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

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

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

2. The pro­gram relates the ret­ri­bu­tion vis­it­ed on whis­tle-blow­ers who had dis­closed that gold belong­ing to Holo­caust vic­tims was left in Swiss banks. Note that Car­la del Ponte, who charged Jean Ziegler with trea­son, is a law partne of Pier Felice Barchi, rthe lawyer for Bank Al Taqwa’s Youssef Nada. (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.)