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.
FTR #1106 Reflections on the Passing of Peggy and Sterling Seagrave
This broadcast commemorates the lives and passing of Peggy and Sterling Seagrave, investigators, journalists, authors and heroes.
A peripheral internet search conducted while re-reading Gold Warriors yielded the sad news that both Peggy and Sterling Seagrave had passed. Peggy passed away in 2016 and Sterling in the spring of 2017.
Authors of a number of ground-breaking and overlapping historical/political exposes, they culminated their remarkable careers with Gold Warriors, which Mr. Emory feels is as important a book as has ever been written and is a MUST read for anyone genuinely concerned with the state of world affairs, past, present and future.
More admirable than even their consummate investigative and literary skills is the fact that they continued their research and reporting in the face of serious death threats and attempts, as well as lethal consequences visited on some of the participants in the “Black Gold” transactions and, apparently, on some of those investigating the machinations of the nations, commercial institutions and individuals involved with the operations.
(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.)
In FTR #‘s 446 and 509, we highlighted and reviewed the death threats and hands-on interference experienced by the Seagraves in response to their investigations. In 509, we also noted the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of the heroic Iris Chang, who aided the Seagraves in their Gold Warriors project. Having authored a book on the Rape of Nanking and working on another about the Bataan Death March, Ms. Chang had crossed the very power structure delineated at length, depth and detail in the Seagraves volume.
In our last visit with the Seagraves, a 2009 interview that was the focus of FTR #689, Sterling expressed anxiety about the proximity of their residence in Southern France to the Spanish border and the formidable presence of Opus Dei in Franco’s former domain.
(The Vatican’s relationship to fascism, including Opus Dei and the Ustachi in Croatia, is highlighted in, among other programs AFA #17.)
The remarkable Severino Santa Romana, prime mover in the Black Eagle Trust operations in the Philippines and the gold recoveries in those islands was, in addition to his work for U.S. intelligence, an operative of the powerful Vatican order Opus Dei. It appears that Opus Dei was Santa Romana’s primary affiliation and his U.S. intelligence connections were derivative.
With strong connections in Spain, dating to the Franco fascist regime (which maintains powerful presence in contemporary Spain), Opus Dei is a major factor in the contemporary political scene. Sterling opined in FTR #689 that his and Peggy’s proximity to the Spanish border might expose them to violence.
His fear 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.
After detailing the attempt on his life, we set forth Santa Romana’s relationship with Opus Dei. Santa Romana’s Opus Dei operations were essential for the fiscal reinforcement of the Vatican’s financial institutions, which benefitted from the Golden Lily-derived treasure from the Philippines.
We have discussed the Vatican bank in, among other programs, AFA #18.
FTR #1095 The Destabilization of China, Part 6: Asian Deep Politics
In this program we present some of the deep political Asian history that bears on Chinese history and politics. In particular, the harm done to China by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s drug-dealing Kuomintang government, its collaboration with the brutal Japanese occupiers of Manchuria, as well as the United States is important in understanding the Chinese political and historical outlook.
In turn, the deep economic, political and military relationship between the Japanese fascists and the U.S. is to be factored in to any understanding of how the Chinese view this country and the West.
In that context, we do NOT think China’s present government will go down easily in the face of an obvious destabilization effort by the U.S. and the West.
In addition to the European colonization of China and Britain’s violent imposition of the opium drug trade through the Opium Wars, China’s political and historical memory is vividly animated by the drug-financed fascist dictatorship of Nationalist Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Dubbed “the Peanut” by General Joseph Stilwell during World War II, Chiang was compared by Stilwell (the chief American military adviser and liaison to the Kuomintang forces during World War II) to Mussolini.
Chiang’s entire government and brutal national security apparatus rested on the foundation of the narcotics traffic, as was well known by the US Commissioner Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger.
Key points of discussion and analysis of this relationship include: The decisive role of the Green Gang of Shanghai crime lord Du (sometimes ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financing Chiang’s forces and supplying muscle and intelligence to Tai Li, Chiang’s intelligence chief and interior minister, nicknamed “The Himmler of China;” the important role of Chiang’s drug traffic in supplying American t’ongs who, in turned, supplied the Mafia with their narcotics; the role of Chiang’s finance minister as Du Yue-sheng’s protector; the collaboration of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuomintang apparatus with the Japanese occupation government of Manchuria in the narcotics traffic; the role of Chaing’s head of Narcotics Control in supplying Chinese officials with drugs; the role of the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai in supervising the trafficking of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; Du’s collaboration with Hong Kong-based British financiers in selling drugs to the Chinese population; the deliberate deception on the part of Anslinger and kingpins in the US China Lobby, who knowingly misled the American public by blaming the U.S. drug traffic on the Communist Chinese; the narcotics kickbacks to U.S. China Lobby figures by Chiang’s dope trafficking infrastructure; the overlap of the Kuomintang dope trade with arms sales by China Lobby luminaries; the support of the CIA for Chiang’s narcotics traffic; the destruction of the career of Foreign Service officer John Service, who noted that “the Nationalists were totally dependent on opium and ‘incapable of solving China’s problems;’ ” the central role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in framing John Service.
Supplemental information about these topics is contained in AFA #11 and AFA #24.
It is impossible to understand World War II and the global and economic political landscape that emerged from it without digesting the vitally important book Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave.
Covering the Japanese equivalent of the Bormann flight capital network, the volume is a heroic, masterful analysis and penetration of the Asian wing of the cartel system that spawned fascism, as well as the realities of the post-World War II economic landscape. (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.)
An incisive, eloquent review and encapsulation of the book is provided by Doug Valentine, providing further insight into the political and historical memory of the Chinese government and resulting stance toward any pressure to be mounted against that nation by the U.S. and the West.
Of particular note is the detailed analysis of the Japanese development of occupied Manchuria as an epicenter of the opium traffic with which to enrich their operations and to help subjugate the Chinese. Chinese sensitivity to the Japanese, Kuomintang, American and British roles in using drugs to enslave the Chinese people is very much in the forefront of Japanese political consciousness.
” . . . . .They [the Japanese] build roads and create industries and, more importantly, they work with corrupt warlords and Chinese gangsters associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party to transform Manchuria into a vast poppy field. By 1937 the Japanese and their gangster and Kuomintang associates are responsible for 90% of the world’s illicit narcotics. They turn Manchu emperor Pu Yi into an addict, and open thousands of opium dens as a way of suppressing the Chinese. . . .”
Far from being a peripheral political and economic consideration; the Golden Lily plunder is fundamental to postwar Western reality.
” . . . . The Seagraves conclude their exciting and excellent book by taking us down the Money Trail, and explaining, in layman’s terms, how the Gold Warriors have been able to cover their tracks. Emperor Hirohito, for example, worked directly with Pope Pius XII to launder money through the Vatican bank. In another instance, Japan’s Ministry of Finance produced gold certificates that were slightly different than ordinary Japanese bonds. The Seagraves interview persons defrauded in this scam, and other scams involving the Union Bank of Switzerland and Citibank. . . . ”
” . . . . the banks that maintain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, anyone trying to sue them will eventually fade away. The Seagraves asked the Treasury Department, Defense Department, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. During the 1990s, the records mysteriously went missing. Other records were destroyed in what the Seagraves caustically call ‘history laundering.’ . . . . .”
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include: Discussion of the war crimes committed by the Japanese against the Chinese; the roles of the Japanese army, the Japanese royal family and yakuza gangster Kodama Yoshio (later the CIA’s top contact in Japan and a key official with the Unification Church) in extracting the liquid wealth of China; the restoration of the Japanese fascists in the “new,” postwar Japanese government by Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces; the fusion of the Golden Lily loot with Nazi World War II plunder to form the Black Eagle Trust; the use of the Golden Lily plunder to finance funds to reinforce the renascent fascists in Japan, to finance U.S. covert operations in the postwar period and to suppress political dissidence in Japan; the use of the M‑Fund to finance the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and Richard Nixon’s transfer of control of that fund to the Japanese government in exchange for clandestine financial help in his 1960 election campaign; the use of Golden Lily loot by the U.S. to purchase the support of Pacific ally nations for the Vietnam War; the use of Golden Lily treasure by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos; the suppression and criminal prosecution of individuals attempting to penetrate the elite, selective use of Golden Lily gold by the world’s large banks.
We conclude by highlighting 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–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!
Having been raised on Victory at Sea and similar fare, this passage is yet another reminder that–70 + years or so after V‑J Day–“we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”
In retrospect, we never were.
For more on the subject of the Japanese fascism, see–among other programs–FTR #‘s 905, 969, 970.
Program Highlights Include: Brief discussion and overview of an article read in our previous program concerning HSBC and the bank’s historical links to laundering narcotics money and jihadist financing; the use of the racist term “shina” by the Hong Kong protesters–a term that had its genesis in the Sino-Japanese war.
FTR #509 The Death of Iris Chang
At the time of her death, Iris Chang was researching a book chronicling the experiences of survivors of the Bataan Death March.
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