FTR#1209 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 16

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.’ . . . .”

FTR#1208 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 15

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.

FTR#1207 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 14

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 . . .”

The Smoking Genome? Supplement to the “Oswald Institute of Virology” Series UPDATED ON 10/10/2021 AND ON 10/22/2021

We have done many pro­grams under­scor­ing our work­ing hypoth­e­sis that Covid-19 is a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon, devel­oped by the U.S. and deployed as part of the desta­bi­liza­tion pro­gram against Chi­na we have cov­ered since the fall of 2019. (Some of those pro­grams are: FTR#‘s 1157, 1158, 1159, 1170 and FTR#‘s 1183 through 1193, inclu­sive.) A heav­i­ly “spun” sto­ry about the Eco­Health Alliance and its involve­ment with Pen­ta­gon-linked research into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es may well–when freed from the pre­dictably ide­ol­o­gized jour­nal­is­tic shad­ing to which it has been subjected–yield a “smok­ing genome” with regard to the SARS CoV‑2 virus caus­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

“Dozens of Countries”: Addendum to the “Oswald Institute of Virology” Programs

We have done many pro­grams under­scor­ing our work­ing hypoth­e­sis that Covid-19 is a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon, devel­oped by the U.S. and deployed as part of the desta­bi­liza­tion pro­gram against Chi­na we have cov­ered since the fall of 2019. (Some of those pro­grams are: FTR#‘s 1157, 1158, 1159, 1170 and FTR#‘s 1183 through 1193, inclu­sive.) A pair of sto­ries in “The Wall Street Jour­nal” yield under­stand­ing of our media land­scape and the degree of pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of same. A remark­able aspect of the Jour­nal’s cov­er­age con­cerns a devel­op­ment that has been almost com­plete­ly excised from the West­ern press: ” . . . . For months, China’s gov­ern­ment has insist­ed both in pub­lic, and in pri­vate meet­ings with Dr. Tedros, that stud­ies on the ori­gins of the virus should now focus on oth­er coun­tries, such as Italy, or on a U.S. mil­i­tary biore­search facil­i­ty in Fort Det­rick, Md. Dozens of gov­ern­ments aligned with Chi­na have sent Dr. Tedros let­ters in sup­port of Beijing’s posi­tion, a per­son famil­iar with the let­ters said. . . .” “Dozens of gov­ern­ments?” Which ones? This sounds like a major inter­na­tion­al dialogue/scandal. WHY aren’t we hear­ing about it? In anoth­er arti­cle in the same issue of the “Jour­nal,” it was not­ed that: ” . . . . Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs said he has dis­band­ed a task force of sci­en­tists prob­ing the ori­gins of Covid-19 in favor of wider bio-safe­ty research. Dr. Sachs, chair­man of a Covid-19 com­mis­sion affil­i­at­ed with “The Lancet” sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, said he closed the task force because he was con­cerned about its links to Eco­Health Alliance. . . . Eco­Health Alliance’s pres­i­dent, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recus­ing him­self from that role in June. Some oth­er mem­bers of the task force have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dr. Daszak or Eco­Health Alliance on projects. . . . .” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR#1206 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 13

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. . . .”

FTR#1205 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and The Kuomintang, Part 12

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.)

We also draw on anoth­er, alto­geth­er remark­able work by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Seagrave–Gold War­riors.

The Rape of Nanking–the sub­ject of Iris Chang’s best-sell­ing, non­fic­tion book, saw the begin­ning of the Gold­en Lily oper­a­tion.  The loot­ing of Chi­na (as well as the rest of Asia) by Japan and the sub­se­quent Amer­i­can fus­ing of the Japan­ese war loot into the clan­des­tine U.S. econ­o­my is undoubt­ed­ly a major irri­tant to the Chi­nese.

The loot­ing of Chi­na by Japan–and by exten­sion the U.S.–manifests on top of the cen­turies’ old loot­ing of that coun­try by Britain and the rest of the Euro­pean colo­nial pow­ers, the U.S. as a whole, the Chi­ang Kai-shek/­Green Gang alliance and the over­lap­ping Soong clan.

Chi­nese insis­tence on access to tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by firms estab­lish­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing con­cerns on their soil may be seen as an his­tor­i­cal reac­tion to what the coun­try was sub­ject­ed to at the hands of the above inter­ests.

In the pas­sage below, note the intel­lec­tu­al and cul­tur­al plun­der­ing of Chi­na by Japan, as well as the loot­ing of their eco­nom­ic wealth–a phe­nom­e­non of which the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion forces were aware and with which they ulti­mate­ly col­lud­ed.

Loot­ing of Chi­na was com­pound­ed by joint U.S. and Kuom­intang secret­ing of gold from soon to be Com­mu­nist-occu­pied Chi­na in the post-World War II peri­od (over­lap­ping the Chi­nese civ­il war.) This episode could be seen as an exten­sion of Chi­ang’s loot­ing of the gold of pri­vate investors from the Bank of Chi­na (with the active col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Green Gang) just before the Gen­er­alis­si­mo decamped for Tai­wan.

” . . . . As Chair­man Mao’s forces advanced through Chi­na in 1948 . . . Britain and the U.S. dread­ed the prospect that one of the world’s largest stocks of gold–worth $83-bil­lion at cur­rent prices–would fall into com­mu­nist hands. So it was decid­ed to extract the gold reserves from Chi­na before the com­mu­nists could seize them. The CIA pro­vid­ed the means for this bul­lion res­cue mis­sion . . . .”

Note that the joint U.S./Kuomintang loot­ing of gold from post­war Chi­na was done with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of ele­ments of CIA, as well as the Strate­gic Air Com­mand.

The Fed­er­al Reserve Notes and Fed­er­al Reserve Bonds were to be giv­en to Chi­nese finan­cial inter­ests hold­ing the gold in order to con­vince them to part with the bul­lion.

” . . . . These two CAT [Civ­il Air Transport–a CIA air­line lat­er renamed Air Amer­i­ca] B‑29s, loaded bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of FRNs and FRBs, were on their way to Malaysia on a round­about route to South­west­ern Chi­na by way of Thai­land and Bur­ma. . . .”

Note, also, that one of the air­craft in a U.S. flight that was downed in the Philip­pines by a typhoon was car­ry­ing ura­ni­um for pos­si­ble use in a “dirty bomb” attack on Chi­na.

” . . . . The B‑50, which had recent­ly been built by Boe­ing to car­ry nuclear weapons for the Strate­gic Air Com­mand (SAC), had a car­go of 117 can­is­ters of Ura­ni­um. At this time, Wash­ing­ton was seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing drop­ping “dirty bombs” on Red Chi­na and North Korea. . . .”

As not­ed above, Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek (nee Mae-ling Soong) were aware of the oper­a­tion and prof­it­ed from it: ” . . . . He [CAT and for­mer Fly­ing Tiger pilot Eric Shilling] gold us Gen­er­alis­si­mo and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek were ful­ly informed of the flights . . . . Shilling was invit­ed to the pres­i­den­tial palace where Mme. Chi­ang praised him, telling hi: ‘I did not go to bed until i knew that you had land­ed safe­ly. . . .”

One can but guess if Mme. Chi­ang’s con­cern for Shilling’s well being was ground­ed in the fact that she and Chi­ang ben­e­fit­ed great­ly from the FRNs that were involved in the oper­a­tion: ” . . . . A CIA friend told me that these FRNs were all over the world, not only in the Philip­pines. He said Chi­ang Kai-shek’s fam­i­ly owned large quan­ti­ties. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

Was T.L. Soong’s Trea­sury con­sul­tan­cy exe­cut­ed in con­junc­tion with the CAT gold extrac­tion mis­sion described above?

The pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of the results of an inves­ti­ga­tion ordered by Pres­i­dent Tru­man into the affairs of the Soong fam­i­ly and their klep­to­crat­ic asso­ciates in what became known as the “Chi­na Lob­by.”

An FBI probe into the family’s doings (and, by exten­sion, those of the Kuom­intang) yield­ed a report that was still heav­i­ly redact­ed in 1983 when the Sea­graves obtained a copy of it.

Pres­i­dent Tru­man summed up the find­ings of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Soongs, the Kungs and their asso­ciates: “ . . . . ‘They’re all thieves, every damn one of them. . . . They stole sev­en hun­dred and fifty mil­lion dol­lars out of the [$3.8] bil­lion that we sent to Chi­ang. They stole it, and it’s invest­ed in real estate down in Sao Paulo and some right here in New York. . . . And that’s the mon­ey that was used and is still being used for the so-called Chi­na Lob­by.’ . . . .”

Truman’s gaug­ing of the Soong family’s ill-got­ten gains was under­es­ti­ma­tion: “ . . . . In May of 1949, a few months after May-ling’s vis­it [May-ling Soong, aka Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek], Tru­man heard of alle­ga­tions made by bank­ing sources to mem­bers of Con­gress that the Soongs and Kungs actu­al­ly had $2 bil­lion salt­ed away in Man­hat­tan. . . .”

We note that even the FBI was dealt with in a less than can­did fash­ion by some of the banks that held Soong and Kung fam­i­ly deposits: “ . . . . ‘It would appear,’ an FBI agent not­ed lacon­i­cal­ly, ‘that high bank offi­cials had pre­pared a flat state­ment for issuance to the Bureau in this mat­ter.’. . .”

Even Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies were also less than enthu­si­as­tic about coop­er­at­ing with the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion: “ . . . . The FBI was reluc­tant to ask Trea­sury for a copy [of bureau­crat­ic forms sub­mit­ted by the Soong fam­i­ly] because it believed that senior Trea­sury offi­cials were close to T.V. and might reveal the inves­ti­ga­tion to him. [Recall that his broth­er T.L. may well have been a con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Department—D.E] . . .”

 The FBI also ran across evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries that may well have run from the clan­des­tine loot­ing of Chi­nese gold reserves described in the sec­ond major ele­ment of this pro­gram. “ . . . . On the West Coast, oth­er agents dis­cov­ered the cold trail of a Chi­nese plot to fly huge quan­ti­ties of gold from Chi­na to an out-of-the-way pri­vate air­port in the Los Ange­les sub­urb of Van Nuys. . . .”

Inves­ti­ga­tion of the digs of H.H. Kung’s fam­i­ly yield­ed some of the most sor­did infor­ma­tion. [H.H. was mar­ried to Ai-ling Soong, elder sis­ter of Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek and sis­ter to the Soong brothers—T.V., T.L. and T.A.]. “ . . . . Accord­ing to the news­pa­pers, sev­er­al Chi­nese ser­vants in the sum­mer had been brought from Hong Kong osten­si­bly to work in the Chi­nese Embassy found them­selves vir­tu­al pris­on­ers of the Kungs in Riverdale. [At that point in time, the Chi­nese Embassy would have been that of the Tai­wan-based Kuom­intang.] . . . . In des­per­a­tion, they escaped togeth­er, but were cap­tured and brought back. . . . the hap­less ser­vants were taught a les­son when they were hung from the ceil­ing and whipped. . .  H.H. Kung . . . did not deny any of his ser­vants’ . . . charges. . . .”

FTR#1204 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 11

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.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

We begin with fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the influ­ence of Time Inc.–the Hen­ry Luce pub­lish­ing empire–on Amer­i­can per­cep­tions of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime. Theodore White, who wrote for Time mag­a­zine had this obser­va­tion on the jour­nal’s edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy: “ . . . . Theodore White post­ed the fol­low­ing sign in the shack that served as the Time office in Chungk­ing: ‘Any resem­blance to what is writ­ten here and what is print­ed in Time Mag­a­zine is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal.’ This reflect­ed his increas­ing­ly pes­simistic atti­tude about his abil­i­ty, if not to change the course of China’s des­tiny, at least to keep the Amer­i­can pub­lic informed of the events as he and observers like [Gen­er­al Joseph] Stil­well, [State Depart­ment Offi­cer Jack] Ser­vice and [State Depart­ment offi­cial John Paton] Davies saw them . . . .”

When White lodged his com­plaints with Hen­ry Luce, the for­eign news edi­tor for Time was Whitak­er Cham­bers, best known as the accuser of Alger Hiss in the pro­ceed­ings which helped ele­vate Richard Nixon’s polit­i­cal career.

(In AFA#1, we not­ed that Cham­bers dis­played a life-size por­trait of Adolf Hitler in his liv­ing room. In AFA#2, we high­light­ed vehe­ment crit­i­cism of Cham­bers from a for­mer writer for Time, who spun sto­ries from reporters in the field to the far right, mak­ing sto­ries of the lib­er­a­tion of Euro­pean coun­tries by Allied sol­diers look like a creep­ing Com­mu­nist man­i­fes­ta­tion. The com­men­tary was in a let­ter protest­ing Ronald Rea­gan’s award­ing of a medal to Cham­bers. Rea­gan also ele­vat­ed Albert C. Wede­mey­er to a posi­tion of spe­cial mil­i­tary advi­sor.)

Dur­ing the last year of the war, Chi­ang Kai-shek retreat­ed into a world of debauch­ery, Green Gang cama­raderie and ide­o­log­i­cal delu­sion. The deba­cle cre­at­ed by Chi­ang is embod­ied in the star­va­tion of his own army con­scripts and his refusal to believe accounts of what was tak­ing place: “ . . . . So total­ly removed from real­i­ty did Chi­ang become that he was struck with dis­be­lief one day by rumors that his own sol­diers were drop­ping dead of star­va­tion in the streets. Cor­rup­tion was keep­ing them from being fed the barest rations. He sent his eldest son, CCK, to inves­ti­gate. When CCK report­ed back that it was true, Chi­ang insist­ed on see­ing for him­self. CCK showed him army con­scripts who had died in their bedrolls because of neglect. . . . The star­va­tion deaths con­tin­ued. In August 1944, the corpses of 138 stared sol­diers were removed from the streets of Chungk­ing. Chi­ang did not come out again to see. . . .”

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include: Cham­bers’ com­plete per­ver­sion of a sto­ry writ­ten by Theodore White about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the removal of Gen­er­al Stil­well (dis­cussed in FTR#1203); T.V. Soong’s con­tin­ued pres­ence in Chi­na, the only mem­ber of the fam­i­ly to remain in the coun­try after a failed “palace coup” dis­cussed in FTR#1203; T.V.‘s effec­tive con­trol of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s pub­lic per­sona and state­ments; T.V.‘s use of his posi­tion as Pre­mier to manip­u­late the dis­po­si­tion of Amer­i­can aid to his own ben­e­fit.

The scale of the cor­rup­tion char­ac­ter­iz­ing Chiang’s regime and the Soong clan that con­tin­ued to con­trol it was enor­mous. In addi­tion to the pirat­ing of Amer­i­can Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al shipped to Chi­na by the Soong fam­i­ly, as well as Chi­ang and his gen­er­als (who sold much of what they did not keep for them­selves to the Japan­ese invaders), post war Unit­ed Nations Relief suf­fered a sim­i­lar dis­po­si­tion.

“ . . . . After T.V. [Soong] was named Pre­mier, he cre­at­ed a spe­cial agency, the Chi­nese Nation­al Relief and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (CNRRA) to over­see the dis­tri­b­u­tion of UN relief goods. The deal he struck with the U.S. gov­ern­ment and the Unit­ed Nations was that UNRRA would relin­quish all title to sup­plies the moment the goods touched down on  any Chi­nese wharf. . . . The wharfs where most of these goods land­ed, the ware­hous­es where the goods were stored and the trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies that moved them (includ­ing Chi­na Mer­chants Steam Nav­i­ga­tion Com­pa­ny) were owned by Big-eared Tu [Tu Yueh-sheng]. This was a sit­u­a­tion ready-made for abuse. . . .”

Like many oth­er for­eign regimes, as well as domes­tic ele­ments of the pow­er elite, the Chiang/Soong/Green Gang klep­toc­ra­cy used the fear of Com­mu­nism to bilk the U.S. out of vast sums: “ . . . . Chi­ang was using the fear of a Com­mu­nist takeover to obtain mil­lions from the Unit­ed States. Fear served him well. . . .”

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The mon­u­men­tal rip-off of Chi­nese investors and finan­cial insti­tu­tions engi­neered by T.V. Soong with a scam launch­ing a gold-backed cur­ren­cy; the pan­ic that gripped Shang­hai and much of the rest of Chi­na as a result of the “gold yuan” scam; the gob­bling up of much of that wealth by the Soong and Kung fam­i­lies.

When Chi­ang made a woe­ful­ly belat­ed anti-cor­rup­tion drive—headed up by his son, CCK made the mis­take of arrest­ing David Kung (son of H.H. Kung and Ai-ling [Soong] and the nephew of Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek [nee Mae-ling Soong]) and the M.I.T.-educated stock bro­ker son of Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng: “ . . . . The son of Big-eared Tu, a grad­u­ate of the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, was tried and sen­tenced by CCK so fast that it was all over before any­one was dim­ly aware even that he had been arrest­ed. . . . He did not serve time, for that would have been press­ing his father a bit much. . . .”

Pre­sag­ing Hong Kong’s emer­gence as an aug­ment­ed epi­cen­ter of high-lev­el intrigue, Tu Yueh-sheng moved his assets there after the war: “ . . . . It was hard to con­cen­trate on reor­ga­niz­ing the old Shang­hai oper­a­tions when the reds were steam­rolling across Manchuria and mov­ing ever south­ward. Tu began shift­ing his assets to Hong Kong. . . .”

In the case of David Kung, Mme. Chi­ang inter­vened on his behalf and his Yangtze Devel­op­ment Corporation—a major focal point of corruption–moved to Flori­da: “ . . . . Pru­dent­ly, Mae ling hur­ried David onto a plane for Hong Kong, with con­tin­u­ing con­nec­tions to Flori­da. He was not to come back. Yangtze Devel­op­ment Corporation’s offices in Chi­na were closed down overnight and reopened in Mia­mi Beach. . . .”

Chi­ang then decamped to Tai­wan, where he sub­dued the island’s inhab­i­tants with char­ac­ter­is­tic bru­tal­i­ty: “ . . . . The island did not wel­come the KMT. It was dri­ven into sub­mis­sion by ter­ror. . . . Chi­ang forced Tai­wan to heel. There were mas­sacres; in the first, ten thou­sand Tai­wanese were slain by KMT troops in riots in down­town Taipei. Twen­ty thou­sand more were put to death before Chi­ang was firm­ly estab­lished. . . .”

FTR#1203 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and The Kuomintang, Part 10

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.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

We begin by resum­ing analy­sis of the polit­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al destruc­tion of U.S. mil­i­tary and State Depart­ment ele­ments that cor­rect­ly gauged Chi­ang Kai-shek and the [inevitable, down­ward] tra­jec­to­ry of his regime.

Just as Gen­er­al Still­well was removed as top mil­i­tary offi­cer in the China/Burma the­ater because of his appro­pri­ate, accu­rate, vehe­ment crit­i­cism of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of fight­ing the Com­mu­nists over fight­ing the Japan­ese, State Depart­ment offi­cers who accu­rate­ly fore­cast the deci­sive ascent of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty over the KMT were pun­ished for their stance.

(Stilwell’s replace­ment by Gen­er­al Wede­mey­er was noteworthy—particularly in light of the back­ground and behav­ior of Wede­mey­er.

In addi­tion to being part of a polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary milieu that infused iso­la­tion­ist ori­en­ta­tion toward involve­ment in World War II with pro-fas­cist sen­ti­ment, Wede­mey­er appears to have presided over an act of con­sum­mate treason—the leak of the Rain­bow Five Amer­i­can mobi­liza­tion plan for World War II to anti-FDR pub­lish­er Robert J. McCormick, of the Chica­go Tri­bune.)

The Chi­na watch­ers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “sub­ver­sive” dur­ing the anti-Com­mu­nist witch hunts of the McCarthy peri­od.

“ . . . . The eyes and ears of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment in Chunk­ing were a hand­ful of old Chi­na hands . . . . The Chi­na watch­ers’ mes­sage essen­tial­ly was that no mat­ter how much Wash­ing­ton want­ed Chi­ang Kai-shek to ‘run’ Chi­na, he was about to lose it to the Com­mu­nists. . . . The observers in Chungk­ing were accused of being in favor of what they predicted—in favor of com­mu­nism. In fact, they were only warn­ing their gov­ern­ment of a course of events that now seemed cer­tain. . . . Wash­ing­ton react­ed with deep sus­pi­cion and hos­til­i­ty and insist­ed on nail­ing the Amer­i­can flag the more tight­ly to the mast of Chiang’s sink­ing ship . . . .”

As we shall fur­ther explore, the cog­ni­tive per­cep­tion of Chi­na in this coun­try was shaped by the Soong fam­i­ly.

The Chi­na watch­ers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “sub­ver­sive” dur­ing the anti-Com­mu­nist witch hunts of the McCarthy peri­od.

“ . . . . Amer­i­can pol­i­cy was thus based upon the per­son­al­i­ties of the Chi­angs, the Soongs and the Kungs, rather than upon the events, the nation or the peo­ple. This was a trib­ute to the Soongs’ extra­or­di­nary stage­craft. . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave filed a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, which obtained an FBI report on the Soongs. Heav­i­ly redacted—even in 1985—it revealed the Soongs machi­na­tions on both sides of the Pacif­ic.

“ . . . . The Soong fam­i­ly . . . . ‘prac­ti­cal­ly had a death grip.’ The Soongs ‘have always been mon­ey mad and every move they made was prompt­ed by their desire to secure funds.’ . . . . ‘there was a gigan­tic con­spir­a­cy to defraud the Chi­nese from mate­ri­als they would ordi­nar­i­ly receive through [Lend-Lease] and to divert con­sid­er­able of this mon­ey to the Soong fam­i­ly.’. . .”

After dis­cussing the extreme mar­i­tal dif­fi­cul­ties of Chi­ang Kai-shek and Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek (the for­mer Mae-ling Soong, whose mar­riage to Chi­ang had been arranged by H. H. Kung and his Machi­avel­lian wife Ai-ling—the for­mer Ai-ling Soong), the infor­mant iden­ti­fies Mrs. Kung as the sin­is­ter, dead­ly and manip­u­la­tive fig­ure that she was.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the scale of the treach­er­ous, cor­rupt prac­tices of the clan was a diver­sion of Lend-Lease aid: “ . . . . The infor­mant then told the FBI that one of the ways T.V. divert­ed Lend-Lease funds into his own pock­et was illus­trat­ed by reports reach­ing Chunk­ing that a freighter car­ry­ing six­ty new Amer­i­can bat­tle tanks and oth­er very expen­sive war materiel fur­nished by Lend-Lease had been sunk. As a mat­ter of fact this ‘freighter nev­er left the West Coast with any tanks; the tanks were nev­er made . . . . this is a pos­i­tive illus­tra­tion of the man­ner in which the Soongs have been divert­ing funds from Lend-Lease inas­much as the mon­ey was allo­cat­ed for the 60 tanks. . . .”

Again, a key fac­tor in the polit­i­cal clout wield­ed by the Soongs was their extreme wealth, great­ly aug­ment­ed by insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion, includ­ing (and espe­cial­ly) T.V. Soong’s appro­pri­a­tion of much of the Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al des­ig­nat­ed for Chi­na.

In addi­tion to the out­right theft of Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al by Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Green Gang gen­er­al staff and their sale of much of that to the Japan­ese ene­my they were sup­pos­ed­ly fight­ing, T.V. Soong—using his broth­er T.L Soong’s admin­is­tra­tive con­trol of the Lend-Lease pro­gram for China—maneuvered hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of U.S. aid into the pri­vate cof­fers of the Soong fam­i­ly.

As the KMT regime decayed and rela­tions between the Soongs and Chi­ang fol­lowed suit, T. V. increas­ing­ly turned his ener­gies to the Amer­i­can side of the Pacif­ic, and appoint­ed T.L. to over­see the Amer­i­can side of Lend-Lease! “ . . . . T.V. used his posi­tion as For­eign Min­is­ter to issue his broth­er T.L. Soong a spe­cial diplo­mat­ic pass­port, and sent him hur­ried­ly to New York. T. L. was actu­al­ly being whisked out of Chi­na to take over as chief pur­chas­ing agent and admin­is­tra­tor of all U.S. Lend-Lease sup­plies before they left for Chi­na. Since the very begin­ning, T.L. had been in charge of Lend-Lease at the Chi­nese end. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger broth­er: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease dur­ing World II, and whose Amer­i­can roots were in New York City, became some­thing of an enig­ma. Sources in Wash­ing­ton said T.L. worked as a secret con­sul­tant to the Trea­sury Depart­ment in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Trea­sury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong what­ev­er. . . .”

The con­clud­ing seg­ments of the pro­gram are drawn on anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent work by the Sea­graves: Gold War­riors.

Before wind­ing up the broad­cast, we “dol­ly out” to syn­op­size the rela­tion­ship between the Japan­ese invaders of Chi­na, the Green Gang gang­sters, the Kuom­intang regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek which front­ed for the Green Gang and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Japan­ese, Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions and Japan­ese colo­nial inter­ests in Korea and Tai­wan.

This overview fore­shad­ows the polit­i­cal con­sor­tium that—in the post­war peri­od, became the Asian Peo­ples’ Anti-Com­mu­nist League, a key com­po­nent of what was to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng’s con­trol of Shanghai’s boom­ing gam­bling and over­lap­ping broth­el busi­ness­es; syn­op­tic review of the rela­tion­ship between Tu Yueh-sheng and the Green Gang and Chi­ang Kai-shek; Chiang’s sanc­tion­ing of Tu to con­trol the KMT’s drug traf­fick­ing; the sym­bi­ot­ic, coop­er­a­tive rela­tion­ship between the invad­ing Japan­ese and the Green Gang, cement­ed by Gen­er­al Doi­hara and Kodama Yoshio on the side of the invaders and Green Gang/KMT oper­a­tives the Ku broth­ers (one of whom was Tu’s har­bor boss in Shang­hai and the oth­er of whom was a top KMT gen­er­al); review of the Japan­ese devel­op­ment of the nar­cotics busi­ness in Manchuria; the Japan­ese use of their Manchuri­an nar­cotics enter­prise to sub­vert Chi­na by increas­ing the population’s addic­tion rate; review of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Manchurian/Japanese nar­cotics enter­prise; the role of Japan­ese zaibat­su and oth­er col­o­nized areas in the Japan­ese nar­cotics busi­ness.

“ . . . . The [opi­um] was con­vert­ed into mor­phine and hero­in at fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea and Tai­wan, then smug­gled direct­ly across the strait on motor­ized junks, to main­land ware­hous­es owned by Mit­sui, Mit­subishi and oth­er con­glom­er­ates. An army fac­to­ry in Seoul that pro­duced over 2,600 kilos of hero­in in 1938–1939 was only one of sev­er­al hun­dred fac­to­ries in Manchuria, Korea, Tai­wan, and in Japan­ese con­ces­sions in main­land cities like Han­kow. . . .”

We con­clude the pro­gram with 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.

FTR#1202 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 9

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.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

Tack­ling Amer­i­can ide­o­log­i­cal delu­sion vis a vis Chi­ang Kai-shek and the Kuom­intang, the broad­cast resumes analy­sis of the embrace of Chi­ang by the State Depart­ment and the allied U.S. press and the schism with the War Depart­ment (lat­er the Depart­ment of Defense.)

Chi­ang’s anti-Com­mu­nism endeared him to ele­ments of State, even–as we have seen–his obses­sion with fight­ing the CCP instead of the invad­ing Japan­ese was cor­rect­ly fore­cast by T.V. Soong, among oth­ers as dri­ving the Chi­nese peo­ple into the arms of the invaders.

” . . . . Washington–not as rep­re­sent­ed by Chief-of-Staff George C. Mar­shall but as typ­i­fied by FDR’s advi­sor Har­ry Hopkins–increasingly shared Chi­ang’s fix­a­tion with the post­war threat of Com­mu­nism. To please the Gen­er­alis­si­mo and his sup­port­ers in Amer­i­ca, the Wash­ing­ton of Hop­kins and the Depart­ment of State was pre­pared to sac­ri­fice any num­ber of its own peo­ple. . . .”

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to the replace­ment of the skilled, hero­ic Amer­i­can Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well and the polit­i­cal defen­es­tra­tion of the State Depart­men­t’s best “Chi­na Watch­ers,” we note the role of the con­sum­mate­ly pow­er­ful Soong fam­i­ly in shap­ing U.S. ide­o­log­i­cal delu­sion con­cern­ing Chi­ang Kai-shek.

It is a con­sum­mate irony that the dog­mat­ic anti-Com­mu­nists allied with Chi­ang and the Soongs were the ones who “Lost Chi­na,” as the McCarthyites and the Chi­na Lob­by put it. (Of course Chi­ang and the KMT them­selves were the prin­ci­pal agen­cies involved in said loss.)

The War Depart­ment as embod­ied by Chief-of-Staff Gen­er­al George C. Mar­shall did not share the infat­u­a­tion with Chi­ang, and sided with Chi­ang’s neme­sis, Gen­er­al Joseph Stilwell–the top U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cer in the China/Burma the­ater.

” . . . . Amer­i­ca failed to under­stand the trap it was falling into because the State Depart­ment was not lis­ten­ing to its Chi­na Watch­ers. Very few of their secret reports actu­al­ly reached the Sec­re­tary of State, because the rest were being inter­cept­ed by par­ti­sans inside the depart­ment hier­ar­chy. . . . Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion gath­ered by the FBI at the time, some­one high in the depart­ment was pass­ing this secret infor­ma­tion straight over to Chi­na Defense Sup­plies, to be read by T V. Soong and to be act­ed upon as he saw fit. So the Amer­i­cans sent to Chi­na to watch Chi­ang’s regime were report­ing to the Soong fam­i­ly, not to Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt. . . . At the War Depart­ment, the sit­u­a­tion was quite dif­fer­ent. Gen­er­al Mar­shall was sus­pi­cious of Chi­ang, and lis­tened to Stil­well’s warn­ings. . . .” 

Key ele­ments of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include: Joseph Alsop’s role as a Chiang/Soong par­ti­san; Alsop’s World War II role as the Chungk­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Lend-Lease pro­gram; Intro­duc­to­ry dis­cus­sion of T.L. Soong (younger broth­er of T.V.) and his role as first, admin­is­tra­tor of U.S. Lend-Lease in Chi­na and, lat­er, admin­is­tra­tor of Lend-Lease in the U.S. (this will be dealt with at greater length lat­er in the series); Alsop’s post­war career as a not­ed jour­nal­ist, close­ly linked to the CIA; Gen­er­al Claire Chen­nault’s hatred of Stil­well; review of Chen­nault’s role as leader of the Fly­ing Tigers (the Amer­i­can Vol­un­teer Group); Chennault’s asser­tion to FDR that his Four­teenth Air Force could use for­ward bases to dec­i­mate Japan­ese ship­ping; Stilwell’s cor­rect counter-asser­tion that the Japan­ese would sim­ply destroy the for­ward air bases upon which Chen­nault based his asser­tions; the 1944 Japan­ese offen­sive known as Oper­a­tion Ichi­go; the resound­ing suc­cess of the Japan­ese offen­sive; review (from our pre­vi­ous pro­gram) of KMT Gen­er­al T’ang En-po’s dis­as­trous com­mand of the Chi­nese forces oppos­ing the Japan­ese Ichi­go offen­sive; the view of the State Department’s Chi­na watch­ers and Vice-Pres­i­dent Hen­ry Wal­lace that Chi­ang Kai-shek could not suc­cess­ful­ly rule post­war Chi­na; the War Department’s tem­po­rary ele­va­tion of Gen­er­al Stil­well to com­mand the KMT armies in Chi­na; Chiang’s fierce and suc­cess­ful resis­tance of Chi­ang to Stilwell’s ele­va­tion; Chiang’s insis­tence on a quid-pro-quo for agree­ing to allow U.S. observers into the Com­mu­nist-con­trolled areas of China—an agree­ment that fea­tured the replace­ment of Stil­well with Major Gen­er­al Albert C. Wede­mey­er; Chiang’s insis­tence on the replace­ment of Ambas­sador Clarence Gauss; the deci­sive appoint­ment of Major Gen­er­al Patrick J. Hur­ley as Roosevelt’s per­son­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Chiang—an appoint­ment which led to Stilwell’s replace­ment with Wede­mey­er.

Stilwell’s replace­ment by Gen­er­al Wede­mey­er was noteworthy—particularly in light of the back­ground and behav­ior of Wede­mey­er.

The pro­gram recaps infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in AFA#11.

In addi­tion to being part of a polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary milieu that infused iso­la­tion­ist ori­en­ta­tion toward involve­ment in World War II with pro-fas­cist sen­ti­ment, Wede­mey­er was a chief sus­pect in an act of con­sum­mate treason—the leak of the Rain­bow Five Amer­i­can mobi­liza­tion plan for World War II to anti-FDR pub­lish­er Robert J. McCormick (of the Chica­go Tri­bune.) (As cel­e­brat­ed anti-fas­cist jour­nal­ist and researcher George Seldes has doc­u­ment­ed, the “iso­la­tion­ist” Amer­i­ca First orga­ni­za­tion received financ­ing from the Abwehr [Ger­man intel­li­gence dur­ing the Third Reich.])

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–Wedemeyer’s back­ground: “ . . . . he him­self had been edu­cat­ed in part at the Ger­man War Col­lege, in Berlin. He rent­ed his apart­ment from a mem­ber of the Nazi Par­ty, Ger­hard Ross­bach, and dur­ing his sojourn became a great friend of Gen­er­al Lud­wig Beck, chief of the Ger­man Gen­er­al Staff. . . . (Ross­bach was, in fact, the num­ber two man in the SA behind Ernst Rolm. As dis­cussed in AFA#11, Ross­bach went to work for the CIA after the war.–D.E.) . . . .Right­ly or wrong­ly, he was regard­ed by the Ger­man embasssy in Wash­ing­ton as part of the pro-Ger­man mil­i­tary clique in teh War Depart­ment. . . .”
2.–Wedemeyer’s asso­ci­a­tion with key per­son­nel on the Ger­man Gen­er­al staff: ” . . . . His intro­duc­tions to Beck were arranged by Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Friedrich von Boet­tich­er, Ger­man mil­i­tary attache in Wash­ing­ton. He cor­re­spond­ed reg­u­lar­ly withy his Ger­man con­tacts until the advent of World War II in Europe. . . .” 
3.–The Third Reich’s devel­op­ment of a Fifth Col­umn with­in its Amer­i­can coun­ter­part: ” . . . . The numer­ous mem­o­ran­da of Hans Thom­sen and Boet­tich­er to Berlin at the time indi­cate that a series of con­tacts had been estab­lished in this group held meet­ings at the home of for­mer Amer­i­can mil­i­tary attache in Berlin Colonel Tru­man Smith. Although pro-Ger­man and a sym­pa­thiz­er of Amer­i­ca First, Smith had the ear of Gen­er­al Mar­shall. . . .”
4.–The theft of the Rain­bow Five man­u­script by a U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cer. ” . . . . On the night of Decem­ber 3, 1941, an office attached to the War Plans Divi­sion decid­ed on his own account to con­sult some of the doc­u­ments at home. It was a sim­ple mat­ter to unlock the steel cab­i­net and remove the large expand­ing fold­er of sev­er­al hun­dred pages. That he was not autho­rized to do so is indi­cat­ed by the fact that he found it nec­es­sary to wrap the file in heavy brown paper, to make it look like a par­cel for mail­ing. . . .”
5.–The fact that Wede­mey­er under­lined the same pas­sages in his copy of the man­u­script as even­tu­al­ly found their way into the Chica­go Tri­bune piece: ” . . . . . Back in his office, Wede­mey­er faced a very unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tion. [J. Edgar] Hoover had dis­patched his num­ber-one man, Edward Tamm, to the office, and Tamm was stand­ing by an open fil­ing cab­i­net while Wede­mey­er’s sec­re­tary was sob­bing into her hands. One of Tam­m’s men was hold­ing a copy of the Vic­to­ry Pro­gram. The same pas­sages were under­lined in red by Wede­mey­er as appeared in the news­pa­pers . . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at 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.

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. . . .”