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#1202 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 9
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we draw still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave. Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it.
(Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
Tackling American ideological delusion vis a vis Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, the broadcast resumes analysis of the embrace of Chiang by the State Department and the allied U.S. press and the schism with the War Department (later the Department of Defense.)
Chiang’s anti-Communism endeared him to elements of State, even–as we have seen–his obsession with fighting the CCP instead of the invading Japanese was correctly forecast by T.V. Soong, among others as driving the Chinese people into the arms of the communists.
” . . . . Washington–not as represented by Chief-of-Staff George C. Marshall but as typified by FDR’s advisor Harry Hopkins–increasingly shared Chiang’s fixation with the postwar threat of Communism. To please the Generalissimo and his supporters in America, the Washington of Hopkins and the Department of State was prepared to sacrifice any number of its own people. . . .”
Further developing the circumstances leading to the replacement of the skilled, heroic American General Joseph Stilwell and the political defenestration of the State Department’s best “China Watchers,” we note the role of the consummately powerful Soong family in shaping U.S. ideological delusion concerning Chiang Kai-shek.
It is a consummate irony that the dogmatic anti-Communists allied with Chiang and the Soongs were the ones who “Lost China,” as the McCarthyites and the China Lobby put it. (Of course Chiang and the KMT themselves were the principal agencies involved in said loss.)
The War Department as embodied by Chief-of-Staff General George C. Marshall did not share the infatuation with Chiang, and sided with Chiang’s nemesis, General Joseph Stilwell–the top U.S. military officer in the China/Burma theater.
” . . . . America failed to understand the trap it was falling into because the State Department was not listening to its China Watchers. Very few of their secret reports actually reached the Secretary of State, because the rest were being intercepted by partisans inside the department hierarchy. . . . According to information gathered by the FBI at the time, someone high in the department was passing this secret information straight over to China Defense Supplies, to be read by T V. Soong and to be acted upon as he saw fit. So the Americans sent to China to watch Chiang’s regime were reporting to the Soong family, not to President Roosevelt. . . . At the War Department, the situation was quite different. General Marshall was suspicious of Chiang, and listened to Stilwell’s warnings. . . .”
Key elements of analysis and discussion include: Joseph Alsop’s role as a Chiang/Soong partisan; Alsop’s World War II role as the Chungking representative of Lend-Lease program; Introductory discussion of T.L. Soong (younger brother of T.V.) and his role as first, administrator of U.S. Lend-Lease in China and, later, administrator of Lend-Lease in the U.S. (this will be dealt with at greater length later in the series); Alsop’s postwar career as a noted journalist, closely linked to the CIA; General Claire Chennault’s hatred of Stilwell; review of Chennault’s role as leader of the Flying Tigers (the American Volunteer Group); Chennault’s assertion to FDR that his Fourteenth Air Force could use forward bases to decimate Japanese shipping; Stilwell’s correct counter-assertion that the Japanese would simply destroy the forward air bases upon which Chennault based his assertions; the 1944 Japanese offensive known as Operation Ichigo; the resounding success of the Japanese offensive; review (from our previous program) of KMT General T’ang En-po’s disastrous command of the Chinese forces opposing the Japanese Ichigo offensive; the view of the State Department’s China watchers and Vice-President Henry Wallace that Chiang Kai-shek could not successfully rule postwar China; the War Department’s temporary elevation of General Stilwell to command the KMT armies in China; Chiang’s fierce and successful resistance of Chiang to Stilwell’s elevation; Chiang’s insistence on a quid-pro-quo for agreeing to allow U.S. observers into the Communist-controlled areas of China—an agreement that featured the replacement of Stilwell with Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer; Chiang’s insistence on the replacement of Ambassador Clarence Gauss; the decisive appointment of Major General Patrick J. Hurley as Roosevelt’s personal representative to Chiang—an appointment which led to Stilwell’s replacement with Wedemeyer.
Stilwell’s replacement by General Wedemeyer was noteworthy—particularly in light of the background and behavior of Wedemeyer.
The program recaps information presented in AFA#11.
In addition to being part of a political and military milieu that infused isolationist orientation toward involvement in World War II with pro-fascist sentiment, Wedemeyer was a chief suspect in an act of consummate treason—the leak of the Rainbow Five American mobilization plan for World War II to anti-FDR publisher Robert J. McCormick (of the Chicago Tribune.) (As celebrated anti-fascist journalist and researcher George Seldes has documented, the “isolationist” America First organization received financing from the Abwehr [German intelligence during the Third Reich.])
Key points of discussion and analysis include:
1.–Wedemeyer’s background: “ . . . . he himself had been educated in part at the German War College, in Berlin. He rented his apartment from a member of the Nazi Party, Gerhard Rossbach, and during his sojourn became a great friend of General Ludwig Beck, chief of the German General Staff. . . . (Rossbach was, in fact, the number two man in the SA behind Ernst Rolm. As discussed in AFA#11, Rossbach went to work for the CIA after the war.–D.E.) . . . .Rightly or wrongly, he was regarded by the German embasssy in Washington as part of the pro-German military clique in teh War Department. . . .”
2.–Wedemeyer’s association with key personnel on the German General staff: ” . . . . His introductions to Beck were arranged by Lieutenant General Friedrich von Boetticher, German military attache in Washington. He corresponded regularly withy his German contacts until the advent of World War II in Europe. . . .”
3.–The Third Reich’s development of a Fifth Column within its American counterpart: ” . . . . The numerous memoranda of Hans Thomsen and Boetticher to Berlin at the time indicate that a series of contacts had been established in this group held meetings at the home of former American military attache in Berlin Colonel Truman Smith. Although pro-German and a sympathizer of America First, Smith had the ear of General Marshall. . . .”
4.–The theft of the Rainbow Five manuscript by a U.S. military officer. ” . . . . On the night of December 3, 1941, an office attached to the War Plans Division decided on his own account to consult some of the documents at home. It was a simple matter to unlock the steel cabinet and remove the large expanding folder of several hundred pages. That he was not authorized to do so is indicated by the fact that he found it necessary to wrap the file in heavy brown paper, to make it look like a parcel for mailing. . . .”
5.–The fact that Wedemeyer underlined the same passages in his copy of the manuscript as eventually found their way into the Chicago Tribune piece: ” . . . . . Back in his office, Wedemeyer faced a very unpleasant situation. [J. Edgar] Hoover had dispatched his number-one man, Edward Tamm, to the office, and Tamm was standing by an open filing cabinet while Wedemeyer’s secretary was sobbing into her hands. One of Tamm’s men was holding a copy of the Victory Program. The same passages were underlined in red by Wedemeyer as appeared in the newspapers . . . .”
The program concludes with a look at the fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a persistent critic of Chiang Kai-shek.
Disillusioned with Communism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen partnered with Teng Yen-ta, who recognized Chiang’s fascism and, yet, felt that the Chinese Communist Party (at that point in time) was overly loyal to Moscow and wasn’t doing enough for the Chinese peasantry.
Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alternative to both Kuomintang fascism and the Chinese Communist Party.
Finding the democratic socialism proposed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unacceptable, Chiang had the British and American police authorities arrest him in the International Concession in Shanghai, after which he was tortured for many months.
Ching-ling was reported to have visited Chiang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chiang had already dealt with him in characteristic fashion: “ . . . . Days earlier, on November 29, 1931, nearly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been taken from his cell at Chiang’s command and was slowly strangled with a wire. The executioner was said to be famous for keeping victims alive for half an hour while he tightened his grip. In his office, Chiang had remained silent while Ching-ling pleaded for a man already dead, enjoying the spectacle of her momentary vulnerability. . . .”
FTR #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.
H.L. Hunt Funded the Nation of Islam; Malcolm X Vehemently Criticized the Relationship
A past event which gives context to the present concerns the late H.L. Hunt’s financing of the Nation of Islam. Before his assassination, Malcolm X called attention to this and it was among the reasons for the rupture of relations with the group and his departure from it. Hunt’s hatred of black folks and desire to see them repatriated to Africa (or worse) was the basis for his financial support. Divide and conquer. His granddaughter Leah Hunt-Hendrix is a financier of the, left wing of the Democratic Party, supposedly because she and other like-minded high-rollers wish to wean the Democratic Party from the influence of Big Money. Aside from the consummate irony of this dynamic, it calls to mind the possibility that the real reason for Hunt-Hendrix’s political generosity is to promote the refractory influence of Bernie, AOC, et al. Instead of attempting to unseat the moderate Democrats, who recaptured the House of Representatives from the GOP last year, and whose ideology does not fit their rigid ideological precepts, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez et al would do well to roll up their sleeves and undertake the laborious, unsexy, but altogether necessary job of recapturing state legislatures and governors’ mansions from the GOP. THAT is the only way to effectively combat gerrymandering and voter suppression laws. Those manifest at the state level, something the GOP has effectively realized but that eludes the grasp of the “democratic socialists” who benefit from the likes of Hunt-Hendrix, Saikat Chakrabarti et al.
The Crusade For Freedom and the Assassination of President Kennedy
We have spoken for years about The Crusade For Freedom, a covert operation with both foreign and domestic venues. Abroad, the CFF was a vehicle for financing the use of Eastern European Third Reich alumni as “fascist freedom fighters” in paramilitary operations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Domestically, the CFF spawned a Nazi branch of the Republican Party, with roots in the Third Reich and the Reinhard Gehlen spy organization. Many of CFF’s members figure in the milieu of the JFK assassination:
” . . . . Members of the Texas Crusade for Freedom would become a who’s who of Texans connected to the events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In addition to Neil Mallon, members included [Paul] Raigorodsky, Lewis W. MacNaughton, Everette De Golyer, and Dallas mayor Earle Cabell, brother of Charles Cabell, who was Allen Dulles’s deputy CIA director [fired by JFK for his conduct in the Bay of Pigs operation along with Dulles himself]. Another member was D. Harold Byrd, who owned the building in downtown Dallas that would become known as the Texas School Book Depository. Another member was E.M. “Ted” Dealey, publisher of “The Dallas Morning News,” who was a harsh critic of Kennedy. . . .”
Broadcast on 50th Anniversary of RFK Assassination
On Tuesday, June 5th, KFJC-FM will broadcast an eight-hour memorial program about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of that event. Beginning at 2pm, Pacific time and concluding at 10pm, much of the broadcast will feature AFA #9, the description for which is below. The program was recorded on 6/5/1985 (the 17th anniversary of the killing). The broadcast features significant analysis from The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by John C. Christian and William Turner.
FTR #994 What Was Old Is New Again
This broadcast recaps material from previous programs, underscoring key points of information from current developments.
Last week, we opened our program with an article from Consortium News about some alarming developments in Ukraine–a piece of legislation approved by the Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) that might augur World War III.
One of the few media outlets that has covered the return to power of the OUN/B’s successor fascist organizations in Ukraine, Consortium News was founded and headed by Robert Parry.
Parry passed away last weekend.
Mr. Emory posted the following comment on the Consortium News article about Robert’s passing:
A very, very sad occasion. It was my privilege to have interviewed Robert a number of times over the years, including an interview–scheduled days before–that took place on the day he learned of Gary Webb’s death.
It was also my privilege to have used many articles from Consortium News in my weekly broadcasts, including, and especially, his reportage about the return to power of the OUN/B successor organizations in Ukraine.
Very few have manifested the courage and integrity to report honestly on those events.
Now, there will be fewer.
Rest in peace, Robert.
Next, we return to the subject of Peter Thiel, of “Team Trump,” Facebook and Palantir.
We have covered Peter Thiel in numerous programs, beginning with our warning about him in FTR #718.
Some of the points we have made about him include:
1.-His family background in the Frankfurt (Germany) chemical business. Probably I.G. Farben/Bormann, in that context.
2.-His primary role in Palantir, apparently the maker of the PRISM software at the epicenter of L’Affaire Snowden.
3.-His role as the primary financier of Ron Paul’s super PAC. (Paul is an unabashed white supremacist, joined at the hip with David Duke and the neo-Confederate movement. He was the Presidential candidate of choice for Eddie “The Friendly Spook” Snowden and Julian Assange.)
4.-Thiel’s networking with movers and shakers from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s high-tech venture capital firm.
5.-Thiel’s active anti-immigrant stance.
6.-Thiel’s seminal networking with other tech titans and venture capital firms, including some with political and historical tributaries leading back to the apartheid regime in South Africa.
With Thiel among the candidates to head Trump’s President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, we note that his apocalyptic, anti-Enlightenment ideology draws on, among other influences, Carl Schmitt. Arguably the prime mover behind the German Conservative Revolution, Schmitt was also: “. . . . a Nazi and the Third Reich’s preeminent legal theorist. For Thiel, Schmitt is an inspiring throwback to a pre-Enlightenment age, who exalts struggle and insists that the discovery of enemies is the foundation of politics. . .”
There has been a fair amount of buzz about the release of additional, previously classified, documents about the assassination of President Kennedy.
An interesting document came to light in the recent release of files relating to the assassination of JFK. Jack Ruby told an FBI informant to “watch the fireworks” in Dealey Plaza that day.
“Jack Ruby, the man who eventually shot Lee Harvey Oswald, told an FBI informant to ‘watch the fireworks’ on the day President John F. Kennedy was killed, according to new records the National Archives released Friday. . . . ‘The informant stated that on the morning of the assassination, Ruby contacted him and asked if he would ‘like to watch the fireworks,” an FBI record dated April 6, 1977, says. ‘He was with Jack Ruby and standing at the corner of the Postal Annex Building facing the Texas School Book Depository Building at the time of the shooting. . . .”
This might be evaluated against the background of FTR #963, relating–among other things–a reading of Jack Ruby’s Warren Commission testimony. (A reading of Ruby’s testimony is re-broadcast in this program.)
When interviewed by the Warren Commission, Jack Ruby indicated that he had been part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy and that he feared for his life. The Warren Commission turned a deaf ear to his desire to go to Washington and “spill the beans.”
Gerald Ford (who succeeded Nixon as President and pardoned him of all crimes committed), Leon Jaworski (a Warren Commission counsel who was a director of a CIA domestic funding conduit and who was selected by Nixon to be Watergate Special Prosecutor) and Arlen Specter (another Warren Commission counsel who was Nixon’s first choice as his personal defense attorney in the Watergate affair) were present at Ruby’s de facto confession.
Warren Commission Counsel J. Lee Rankin is also present at this interview. Nixon first selected J. Lee Rankin to serve as Watergate Special Prosecutor. Rankin was subsequently tabbed to review the Watergate tapes and determine which would be released. Rankin was the Warren Commission’s liaison between the commission and both the CIA and the FBI. Rankin was a key proponent of the so-called “Magic Bullet Theory.”
We conclude with discussion of another aspect of the JFK assassination.
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money has received considerable discussion and media play over the last couple of years. In past discussion of the Koch family, we noted that patriarch Fred Koch worked with Hitler building one of Nazi Germany’s most important refineries–one capable of refining the high-octane fuel needed by fighter planes.
In addition, we noted that Fred Koch was one of the first members of the John Birch Society.
Mayer notes that Fred Koch helped finance ads in the wake of the JFK assassination that pinned responsibility for the crime on the Soviet Union–one of the primary levels of disinformation.
” . . . . In a hasty turnabout, soon after the assassination, Fred Koch took out full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post, mourning JFK. The ads advanced the conspiracy theory that JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had acted as part of a Communist plot. The Communists wouldn’t “rest on this success,” the ads warned. In the corner was a tear-out order form, directing the public to sign up for John Birch Society mailings. . . .”
We have covered the “painting of Oswald Red” in numerous programs, including FTR #‘s 925 and 926.
Jack Ruby to FBI Informant: Watch “the Fireworks” in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963
An interesting document came to light in the recent release of files relating to the assassination of JFK. Jack Ruby told an FBI informant to “watch the fireworks” in Dealey Plaza that day. This might be evaluated against the background of FTR #963, relating–among other things–a reading of Jack Ruby’s Warren Commission testimony. All of the contents of this website as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of videotaped lectures are available on a 32GB flash drive. Dave offers his programs and articles for free–your support is very much appreciated.
Fred Koch, the John Birch Society and the JFK Assassination
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money has received considerable discussion and media play over the last couple of years. In past discussion of the Koch family, we noted that patriarch Fred Koch worked with Hitler building one of Nazi Germany’s most important refineries–one capable of refining the high-octane fuel needed by fighter planes. In addition, we noted that Fred Koch was one of the first members of the John Birch Society and remained an important member of the group after that. Mayer notes that Fred Koch helped finance ads in the wake of the JFK assassination that pinned responsibility for the crime on the Soviet Union–one of the primary levels of disinformation. We have covered the “painting of Oswald Red” in numerous programs, including FTR #‘s 925 and 926. All of the contents of this website as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of videotaped lectures are available on a 32GB flash drive. Dave offers his programs and articles for free–your support is very much appreciated.
FTR #971 Nazis in New Orleans
This broadcast is something of a “prequel” to the next two programs, both dealing with Charlottesville.
What the media have termed “Alt-Right” and the author calls “the radical right” were present at Charlottesville and participants in the assassination of JFK.
Numerous programs and articles on this website have dealt with Nazi involvement with the assassination of JFK, from paramilitary American Nazi elements to individuals and institutions overlapping the Reinhard Gehlen spy milieu.
In this program, we excerpt a recent, massive volume General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy by Jeffrey H. Caufield M.D. NB: For a seasoned researcher, this is a useful and important book, however it MUST be handicapped–the author is dismissive of the [by now recorded fact] that elements of the intelligence community were involved in the killing. Of course, they were.
Notwithstanding that significant flaw, the book features a treasure trove of information about Nazi and fascist connections to the assassination of JFK. A veteran researcher can–and should–easily take the information from Caufield’s book and collate it with the intelligence community elements with which the “radical right” individuals and institutions are affiliated.
Although not coterminous by any means, what Caufield terms “the radical right” and U.S. intelligence are profoundly connected.
We suspect that overlapping groups comprising what Caufield terms “the radical right” constitute an “American Gladio.”
This hypothetical relationship suggests the possibility of a domestic version of “Operation Stay Behind” and its Italian component, “Operation Gladio”. The above were NATO operations that utilized extreme right and fascist elements as potential guerilla forces to fight against communists in the event of either a successful Soviet takeover of Western Europe (an extreme improbability), or the greater likelihood of a popular Communist takeover of a major Western European country. In practice, Gladio resulted in a program of terrorist acts (bombings, kidnappings and assassinations) directed against the left. (Many of those acts were actually blamed on the left, in order to discredit it in the eyes of the public.)
Disturbed by the alleged lack of “backbone” demonstrated by American military personnel during the Korean War, American strategic thinkers undertook to indoctrinate the American public with a practically militant, anti-Communist perspective. These leaders feared that, in the event of a protracted nuclear face-off with the Soviets, lack of American political resolve could result in the United States “blinking” and backing down in such a confrontation.
In 1958, the Eisenhower administration issued a National Security Council directive authorizing the military to engage in a program of political indoctrination of military personnel and (more importantly) the civilian population as well. The goal of this directive was to alter the political views of the American people. The constitutional implications of this directive could not be exaggerated. The bulk of the broadcast examines evidence that suggests that, as a result of this NSC directive, the national security establishment began utilizing far-right and fascist groups in order to realize the desired ideological transformation. Mr. Emory suggests that these networks may very well have been utilized in the American political assassinations of the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as domestic intelligence operations against the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.
We begin our analysis with New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s 1967 letter to Lord Bertrand Russell, in which he noted the Nazi associations of many of the people involved with the JFK assassination.
Next, we excerpt text discussing David Ferrie’s Nazi musings and associations.
In future programs, we will take up the issue of what Fort Sill Operations Command Officer Glenn Pinchback referred to as a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave America in the name of anti-Communism” and “a neo-Nazi plot gargantuan in scope.”
In FTR #188, we detailed the “Hate Bus,” a gambit by American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell to protest the Freedom Riders and the Civil Rights movement. It bears some structural similarity to the Charlottesville incident, with fascists staging a counter-event to a progressive demonstration, in this case the “freedom riders” bus ridden by white college students and black civil rights activists in support of integration and voting rights in the South.
Note that apparent Oswald associate Ray Leahart was the best man at the wedding of David Duke, a major participant in the Charlottesville event.
Highlighting aspects of the career of “Hate Bus” participant Ray Leahart, a New Orleans ANP [American Nazi Party] member, we note that:
1.-Leahart was alleged to have been an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald. ” . . . . On December 16, 1963, after the Kennedy assassination, the New Orleans FBI investigated a tip that Lee Harvey Oswald had been seen with Ray Leahart during the previous summer. Leahart was a New Orleans Nazi whom [Guy] Banister had bailed out of jail in the Hate Bus incident. . . .”
2.-The FBI had no documents on Leahart, raising the question of what happened to a document about Leahart’s arrest in the “Hate Bus” incident. (For more about the Hate Bus, see FTR #188.) Author Caufield speculates that Oswald handler Guy Banister’s close relationship with FBI SAC Regis Kennedy may have had something to do with the disappearance of Leahart’s arrest record. ” . . . . No FBI documents, other than the New Orleans police mug shots from the Hate Bus arrest, were in the FBI record, which raises the question of what happened to FBI reference 841767D (Leahart’s arrest record in the Hate Bus incident) and why it did not accompany the allegation and substantial likelihood of an Oswald-Leahart association when sent to the Warren Commission. Banister’s close friendship with New Orleans FBI SAC Regis Kennedy may have had something to do with the critical omission. . . .”
3.-Leahart was close to Dallas, Texas, ANP members, including Robert Surrey, who printed a notorious poster of JFK: ” . . . . . . . The Dallas FBI office was aware of correspondence linking Leahart to ANP [American Nazi Party] activities in Texas. One Dallas ANP member, Robert Surrey, was a close associate of General [Edwin] Walker. Surrey’s wife Mary was Walker’s personal secretary. Wealthy oilmen reportedly funded Surrey’s Nazi outfit. Surrey printed the infamous ‘Wanted for Treason’ poster which had circulated in Dallas before the association. The poster pictured mug-shot-styled photos of President Kennedy and accused him of treason. Surrey and Walker were Warren Commission witnesses, and, of course, Walker was close to both Guy Banister and Kent Courtney. . . .”
4.-Leahart was an associate of David Duke, and was best man at Duke’s wedding. ” . . . . On September 9, 1972, Leahart became the best man at Duke’s wedding. . . .”
The program then reviews Daniel Burros, one of the American Nazi Party members whose contact information was in Lee Harvey Oswald’s address book.
Burros viewed with favor veteran Nazi Edward Hunter, a Guy Banister’s associate, who had been a member of the pre-war Nazi Fifth Column in the U.S.
Burros allegedly committed suicide at the home of Pennsylvania Klan leader Roy Frankhouser, who–as seen in AFA #13–had operational links with elements of U.S. intelligence, CIA in particular.
Frankhouser also infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party, an organization so infiltrated by spooks and fascists that it was little more than a right-wing front organization. (The SWP was the ideological petri dish in which Lyndn LaRouche and Bernie Sanders were cultured.)
Note that Frankhouser was apparently in possession of correspondence from Michael and Ruth Paine, two “liberal” babysitters of Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife. Both Michael and Ruth Paine had strong links to the national security establishment.
Fleshing out the continuity between the Nazi Fifth Column of the pre-World War II period and what author Caufield termed the “radical right” and by contemporary observers as “the alt-right,” we excerpt John Roy Carlson’s Under Cover. Note that Edward Hunter was an associate of Guy Banister’s. (Banister was one of Oswald’s apparent intelligence handlers.)
Gerhard Frey was the editor of the Deutsche National Zeitung und Soldaten Zeitung, which had veterans of the SS and Goebbels’ propaganda bureau on its editorial staff. The publication received financial support from the CIA.
A financier of contemporary Russian fascist Vladimir Zhironovsky, Frey was associated with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.
Formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, that organization is a consortium of Eastern European Third Reich subsidiaries such as the Ukrainian OUN/B, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Bulgarian National Front, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Croatian Ustachi, the Slovakian Hlinka Party and others. The unifying element in these fascist organizations was the SS. The ABN became a key element of the Gehlen organization and the GOP.
Both Frey and General Charles Willoughby were associated with the ABN.
General Charles Willoughby was also tight with the ABN, and its founder Jaroslav Stetzko, the head of Ukraine’s Nazi collaborationist government. (The spelling of Stetzko’s name varies with the transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet.) In numerous programs, we have discussed Stetzko, his wartime genocidal operations, his and the ABN’s links to the Gehlen organization, the GOP, the CIA and the Underground Reich.
An element of continuity between the wartime regime of Jaroslav Stetzko and the present OUN/B successor organizations in Ukraine is Roman Svarych.
Roman Svarych was Stezko’s personal secretary in the early 1980’s. He became Ukraine’s minister of justice (the equivalent of Attorney General) under Yuschenko, and held the same post under both Timoshenko governments. Svarych then became an adviser to Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko and is the chief spokesman for the Azov Battalion. (We highlight Stetzko/Stetsko in numerous programs–use the search function with the alternate spellings to flesh out your understanding.)
Recommended Reading
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