FTR#‘s 1309 and 1310 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Parts 3 and 4

These broad­casts sup­ple­ment FTR#‘s 509, 1107 and 1108.

Sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions of the lat­ter two broad­casts are recapped in these pro­grams and this descrip­tion.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–Iris Chang’s moth­er, Ying-Ying Chang, could not rule out the “dark con­spir­a­cy” that Iris was fac­ing. Ying-Ying’s point of view was shaped, in part, by Steven Clemons’ obser­va­tions.
2.–In an appen­dix titled “Requiem for Iris Chang,” Steven Clemons not­ed the alleged “sui­cide” of his asso­ciate Juzo Ita­mi, who was bat­tling the same forces as Iris Chang. “I have nev­er bought the sto­ry about Juzo Ita­mi, who was at war in his films with the Japan­ese right-wing crowd and yakuza.”
3.–Iris’ best-known work, “The Rape of Nanking”, inspired a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing Japan­ese com­pen­sa­tion for those who had been com­pelled to labor as slaves and slave pros­ti­tutes or “com­fort women.”
4.–Iris was work­ing on a book and doc­u­men­tary film project about the sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March. Some of those vet­er­ans had been used as slave labor­ers by Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing the war. The Bataan Death March vet­er­ans were among those who sued the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions that had enslaved them.
5.–The pre­sid­ing judge ruled against the vet­er­ans and for the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions. On the day of Iris’ “sui­cide” Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger was meet­ing with Japan­ese busi­ness­men to pro­mote Cal­i­for­nia-Japan­ese trade.
6.–In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber of 2001, Iris spoke at a con­fer­ence assem­bled to protest the cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of the U.S./Japanese treaty of 1951 (nego­ti­at­ed by John Fos­ter Dulles). Iris called “the San Fran­cis­co Peace Treaty a trav­es­ty of jus­tice, a betray­al of our own Amer­i­can vet­er­ans.” Recall the con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion passed in the after­math of, and because of The Rape of Nanking.
7.–After watch­ing a spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion between Iris and the Japan­ese ambas­sador to the U.S., a friend of Iris’ father advised her to hire a body­guard.
8.–As will be not­ed at greater length below, Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion and had writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles crit­i­cal of his poli­cies.
9.–Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and had tak­en stances against many fea­tures of his for­eign pol­i­cy, Bush’s inva­sion of Iraq in par­tic­u­lar. Iris had long opposed all forms of racism in this coun­try.
10.–Sadly, many of those close to Iris dis­missed her fears con­cern­ing the government’s tar­get­ing of her and the over­lap­ping ide­o­log­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty and tar­get­ing of her by the Japan­ese right-wing. The his­tor­i­cal and oper­a­tional over­lap between the two is fun­da­men­tal and is explored in some of the mate­r­i­al below.
11.–When she trav­eled to Louisville, Ken­tucky to inter­view sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March, she felt she was under phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance and harass­ment. We note below that Ken­tucky was a place where Bush con­fi­dant William Stamps Far­ish III had pow­er­ful con­nec­tions.
12.–During her book tour for The Rape of Nanking, Iris was approached by some­one she felt was recruit­ing her. He said “You will be safer to join us.” Was this and attempt at recruit­ment by the CIA?
13.–We repeat the infor­ma­tion in #11, for pur­pos­es of empha­sis.
14.–Iris was con­vinced to her dying day that she was the focal point of hos­til­i­ty from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A remake of the movie The Manchuri­an Can­di­date height­ened her anx­i­ety. Her arti­cles crit­i­cal of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and, as we have and shall see, the over­lap­ping dynam­ics of her work on The Rape of Nanking and Gold War­riors fur­ther deep­ened her per­il. She first pur­chased a firearm for pro­tec­tion and was hop­ing that John Ker­ry would defeat Bush in 2004.
15.–Despite the fact that Iris’ corpse was found in her car in the ear­ly morn­ing, her par­ents weren’t noti­fied of her death until almost mid­night. Why?
16.–Iris’ corpse was dis­cov­ered ear­ly in the morn­ing with her head against the driver’s side win­dow, her hands crossed in her lap and the gun on her left leg. While not phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble, this is alto­geth­er unlike­ly for some­one who had alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide by fir­ing a pow­er­ful hand gun into her mouth. She felt that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” while those around her thought they were “inter­nal,” i.e. “all in her head.”
17.–Same as 16.
18.–Iris’ ordeal was remark­ably sim­i­lar to what Rita Katz endured fol­low­ing her work on Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion.
19.–George W. Bush was pur­su­ing Philip­pine Gold­en Lily loot in order to increase U.S. gold reserves and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, to for­ti­fy his blind trust. That trust was over­seen by William Stamps Far­ish III, who had con­sid­er­able polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic grav­i­tas in the state of Ken­tucky.
20.–Bush’s Harken Ener­gy may well have served as a mon­ey laun­der­ing front, per­haps for some of the gold recov­ered in the Philip­pines. We note that a direc­tor of Harken, Talat Oth­man, inter­ced­ed direct­ly with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 raids. The SAAR net­work was a pri­ma­ry tar­get of those raids: we have seen how Rita Katz and her fel­low inves­ti­ga­tors came under sur­veil­lance and harass­ment for dig­ging into that case.
21.–We revis­it the deep pol­i­tics of the Bush fam­i­ly, the fam­i­ly of Dou­glas MacArthur and William and Alan Quasha.
22.–More about the deep pol­i­tics of the Philip­pines, the Bush fam­i­ly, father and son Quasha, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Alan Quasha’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Harken Ener­gy may be deriv­a­tive of the clan­des­tine acqui­si­tion of Gold­en Lily loot.
23.–The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the oper­a­tions of Gold­en Lily and their involve­ment with things Iris was inves­ti­gat­ing. The Rape of Nanking marked the for­mal begin­ning of Gold­en Lily.
24.–Colonel Tsu­ji Masanobu was heav­i­ly involved with Gold­en Lily and the Bataan Death March, the sur­vivors of which were a focal point of Iris Chang’s research at the time of her death.

Latest Patreon Talks: Comparison with Japanese Pre-WWII Child-Rearing and Contemporary American Behavior; Reflections on Death of Ayman Al-Zawahiri

In the lat­est Patre­on talks–three, one-hour pre­sen­ta­tions per week–Mr. Emory com­pares the mil­i­tary incul­ca­tion of Japan­ese youth in the pre-World War II peri­od with the sub­mer­sion of Amer­i­can boys in a cog­ni­tive mil­i­tary cul­ture pre­sent­ed by movies, TV, video-games and the Inter­net. In addi­tion, we review the role of Mohammed Al-Zawahiri–the late Ayman’s brother–with the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, al-Qae­da, and the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beng­hazi. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. 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.

Memorial Day Weekend Special on KFJC-FM

On Sun­day, 5/29, from 7 until 10pm and Mon­day, 5/30, from 6 until 7pm, KFJC-FM observes Memo­r­i­al Day Week­end by fea­tur­ing Dave Emory’s research on the fun­da­men­tal inter­re­la­tion­ship of fas­cism, mon­ey, war and mur­der. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. 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.

FTR#1214 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 21

This pro­gram con­cludes the series.

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

Next, the pro­gram high­lights key aspects of the career of Ching-Ling Soong, aka Mme. Sun Yat-sen.

Sis­ter of Ai-Ling (aka Mme. H.H. Kung), Mae-ling (aka Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek) and T.V., T.A. and T.L. Soong, she had a long and remark­able career. 

For the pur­pos­es of this descrip­tion, we re-print mate­r­i­al from FTR#1202.

The fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a per­sis­tent crit­ic of Chi­ang Kai-shek, was pre­dictable.

Dis­il­lu­sioned with Com­mu­nism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen part­nered with Teng Yen-ta, who rec­og­nized Chi­ang’s fas­cism and, yet, felt that the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (at that point in time) was over­ly loy­al to Moscow and was­n’t doing enough for the Chi­nese peas­antry.

Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alter­na­tive to both Kuom­intang fas­cism and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

Find­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism pro­posed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unac­cept­able, Chi­ang had the British and Amer­i­can police author­i­ties arrest him in the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ces­sion in Shang­hai, after which he was tor­tured for many months.

Ching-ling was report­ed to have vis­it­ed Chi­ang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chi­ang had  already dealt with him in char­ac­ter­is­tic fash­ion: “ . . . . Days ear­li­er, on Novem­ber 29, 1931, near­ly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been tak­en from his cell at Chiang’s com­mand and was slow­ly stran­gled with a wire. The exe­cu­tion­er was said to be famous for keep­ing vic­tims alive for half an hour while he tight­ened his grip. In his office, Chi­ang had remained silent while Ching-ling plead­ed for a man already dead, enjoy­ing the spec­ta­cle of her momen­tary vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. . . .”

Next, we recount Mme. Sun’s encounter with a Kuomintang/Green Gang agent.

After rebuff­ing his polit­i­cal approach, Mme. Sun Yat-sen demol­ished his  polit­i­cal per­sona.

. . . . “Soong: ‘There is only one way to silence me, Mr. Tai. Shoot me or imprison me. If you don’t then it sim­ply means that you admit you are not wrong­ly accused. But what­ev­er you do, do it open­ly like me, don’t . . . sur­round me with spies.’

Tai: ‘I shall call again upon my return from Nanking.

Soong: ‘Fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions would be useless—the gulf between us is too wide.’

As Tai Ch’i‑tao and his wife left, the old man turned and—his tongue flick­ing over dry lips (he was a very ner­vous man)—hissed out a part­ing bit of ven­om: ‘If you were any­one but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.’

Ching-ling smiled. ‘If you were the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies you pre­tend to be, you’d cut it off any­way.’. . .”

Infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ster­ling Seagrave–of which Mr. Emory was not pre­vi­ous­ly aware–indicates that the CCP is more nuanced than Amer­i­cans have been led to believe.

Although resist­ing mem­ber­ship in the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and attempt­ing to re-start the Third Option on the eve of Chi­ang’s capit­u­la­tion and flight to Tai­wan, Mme. Sun Yat-sen was installed as one of three Vice-Chair­men of the gov­ern­ment.

Again, this is not some­thing of which Mr. Emory was aware until read­ing this book.

“ . . . . Ching-ling sold many of her remain­ing pos­ses­sions to sup­port pro­grams of the Chi­na Wel­fare League she had found­ed. In 1948, with the Chi­ang regime ready to flee and the Com­mu­nists on their way to vic­to­ry, she took part in a last attempt to orga­nize an alter­na­tive to both com­mu­nism and fascism—a new ver­sion of the Third Force. It was called the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mit­tee, and Ching-ling was named its hon­orary chair­man. Its con­stituen­cy was the pow­er­less. . . .”

“ . . . . When the People’s Repub­lic came into exis­tence, Ching-ling became one of the three non-Com­mu­nist polit­i­cal lead­ers cho­sen as Vice-Chair­men of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in Peking. . . .”

Mme. Sun (Ching-ling Soong) man­i­fest­ed a strong­ly inde­pen­dent ide­o­log­i­cal stance, which, while anti-fas­cist and anti-impe­ri­al­ist, sought (as we have seen) a “Third Force” or “Third Option” between Com­mu­nism and Chi­ang’s nar­co-fas­cism.

That inde­pen­dence of mind, demon­strat­ed through decades of social strug­gle, plus out­right jeal­ousy on the part of Madame Mao led to defama­tion and per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, with Mme. Sun nar­row­ly escap­ing the rav­ages of the Red Guard.

“ . . . . Dur­ing the Red Guard ram­pages of the 1960’s, the job of pro­tect­ing Madame Sun became nerve-rack­ing. Posters appeared denounc­ing her, and it was not safe for her to go any­where. . . .”

“ . . . . In the sum­mer of 1966, Pre­mier Chou En-lai was forced to warn the Red Guards to cease their ver­bal attacks on Madame Sun, and to stop putting up posters accus­ing her of being a bour­geois reac­tionary. On Sep­tem­ber 21, 1966, in Shang­hai where the Red Guard move­ment fre­quent­ly got out of con­trol, a mob stormed Ching-ling’s house on the Avenue Jof­fre and loot­ed it. Ching-ling was not in Shang­hai at the time. She let the inci­dent pass with­out com­ment. Her chief adver­sary was the wife of Chair­man Mao, who appar­ent­ly resent­ed the fact that Ching-ling was always men­tioned as the woman of high­est rank in Chi­na.

“ . . . . When the Red Guard move­ment abat­ed, and Madame Mao and the cel­e­brat­ed Gang of Four were tried in a people’s court as coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, Ching-ling’s life set­tled back into a tran­quil twi­light. . . .”

“ . . . . On May 16, 1981, Soong Ching-ling was named hon­orary Pres­i­dent of Chi­na. . . . She suc­cumbed to leukemia on May 29, 1981, in her Peking home. . . . But, in an inter­view once with writer Han Suyin, Ching-ling put into words the lega­cy she had learned most bit­ter­ly from the time of the Soongs:

The Soong Dynasty con­cludes with an epi­logue which is note­wor­thy in sev­er­al respects. The prose is of a char­ac­ter that one does not see any­more. Elo­quent, poignant, pas­sion­ate and yet, at the same time, bit­ing­ly, iron­i­cal­ly humor­ous, Seagrave’s writ­ing is remark­able in, and of, itself.

Beyond the prose, the epi­logue is remark­able for the elab­o­rate his­tor­i­cal metaphor that it presents: dis­cus­sion of the cor­rup­tion and bru­tal­i­ty of the late Manchu Dynasty and the Dowa­ger Empress, whom Sea­grave refers to as “The Old Bud­dha.” (He lat­er pub­lished a vol­ume about her reign titled The Drag­on Lady.)

Seagrave’s dis­cus­sion of the Dowa­ger Empress’s intrigues and bru­tal mur­der of the Pearl Con­cu­bine con­sti­tutes a metaphor for the lethal, con­sum­mate­ly cor­rupt gov­ern­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his pup­pet mas­ters, the Soongs.

As for­eign armies were approach­ing Peking dur­ing the Box­er Rebel­lion, “The Old Bud­dha” made arrange­ments to flee the palace known as The For­bid­den City, don­ning a dis­guise and tak­ing the Emper­or with her.

When the Emper­or sought to remain in Peking to nego­ti­ate with the for­eign armies and enlist­ed the assis­tance of his favorite consort—the Pearl Concubine—in order to per­suade the Dowa­ger Empress.

The Pearl Con­cu­bine had resist­ed con­form­ing to the will of the Dowa­ger Empress, and “The Old Bud­dha” took this occa­sion to elim­i­nate this ele­ment of resis­tance to her palace intrigues, a long­time obsta­cle to her polit­i­cal orders.

“ . . . . The Pearl Con­cu­bine had been a thorn in the Dowager’s side, inter­fer­ing with palace intrigues by giv­ing inde­pen­dent advice to the Emper­or. It was time to dis­pose of her. The Dowa­ger bel­lowed orders. Two eunuchs seized the Pearl Con­cu­bine. In ter­ror, the Emper­or went to his knees and begged for her life. But the eunuchs car­ried the strug­gling girl to the nar­row well by the Palace of Peace and Longevi­ty, turned her upside down in her shim­mer­ing cocoon of silks, and flung her shriek­ing into its maw. Because the well was so nar­row, the eunuchs jumped on her to force her down. . . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then sets forth the mur­der­ous nature of the late Manchu rule of the Dowa­ger Empress—a metaphor for the bloody cor­rup­tion of Chiang’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

“ . . . . The For­bid­den City is a grave­yard of souls, drowned, behead­ed, throt­tled, flayed alive, to silence them in the inter­ests of state. Here, mur­der was not an act of pas­sion but an instru­ment of rule. Judi­cial mur­der. Impe­r­i­al mur­der. Silence by assas­si­na­tion. To sti­fle those who would inter­fere, who would object, who would ques­tion, who would say no. . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then piv­ots to the Soong fam­i­ly: “ . . . . The oth­ers passed through life like a team of pick­pock­ets through a car­ni­val crowd, doing what they did best, while the rubes watched geeks bite heads off live chick­ens. There are those who insist that May-ling remained inno­cent through­out by virtue of her tun­nel vision. It is not for me to say, except that these peo­ple also believe in vir­gin birth.

“They were a fam­i­ly that could stand togeth­er in front of a mir­ror (Ching-ling miss­ing from the group by choice), all cast­ing reflec­tions except Ai-ling. She cast no reflec­tion at all. What medieval con­clu­sion can we draw? . . . .”

Sea­grave con­cludes with a ref­er­ence to Har­ry Truman’s launch­ing of an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of the Soong fam­i­ly. (We dis­cussed this in FTR#1205 .)

“ . . . . Of all the peo­ple who might have act­ed, I won­dered why Har­ry Tru­man did noth­ing. . . . . Per­haps he con­clud­ed that so many promi­nent peo­ple were involved it would not be good for the nation as they say. So near­ly every­one stayed silent. Nobody spoke for the vic­tims. Who, then, will speak for the con­cu­bine in the well? . . .”

The pro­gram reviews the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er books.

“. . . . Many peo­ple told us this book was his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant and must be published—then warned us that if it were pub­lished, we would be mur­dered. An Aus­tralian econ­o­mist who read it said, ” I hope they let you live.” He did not have to explain who “they” were. . . .

“. . . .

We have been threat­ened with mur­der before. When we pub­lished The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA offi­cial that a hit team was being assem­bled in Tai­wan to come mur­der us. He said, ‘I would take this very seri­ous­ly, if I were you.’ We van­ished for a year to an island off the coast of British Colum­bia. While we were gone, a Tai­wan hit team arrived in San Fran­cis­co and shot dead the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Hen­ry Liu.

When we pub­lished The Mar­cos Dynasty we expect­ed trou­ble from the Mar­cos fam­i­ly and its cronies, but instead we were harassed by Wash­ing­ton. Oth­ers had inves­ti­gat­ed Mar­cos, but we were the first to show how the U.S. Gov­ern­ment was secret­ly involved with Mar­cos gold deals. We came under attack from the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment and its Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, whose agents made threat­en­ing mid­night phone calls to our elder­ly par­ents. Arriv­ing in New York for an author tour, one of us was inter­cept­ed at JFK air­port, pass­port seized, and held incom­mu­ni­ca­do for three hours. Even­tu­al­ly the pass­port was returned, with­out a word of expla­na­tion. When we ran Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion queries to see what was behind it, we were grudg­ing­ly sent a copy of a telex mes­sage, on which every word was blacked out, includ­ing the date. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en for this cen­sor­ship was the need to pro­tect gov­ern­ment sources, which are above the law.

Dur­ing one harass­ing phone call from a U.S. Trea­sury agent, he said he was sit­ting in his office watch­ing an inter­view we had done for a Japan­ese TV network—an inter­view broad­cast only in Japan­ese, which we had nev­er seen. After pub­lish­ing The Yam­a­to Dynasty, which briefly men­tioned the dis­cov­ery that is the basis for Gold War­riors, our phones and email were tapped. We know this because when one of us was in a Euro­pean clin­ic briefly for a med­ical pro­ce­dure, the head nurse report­ed that “some­one pos­ing as your Amer­i­can doc­tor” had been on the phone ask­ing ques­tions.

When a brief extract of this book was pub­lished in the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post in August 2001, sev­er­al phone calls from the edi­tors were cut off sud­den­ly. Emails from the news­pa­per took 72 hours to reach us, while copies sent to an asso­ciate near­by arrived instant­ly. In recent months, we began to receive veiled death threats.

What have we done to pro­voke mur­der? To bor­row a phrase from Jean Ziegler, we are “com­bat­ing offi­cial amne­sia.” We live in dan­ger­ous times, like Ger­many in the 1930’s when any­one who makes incon­ve­nient dis­clo­sures about hid­den assets can be brand­ed a “ter­ror­ist” or a “trai­tor. . . .”

Despite the best efforts of the Amer­i­can and Japan­ese gov­ern­ments to destroy, with­hold, or lose doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ed to Gold­en Lily, we have accu­mu­lat­ed thou­sands of doc­u­ments, con­duct­ed thou­sands of hours of inter­views, and we make all of these avail­able to read­ers of this book on two com­pact discs, avail­able from our web­site www.bowstring.net [no longer online–D.E.] so they can make up their own minds. We encour­age oth­ers with knowl­edge of these events to come for­ward. When the top is cor­rupt, the truth will not come from the top. It will emerge in bits and pieces from peo­ple like Jean Ziegler and Christophe Meili, who decid­ed they had to ‘do some­thing.’ As a pre­cau­tion, should any­thing odd hap­pen, we have arranged for this book and all its doc­u­men­ta­tion to be put up on the Inter­net at a num­ber of sites. If we are mur­dered, read­ers will have no dif­fi­cul­ty fig­ur­ing out who ‘they’ are. . . .”

Ster­ling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to Spain–the seat of that orga­ni­za­tion’s pow­er  turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors.

. . . . Sea­grave will be remem­bered warm­ly by Ver­so staff for his live­ly cor­re­spon­dence. In a 2011 email, he described an attempt on his life that fol­lowed the Span­ish pub­li­ca­tion of Gold War­riors: 

“A hired thug tried to mur­der me on the ser­pen­tine road lead­ing up to our iso­lat­ed house on the ridge over­look­ing Banyuls-sur-Mer, and near­ly suc­ceed­ed.  (We’ve had sev­er­al seri­ous death threats because of our books.) The road was very nar­row in places, with tar­mac bare­ly the width of my tires. At 10 pm Christ­mas night, in 2011, after vis­it­ing Peg­gy at a clin­ic in Per­pig­nan, as I turned the final hair­pin, I clear­ly saw a guy sit­ting on a cement block path lead­ing up to a shed for the uphill vine­yard. He was obvi­ous­ly wait­ing for me because we were the only peo­ple liv­ing up there on that moun­tain shoul­der.  He jumped up, raised a long pole, and unfurled a black fab­ric that total­ly blocked the nar­row­est turn ahead of me. I tried to swerve to avoid him (not know­ing whether he also had a gun), and my right front dri­ve wheel went off the tar­mac and lost trac­tion in the rub­ble.

The car teetered and then plunged down through a steep vine­yard on my right side, rolling and bounc­ing front and rear, 100 meters into a ravine where it final­ly came to rest against a tree. Thanks to my seat­belt and air bag, I sur­vived. I don’t know how many con­cus­sions I got on the way down, but I man­aged to squeeze out the driver’s door and fell onto the rub­ble. I got up on my left hand and knees, but my right shoul­der caved in. (Turned out lat­er that I had frac­tured my right shoul­der, and all the lig­a­ments there had torn loose.) I passed out and remained uncon­scious for 14 hours.  After 12 hours, a vigneron dri­ving up the next morn­ing saw my wrecked car and body.

 He called the Gen­darmerie on his portable, and I was hoist­ed out uncon­scious by a chop­per and flown to an old Vic­to­ri­an-era hos­pi­tal in Per­pig­nan where they did noth­ing but keep me doped on mor­phine for two weeks — no X‑rays or seri­ous med­ical care.  Final­ly, friends in Banyuls got me (and Peg­gy) trans­ferred to a clin­ic on the beach there, where Peg­gy and I shared a room while we both recov­ered. I got my right shoul­der lig­a­ments fixed by an excel­lent sur­geon in Per­pig­nan.  (Peg­gy did not know it then but she had an ear­ly stage of can­cer.) I still have a hair­line frac­ture in my right shoul­der.

I attribute the event to stay­ing too long in one place, so the spooks even­tu­al­ly tracked me down.  We had been liv­ing for years on a sail­boat, mov­ing from Hol­land to Britain to Por­tu­gal to Spain and final­ly to France, where we found — in Cat­alo­nia — an ide­al vil­lage at the Mediter­ranean end of the Pyre­nees. In ret­ro­spect, I’m sor­ry I agreed to move ashore for Peggy’s sake, and sold the beau­ti­ful 43-foot boat I had  built from a bare hull. It was very com­fort­able, but Peg­gy want­ed a house. We nev­er did find the right house in Banyuls — so we spent 18 years restor­ing a 13th cen­tu­ry Tem­plar ruin on the shoul­der of the moun­tain.  Made me an easy tar­get. Def­i­nite­ly a bad deci­sion. I think it was the Span­ish edi­tion of Gold War­riors that made me the easy tar­get. 

In FTR#‘s 1107, 1108 and 1111, we set forth the high­ly sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death (and prob­a­ble mur­der) of author Iris Chang. A ring­ing endorse­ment by Ms. Chang graces the cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Ms. Chang’s sig­na­ture work–The Rape of Nanking–detailed one of the ini­tial events in Japan’s loot­ing of Chi­na dur­ing World War II, an act which the U.S. signed off on and prof­it­ed from in the post­war years.

At the time of her alto­geth­er sus­pi­cious death, she was work­ing on a book about the Bataan Death March, at the very time that sur­vivors of that event and oth­er Japan­ese World War II atroc­i­ties were suing Japan­ese zaibat­sus that had employed U.S. POW’s as slave labor.

The suit was rebuffed by U.S. courts.

When Mr. Emory inter­viewed Ster­ling Sea­grave in 2009, he declined to dis­cuss Ms. Chang’s death, which he, too, believed to be mur­der.

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#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.

Never Underestimate a Space Alien from Venus

A Japan­ese fas­cist mind con­trol cult called Hap­py Sci­ence joins Falun Gong in the list of par­tic­i­pants in the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence. ” . . . . On Fri­day after­noon at the Hyatt Regency Orlan­do, Hiroa­ki ‘Jay’ Aeba, a promi­nent Japan­ese con­ser­v­a­tive, will address CPAC about the threat Chi­na pos­es to the U.S., tak­ing a prime spot in the line­up just after Don­ald Trump Jr. Aeba is no stranger to CPAC. . . . . What isn’t men­tioned is the cen­tral role Aeba plays in a Japan­ese cult called Hap­py Sci­ence, whose leader believes he is the Mes­si­ah . . . . Hap­py Sci­ence was found­ed in Octo­ber 1986 by Ryuho Okawa, a for­mer Wall Street trad­er who claims to be the rein­car­nat­ed form of Bud­dha, who him­self was the rein­car­nat­ed form of El Cantare, a god from Venus who cre­at­ed life on earth mil­lions of years ago. . . . ” ” . . . . . . . . At the same time, the orga­ni­za­tion’s polit­i­cal wing, the Hap­pi­ness Real­iza­tion Par­ty, pro­motes polit­i­cal views that include sup­port for Japan­ese mil­i­tary expan­sion, sup­port for the use of nuclear deterrence,[8] and denial of his­tor­i­cal events such as the Nan­jing Mas­sacre in Chi­na and the com­fort women issue in South Korea . . . . ” One of the group’s most out­ra­geous undertakings–crafted by the group’s founder–Ryuho Okawa–is  a book in which he claims to have chan­neled the spir­it of Iris Chang, the late author of The Rape of Nanking. In this piece of offal, Okawa claims that Iris Chang’s spir­it has con­fessed to pub­lish­ing a false book, and wish­es that it be with­drawn. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108 we looked at the sus­pi­cious death of Iris Chang, whose work over­lapped the world of Black Gold dis­cussed by the Sea­graves in “Gold War­riors”.

Suggestive Detail in the Alleged “Suicide” of Iris Chang

A “San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle” arti­cle about the alleged “sui­cide” of Iris Chang con­tained a detail we over­looked. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we high­light­ed Ms. Chang’s death, which sug­gest­ed the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of foul play. A detail about the phys­i­cal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Iris’s “sui­cide” suggests–strongly–that she did not pull the trig­ger her­self. Her body was dis­cov­ered by a San­ta Clara Coun­ty Water Dis­trict Employ­ee: “. . . . He noticed con­den­sa­tion on the win­dows, peered inside and saw Iris in the dri­ver’s seat with her hands crossed in her lap. The revolver lay on her left leg. . . .” Some­one who had fired a .45 cal­iber black pow­der weapon into her mouth would be unlike­ly to have her hands crossed in her lap and with the revolver on her left leg. This sounds like it may well an arranged crime scene. Thanks to a sharp-eyed listener/reader who noticed this detail.

“Cain, Where Is Thy Brother Abel? (Or Thy Sister Iris?)”

In “The Death of A Sales­man” Arthur Miller (speak­ing through Mrs. Loman, Willy’s wid­ow) said “Atten­tion must be paid to such a per­son! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away!” Before mov­ing on from FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, an aspect of the sus­pi­cious death of author Iris Chang bears empha­sis: The peo­ple around her, friends, hus­band and fam­i­ly, attrib­uted her “sui­cide” to psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tur­bances, despite evi­dence that she was the focal point of hos­tile action by intel­li­gence agents and fas­cists, as well as sub­ject­ed to forms of mind con­trol. Ms. Chang said her prob­lems were “external”–those around her felt they were “inter­nal.” Her friend since col­lege, writer Paula Kamen felt that Iris’ fer­til­i­ty treat­ments may have lay at the core of her prob­lems. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we com­pared Iris’ expe­ri­ences with those of Rita Katz, who helped inves­ti­gate the 9/11 mon­ey trail that led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest SAAR net­work raids. When the Agents of Dark­ness gath­er to vis­it ret­ri­bu­tion on some­one seen as a trans­gres­sor, it is, in effect, col­lab­o­ra­tive to increase the tar­get’s iso­la­tion and con­se­quent vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by see­ing them as “sick.” Rita Katz was­n’t expe­ri­enc­ing what she did because of “fer­til­i­ty treat­ments.”

FTR #1107 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 1 and FTR #1108 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 2

“The Sea­graves have uncov­ered one of the Biggest Secrets of the Twen­ti­eth Century”–Iris Chang, quot­ed on the front cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Late last year (2019), the city of San Jose (Cal­i­for­nia) opened a park ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of the late author Iris Chang.

These broad­casts update and sup­ple­ment dis­cus­sion of Iris Chang’s alleged “sui­cide,” high­light­ed in FTR #509. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the Gold­en Lily loot and the deci­sive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors stem­ming from the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in Gold War­riors, the oth­er books by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave, and Ms. Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” have enor­mous and ongo­ing sig­nif­i­cance.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert oper­a­tions but under­wrote much of the post-war glob­al econ­o­my. Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos recov­ered a tremen­dous amount of the Gold­en Lily loot, some of which was shared with  the Japan­ese, some with  the U.S. and much of it kept by Mar­cos. The Mar­cos “Black Gold” fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the death of Ms. Chang.)

In Novem­ber of 2004, author and inves­ti­ga­tor Iris Chang was found dead of an alleged­ly self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound. This pro­gram exam­ines the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death.

In her land­mark book “The Rape of Nanking,” Ms. Chang doc­u­ment­ed the Japan­ese atroc­i­ties which gave that occu­pa­tion its name. The rape of Nanking saw the begin­ning of the Japan­ese Gold­en Lily pro­gram, which yield­ed the spec­tac­u­lar loot­ed wealth and post­war eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal intrigue doc­u­ment­ed in the Sea­graves’ inci­sive text “Gold War­riors.”

The “Rape of Nanking” drew much hos­tile reac­tion from the Japan­ese right and relat­ed forces:  . . . . At the same time, tor­rents of hate mail came in, Brett [her hus­band] said. ‘Iris is sen­si­tive, but she got charged up,’ he recalled. ‘When any­body ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of what she wrote, she would respond with over­whelm­ing evi­dence to back it up. She’s very much a per­fec­tion­ist. It was hard for her not to react every sin­gle time.’ Most of the attacks came from Japan­ese ultra­na­tion­al­ists. ‘We saw car­toons where she was por­trayed as this woman with a great big mouth,‘Brett said. ‘She got used to the fact that there is a Web site called ‘Iris Chang and Her Lies.’ She would just laugh.’ But friends say Iris began to voice con­cerns for her safe­ty. She believed her phone was tapped. She described find­ing threat­en­ing notes on her car. She said she was con­front­ed by a man who said, ‘You will NOT con­tin­ue writ­ing this.’ She used a post office box, nev­er her home address, for mail. ‘There are a fair num­ber of peo­ple who don’t take kind­ly to what she wrote in The Rape of Nanking.’ Brett said, ‘so she’s always been very, very pri­vate about our fam­i­ly life.’ . . . .”

(As we have seen in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 813, 905, 969, 970, the Japan­ese “ultra­na­tion­al­ists” were put right back in pow­er by the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion forces, as the Sea­graves doc­u­ment in Gold War­riors, as well as The Yam­a­to Dynasty.)

At the time of her death, Ms. Chang was research­ing a book chron­i­cling the expe­ri­ences of sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March—the bru­tal per­se­cu­tion of Amer­i­can POW’s cap­tured in the siege of Bataan in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. Many of the sur­vivors were shipped to Japan to work as slave labor­ers for major Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions.

Many of these cor­po­ra­tions have had pro­found con­nec­tions with their Amer­i­can transna­tion­al coun­ter­parts, and were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Amer­i­can invest­ment cap­i­tal in the run-up to World War II. More impor­tant­ly, many of these cor­po­ra­tions are a prin­ci­pal ele­ment of the US/Japanese com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship today.

Law­suits in Cal­i­for­nia tar­get­ed those Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions for com­pen­sa­tion for the slave labor wrung from the Bat­taan POWs. The State Depart­ment sided with the Japan­ese and Judge Vaughn Walk­er ruled against the Bataan sur­vivors.

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, in-depth cov­er­age of the Bataan Death March would uncov­er the Black Eagle Trust and the fun­da­men­tal role in post-World War II Amer­i­can and Japan­ese pol­i­tics of the vast wealth loot­ed by Japan dur­ing World War II. That pur­loined “black gold” is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with U.S. covert oper­a­tions and is at the epi­cen­ter of post­war Japan­ese pow­er pol­i­tics and econ­o­my.

In addi­tion to the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March sur­vivors, Ms. Chang’s research cut across some deep polit­i­cal dynam­ics con­nect­ed to then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion and his busi­ness deal­ings.

George W. Bush:

1.–Was using U.S. Naval forces to secure Japan­ese war gold from the Philip­pines for his per­son­al blind trust, as well as shoring up Amer­i­can reserves.
2.–Was deeply involved with Harken Ener­gy, which may well have been a cor­po­rate front for the acqui­si­tion and recy­cling of Gold­en Lily loot and Bor­mann mon­ey.
3.–Was heir to a deep polit­i­cal her­itage involv­ing, among oth­ers, the fam­i­ly of William Stamps Far­ish, the head of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey dur­ing the time it man­i­fest­ed its car­tel agree­ments with I.G. Far­ben. Dubya ben­e­fit­ed from his father’s lega­cy of involve­ment with the milieu of Dou­glas MacArthur. George H.W. Bush’s deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions in the Philip­pines include the involve­ment of both Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Paul Man­afort and Trump and GOP trick­ster Roger Stone with Fer­di­nand Mar­cos while the dic­ta­tor was involved with the recov­ery of Gold­en Lily loot.
4. Served as a direc­tor of Harken when the head of the firm was Alan Quasha, son of William Quasha, an attor­ney for the CIA-linked Nugan Hand Bank, a focal point of AFA #25. William had been Alien Prop­er­ty cus­to­di­an in the Philip­pines under Dou­glas MacArthur, which placed him in a posi­tion to great­ly influ­ence the “Alien Prop­er­ty” placed there by the Japan­ese under Gold­en Lily.

There is evi­dence to sug­gest that Ms. Chang’s death may have result­ed from mind con­trol, admin­is­tered to neu­tral­ize her as a threat to those clan­des­tine eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty rela­tion­ships that have gov­erned US/Japanese affairs in the post­war peri­od. Ms. Chang had received threats ever since the pub­li­ca­tion of her land­mark text The Rape of Nanking.

(For more about the gov­ern­men­t’s mind con­trol pro­grams, see, among oth­er broad­casts, AFA #‘s 5–7.)

She appears to have been under sur­veil­lance, and her “sui­cide” note alleged that a sus­pi­cious intern­ment in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal may have been ini­ti­at­ed at the insti­ga­tion of the ele­ments opposed to a ruf­fling of the Japanese/US feath­ers. In addi­tion to threat­en­ing to expose a dom­i­nant fac­tor in U.S. covert oper­a­tions, a key ele­ment in the post­war Amer­i­can and glob­al econ­o­my, Ms. Chang’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Japan­ese war crimes was an irri­tant to the Japan­ese estab­lish­ment that had thrived on the gold and oth­er wealth loot­ed from occu­pied coun­tries since World War II.

Ms. Chang’s “sui­cide” note read, in part: “. . . .There are aspects of my expe­ri­ence in Louisville that I will nev­er under­stand. . . . . I can nev­er shake my belief that I was being recruit­ed, and lat­er per­se­cut­ed, by forces more pow­er­ful than I could have imag­ined. Whether it was the CIA or some oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I will nev­er know. As long as I am alive, these forces will nev­er stop hound­ing me. Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep fore­bod­ing about my safe­ty. I sensed sud­den­ly threats to my own life: an eerie feel­ing that I was being fol­lowed in the streets, the white van parked out­side my house, dam­aged mail arriv­ing at my P.O. Box. I believe my deten­tion at Nor­ton Hos­pi­tal was the gov­ern­men­t’s attempt to dis­cred­it me. . . .”

At the con­clu­sion of the pro­gram, we review Rita Katz’s expe­ri­ences after she helped break the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR net­work that became known  as Oper­a­tion Green Quest. That inves­ti­ga­tion over­lapped George W. Bush’s firm Harken Ener­gy. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty between Iris Chang’s expe­ri­ences and those  of Rita  Katz. ” . . . . White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a ter­ri­ble sen­sa­tion to know that you have no pri­va­cy. . . . and no secu­ri­ty. That strange click­ing of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crude­ly opened mail at home in the office. . . and the same man I spied in my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket, who was also on the train I took to Wash­ing­ton a week ago. . . Life can be mis­er­able when you know that someone’s always breath­ing down your neck. . . .”

In con­ver­sa­tions with friends, Ms. Chang not­ed that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” not in her head. She also felt she was being “recruit­ed” to become a “Manchuri­an Can­di­date” for the CIA–i.e. being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol. ” . . . . in her last year she became para­noid about every­thing from virus­es attack­ing her com­put­er to attempts by the gov­ern­ment to “recruit” her, a la The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The alleged role of Japan­ese war crim­i­nal Tsu­ji Masanobu in aid­ing the Mar­cos gold recov­er­ies in the Philip­pines; the role of Tsu­ji Masanobu in imple­ment­ing the Bataan Death March; William Stamps Far­ish III’s stew­ard­ship of Dubya’s blind trust, for which Philip­pines war gold was appar­ent­ly being sought; William Stamps Far­ish (II) and his stew­ard­ship of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey, when it col­lab­o­rat­ed with I.G. Far­ben; George H.W. Bush’s asso­ci­a­tion with the descen­dants of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate fig­ures who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich.