FTR#‘s 1351 & 1352 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 25 & 26

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams con­tin­ue (from FTR#‘s 1349 & 1350)  explo­ration of the his­to­ry of U.S. involve­ment with Asian fas­cism from the pre-World War II peri­od until the present.

Crit­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on U.S. cap­i­tal sup­port for Japan­ese fas­cism and Japan’s cen­turies-long sub­ju­ga­tion of Korea may be found in FTR#‘s 905 and 1141.

FTR#‘s 1349 & 1350 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 23 & 24

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams con­tin­ue (from FTR#‘s 1345 & 1346)  explo­ration of the his­to­ry of U.S. involve­ment with Asian fas­cism from the pre-World War II peri­od until the present.

Crit­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on U.S. cap­i­tal sup­port for Japan­ese fas­cism and Japan’s cen­turies-long sub­ju­ga­tion of Korea may be found in FTR#‘s 905 and 1141.

1. It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tain­ly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Com­mu­nist League) were involved.

The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Dick Rus­sell; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 684.

 . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . .I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Naz­i’s [sic], and that is who is in pow­er in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­i­ca is also full of these Naz­i’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­ri­or motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .

2. 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.

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

 . . . . 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? . . . .

3a. The shoot­ing war in Asia did not end with V‑J Day.

The Night­mare Decade: The Life and Times of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy by Fred J. Cook; Copy­right 1971 by Fred J. Cook; Ran­dom House [HC]; ISBN 0–394-46270‑x; p. 219.

. . . . When the war end­ed, Chi­na was in utter chaos. Thou­sands of Japan­ese troops wan­dered around the coun­try­side, ful­ly armed, with no one accept­ing their sur­ren­der. John F. Mel­by [a State Depart­ment offi­cer], in a day-by-day diary he kept at the time, reflect­ed in bewil­der­ment upon this anom­aly. On Decem­ber 27, 1945, he not­ed: “I still don’t under­stand about the Japan­ese. Offi­cial­ly they are being dis­armed, but the fact is they nev­er seem to be. In Shang­hai, fif­teen thou­sand still walk the streets with full equip­ment. In Nanking, the high Japan­ese gen­er­als are bosom bud­dies of the Chi­nese. In the north, tens of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers are used to guard rail­roads and ware­hous­es and to fight the Com­mu­nists. If you ask what this is all about, the answer is either a denial or in more can­did moments a ‘Shh, we don’t talk about that.’ ” In anoth­er entry on Jan­u­ary 30, 1947, a good six­teen months after V‑J Day, Mel­by not­ed that, though it was being kept “very qui­et,” there were “eighty thou­sand hold­out Japan­ese troops in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria, who are ful­ly equipped, fight­ing the Com­mu­nists.” . . . .

3b. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Machii Hisayu­ki (head of the Kore­an Yakuza in Japan) in Seoul South Korea on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . 

3c. Japan’s loot­ing of Korea took place over cen­turies. In Gold War­riors, the Sea­graves present the his­to­ry of Japan’s rape of Korea, begin­ning with their account of the gris­ly mur­der of Kore­an Queen Min in 1894. (For more about the Japan­ese con­quest, sub­ju­ga­tion and loot­ing of Korea, see FTR#1141.) ” . . . . the defense­less queen was stabbed and slashed repeat­ed­ly, and car­ried wail­ing out to the palace gar­den where she was thrown onto a pile of fire­wood, drenched with kerosene, and set aflame. An Amer­i­can mil­i­tary advi­sor, Gen­er­al William Dye, was one of sev­er­al for­eign­ers who heard and saw the killers milling around in the palace com­pound with dawn swords while the queen was burned alive. . . .”

A snap­shot of the Japan­ese colo­nial occu­pa­tion of Korea, a focal point of crit­i­cism of the late Park Won-soon:” . . . . [Gen­er­al] Ter­auchi was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly bru­tal, set­ting a prece­dent for Japan­ese behav­ior in all the coun­tries, it would occu­py over com­ing decades. Deter­mined to crush all resis­tance, he told Kore­ans, ‘I will whip you with scor­pi­ons!’ He set up a sadis­tic police force of Kore­an yakuza, order­ing it to use tor­ture as a mat­ter of course, for ‘no Ori­en­tal can be expect­ed to tell the truth except under tor­ture’. These police were close­ly super­vised by Japan’s gestapo, the kem­peitai. . . . ‘Japan’s aim,’ said Kore­an his­to­ri­an Yi Kibeck, ‘was to erad­i­cate con­scious­ness of Kore­an nation­al iden­ti­ty, roots and all, and thus to oblit­er­ate the very exis­tence of the Kore­an peo­ple from the face of the earth.’ . . . the penin­su­la was stripped of every­thing from art­works to root veg­eta­bles. As Korea now belonged to Japan, the trans­fer of cul­tur­al property—looting—was not theft. How can you steal some­thing that already belongs to you? . . .”

4. Top­ics and Points of Dis­cus­sion For Inclu­sion in this series: The Cab­i­net Research Offi­cer next to Ruby at the press con­fer­ence; Gen­er­al Arisue and his myr­i­ad con­nec­tions; Tsu­ji Masanobu and his links to Arisue, the Bataan Death March and also high­light­ing the death of Iris Chang in this dis­cus­sion; Both Syn­g­man Rhee’s and Ngo Dinh Diem’s work for the Japan­ese; The use of the Uighurs by the Japan­ese and their imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors; The divid­ing of Korea at the 38th par­al­lel by Col’s David Dean Rusk and Bon­es­teel; Rusk’s work for Admi­ral Hil­lenkoet­ter at CIA, as well as any oth­er intel­li­gence links you have for him (There was at least anoth­er, but I can’t remem­ber if off the top of my head); Colonel Bonesteel’s lat­er work in Viet­nam as a Gen­er­al and for CIA; Gen­er­al Kim Sook Won and his work as a “Ban­dit Hunter;” Kim Sook Won’s role as com­man­der of Syn­g­man Rhee’s bor­der forces; We will dis­cuss I.F. Stone’s Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kore­an War, not­ing that it appears that South Korea attacked first, bat­ing the North to coun­ter­at­tack; What the Kore­an War did strate­gi­cal­ly for MacArthur & Company—precluding an attack by Mao’s forces on Formosa/Taiwan, as well as solid­i­fy­ing Rhee’s posi­tion in South Korea (which might have been end­ed by a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum); JFK’s cut­ting loose of Syn­g­man Rhee and his White Terror—undoubtedly anoth­er major rea­son for his assas­si­na­tion; Willough­by, of course; Jim Wilcott and the Japan­ese fas­cists with whom he worked; Oswald in Japan and E. Howard Hunt’s role in covert oper­a­tions in Japan; Review of JFK’s attempts to extri­cate us from Viet­nam; Eisuke Ono’s role as a Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence pay­mas­ter in the U.S. in1933; Fred­er­ick Rutland’s work for Mit­subishi and the oper­a­tional links to Kodama Yoshio and Arisue (Rut­land was the guy Ono was pay­ing); The posi­tion of Ono in the post-WWII bank­ing milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Gold­en Lily—The links to Tiarks, Nor­bert Bog­dan and the role of the Bank of Tokyo as the suc­ces­sor to the Yoko­hama Specie Bank.

FTR#‘s 1345 & 1346 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 19 and 20

These pro­grams begin an explo­ration of the his­to­ry of U.S. involve­ment with Asian fas­cism from the pre-World War II peri­od until the present.

Crit­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on U.S. cap­i­tal sup­port for Japan­ese fas­cism and Japan’s cen­turies-long sub­ju­ga­tion of Korea may be found in FTR#‘s 905 and 1141.

1. It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tain­ly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Com­mu­nist League) were involved.

 . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . .I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Naz­i’s [sic], and that is who is in pow­er in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­i­ca is also full of these Naz­i’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­ri­or motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .

The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Dick Rus­sell; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 684.

2. 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? . . . .

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

3a. The shoot­ing war in Asia did not end with V‑J Day.

. . . . When the war end­ed, Chi­na was in utter chaos. Thou­sands of Japan­ese troops wan­dered around the coun­try­side, ful­ly armed, with no one accept­ing their sur­ren­der. John F. Mel­by [a State Depart­ment offi­cer], in a day-by-day diary he kept at the time, reflect­ed in bewil­der­ment upon this anom­aly. On Decem­ber 27, 1945, he not­ed: “I still don’t under­stand about the Japan­ese. Offi­cial­ly they are being dis­armed, but the fact is they nev­er seem to be. In Shang­hai, fif­teen thou­sand still walk the streets with full equip­ment. In Nanking, the high Japan­ese gen­er­als are bosom bud­dies of the Chi­nese. In the north, tens of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers are used to guard rail­roads and ware­hous­es and to fight the Com­mu­nists. If you ask what this is all about, the answer is either a denial or in more can­did moments a ‘Shh, we don’t talk about that.’ ” In anoth­er entry on Jan­u­ary 30, 1947, a good six­teen months after V‑J Day, Mel­by not­ed that, though it was being kept “very qui­et,” there were “eighty thou­sand hold­out Japan­ese troops in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria, who are ful­ly equipped, fight­ing the Com­mu­nists.” . . . .

The Night­mare Decade: The Life and Times of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy by Fred J. Cook; Copy­right 1971 by Fred J. Cook; Ran­dom House [HC]; ISBN 0–394-46270‑x; p. 219.

3b. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Machii Hisayu­ki (head of the Kore­an Yakuza in Japan) in Seoul South Korea on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . 

4. Top­ics and Points of Dis­cus­sion For Inclu­sion in this series: The Cab­i­net Research Offi­cer next to Ruby at the press con­fer­ence; Gen­er­al Arisue and his myr­i­ad con­nec­tions; Tsu­ji Masanobu and his links to Arisue, the Bataan Death March and also high­light­ing the death of Iris Chang in this dis­cus­sion; Both Syn­g­man Rhee’s and Ngo Dinh Diem’s work for the Japan­ese; The use of the Uighurs by the Japan­ese and their imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors; The divid­ing of Korea at the 38th par­al­lel by Col’s David Dean Rusk and Bon­es­teel; Rusk’s work for Admi­ral Hil­lenkoet­ter at CIA, as well as any oth­er intel­li­gence links you have for him (There was at least anoth­er, but I can’t remem­ber if off the top of my head); Colonel Bonesteel’s lat­er work in Viet­nam as a Gen­er­al and for CIA; Gen­er­al Kim Sook Won and his work as a “Ban­dit Hunter;” Kim Sook Won’s role as com­man­der of Syn­g­man Rhee’s bor­der forces; We will dis­cuss I.F. Stone’s Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kore­an War, not­ing that it appears that South Korea attacked first, bat­ing the North to coun­ter­at­tack; What the Kore­an War did strate­gi­cal­ly for MacArthur & Company—precluding an attack by Mao’s forces on Formosa/Taiwan, as well as solid­i­fy­ing Rhee’s posi­tion in South Korea (which might have been end­ed by a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum); JFK’s cut­ting loose of Syn­g­man Rhee and his White Terror—undoubtedly anoth­er major rea­son for his assas­si­na­tion; Willough­by, of course; Jim Wilcott and the Japan­ese fas­cists with whom he worked; Oswald in Japan and E. Howard Hunt’s role in covert oper­a­tions in Japan; Review of JFK’s attempts to extri­cate us from Viet­nam; Eisuke Ono’s role as a Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence pay­mas­ter in the U.S. in1933; Fred­er­ick Rutland’s work for Mit­subishi and the oper­a­tional links to Kodama Yoshio and Arisue (Rut­land was the guy Ono was pay­ing); The posi­tion of Ono in the post-WWII bank­ing milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Gold­en Lily—The links to Tiarks, Nor­bert Bog­dan and the role of the Bank of Tokyo as the suc­ces­sor to the Yoko­hama Specie Bank.

R.I.P. Daniel Hopsicker

Over many years, it was Mr. Emory’s priv­i­lege and hon­or to have inter­viewed Daniel Hop­sick­er fre­quent­ly and at length. In the wake of his pass­ing from can­cer on 8/22/2023 at the age of 72, we mourn the loss of this pro­fes­sion­al, and yet can be very glad for his hav­ing shared his work with us. Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

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. . . .”