Biden and “BCCI Bipartisanship”
Joe Biden has had much to say about “bipartisanship” during his term so far. When he served on the Senate Banking Committee, he and GOP compatriot Orrin Hatch were recipients of funds from the terrorist and drug-dealing BCCI. The Committee did not investigate the bank. ” . . . . among later highly placed recipients of largesse from BCCI, its owners, and its affiliates were Ronald Reagan’s treasury secretary, James Baker, who declined to investigate BCCI, and Democratic Senator Joseph Biden and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, the ranking members of the Senate Judiciary committee, which declined to investigate BCCI. . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
Supplement to the Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek Series
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.
Golden Lily Veterans Involved with 1965 Indonesian Coup
The “Deep Politics” detailed by the brilliant Berkeley professor Peter Dale Scott in his opus “American War Machine” set forth the involvement Japanese war criminals Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in the Indonesian coup of 1965. That epic bloodletting saw the engineers of the event kill a million people (some put the toll as high as three million.) In addition to being prime movers behind the Unification Church, Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio were lynchpins of the perpetuation of the operational foundation of Japanese fascism under the auspices of the LDP in the postwar period. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
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 . . .”
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 communists.
” . . . . 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. . . .”
FTR#1201 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 8
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.)
The broadcast begins with review of the denouement of the Siang incident, detailed in FTR#1200.
Points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–Eventually, Chiang grudgingly agreed to the coalition, apparently after T.V. Soong saw to it that Chiang got a significant amount of money. “ . . . . The Young Marshal gallantly accepted all blame for the Sian Incident, allowing Chiang to wash his hands in public and wipe them on him. (Interestingly he was put up at T.V. Soong’s home in Nanking.) He had done China a historic service by bringing about the long-sought united front, whatever its later failings. . . .”
2.–Chiang’s reluctant agreement was trumpeted by Henry Luce: “ . . . . He put them [Chiang and Mme. Chiang] on the cover of Time’s first issue of 1938 as ‘Man and Wife of the Year.’ May-ling Soong Chiang now became an even bigger international celebrity. . . .”
3.–As was his wont, Chiang broke his promise to the Young Marshal and General Yang. Lauded by Henry Luce and his associates as an Exemplary Christian, Chiang promised an amnesty on Good Friday—a promise he promptly broke. “ . . . . In his Good Friday message to China that spring of 1937, Chiang referred to the Sian Incident and said piously, ‘Remembering that Christ enjoined us to forgive those who sin against us until seventy times seven and upon their repentance, I felt that that they should be allowed to start life anew. . . .”
3.–Similar treatment was afforded General Yang: “ . . . . The Young Marshal’s co-conspirator, General Yang, despite the Good Friday amnesty, was imprisoned when he came back from European exile and languished for eleven years in one of Tai Li’s special detention camps near Chungking. His wife went on a hunger strike in protest and was allowed to starve herself to death. . . .”
On his last trip through China before decamping to Taiwan, Chiang ordered the execution of General Yang and his surviving family: “ . . . . As long as he was in Chunking anyway, the Generalissimo stopped by police headquarters to finish off one remaining bit of ‘personal’ business. In the Chunking prison, there was still a prisoner who was very special. It was Yang Hu-Cheng, the warlord who had joined the Young Marshal to kidnap Chiang in the Sian Incident. . . . For eleven years, Yang, a son, and a daughter (along with a loyal secretary and his wife) languished in Tai-Li’s concentration camp outside Chunking. Now, before leaving China for good, Chiang made this special trip just to sign Yang’s death warrant. The old man, his son, his daughter, his secretary, and the secretary’s wife were all taken out and shot. . . .”
A signature episode in China’s World War II history is what became known as the New Fourth Army Incident.
Key points of analysis and discussion include:
1.–When the Chinese Communist Fourth Army, acting under the auspices of the accord wrested from Chiang at Sian, was preparing a campaign that would have disturbed a symbiotic relationship between the Japanese and Tu Yueh-sheng, it was ambushed by Kuomintang general Ku Chu‑t’ung. Ku Chu‑t’ung was the brother of Tu Yueh-sheng’s powerful harbor boss Ku Tsu-chuan. “ . . . . Chiang’s defense of China was being portrayed by T.V. Soong as a valiant defiance against Japanese hordes carried out assiduously by KMT generals. If so, it was proceeding in a curious fashion. Chiang was engaging in as little actual fighting as possible. . . . Chiang was husbanding his resources for a renewal of his war with the Communists. Once holed up in Chungking, he let the people fend for themselves. . . .”
2.–Worth noting in this context is the fact that Chinese troops were capable of defeating the Japanese in battle and enjoyed celebratory support from the country’s populace when they did so. This dynamic became central to the entreaties made (in vain) by General Joseph Stilwell later in the war and his subsequent dismissal and replacement: “ . . . . On only one occasion, a KMT army under General Li Tsung-jen proved that Chinese soldiers could whip the Japanese when they had the will to do so, in the battle of Taierchuang in April 1938. Th Japanese in this instance were badly beaten and the people of China were elated. But Chiang ordered the army not to pursue, and within weeks of Taierchuang the Japanese had recovered the initiative. . . .”
3.–Typical of the lethally incompetent conduct of the war by Chiang’s KMT armies was the Yellow River dikes incident. “ . . . . One of Chiang’s few attempts to slow the Japanese led him to dynamite the dikes on the Yellow River. Without warning of any kind, three provinces, eleven cities, and four thousand villages were flooded, two million people were made homeless, and all their crops were destroyed. The Japanese were only bogged down for three months. . . . Chiang’s government tried to put the blame on the Japanese and the Taiwan government continues to do so today. [1985—D.E.] . . .”
4.–Taking precedence over fighting the Japanese was Chiang’s political/military prioritization of waging civil war against the Communists: “. . . . By 1940–41, Chiang’s sphere of influence had shrunk while the Communists’ area had, expanded at the expense of the Japanese. In the red area, soldiers, guerillas, and peasants were fighting furiously and with results. But, each time the reds enlarged their perimeter, Chiang had his army attack the Communists instead of the Japanese, to keep his rivals from making territorial gains. It was a war within a war. Chiang had half a million soldiers occupied blockading the red area in the Northwest. . . .”
5.–Chiang’s anti-communist strategy reached an extreme with the New Fourth Army Incident. When a communist army moved into an area in which the Green Gang and Japanese had established a cooperative relationship, it was ambushed: “ . . . . Part of the United Front agreement involved putting Mao’s Red Army under joint KMT command. . . . In 1941, the [Communist] New Fourth Army was assigned to operate under joint KMT-CCP command along the south bank of the Yangtze River within the orbit of the Green Gang. . . .”
6.–Green Gang’s dope rackets had continued in the area: “ . . . . The gang’s operations had not seriously diminished because of the war. The gang operated under the Japanese occupation much as it had before, although Big-eared Tu, bearing the rank of general in the KMTR, widely moved to Chunking. In his absence, the Shanghai gang headquarters was left in the hands of Tu’s harbor boss, Ku Tsu-chuan. As a complement Generalissimo Chiang gave all military responsibilities for the lower Yangtze river to Ku’s brother, General Ku Chu‑t’ung. . . .”
7.–The New Fourth Army was going to move against a railway. “ . . . . This was an area in which there was cooperation between the Green Gang and the Japanese. In return for permitting its opium smuggling and underworld operations to go on uninterrupted, the Green Gang guaranteed the security of Japanese garrisons and enterprises in the Yangtze Valley. . . .”
7.–“ . . . . General Ku, in consultation with Chiang Kai-shek, decided that the New Fourth Army was a threat to this fiefdom. . . .”
8.–Taking a safer route—to avoid being sent to an area which would have fed them into a Japanese ambush, the New Fourth Army left key parts of its troops and support personnel behind.
9.–“ . . . . suddenly, early in January, 1941, General Ku fell upon it with a much greater force and massacred all but the headquarters contingent and its women cadres and nurses. All five thousand combat soldiers left behind as a guard were slain. According to survivors, the men of the headquarters staff were then butchered. The KMT general who had been commanding the New Fourth was arrested, while the CCP political commissar of the unit—who had escaped the 1927 Shanghai Massacre—was brutally murdered. Meanwhile the Communist nurses and women political cadres, many of them schoolgirls, were being and raped repeatedly by hundreds of soldiers. They were kept in army brothels near the attack site for a year and a half. The women contracted venereal diseases and some committed suicide, singly and with each other’s help. . . .”
10.–General Ku Chu‑t’ung was rewarded for this by Chiang, who made him commander-in-chief of al KMT armies.
The program then reviews General Ku Chu-t’ung’s collaboration with Kodama Yoshio and the Japanese to–among other things–re-sell them American Lend Lease goods that were flown Over the Hump or traveling via the equally perilous Burma Road.
T.V. Soong’s brother T.L. Soong was in charge of the Lend-Lease program to China during World War II.
The collaboration between the Japanese and the Kuomintang officer corps—who, it must be remembered, were also kingpins of the Green Gang criminal syndicate—was a consistent pattern. The KMT avoided fighting the Japanese whenever possible, and formed commercial relationships with the invaders: “ . . . . bartering American Lend-Lease materials for Japanese consumer goods. Fortunes were made. The only KMT armies that did fight were those under Stilwell’s control in Burma . . . .”
Embodying the corruption that was part and parcel to the Kuomintang military’s officer corps (minted at the Whampoa academy), was General T’ang En-po. In addition to his collaboration with the Japanese invaders, he viewed his military commission as license to steal and betray the men under his command, as well as China and the American and other Allies with which Chiang was officially arrayed.
Key points of discussion and analysis:
1.–General Tang En-po’s close association with the Ku brothers and the Green Gang.
2.–General Tang En-po’s role in blowing up the Yellow River dikes.
3.–His bartering of American Lend-Lease materials to the Japanese.
4.–His plundering of the peasants in areas under his military command.
5.–His theft of pay from the troops under his command.
6.–His army’s total capitulation to the Japanese when the invaders launched their Operation Ichigo offensive of 1944.
7.–General Tang En-po was rewarded by Chiang with the command of 14 KMT divisions comprising the Third Front Army.
8.–His cozy relationship with the Japanese who surrendered to his army at the war’s end.
Although the U.S. political leadership—as a whole—were blind to Chiang’s fascism, anti-democratic behavior and the institutionalized corruption of his regime, the same was not true of many U.S. fighting men.
One of Chiang’s detractors was a celebrated Marine Corps flier and member of Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers named Gregory “Pappy” Boyington.
Boyington despised Chiang, Mme. Chiang and was loath to die in a P‑40 for someone he recognized as a tyrant.
When the Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang visited the base of the American Volunteer Corps (“The Flying Tigers”), Boyington and several of his fellow “Tigers” got liquored up and buzzed Chiang and wife, forcing both to “hit the deck.”
There was a prime-time TV series crafted on the template of Boyington’s Marine Corps squadron called “Ba, Ba Black Sheep” with the late Robert Conrad playing Pappy Boyington.
Among the vehement critics of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek were U.S. flyers who had to make the run “Over the Hump”—the dangerous air supply route that crossed the Himalayas.
(As we have already seen, U.S. Lend Lease material that was flow through that route into China was often sold to the Japanese enemy by corrupt Kuomintang officers, politicians and Green Gang functionaries.)
Flying “Over the Hump” caused high casualties among Army Air Corps flyers, and when they discovered the luxury items that Mme. Chiang included in her personal baggage, they were outraged. That outrage found expression.
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