­ops and car­di­nals in charge of the Vatican’s finan­cial office. But we have estab­lished that he was with Opus Dei. . . .

4b. San­ta Romana’s Opus Dei oper­a­tions were essen­tial for the fis­cal rein­force­ment of the Vat­i­can’s finan­cial insti­tu­tions, which ben­e­fit­ted from the Gold­en Lily-derived trea­sure from the Philip­pines.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 252.

. . . . Because of the key role played by San­ty [Sev­eri­no San­ta Romana], as the gold was recov­ered and moved to banks through­out the world, a major por­tion went to the Vat­i­can bank and oth­er banks tied to the Vat­i­can, as we describe in Chap­ters 4 and 8.

It is now clear that this is why San­ty was treat­ed with such respect by bankers who came to see him at his Mani­la Hilton suite, although he remained a secre­tive fig­ure and was nev­er the sub­ject of a mag­a­zine pro­file in the Philip­pines or any­where else. It was not his con­nec­tion to the CIA that gave him invis­i­bil­i­ty, but his posi­tion as an agent of the Vat­i­can secret ser­vices, fil­ing the cof­fers of the Vat­i­can bank. Dia­grams of the “Umbrel­la” orga­ni­za­tion that moved much of the gold, which we repro­duce on our CDs, show that secu­ri­ty was pro­vid­ed both by the CIA and by the Ital­ian Mafia. Col­lab­o­ra­tion in Europe between the Mafia and the OSS began on the eve of the war, and con­tin­ued through­out. OSS agents were smug­gled into Italy through Sici­ly. In return, at the end of the war, top Mafia fig­ures were released from Amer­i­can pris­ons and allowed to return to Italy, where they helped the CIA and the Vat­i­can pro­mote can­di­dates of the Chris­t­ian Democ­rats, to pre­vent the Com­mu­nist Par­ty from gain­ing con­trol of Italy’s gov­ern­ment.

Santy’s stature in the Vat­i­can finan­cial hier­ar­chy must have been assured by his role in restor­ing sol­ven­cy to banks linked to the Vat­i­can. . . .

5a. In a tran­si­tion­al ele­ment to our next pro­gram, we note that the late author Iris Chang had an endorse­ment of the Sea­graves’ work on the cov­er of Gold War­riors“The Sea­graves have uncov­ered one of the biggest secrets of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”

5b. In the acknowl­edge­ments sec­tion of Gold War­riors, the authors thank Iris Chang for her sup­port:

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 273.

. . . . We are espe­cial­ly indebt­ed to Iris Chang, Ignatius Ding, and Jesse Hwa, for their unstint­ing sup­port and encour­age­ment through­out. . . .

 

Discussion

7 comments for “FTR #1106 Reflections on the Passing of Peggy and Sterling Seagrave”

  1. May every­thing that is good and pure in this uni­verse show­er bless­ings upon you and yours, Mr. Emory. The Sea­graves and Ms. Iris Chang were all tar­gets of fas­cist ele­ments with­in the Unit­ed States intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and its allies on an inter­na­tion­al plat­form.

    Thank you, Mr. Emory for your con­tin­ued efforts.

    I wished you had my good friend Mr. H.P. “Hank” Albarel­li Jr. on your pro­gram just once before he passed away last June. In my hum­ble opin­ion, he damn near solved who was behind the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy back in 2009 with his Earth-shat­ter­ing book “A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take: The Mur­der of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Exper­i­ments”.

    The fol­low­ing is a quote from his book and can be found on pages 339–340, QUOTE: “…Accord­ing to Cuba’s intel­li­gence ser­vice, Spirit­to had per­formed “spe­cial ser­vices” for the Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics in the 1950s in New York City and for the CIA in Mex­i­co and South Amer­i­ca. Spirit­to had occa­sion­al­ly come into con­tact with Boris Pash, who, accord­ing to Church Com­mit­tee reports, also pre­formed “spe­cial func­tions” for the CIA in Latin Amer­i­ca.

    William Mor­gan report­ed­ly “flew off the han­dle” when Spirit­to informed him that he was being replaced as the Agency’s lead­ing choice to kill Cas­tro. After Spirit­to threat­ened to expose some of Morgan’s finan­cial deal­ings to the Agency, Mor­gan calmed down and agreed to assist Spirit­to. By way of assis­tance, Mor­gan intro­duced Spirit­to to Frank Stur­gis and Rex Sander­lin, to more Amer­i­can sol­diers-of-for­tune who had soured on Cas­tro and want­ed him removed from pow­er. (Stur­gis would lat­er be arrest­ed in the infa­mous Water­gate break-in, and Sander­lin would die mys­te­ri­ous­ly in Cuba in the ear­ly 1960s.)

    Despite J.C. King’s high lev­el of con­fi­dence in Spirit­to, the For­mer FBN spe­cial employ­ee made grave mis­takes in attempt­ing to car­ry out the assas­si­na­tion. Ignor­ing the train­ing he had received from Jean-Pierre Lafitte, Spirit­to failed to keep a low pro­file on the island and, instead, engaged in risky, high vis­i­bil­i­ty escapades, at one point acci­den­tal­ly killing a rebel sol­dier in a bar­room brawl. A sad­ly dis­ap­point­ed King relieved Spirit­to of his duties.

    Bis­sell lat­er insist­ed that it had not been his idea to use the Mafia, and that it had come from J.C. King. King, not sur­pris­ing­ly, denied that the idea was his and told sev­er­al Agency offi­cials that the Mafia idea had orig­i­nat­ed in a con­ver­sa­tion among Office of Secu­ri­ty employ­ee James O’Connell and nar­cotics agents George Hunter White and Charles Sir­a­gusa…”

    Does any­one else need to be named? Here you have an ad-hoc com­mit­tee, with no name, act­ing across the CIA, FBN and Unit­ed States Army, using right-wing sol­diers of for­tune, Mafia hit­men and nar­cotics traf­fick­ers, act­ing with com­plete impuni­ty and answer­ing to no one.

    Posted by Robert Ward Montenegro | January 10, 2020, 6:23 pm
  2. Con­tin­u­ing with Mr. H.P. “Hank” Albarel­li Jr.’s book “A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take: The Mur­der of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Exper­i­ments”.

    The fol­low­ing is a quote from his book and can be found on page 340, QUOTE:

    “…At any rate, Sheffield Edwards quick­ly con­tact­ed Robert Maheu, a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor and for­mer FBI agent who had worked with secu­ri­ty offi­cer James McCord when he was also an FBI agent. Edwards asked Maheu if he had any Mafia con­tacts in Cuba. Maheu, who had per­formed ‘sen­si­tive’ con­tract work for the CIA for years, had excel­lent con­tacts among the under­world, not the least of which was dap­per mob­ster John­ny Rossel­li, then liv­ing in Los Ange­les, where Maheu had an office. Edwards and Maheu agreed that Rossel­li would be ide­al for the Cas­tro assas­si­na­tion job and that Maheu should meet with him as soon as pos­si­ble. Maheu said that he would con­tact Rossel­li, but that he was con­cerned about being involved in a job whose objec­tive was to kill Cas­tro. Accord­ing to the CIA’s report, ‘Maheu was autho­rized to tell Rosel­li that his “client” [whom he was instruct­ed not to iden­ti­fy] were will­ing to pay $150,000 for Cas­tro’s removal.’
    “OS chief Edwards named secu­ri­ty offi­cer James ‘Big Jim’ O’Con­nell as his lead per­son in over­see­ing the oper­a­tion, and assigned him to keep an eye on Maheu. O’Con­nell, a for­mer FBI spe­cial agent, was then Chief, Oper­a­tional Sup­port Divi­sion for the CIA’s Office of Secu­ri­ty under Edwards. Like Maheu, O’Con­nell had worked in New York for the Bureau and is report­ed to have been close­ly involved in the Agen­cy’s cov­er-up of Frank Olson’s death.
    “O’Con­nell and Maheu met Rossel­li in New York City on Sep­tem­ber 14, 1960 and Maheu made his pitch to Rossel­li. Rossel­li, who had been around the block numer­ous times, so to speak, was nonethe­less reluc­tant to become involved in the assas­si­na­tion of Cas­tro…”

    In any case, here we have the elite of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency’s Oper­a­tional Sup­port Divi­sion, Office of Secu­ri­ty and the senior-most com­man­ders of the Direc­torate of Plans over­see­ing an assas­si­na­tion of a nation­al leader.

    Con­tin­u­ing with Mr. H.P. “Hank” Albarel­li Jr.’s book “A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take: The Mur­der of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Exper­i­ments”, page 341, QUOTE:

    “Edwards mean­while informed Bis­sell that he had made con­tact with a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, Maheu, who in turn had con­tacts with mob­sters in Cuba that might offer assis­tance in get­ting close to Cas­tro.
    “Days lat­er, Bis­sell and Edwards report­ed up the chain of com­mand to DCI Allen Dulles and DDCI Charles Cabell on the plan to assas­si­nate Cas­tro. The CIA’s report reads: ‘Edwards recalls that Mr. Dulles mere­ly nod­ded, pre­sum­ably in under­stand­ing and approval. Cer­tain­ly there was no oppo­si­tion.’
    “O’Con­nell and Maheu met with Rossel­li again on Sep­tem­ber 25 in Mia­mi at the Fontainebleau Hotel, where, with­out O’Con­nell present, he intro­duced Maheu to ‘Sam Gold.’ Gold told Maheu that he had a man, whom he iden­ti­fied as only as ‘Joe,’ who ‘could serve as a couri­er to Cuba and make arrange­ments there.’ O’Con­nell observed Gold from afar, but he soon learned that ‘Gold’ was [Sam] Gian­cana and that ‘Joe the Couri­er’ was Flori­da Mafia chief San­to Traf­fi­cante, Jr., who owned a num­ber of thriv­ing gam­bling oper­a­tions in Cuba. Cas­tro had not yet per­ma­nent­ly closed the Amer­i­can-held casi­nos and hotels in Cuba, and, accord­ing to the CIA report, Traf­fi­cante ‘was mak­ing reg­u­lar trips between Mia­mi and Havana’ on Mafia busi­ness.”

    So cer­tain­ly, Nazi war crim­i­nal Allen Welsh Dulles was nod­ding in approval (an action that could nev­er be com­mit­ted to paper) along with his Deputy Direc­tor, Air Force Gen­er­al Charles Pearre Cabell. Of course, when one reads fur­ther into Mr. Albarelli’s book, two of the most dev­as­tat­ing pieces of infor­ma­tion about this whole cast of trea­so­nous mad­men can be found on pages 428 and 663 respec­tive­ly, QUOTES:

    “…It is worth not­ing that Lafitte turned up in yet anoth­er tan­gle of major, his­toric pro­por­tions dur­ing the 1960s. Around the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, Lafitte worked for the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny and then as a chef for the World Trade Mart, both in New Orleans. William B. Reily, an avid anti-Com­mu­nist, owned the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny and was close­ly con­nect­ed to McCarthyite and rabid anti-Com­mu­nist Edward Scan­nell But­ler, who were both close to CIA assis­tant direc­tor Charles Cabell, CIA SRS chief Paul Gaynor, and Agency ARTICHOKE offi­cial Morse Allen. Read­ers may recall that alleged JFK assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald also worked as a main­te­nance man for the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny in the sum­mer of 1963…” (IBID, pg. 428)

    “…Lafitte and Allan Hugh­es col­lab­o­rat­ed on anoth­er occa­sion in a very bizarre and reveal­ing episode hav­ing to do with accused JFK assas­si­na­tion co-con­spir­a­tor Clay Shaw... Hugh­es, Lafitte and inves­tiga­tive writer James Phe­lan –who some main­tain was in league with both Maheu and the CIA –lit­er­al­ly crawled into New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s office to pur­loin doc­u­ments hav­ing to do with Clay Shaw. Lafitte would lat­er tell George Hunter White that the Gar­ri­son office break-in was ‘maybe one of the only jobs I ever did that made me wor­ry any at all…’ ”
    (IBID, pg. 663)

    So the man who trained the first wave of assas­sins meant to mur­der Prime Min­is­ter Fidel Cas­tro, Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics bag­man and QJ/WIN asset, Jean-Pierre Lafitte, is employed at the Reily Cof­fee Com­pa­ny of William B. Reily and the World Trade Mart AT THE SAME TIME that Lee Har­vey Oswald is oper­at­ing at these loca­tions! And to top it off, CIA com­man­do Jean-Pierre Lafitte admit­ted to lead­ing one of the break-ins of Jim Garrison’s office to retain and destroy doc­u­ments that would incrim­i­nate OSS Maj. Clay LaV­erne Shaw in the plan­ning of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s mur­der!

    I should note, that FBN agent George Hunter White trained most of the key oper­a­tives that have been named as either cov­er­ing up, or hav­ing some­thing to do with plan­ning JFK’s mur­der, QUOTE:

    “…White was sent to Camp X not only to be trained, but also to become a train­er him­self, which he did when he was assigned in 1942 as Branch Chief of Schools and Train­ing for the OSS Counter-Espi­onage Divi­sion in Wash­ing­ton D.C. Sub­se­quent­ly, he became Deputy Chief of Counter-Espi­onage, or X‑2, as it was com­mon­ly called. In his train­er role, White rotat­ed among sev­er­al secret sites, includ­ing Area B3, a 9,000-acre cen­ter hid­den away in Mary­land’s Cotoctin Moun­tain Park, a few miles from today’s Camp David Pres­i­den­tial retreat. Anoth­er secret train­ing site was known as Area A2, a 5,000-acre wood­ed site near Quan­ti­co, Vir­ginia. ‘The Farm,’ locat­ed forty miles from Wash­ing­ton, D.C., was a third site. White’s own train­ing con­tin­ued, as well. In May 1942, togeth­er with Gar­land Williams and Phillip Strong, White took a brief break from his train­er’s posi­tion to attend a six-week advanced com­man­do and para­chute school in Vir­ginia.

    “Among White’s first OSS stu­dents were sev­er­al novice offi­cers who would lat­er become top CIA offi­cials: Richard Helms, Frank Wis­ner, Jr., James Jesus Angel­ton, Lyman B. Kirk­patrick, Jr., Thomas Karmessines, and William Col­by. Sev­er­al oth­er notable stu­dents were anthro­pol­o­gists Carl­ton S. Coon and Gre­go­ry Bate­son, psy­chol­o­gist Dr. James Hamil­ton, future Fed­er­al Nar­cotics agent Howard Chap­pell, and Alfred M. Hub­bard, an elu­sive and fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure who arrived at OSS’s Area B fresh from a stint in prison…”
    (“A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take: The Mur­der of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Exper­i­ments”, pgs. 398–399)

    And Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave lit­er­al­ly spent the bet­ter part of thir­ty years inves­ti­gat­ing the activ­i­ties of George Hunter White’s stu­dents activ­i­ties? The Sea­graves did more that write a book, they were com­bat­ives in a glob­al covert con­flict of espi­onage and blood­shed.

    Thank you once again Mr. Emory for giv­ing them a plat­form to fire vol­leys upon.

    Posted by Robert Ward Montenegro | January 16, 2020, 2:58 pm
  3. Gold War­riors is a mag­nif­i­cent book. So is Dream­er Of The
    Day and I just dis­cov­ered the author Kevin Coogan died
    sud­den­ly on Feb­ru­ary 27 2020. He was 67. There are many
    FTR inter­views con­duct­ed with Kevin Coogan by Dave.
    RIP Mr. Coogan

    Posted by Dennis | April 10, 2020, 11:33 pm
  4. Mr Emory – you have made such an impact on my mind that I won­dered if your name could give any clues as to how you had come into my field.

    This is what I found:

    “Emory is a com­mon Eng­lish lan­guage mas­cu­line giv­en name vari­ant of Emery, of Old Ger­man ori­gin (mean­ing “home strength, Indus­tri­ous Leader”). Emory is also a com­mon Eng­lish lan­guage sur­name.”

    (Intrigued if you have links to my UK home­land?)

    The sheer enor­mi­ty of your work – which I am about to choose as my gift for a deserved dona­tion – is for sure of an indus­tri­al sized nature and also the very per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of lead­er­ship with strength.

    I came across your remark­able site a cou­ple of weeks ago – via back­ground research to the remark­able Gold War­riors by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave – when I land­ed there fol­low­ing sev­er­al links or leads.

    Hav­ing read that book three times in the last 18 months I was beyond excit­ed to find them in voice on your site. It was like lis­ten­ing to old pro­fes­sors who had become friends.

    Your role as the con­duit was more than one of facil­i­ta­tor – giv­en how much I have learnt from oth­er record­ings since. You are your­self an incred­i­ble wealth of knowl­edge – rather crit­i­cal knowl­edge for sure.

    Of course I have lis­tened to all of your record­ings about their books and it was when you stat­ed that you believed this one book “Gold War­riors” was one of the most impor­tant books ever writ­ten that I knew I had found the right place!

    Thank you for being there and for bring­ing me pos­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion that my feel­ings about this book, its truths and the incred­i­ble Sea­graves and their coura­geous jour­ney were exact­ly as they should be…of the great­est impor­tance to the peo­ple of the world.

    My belief is that with­out the infor­ma­tion in this book then the peri­od between 1945 and 2020 can­not pos­si­bly make sense…to any­one.

    And with this infor­ma­tion then any­thing can make sense – when you are pre­pared to do the addi­tion­al research required.

    Ster­ling and Peg­gy have giv­en me what I need­ed to know to under­stand the role of the Office of the US Pres­i­dent and who it serves. They have made sense of world events like the JFK sac­ri­fice. They have allowed me a grasp on the role of the tri­umvi­rate of the City of Lon­don Cor­po­ra­tion, Vat­i­can City and DC, and of course the role of secret soci­eties in our every­day lives. Then there is the con­fir­ma­tion of where fund­ing has come from for ALL black ops machi­na­tions dur­ing the entire peri­od and so much more from Hol­ly­wood to 9/11 to the World Bank and on and on.

    The one thing that stands above all for me is relat­ed to the gold and the hid­ing of the world’s assets. When the read­er is pre­pared to put the text, the fab­u­lous notes and then addi­tion­al research togeth­er, then what becomes obvi­ous out of these “unbe­liev­able” sto­ries is that there is more wealth hid­den on this plan­et than any one per­son knows, than any one organ­i­sa­tion – good or bad – con­trols, than human­i­ty ever need­ed to right every wrong…and it also gives a sober­ing insight into why it remains hid­den for now: which is the death­ly pur­suit of the Sea­graves for sim­ply shar­ing truths.

    They will one day sure­ly be hon­oured posthu­mous­ly when the world knows their val­ue.

    Until I read the “Gold War­riors” this quote nev­er quite made sense:

    “World events do not occur by acci­dent. They are made to hap­pen, whether it is to do with nation­al issues or com­merce; and most of them are staged and man­aged by those who hold the purse strings”.

    Lord Denis Healey — for­mer UK Sec­re­tary for Defence and Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer.

    It makes sense now!

    Dave I am in awe of you and thank you again for your work — it is a uni­ver­si­ty, a muse­um and an ency­clopae­dia in one...

    Best

    Christo­pher

    Posted by Christopher Pomfret | November 4, 2020, 7:23 am
  5. @Christopher Pom­fret–

    Thanks for the kind words! Alas, I could not tell you what sig­nif­i­cance, if any, lies in my last name.

    You would have to con­sult with my late par­ents.

    A medi­um and/or a Oui­ja board would be nec­es­sary for such a com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

    Denis Healey’s obser­va­tion is very much on the mark.

    Don’t for­get Iris Chang in your acco­lades. https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1107-deep-politics-and-the-death-of-iris-chang-part-1-and-ftr-1108-deep-politics-and-the-death-of-iris-chang-part‑2/

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | November 4, 2020, 7:39 pm
  6. Hi Dave
    I have lis­tened to the Iris episodes too.
    Please direct me to any spe­cif­ic episodes you think rel­e­vant con­nect­ed to gold, Vat­i­can Bank, Nazi war loot, JFK links.

    Many thanks

    Christo­pher

    Posted by Christopher Pomfret | November 5, 2020, 10:28 am
  7. @Christopher Pom­fret–

    I am in my 42nd year on the air. There is too much on all of these sub­jects to dis­cuss here.

    Use the search func­tion on the web­site.

    Sug­gest search­ing each cat­e­go­ry, by choos­ing the “select cat­e­go­ry” func­tion. Be sure to use quo­ta­tion marks at the begin­ning and end of the item for which you are search­ing.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | November 5, 2020, 6:25 pm

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