Exploring a deep political, historical and economic dynamic, this program sets forth fundamental aspects of what the late, brilliant Sterling and Peggy Seagrave called “The Marcos Dynasty.”
This program excerpts two of their excellent books–which Mr. Emory emphatically recommends. There are links provided with each text excerpt to facilitate the acquisition of the books, which, again, Mr. Emory emphatically recommends.
Recently elected president of the Philippines (with close relatives of former president Duterte as aides), Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.—nicknamed Bong-Bong—has networked with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and renewed an invigorated, anti-China alliance.
Essential for an understanding of the Bong-Bong/Blinken liaison is awareness of Marcos, Jr.’s participation in his dictator father’s phenomenally lucrative recoveries of Golden Lily war gold secreted in the Philippines during World War II.
This subject is covered in the landmark text Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave.
(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688, 689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the subject material of that consummately important book.)
Ferdinand, Sr.’s rise was aided by his “godfather,” Judge Chua, who was his biological father in an out-of-wedlock liaison. This was relatively common in the Philippines and not stigmatized as in many other societies.
Judge Chua’s position in the Chua family gave him great influence. In turn, the clan associations of Chinese in the Philippines were fundamental to the professional and social undertakings of members of that community.
Of great significance is the strong affiliation of the clans with the Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek, imparting a fascist ideological orientation to them. This was a major deep political influence on Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., the out-of-wedlock son of the influential Judge Chua.
Next, we present the deep political background that shaped Ferdinand Marcos and an exploration of the manner in which economic class considerations shaped alliances during the Japanese fascist occupation of the Philippines and its aftermath.
In FTR#‘s 905, 970, among other programs, we explored how the U.S. rehabilitated and resuscitated the Japanese fascist infrastructure from that nation’s World War II imperial state.
We have spoken of prominent Japanese fascists Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in numerous programs.
Combined with Chiang Kai-shek’s reactionary stance, those rehabilitated Japanese fascists constituted the critical foundation of America’s Cold War in Asia.
The MacArthur team in the Philippines during the Cold War was culled from the collaborationist milieu who worked with the Japanese during the occupation. This included the head of the Japanese occupation government, Jose Laurel, as well as Benigno Aquino Sr. and Manuel Roxas.
Following the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. the Philippine government was headed by Cory Aquino, the widow of slain CIA agent Benigno Aquino, Jr. and Salvador Laurel, the son of Jose Laurel.
Collaborator Manuel Roxas was MacArthur’s “favorite son” to manage postwar Philippine government.
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As William Faulkner noted: “The past is never dead and buried. It isn’t even past.” In FTR#1209–part of the recently concluded series on “The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang”–we wrapped up the broadcast with discussion of the seminal influence of Chiang’s drug-dealing regime on associated American national security elements that continued and expanded that narcotics trafficking. A characteristically incisive, informative footnote in Peter Dale Scott’s “American War Machine” further develops the profound operational imprint that the KMT had on post World War II U.S. intelligence networks. Exemplifying the Kuomintang fascist heritage of this milieu is General George Olmstead, in charge of covert “ops” for Albert Wedemeyer, who leaked FDR’s Rainbow Five mobilization plan, as discussed in, among other programs, FTR#1202. This was a consummate act of treason. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
This program concludes the series.
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
Next, the program highlights key aspects of the career of Ching-Ling Soong, aka Mme. Sun Yat-sen.
Sister of Ai-Ling (aka Mme. H.H. Kung), Mae-ling (aka Mme. Chiang Kai-shek) and T.V., T.A. and T.L. Soong, she had a long and remarkable career.
For the purposes of this description, we re-print material from FTR#1202.
The fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a persistent critic of Chiang Kai-shek, was predictable.
Disillusioned with Communism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen partnered with Teng Yen-ta, who recognized Chiang’s fascism and, yet, felt that the Chinese Communist Party (at that point in time) was overly loyal to Moscow and wasn’t doing enough for the Chinese peasantry.
Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alternative to both Kuomintang fascism and the Chinese Communist Party.
Finding the democratic socialism proposed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unacceptable, Chiang had the British and American police authorities arrest him in the International Concession in Shanghai, after which he was tortured for many months.
Ching-ling was reported to have visited Chiang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chiang had already dealt with him in characteristic fashion: “ . . . . Days earlier, on November 29, 1931, nearly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been taken from his cell at Chiang’s command and was slowly strangled with a wire. The executioner was said to be famous for keeping victims alive for half an hour while he tightened his grip. In his office, Chiang had remained silent while Ching-ling pleaded for a man already dead, enjoying the spectacle of her momentary vulnerability. . . .”
Next, we recount Mme. Sun’s encounter with a Kuomintang/Green Gang agent.
After rebuffing his political approach, Mme. Sun Yat-sen demolished his political persona.
. . . . “Soong: ‘There is only one way to silence me, Mr. Tai. Shoot me or imprison me. If you don’t then it simply means that you admit you are not wrongly accused. But whatever you do, do it openly like me, don’t . . . surround me with spies.’
Tai: ‘I shall call again upon my return from Nanking.
Soong: ‘Further conversations would be useless—the gulf between us is too wide.’
As Tai Ch’i‑tao and his wife left, the old man turned and—his tongue flicking over dry lips (he was a very nervous man)—hissed out a parting bit of venom: ‘If you were anyone but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.’
Ching-ling smiled. ‘If you were the revolutionaries you pretend to be, you’d cut it off anyway.’. . .”
Information presented by Sterling Seagrave–of which Mr. Emory was not previously aware–indicates that the CCP is more nuanced than Americans have been led to believe.
Although resisting membership in the Communist Party and attempting to re-start the Third Option on the eve of Chiang’s capitulation and flight to Taiwan, Mme. Sun Yat-sen was installed as one of three Vice-Chairmen of the government.
Again, this is not something of which Mr. Emory was aware until reading this book.
“ . . . . Ching-ling sold many of her remaining possessions to support programs of the China Welfare League she had founded. In 1948, with the Chiang regime ready to flee and the Communists on their way to victory, she took part in a last attempt to organize an alternative to both communism and fascism—a new version of the Third Force. It was called the Revolutionary Committee, and Ching-ling was named its honorary chairman. Its constituency was the powerless. . . .”
“ . . . . When the People’s Republic came into existence, Ching-ling became one of the three non-Communist political leaders chosen as Vice-Chairmen of the Central Government in Peking. . . .”
Mme. Sun (Ching-ling Soong) manifested a strongly independent ideological stance, which, while anti-fascist and anti-imperialist, sought (as we have seen) a “Third Force” or “Third Option” between Communism and Chiang’s narco-fascism.
That independence of mind, demonstrated through decades of social struggle, plus outright jealousy on the part of Madame Mao led to defamation and persecution during the disastrous Cultural Revolution, with Mme. Sun narrowly escaping the ravages of the Red Guard.
“ . . . . During the Red Guard rampages of the 1960’s, the job of protecting Madame Sun became nerve-racking. Posters appeared denouncing her, and it was not safe for her to go anywhere. . . .”
“ . . . . In the summer of 1966, Premier Chou En-lai was forced to warn the Red Guards to cease their verbal attacks on Madame Sun, and to stop putting up posters accusing her of being a bourgeois reactionary. On September 21, 1966, in Shanghai where the Red Guard movement frequently got out of control, a mob stormed Ching-ling’s house on the Avenue Joffre and looted it. Ching-ling was not in Shanghai at the time. She let the incident pass without comment. Her chief adversary was the wife of Chairman Mao, who apparently resented the fact that Ching-ling was always mentioned as the woman of highest rank in China.
“ . . . . When the Red Guard movement abated, and Madame Mao and the celebrated Gang of Four were tried in a people’s court as counterrevolutionaries, Ching-ling’s life settled back into a tranquil twilight. . . .”
“ . . . . On May 16, 1981, Soong Ching-ling was named honorary President of China. . . . She succumbed to leukemia on May 29, 1981, in her Peking home. . . . But, in an interview once with writer Han Suyin, Ching-ling put into words the legacy she had learned most bitterly from the time of the Soongs:
The Soong Dynasty concludes with an epilogue which is noteworthy in several respects. The prose is of a character that one does not see anymore. Eloquent, poignant, passionate and yet, at the same time, bitingly, ironically humorous, Seagrave’s writing is remarkable in, and of, itself.
Beyond the prose, the epilogue is remarkable for the elaborate historical metaphor that it presents: discussion of the corruption and brutality of the late Manchu Dynasty and the Dowager Empress, whom Seagrave refers to as “The Old Buddha.” (He later published a volume about her reign titled The Dragon Lady.)
Seagrave’s discussion of the Dowager Empress’s intrigues and brutal murder of the Pearl Concubine constitutes a metaphor for the lethal, consummately corrupt government of Chiang Kai-shek and his puppet masters, the Soongs.
As foreign armies were approaching Peking during the Boxer Rebellion, “The Old Buddha” made arrangements to flee the palace known as The Forbidden City, donning a disguise and taking the Emperor with her.
When the Emperor sought to remain in Peking to negotiate with the foreign armies and enlisted the assistance of his favorite consort—the Pearl Concubine—in order to persuade the Dowager Empress.
The Pearl Concubine had resisted conforming to the will of the Dowager Empress, and “The Old Buddha” took this occasion to eliminate this element of resistance to her palace intrigues, a longtime obstacle to her political orders.
“ . . . . The Pearl Concubine had been a thorn in the Dowager’s side, interfering with palace intrigues by giving independent advice to the Emperor. It was time to dispose of her. The Dowager bellowed orders. Two eunuchs seized the Pearl Concubine. In terror, the Emperor went to his knees and begged for her life. But the eunuchs carried the struggling girl to the narrow well by the Palace of Peace and Longevity, turned her upside down in her shimmering cocoon of silks, and flung her shrieking into its maw. Because the well was so narrow, the eunuchs jumped on her to force her down. . . . .”
Sterling Seagrave then sets forth the murderous nature of the late Manchu rule of the Dowager Empress—a metaphor for the bloody corruption of Chiang’s fascist government.
“ . . . . The Forbidden City is a graveyard of souls, drowned, beheaded, throttled, flayed alive, to silence them in the interests of state. Here, murder was not an act of passion but an instrument of rule. Judicial murder. Imperial murder. Silence by assassination. To stifle those who would interfere, who would object, who would question, who would say no. . . .”
Sterling Seagrave then pivots to the Soong family: “ . . . . The others passed through life like a team of pickpockets through a carnival crowd, doing what they did best, while the rubes watched geeks bite heads off live chickens. There are those who insist that May-ling remained innocent throughout by virtue of her tunnel vision. It is not for me to say, except that these people also believe in virgin birth.
“They were a family that could stand together in front of a mirror (Ching-ling missing from the group by choice), all casting reflections except Ai-ling. She cast no reflection at all. What medieval conclusion can we draw? . . . .”
Seagrave concludes with a reference to Harry Truman’s launching of an FBI investigation of the Soong family. (We discussed this in FTR#1205 .)
“ . . . . Of all the people who might have acted, I wondered why Harry Truman did nothing. . . . . Perhaps he concluded that so many prominent people were involved it would not be good for the nation as they say. So nearly everyone stayed silent. Nobody spoke for the victims. Who, then, will speak for the concubine in the well? . . .”
The program reviews the death threats and intimidation that the authors of Gold Warriors received over the publication of this and other books.
“. . . . 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. . . .
“. . . .
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. . . .”
Sterling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peggy’s proximity to Spain–the seat of that organization’s power 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.
. . . . 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.
In FTR#‘s 1107, 1108 and 1111, we set forth the highly suspicious circumstances surrounding the death (and probable murder) of author Iris Chang. A ringing endorsement by Ms. Chang graces the cover of Gold Warriors.
Ms. Chang’s signature work–The Rape of Nanking–detailed one of the initial events in Japan’s looting of China during World War II, an act which the U.S. signed off on and profited from in the postwar years.
At the time of her altogether suspicious death, she was working on a book about the Bataan Death March, at the very time that survivors of that event and other Japanese World War II atrocities were suing Japanese zaibatsus that had employed U.S. POW’s as slave labor.
The suit was rebuffed by U.S. courts.
When Mr. Emory interviewed Sterling Seagrave in 2009, he declined to discuss Ms. Chang’s death, which he, too, believed to be murder.
This program undertakes a speculative look at the life and family history of Barack Obama, analyzed in the context of the American Deep State.
It was under Obama that the “pivot to Asia” took place, with his then Vice-President Joe Biden now pursuing the anti-China policy with a consuming vigor.
(We note, also, Avril Haines, who was Obama’s Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, then worked as a paid consultant for Peter Thiel’s Palantir firm, was a key participant in Event 201, served as a key member of Biden’s transition team and, ultimately, became Director of National Intelligence, a position from which she helped initiate the momentum to legitimize the “Lab-Leak Theory” of the origin of Covid.)
The central element in our analysis is the professional and political circumstances surrounding the Obama family’s involvement in Indonesia in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter.
The available information suggests that the benign interpretation of the Obama family’s circumstances is not accurate.
Those circumstances are encapsulated: Key Points of Discussion nd Analysis Include: Lolo Soetoro’s work as a civilian employee of the Indonesian Army at the East-West Institute in Hawaii (headed up at the time by Howard Jones, for years U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia); Soetoro’s meeting of (Stanley) Ann Dunham at the East-West Institute; Soetoro’s return to Indonesia in 1966; Soetoro’s work for the Indonesian army following the coup; Soetoro’s work for Unocal and Mobil, two of the key oil companies in Indonesia that faced possible nationalization by Sukarno; Ann Dunham’s work for USAID and Ford Foundation in Indonesia (both common covers for CIA work abroad); Soetoro’s account of having seen a man killed in “bloody” fashion; the dubious nature of claims by the Obama clan that Ms. Dunham learned of the slaughter that had just taken place through quiet asides and innuendo (numerous press accounts available through U.S. media outlets had reported the massacre); Ann Dunham’s subsequent work for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, under Peter Geithner (whose son Timothy Geithner became Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury); Barack Obama’s work for the Business International Corporation between college and graduate school (the company has, in the past, served as a “corporate cover” for CIA employees); Obama’s biological father’s meeting of Ann Dunham in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in 1960, after entering the U.S. under a joint CIA-State Department program initiated under the auspices of Tom Mboya in Kenya (later assassinated because of his perceived/alleged links to CIA).
We are of the opinion that Obama is part of a Deep State, trans-generational intelligence network and his stewardship of the “pivot to Asia,” Avril Haines key position in the events surrounding the full-court press against China, and “Delaware Joe” [Biden]‘s pursuit of a vigorous anti-China policy are part of the straight railway line of Asian policy described by Stanley Hornbeck: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . . [Hornbeck] had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
The program begins with discussion of the formation of the World Anti-Communist League in Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang and their support for the Indonesian coup, including staging attacks on the Chinese embassy in Jakarta; Taiwan as the site for the merging of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations to form the World Anti-Communist League; the role of Adrian Zenz in the fabrication of the Uighur genocide meme; Zenz’s association with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a derivative of the Captive Nations Committee, a subsidiary of the OUN/B and deeply involved with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations; the role of elements of the Azov Battalion and Pravy Sektor in the “pro-democracy” movement in Hong Kong; the adoption by the “pro-Democracy movement” of a permutation of the “Glory to Ukraine, Glory to The Heroes” salute of the OUN/B; review of the networking between Ruzy Nazar and the Pan-Turkist and Nazi deep political forces at work in Xinjiang province; review of Nazar’s representation of the ABN at WACL’s conference in Dallas, Texas.
Following discussion of the formation of WACL, the program highlights the importance of the Indonesian oil companies to the U.S. and their Indonesian satraps.
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
This program chronicles the U.S. coup in Indonesia. In our landmark series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio, we noted that President Kennedy’s assassination put the railway described by Stanley Hornbeck back on schedule in Indonesia, as it had been put back on schedule in Vietnam.
“ . . . . The United States was part and parcel of the operation at every stage, starting well before the killings started, until the last body dropped and the last political prisoner emerged from jail, decades later, tortured, scarred, and bewildered. . . . the U.S. government helped spread the propaganda that made the killing possible, and engaged in constant conversations with the Army to make sure the military officers had everything they needed, from weapons to kill lists. . . . knowing full well that the method being employed to make this possible was to round up hundreds of thousands of people around the country, stab or strangle them, and throw their corpses into rivers. . . . Up to a million Indonesians, maybe more, were killed as part of Washington’s global anticommunist crusade. The U. S. government expended significant resources over years engineering the conditions for a violent clash, and then, when the violence broke out, assisted and guided its longtime partners to carry out the mass murder of civilians as a means of achieving US geopolitical goals. . . .”
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: The Johnson Administration’s determination to wage a “major war against Indonesia; the inability of U.S. strategic planners to comprehend Indonesia’s status of non-alignment in the Cold War outside of the “either with us or against us” operational paradigm that was institutionalized in U.S. foreign and national security under the Dulles brothers during the Eisenhower administration; Pakistan’s ambassador to Paris sent a letter to foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: “ . . . . Western intelligence agencies were organizing a ‘premature communist coup.’ Indonesia, the NATO officer told him, ‘was ready to fall into the Western lap like a rotten apple.’. . .” The enthusiastic coverage of the Indonesian slaughter in the Western press, exemplified by The New York Times’ C.L. Sulzberger, who penned the piece “When a Nation Runs Amok”; the cultural chauvinism tinged with racism of the Western press coverage, embodied by Sulzberger’s piece: “ . . . . the killings occurred in ‘violent Asia, where life is cheap . . . . hidden behind their [Indonesians] smile is that strange Malay streak, that inner, frenzied blood-lust which has given to other languages one of their few Malay words: amok . . . .”; The fact that the main point of irritation in the U.S. about the PKI (Indonesia’s Communist Party) was not that they were undemocratic or trying to seize power through subversion, but that they “were popular;” the role of U.S. plantation managers and corporate personnel in submitting names to the Indonesian army and its allies for liquidation; Historian John Roosa’s encapsulation of the results of the slaughter: “ . . . . Almost overnight the Indonesian government went from being a fierce voice for cold war neutrality and anti-imperialism to a quiet, compliant partner of the US world order. . . .”; New York Times columnist James Reston’s characterization of the coup and resulting slaughter as “A Gleam of Light in Asia” that outweighed U.S. setbacks in Vietnam; he—by now—longstanding and well-recognized American tactic of “making the economy scream;” Suharto’s deliberate engineering of hyperinflation in order to restrict the supply of fundamentals needed by people to sustain their lives; “The U.S. government was intentionally destabilizing the economy;” Robert Kennedy’s criticism of the Indonesian coup; U.S. corporations finding Indonesia “open for business”; a business conference sponsored by James Linen, President of Time-Life (it was Time-Life that was–to a considerable extent–the eyes and ears of the U.S. on both Chiang Kai-shek and the assassination of J.F.K.; The slaughter that took place on the island of Bali, something of an iconic tropical paradise; analysis of the significance of machetes being used in the slaughter of scores of thousands on the beautiful Bali beaches–the machete is not a blade used by the Balinese, who use a thinner, domestic cutting tool caused the klewang; Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang and their support for the Indonesian coup, including staging attacks on the Chinese embassy in Jakarta; Taiwan as the site for the merging of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations to form the World Anti-Communist League.
Epitomizing and encapsulating the coup was the butchery that transpired on the Island of Bali and its aftermath in the contemporary luxury resort economy that prevails there:
” . . . . Then he [Wayan Badra] heard what was happening on the beaches. They were bringing people from the city to the east to kill them on the sand. It was public property there, and empty at night. The bodies were abandoned there. . . . they found a field of bodies. . . .They began looking through bones, picking up skulls. . . . There were just ‘too many skulls, too many skeletons. . . . In total, at least 5 percent of the population of Bali was killed—that is, eighty thousand people . . . .”
” . . . . Wayan Bandra, the Hindu priest, lives on the street where he grew up, in Seminyak, Southwest Bali. But the neighborhood has changed drastically. The same beach he used to walk on for forty minutes every morning, as he headed to school down in Kuta, is certainly not empty. It’s packed wall to wall with luxury resorts and ‘beach clubs,’ a very common type of business on the island, where foreigners can sip cocktails all day, and take a dip in a pool, right on the sand. It’s the same sand, of course, where the military brought people from Kerobokan, a few miles east, to kill them at night. . . .”
” . . . . . . . . Over the years, Wayan Badra and his neighbors have found bones and skulls in the sand . . . . As the elder priest for this village, he takes it upon himself to give the bodies a proper Hindu funeral. . . .”
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we begin by drawing still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave.
Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it. Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!
I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.) It is apparently available from Amazon on Kindle.
We also draw on another, altogether remarkable work by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave–Gold Warriors.
As we approach the close of this series, we “dolly out” and present aspects of how U.S. policy in Asia during the Cold War grew directly out of the “missionary position” that America took toward China–a position that led directly to war in Korea and Vietnam.
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
Next, we recap an element of discussion from FTR#1208.
Networking with Isa Yusuf Alptekin at the Bandung (Indonesia) conference was Ruzi (or “Ruzy”) Nazar, an Uzbek national who fought in various Third Reich military formations, including the SS Dirlewanger Brigade. After the war, Nazar was a CIA operative networking with the National Action Party (or National Movement Party) of Alparslan Turkes.
Nazar represented the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations at the 1984 WACL conference in Dallas.
(We have discussed the de-stabilization of Xinjiang Province in numerous programs, including: FTR#‘s 1143, 1144, 1145. 1154, 1178, 1179, 1180.)
Adrian Zenz–whose professional milieu is the Captive Nations Committee and its subsidiary element the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation–has also been minted as an expert on Tibet.
Next, we detail information on the Dalai Lama:
Important background information on this item of the program is contained in FTR#‘s 547, 548 among other programs. (Mr. Emory mis-identified the numbers of the programs in the audio file for this broadcast.)
Key facts about the Dalai Lama were set forth by former key aides of his.
In addition to a belief in demons and a reliance on magic rituals (some of them sexual in nature), the Dalai Lama’s brand of Tantric Buddhism espouses a militant, warlike and intolerant nature toward other religions. As noted by the Trimondis, there are some similarities between this perverted manifestation of Buddhism and the Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood’s perverted manifestation of Islam.
The Dalai Lama’s brand of Tantric Buddhism contains what might be a viewed as “Buddhist jihadism.” In addition, the Trimondis take note of the significance of the Kalachakra Tantra ceremony performed by the Dalai Lama, a subject to which we will return later in the broadcast. In addition, Tantric Buddhism’s apocalyptic vision of a climactic war of the religions (“Shambala War”) bears some similarities to the fundamentalist Christian vision of Armageddon.
Key elements of discussion and analysis include:
1.–” . . . . In contrary to every democratic custom, the present Dalai Lama consults with the Nechung Oracle, a monk who is possessed by a Mongolian War God, on all-important state decisions. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Murderous super-weapons possessed by the Buddhist Shambhala Army are described at length and in enthusiastic detail in the Kalachakra Tantra Text (Shri Kalachakra I. 128 ‑142) and employed against ‘enemies of the Dharma (Buddha’s teachings).’ . . .”
3.–” . . . . The secret text of the Kalachakra explicitly names the ‘leaders’ of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as the opponents of Buddhism: ‘Adam, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mani, Muhammad and the Mahdi’ describing them as ‘the family of the demonic snakes’ (Shri Kalachakra I. 154). . . .”
Next, the Trimondis note the influence of Tantric Buddhism (and other Eastern religions) on the philosophy of SS chief Heinrich Himmler. They also note that well-known German Buddhist teachers Durckheim and Herrigel have been doctrinaire Nazis. In addition, the Trimondis note that the Dalai Lama has maintained close connections with other Nazis and fascists over the years.
In addition to SS veterans Heinrich Harrer and war criminal Bruno Beger, the Dalai Lama networked with “the French SS- collaborator, convinced anti-Semite, recognized Orientalist and Kalachakra Tantra expert Jean Marques-Riviere (in his absence convicted and given the death sentence for turning Jews over to the Gestapo in France).” The Aum Shinrikyo guru Shoko Asahara was also a friend of the Dalai Lama and was influenced by the ideology of the Kalachakra Tantra. (For more about the Aum Shinrikyo cult, including the influence of Hitler on the Dalai Lama’s friend Shoko Asahara, see FTRs 35 and 69.)
Next, we review analysis of power broker–Kodama Yoshio who helped institutionalize the collaboration between Chinese KMT, Korean and Japanese fascists. Noteworthy, as well is Kodama’s close relationship between with the CIA and the Japanese Imperial family in the postwar/Cold War period.
Kodama Yoshio epitomizes and embodies the operational and ideological structure of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, the Asian branch of what was to become the World Anti-Communist League.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Kodama’s accumulated fortune of 13 billion dollars in World War II dollars; Kodama’s close relationship with Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Imperial Palace; Kodama’s dominant position in the narcotics traffic, during and after World War II; Kodama’s donation of 100 million dollars to the CIA (equivalent to 1 billion dollars in today’s currency); Kodama’s continued dominance in the global narcotics traffic, during the time he was on the CIA’s payroll; Kodama’s cozy relationship with Prince Higashikuni, Emperor Hirohito’s uncle, who facilitated Kodama’s operations, including his close relationship with the U.S.
Next, we review the brilliant Douglas Valentine’s synopsis of the role of Kuomintang drug trafficking in the institutionalization of American government drug-trafficking.
U.S. Ambassador to Thailand (and former OSS chief) William “Wild Bill” Donovan worked with OSS and CIA operative Paul Helliwell to distribute the laundered profits of Agency-backed drug operations to members of Congress, with Donovan gifting Republicans and Helliwell supporting Democrats.
” . . . .Thai dictator Phao Sriyanon, a drug trafficker who was then alleged to be the richest man in the world; ‘hired lawyer Paul Helliwell . . . as a lobbyist in addition to [former OSS chief William] Donovan [who in 1953–1955 was U.S. Ambassador to Thailand]. Donovan and Helliwell divided the Congress between them, with Donovan assuming responsibility for the Republicans and Helliwell taking the Democrats.’ . . . .”
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we begin by drawing still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave.
Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it. Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!
I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.) It is apparently available from Amazon on Kindle.
We also draw on another, altogether remarkable work by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave–Gold Warriors.
As we approach the close of this series, we “dolly out” and present aspects of how U.S. policy in Asia during the Cold War grew directly out of the “missionary position” that America took toward China–a position that led directly to war in Korea and Vietnam.
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
The program continues with review of the obituary of general Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose service in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II has been a focal point of controversy in South Korea. General Sun-yup embodied the ongoing controversy in Korea over Japan’s occupation and the subsequent unfolding of events leading up to, and including the Korean War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a puppet state that imperial Japan had established in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunting down Korean guerrillas fighting for independence . . .”
A post by German Foreign Policy sets forth Cold War history involving the BND/Gehlen “Org” and China.
Documenting plans to launch a nuclear strike against Peking and Moscow during the Korean War, following up with Nazi-aided Kuomintang tank warfare to finish the conflict and spawning a long Gehlen-Nazi advisory role with Chiang Kai-Shek’s military, the post provides historical context in which the Covid-19 pandemic and the full-court press against China.
“When, during the war on Korea, a nuclear strike against Peking (and Moscow) had been relocated (site of deployment Guam, max. 34 Mark 4 atomic bombs), the successor of the Nazi espionage (Organization Gehlen) in Munich, ensured direct contacts with the Kuomintang. Following the dropping of the atomic bombs, Kuomintang troops were supposed to march, as occupying forces, through contaminated terrain towards Peking. To support the offensive of Kuomintang tanks, considered necessary by Chiang Kai-shek, Gehlen could offer specialists from Munich: from the Reichswehr and Nazi military. . . .”
” . . . . Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg was working with the Organization Gehlen . . . . The Nazi General, who, as hero of the Nazi tank divisions’ advance towards Moscow, had been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, was now in action for Taiwan and the Kuomintang in the battle against Peking. He personally instructed the staffs of the nationalist forces with original documents of the Nazi’s ‘Operation Barbarossa.’ He was personally answerable to Chiang Kai-shek. . . .”
” . . . . In Taiwan, Munzel’s BND group, disguised as a delegation of DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service, Bonn) received Chiang Kai-shek’s son Wego, formerly a cadet in the Nazi military, now an armaments expert with connections to the West German war industry. Chiang Wego’s assignment was comprehensive and clear: to train new recruits for the offensive against Peking by drawing on the German experience gained during ‘Operation Barbarossa’ (followed by Munzel’s testing in Cairo) — and to provide the appropriate weapons. . . .”
” . . . . While Munzel, under BND command, set up a secret ‘experimental battalion’ against China (1968), staff officers of the Taiwan dictatorship studied at the German Armed Forces Staff College in Hamburg, quite officially. . . .”
Noteworthy for our purposes, is the exterminationist tactical approach undertaken by the West and drawing on Nazi expertise in drawing up operational plans.
Noteworthy, also, is the continuity of SS activity in, or in connection with, Asia:
1.–In the 1950’s and 1960’s, German television went “retro” with Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, broadcasting SS footage of an anthropological expedition to Tibet. ” . . . . The Nazi propaganda’s imaginary projection of a people, weaker than ‘inner Asians,’ who still had maintained their purity and must be protected was seamlessly transmitted. The notorious SS-produced film (‘Geheimnis Tibet,’– ‘Secret Tibet,’ 1943) about Aryan genes in the Himalayan Highlands returned to the big screen of the movies. . . .”
2.–The broadcast material featured SS war criminal and member of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile Bruno Beger. ” . . . . The West German state was barely a year old, and a nuclear strike against Peking was in the planning stages (1950), when graphically identical cinema posters promoted the relaunch: ‘The original film about the German Tibet expedition.’ The film contains scenes with the Auschwitz criminal Bruno Beger (see Part II). The scenes with Beger, who measures the heads and bodies of the indigenous people comparing them to those of Aryans, conveys racism as a stimulus for murder, seemingly harmless and interchangeable . . . . as the Aryan heritage in Tibetan Asia, threatened with dilution by the yellow peril (from the Chinese state and Han Chinese) . . . .”
3.–In addition, the film featured voice-over narration by the Dalai Lama’s SS tutor Heinrich Harrer: ” . . . . In the evening program, millions learned how, several years earlier, the omnipresent TV moderator and alpinist hero had met the Dalai Lama — as the godly king in Lhasa, Tibet, who had offered his friendship to the white man from distant Europe and who now finds himself on the run from ‘Red China’ — without his indigenous people. The white visitor, the omnipresent TV moderator was Heinrich Harrer, former SS Oberscharfürer. . . .”
3.–The Uighurs (also transliterated as “Uyghurs”) also draw on Waffen SS heritage and institutional momentum: ” . . . . The new Uighur generation traveled via Turkey and filled the Muslim ranks of Gehlen’s agents in Munich, who had made their living for decades at Radio Free Europe (RFE), the intelligence operation in the Oettinger Strasse. . . . The elders of the Uighur community in Munich (today the World Uyghur Congress, WUC) are very familiar with the blood propaganda, through their service in the ‘Eastland-Legions’ of the Waffen SS (Turkestan 162nd Infantry Division). Berlin had promised them their own nation with the inclusion of Xinjiang (‘Great Turkestan’), ‘identity,’ and Muslim law, to be able to position the great German ‘Reich’ at China’s borders with Turkmen help. With the defeated rest of the SS division stranded in Bavaria, they still had their hopes and are once again used against China . . . .”
Networking with Isa Yusuf Alptekin at the Bandung (Indonesia) conference was Ruzi (or “Ruzy”) Nazar, an Uzbek national who fought in various Third Reich military formations, including the SS Dirlewanger Brigade. (Alptekin was a key Kuominang associate and the patriarch of the Uighur separatist movementAfter the war.) Nazar was a CIA operative networking with the National Action Party (or National Movement Party) of Alparslan Turkes.
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we draw still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave.
Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it. Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print!
I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.) It is apparently available from Amazon on Kindle.
We also draw on another, altogether remarkable work by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave–Gold Warriors.
When the failures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and pivoting away from the Nationalist Chinese cause, the amalgam of corporate, criminal, journalistic and political interests that had empowered the Kuomintang counterattacked: “ . . . . the Chiang government poured millions of dollars into a counteroffensive. Zealous Americans who joined the pro-Taiwan crusade became the fund-raisers, the organizers, the telephoners, the legmen, the gofers, the publicists, the congressmen, the tycoons, the hosts and hostesses of the shadowy society called ‘the China Lobby.’ Its management, its direction, and its primary finances were not American. The China Lobby belonged to the Soong clan and the Nationalist Chinese government. The people involved thought they were working for the greater glory of God, or for ‘the survival of the democratic system.’ They were really working for a Chinese public-relations campaign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the primary pipeline connecting American special interests with Taiwan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chiang devoted considerable energies to the lobby and sometimes gathered for strategy sessions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”
The domestic political result in the U.S. was summed by Sterling Seagrave: “ . . . . Small wonder that a large segment of the American public believed that Chiang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Similar amounts were spent during the Korean War and the periodic crises over the defense of the Formosa Strait. Guesses at the grand total spent by Taiwan to stupefy Americans ran as high as $1 billion a year. . . .”
The unique nature of the manifest China Lobby was summed up: “ . . . . Marquis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nationalist China has used the techniques of direct intervention on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the campaign was to pour gasoline on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”
The component elements of the China Lobby:
1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s government used existing American corporations headed by men who shared its viewpoint. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . it hired advertising agencies . . . . Allied Syndicates counted among its clients the bank of China (with H.H. Kung as director). . . . Hamilton Wright, worked for six years as a registered agent for Nationalist China, writing and distributing stories, news articles, photographs, and movies to create a favorable image of Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
3.–“. . . . T.V.’s wartime Universal Trading Corporation was listed in 1949 as a foreign agent working for the Chinese government, with assets of nearly $22 million. The Chinese News Service based in Taiwan established branches in Washington, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Taiwan exercised a particularly strong influence on American newspapers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘Henry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his lifetime in danger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of China and of Christianity and the Asian hegemony of the United States, but also his own peace of mind and reputation. Chiang-in-China was to have been the crowning of a decade and a half of planning in the Chrysler building and Rockefeller Center and of countless thousands of words of Lucepress propaganda. The nightmare rise of Mao-in-Chiina brought a powerful Luce counter-strategy.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . Newscaster Robert S. Allen reported, . . . . Luce has been propagandizing and agitating for another two-billion dollar U.S. handout for Chiang for a long time. . . . And in Washington, practically the whole Luce bureau has been working full blast as part of the Chiang lobby.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . Many of the activists in the lobby were people whose families had worked in China as missionaries, and now thought their heritage was being thrown away. Among them were the directors of the American China Policy Association and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . These groups were periodically supported by campaigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the executive council of the AFL-CIO, the American Legion, the American Security Council, the American Conservative Union, and Young Americans for Freedom. To many conservative organizations, Taiwan became synonymous with anti-Communism. In the atmosphere of the 1950s, the fear of Red China kept normally sensible people from wondering where all the money was coming from. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . As principal director of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was driven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Columnist Drew Pearson, one of the few journalists who maintained an interest in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of China the “nerve center of the China Lobby . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowledge of American politics is almost as astute as his knowledge of Chinese finance, and well before he entered the Truman cabinet, Kung picked Louis Johnson as his personal attorney. It may or may not be significant that, later, when Johnson became Secretary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advocates of American support for Formosa. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [From a Drew Pearson column—D.E.] A move by a Chiang brother-in-law. . . . to corner the soybean market at the expense of the American public . . . The brother-in-law is T.L. Soong, brother of Foreign Minister T.V. Soong, who formerly handled much of the three and a half billion dollars worth of supplies which the United States sent to China during the War. The soybean pool netted a profit of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the American consumer $1 as bushel [much more money in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soybean manipulation was that its operators knew exactly the right time to buy up the world’s soybean supply—a few weeks before the communists invaded Korea. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dallas oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest members of the clan. During Richard Nixon’s 1950 senatorial campaign, Daddy Kung dispatched Younger Son to Los Angeles to give the senator donations and encouragement. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petroleum holdings, with oil properties across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. At the (Nationalist) Chinese embassy in Washington in 1956, Louis organized the Cheyenne Oil Company. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for example, to John Daly, then vice-president for news of the (ABC Network), did poorly, Louis guaranteed that Daly would have his investment back; if the well turned out to be a success, then the profits were divided with Daly. . . .”
Presenting an overview updating the operations of T.V. Soong, Sterling Seagrave recounts his ascent to the pinnacles of power, his corporate largesse in America derived from clever investment and his major participation in the criminal underworld of Kuomintang narcotics trafficking and kleptocracy and his purloining of massive amounts of U.S. aid to China during World War II.
Note, T.V.’s role in the China Lobby: “ . . . . Although T.V. avoided Taiwan, and devoted most of his attention to his expanding financial empire, he did back the China Lobby financially because it was in his interest to do so. The levers of the China Lobby could be worked in many directions. . . .”
Note, also, his gravitas with the lethal, powerful Chinese organized crime milieu in the U.S.: “ . . . . It was not so much implied that T.V. himself was dangerous but that the slightest word from him could bring about terrible consequences from the Chinese tongs or syndicates, the Chinese banks, and nameless other objects of fear. . . .”
The remainder of the program recaps information from FTR#1142 about some of the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of the Korean War.
This is presented as context for T.L. Soong’s remarkably prescient cornering of the soybean market on the eve of the outbreak of that conflict: ” . . . . The soybean pool netted a profit of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the American consumer $1 as bushel [much more money in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soybean manipulation was that its operators knew exactly the right time to buy up the world’s soybean supply—a few weeks before the communists invaded Korea. . . .”
In FTR#1142, we detailed the little-known involvement of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek in the 1943 conferences at Cairo and Teheran. (Mme. Chiang Kai-shek was the sister of T.V. Soong, one of Chiang’s finance ministers and the richest man in the world at one time.)
This low-profile involvement apparently gave them considerable gravitas in helping to shape the postwar geopolitical agenda.
In that context and in relation to the ongoing series on Chiang Kai-shek’s narco-fascist government, it is worth noting the deep political agenda that was governing U.S. national security policy by September 2, 1945–the day on which the treaty ending World War II in the Pacific was signed on board the deck of the U.S. S. Missouri.
While in Okinawa during Japan’s surrender in World War II, Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was witness to the early commitment of decisive military resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States. His response was direct and surprising: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t never goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943–45? . . . .”
In FTR#1142, we highlighted the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agreement which falsely maintained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occupied during World War II and that the (already) booming nation was bankrupt and would not be able to pay reparations to the slave laborers and “comfort women” it had pressed into service during the conflict.
In the context of the fantastic sums looted by Japan under the auspices of Golden Lily and the incorporation of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Korean War raise some interesting, unresolved questions.
One of the principal figures in the looting of occupied Asia during World War II was the remarkable Kodama Yoshio. Networked with the powerful Yakuza Japanese organized crime milieu, the Black Dragon society (the most powerful of the patriotic and ultra-nationalist societies), the Imperial Japanese military and the Royal family of Emperor Hirohito, Kodama looted the Chinese underworld and trafficked in narcotics with Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist narco-dictatorship.
We can but wonder about Kodama Yoshio’s presence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Foster Dulles at negotiations in Seoul on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War.
As discussed in numerous programs in an interview with Daniel Junas, the Korean War was a huge economic boom for Japan, and generated considerable profit for German firms as well. Thyssen, for example, won lucrative contracts for making steel for the war effort. Is there some connection between the Kodama/Dulles presence in Seoul on the eve of the outbreak of war linked to the Golden Lily/Black Eagle/1951 “Peace” Treaty nexus and/or T.L. Soong’s cornering of the soybean market on the outbreak of the war?
Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, John Foster Dulles made a startlingly prescient speech in South Korea, auguring North Korea’s invasion shortly thereafter.
It would be interesting to know if Dulles and Kodama had been involved in deliberately luring the North Koreans to invade, in a manner not unlike that in which U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie appears to have baited Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait.
Note, also, Dulles’s characterization of Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek as Christian gentlemen. Chiang Kai-shek’s Christian credentials are recorded in detail in the ongoing series.
Foster Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curious presence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War, his prescient foreshadowing of the conflict just before the North Korean invasion and the role of these events in shaping the post World War II global economic and political landscapes may well have been designed to help jumpstart the Japanese and German economies.
“. . . . A substantial infusion of money into this new Federal Republic economy resulted from the Korean War in 1950. The United States was not geared to supplying all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pentagon placed huge orders in West Germany and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of booming good times. . . .”
The program concludes with the obituary of general Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose service in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II has been a focal point of controversy in South Korea. General Sun-yup embodied the ongoing controversy in Korea over Japan’s occupation and the subsequent unfolding of events leading up to, and including the Korean War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a puppet state that imperial Japan had established in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunting down Korean guerrillas fighting for independence . . .”
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we draw still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave. Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it.
Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print! I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
It is apparently available from Amazon on Kindle.
First, we highlight Fred J. Cook’s analytical account of the McCarthy period, The Nightmare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Department [Communist] treachery had “lost” China to Mao and his forces.
Exploiting the meme that “pinko” State Department officials were responsible for Mao’s ascendance, McCarthy and his team successfully purged the State Department of officials whose outlook on Chiang Kai-shek was realistic.
The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Organized Crime as well as in earlier programs in this series, illustrates this kind of activity.
In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among other programs), we noted the pivotal influence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the professional development of Donald Trump. We wonder what influence Cohn and the McCarthy legacy may have had on Trump’s policy toward China.
Aside from the airy presumption that China was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s thesis ignored the effects of U.S. policy in that country before, during and after, World War II. (This transgression is, of course, supplemental to Tailgunner Joe’s fabrication of evidence against those he targeted.)
In addition to support for Chiang Kai-Shek, whom General Joseph Stilwell compared to Mussolini, U.S. policy of using scores of thousands of Japanese soldiers as anti-Communist combatants was loathsome to the Chinese population, who had felt the full measure of Japanese atrocity during years of warfare.
Leafing through Nightmare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a passage read into the record in AFA #11.
More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the official conclusion of the hostilities of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was countenancing the use of 80,000 Japanese troops (roughly eight divisions) as anti-Communist combatants in eastern and northwestern Manchuria alone!
The transition to the Cold War from the Second World War also saw the incident that became the signature element of the John Birch Society.
In AFA#11, we set forth the event: ” . . . . Society figurehead John Birch was the intelligence officer for General Claire Chenault’s Flying Tigers in World War II, subsequently serving with the OSS China contingent. Birch was killed recruiting Chinese collaborationst troops to fight the Chinese communists. (These collaborationist forces had served the Japanese during World War II.) Coming little more than a week after the end of the war in the Pacific, his death was heralded by the American right as ‘the beginning of World War III.’ . . . .”
One of the signature propaganda gambits in the New Cold War against China is the Uighur Genocide myth. A political fantasy, rooted in decades of manipulation of the Chinese Uighur minority, the destabilization effort in Xinjiang province, the destabilization effort derives from dynamics dating to the Chinese civil war overlapping and following the Second World War.
(We have covered the Uighur destabilization campaigns in numerous programs, including [most recently] FTR#’s 1143, 1144, 1145, 1178, 1179 and 1180.)
Isa Yusuf Alptekin is the patriarch of the Uighur separatist movement. He was aligned with Chiang Kai-shek during the Chinese civil war, espousing the doctrinaire Anti-Communism characterizing the Kuomintang milieu and endearing Alptekin’s movement and successors to American and Western Cold Warriors.
“ . . . . The founding father of this separatist movement was Isa Yusuf Alptekin. His son, Erkin Alptekin, founded the WUC and served as the organization’s inaugural president. The senior Alptekin is referred to as “our late leader” by the WUC and current President Dolkun Isa. . . . During the Chinese Civil War that raged between the nationalists and communists from 1945 to ’49, Alptekin served under the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) administration in Xinjiang. Throughout this period, the KMT received massive military and economic backing from the United States — including billions of dollars in cash and military hardware, along with the deployment of tens of thousands of US marines — in an effort to quash the Chinese revolution. . . .”
As noted in past programs, the Uighur separatist milieu incorporates Islamists allied with both Al-Qaeda and elements of ISIS, as well as Pan-Turkists allied with the National Action (also National Movement) Party—a doctrinaire fascist, revanchist body whose youth wing—the Grey Wolves—constitute the “Stay Behind” NATO cadre in Turkey.
When the failures of Chiang’s regime led to scorn toward, and pivoting away from the Nationalist Chinese cause, the amalgam of corporate, criminal, journalistic and political interests that had empowered the Kuomintang counterattacked: “ . . . . the Chiang government poured millions of dollars into a counteroffensive. Zealous Americans who joined the pro-Taiwan crusade became the fund-raisers, the organizers, the telephoners, the legmen, the gofers, the publicists, the congressmen, the tycoons, the hosts and hostesses of the shadowy society called ‘the China Lobby.’ Its management, its direction, and its primary finances were not American. The China Lobby belonged to the Soong clan and the Nationalist Chinese government. The people involved thought they were working for the greater glory of God, or for ‘the survival of the democratic system.’ They were really working for a Chinese public-relations campaign. . . . the Kungs and Soongs remained the primary pipeline connecting American special interests with Taiwan. Ai-ling and H.H. Kung, T.V. Soong and May-ling Soong Chiang devoted considerable energies to the lobby and sometimes gathered for strategy sessions at the Kung estate in Riverdale. . . .”
The domestic political result in the U.S. was summed by Sterling Seagrave: “ . . . . Small wonder that a large segment of the American public believed that Chiang was the essence of virtue and his cause was a joint one. Similar amounts were spent during the Korean War and the periodic crises over the defense of the Formosa Strait. Guesses at the grand total spent by Taiwan to stupefy Americans ran as high as $1 billion a year. . . .”
The unique nature of the manifest China Lobby was summed up: “ . . . . Marquis Childs wrote ‘. . . . Nationalist China has used the techniques of direct intervention on a scale rarely, if ever, seen.’ Part of the campaign was to pour gasoline on the McCarthy witch hunts. . . .”
The component elements of the China Lobby:
1.–“ . . . . Chiang’s government used existing American corporations headed by men who shared its viewpoint. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . it hired advertising agencies . . . . Allied Syndicates counted among its clients the bank of China (with H.H. Kung as director). . . . Hamilton Wright, worked for six years as a registered agent for Nationalist China, writing and distributing stories, news articles, photographs, and movies to create a favorable image of Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. . . .”
3.–“. . . . T.V.’s wartime Universal Trading Corporation was listed in 1949 as a foreign agent working for the Chinese government, with assets of nearly $22 million. The Chinese News Service based in Taiwan established branches in Washington, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. . . .”
4.–“ . . . . Taiwan exercised a particularly strong influence on American newspapers. . . .”
5.–“ . . . . ‘Henry Luce now saw the most grandiose project of his lifetime in danger of ruin. Wrapped up in the ruin was not only the fate of China and of Christianity and the Asian hegemony of the United States, but also his own peace of mind and reputation. Chiang-in-China was to have been the crowning of a decade and a half of planning in the Chrysler building and Rockefeller Center and of countless thousands of words of Lucepress propaganda. The nightmare rise of Mao-in-Chiina brought a powerful Luce counter-strategy.’. . .”
6.–“ . . . . Newscaster Robert S. Allen reported, . . . . Luce has been propagandizing and agitating for another two-billion dollar U.S. handout for Chiang for a long time. . . . And in Washington, practically the whole Luce bureau has been working full blast as part of the Chiang lobby.’. . .”
7.–“ . . . . Many of the activists in the lobby were people whose families had worked in China as missionaries, and now thought their heritage was being thrown away. Among them were the directors of the American China Policy Association and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding Anti-Communist China . . . . .”
8.–“ . . . . These groups were periodically supported by campaigns waged on Chiang’s behalf by the executive council of the AFL-CIO, the American Legion, the American Security Council, the American Conservative Union, and Young Americans for Freedom. To many conservative organizations, Taiwan became synonymous with anti-Communism. In the atmosphere of the 1950s, the fear of Red China kept normally sensible people from wondering where all the money was coming from. . . .”
9.–“ . . . . As principal director of the Bank of China’s New York City branch, H.H. [Kung] was driven to Wall Street two or three days a week . . . . Columnist Drew Pearson, one of the few journalists who maintained an interest in the Soongs after they went into exile, called the Bank of China the “nerve center of the China Lobby . . . .”
10.–“ . . . . ‘Dr. Kung’s knowledge of American politics is almost as astute as his knowledge of Chinese finance, and well before he entered the Truman cabinet, Kung picked Louis Johnson as his personal attorney. It may or may not be significant that, later, when Johnson became Secretary of Defense, he was one of the staunchest advocates of American support for Formosa. . . .”
11.–“ . . . . [From a Drew Pearson column—D.E.] A move by a Chiang brother-in-law. . . . to corner the soybean market at the expense of the American public . . . The brother-in-law is T.L. Soong, brother of Foreign Minister T.V. Soong, who formerly handled much of the three and a half billion dollars worth of supplies which the United States sent to China during the War. The soybean pool netted a profit of $30,000,000 and shot up the cost to the American consumer $1 as bushel [much more money in 1950 than now—D.E.] One of the strange things about the soybean manipulation was that its operators knew exactly the right time to buy up the world’s soybean supply—a few weeks before the communists invaded Korea. . . .”
12.–“ . . . . Louis Kung [son of Ai-ling and H.H. who had become a Dallas oil man—D.E.] had become one of the busiest members of the clan. During Richard Nixon’s 1950 senatorial campaign, Daddy Kung dispatched Younger Son to Los Angeles to give the senator donations and encouragement. . . . Louis took an active role in the Soong-Kung petroleum holdings, with oil properties across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. At the (Nationalist) Chinese embassy in Washington in 1956, Louis organized the Cheyenne Oil Company. . . . If one of Louis’s wells (leased for example, to John Daly, then vice-president for news of the (ABC Network), did poorly, Louis guaranteed that Daly would have his investment back; if the well turned out to be a success, then the profits were divided with Daly. . . .”
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