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: What Really Happened at Pearl Harbor on 12/07/1941

On Mr. Emory’s Patre­on site, the most recent one hour talks include a Decem­ber 4th spe­cial on the facts con­cern­ing the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Har­bor. 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.

Latest Patreon Talks: Port Chicago; Philippines History; JFK Assassination Suit; Operation Northwoods

In addi­tion to peri­od­ic appear­ances by oth­er researchers and authors on the Zoom Q & A talks, Mr. Emory’s Patre­on site has cov­ered the deep polit­i­cal his­to­ry of the Philip­pines, the Port Chica­go explo­sion, the law­suit against the Biden admin­is­tra­tion to force the release of doc­u­ments about the JFK assas­si­na­tion, pos­si­ble false flag in Ukraine pri­or to the U.S. midterms. 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.

FTR#s 1264 & 1265 Interviews #3 and #4 with Jim Di Eugenio about “JFK Revisited”

Con­tin­u­ing our dis­cus­sion with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about JFK Revis­it­ed, we begin with analy­sis of com­par­i­son between the “stab in the back” hypoth­e­sis float­ed by reac­tionar­ies in Weimar Ger­many, deny­ing that they lost World War I, with sim­i­lar revi­sion­ism float­ed by the right wing con­cern­ing Amer­i­ca’s defeat in Viet­nam.

Bridg­ing dis­cus­sion that will be con­tin­ued in our pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we note a key quote from the book and doc­u­men­tary by Lisa Pease, not­ing that JFK stood apart from the Eisenhower/Dulles view that non-align­ment among the for­mer colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries that achieved inde­pen­dence was the equiv­a­lent of pro-Com­mu­nist ori­en­ta­tion.

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 352.

. . . . Lisa Pease: His [JFK’s] approach was a rad­i­cal break from his pre­de­ces­sor. In an oral his­to­ry inter­view that Sukarno gave after John Kennedy’s death, he said words to the effect that what made Kennedy spe­cial is that he believed non-align­ment was not amoral as it had been under John Fos­ter Dulles. I thought that was an inter­est­ing way of putting it. . . .

Exem­pli­fy­ing Kennedy’s under­stand­ing of how nation­al­ist aspi­ra­tions were at the fore­front of strug­gles for nation­al inde­pen­dence that were cast into the anni­hi­lat­ing Cold War meat­grinder, we detail his trip to Indochi­na, where he net­worked with French gen­er­als, who told him that France was win­ning its strug­gle against the Viet Minh, and then with State Depart­ment pro­fes­sion­al Edmund Gul­lion, who opined that France was los­ing the war and would, in the end, lose.

Gul­lion also told Kennedy that, if the U.S. got involved, it would lose as well. It was Gullion’s con­vic­tion that the Viet­namese peo­ples’ desire for inde­pen­dence trumped any­thing the West could do.

We note that rough­ly 80% of the bud­get of the French war effort was bankrolled by the U.S. We also note that there was a con­tin­gency plan devel­oped for a mas­sive U.S. air sup­port oper­a­tion on behalf of the French called “Oper­a­tion Vul­ture.” Part of that plan was the deploy­ment of three atom­ic bombs for use against the Viet­namese.

For more about Kennedy’s ear­ly edu­ca­tion about the real­i­ties of war in South­east Asia, see—among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#1031.

This aware­ness guid­ed JFK’s Viet­nam pol­i­cy, in which he not only resist­ed tremen­dous pres­sure to com­mit U.S. com­bat troops to Viet­nam, but planned a with­draw­al of U.S. forces from Viet­nam.

Per­haps the most impor­tant change made after JFK’s assas­si­na­tion was John­son’s nega­tion of Kennedy’s plans to with­draw from Viet­nam.

LBJ can­celled Kennedy’s sched­uled troop with­draw­al, sched­uled per­son­nel increas­es and imple­ment­ed the 34A pro­gram of covert oper­a­tions against North Viet­nam. Exe­cut­ed by South Viet­namese naval com­man­dos using small, Amer­i­can-made patrol boats, these raids were sup­port­ed by U.S. destroy­ers in the Gulf of Tonkin, which were elec­tron­i­cal­ly “fin­ger­print­ing” North Viet­namese radar instal­la­tions.

The elec­tron­ic fin­ger­print­ing of North Viet­namese radar was in antic­i­pa­tion of a pre-planned air war, a fun­da­men­tal part of a plan by LBJ to involve the Unit­ed States in a full-scale war in South­east Asia.

Despite hav­ing promised dur­ing the 1964 cam­paign that no Amer­i­can com­bat units would be com­mit­ted to Viet­nam, with­in three months of the elec­tion, the first com­bat units were dis­patched to that unfor­tu­nate nation.

In addi­tion to not­ing that Hubert Humphrey, con­trary to pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tion, was an oppo­nent of John­son’s war strat­e­gy, we note that Robert McNa­ma­ra was also opposed to it, although he went along with the Com­man­der in Chief’s poli­cies.

McNa­ma­ra did com­mis­sion the Pen­ta­gon study of Viet­nam pol­i­cy that became the Pen­ta­gon Papers. 

Jim notes that Noam Chom­sky and Pro­fes­sor Howard Zinn ini­tial­ly opposed dis­cus­sion of how JFK’s assas­si­na­tion changed U.S. Viet­nam pol­i­cy.

There is a clip in the film of a con­ver­sa­tion between LBJ and McNa­ma­ra where LBJ cod­i­fies his oppo­si­tion to the JFK/McNamara poli­cies in Viet­nam.

The fledg­ling nation of Laos was also part of French Indochi­na, and Jim notes how out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er coached Pres­i­dent-Elect Kennedy on the neces­si­ty of com­mit­ting  U.S. com­bat forces to Laos.

Again, Kennedy refused to com­mit U.S. ground forces and engi­neered a pol­i­cy of neu­tral­i­ty for Laos.

Where­as JFK had imple­ment­ed a pol­i­cy afford­ing neu­tral­i­ty to Laos–against the wish­es of the Joint Chiefs, CIA and many of his own cab­i­net, LBJ scrapped the neu­tral­ist pol­i­cy in favor of a CIA-imple­ment­ed strat­e­gy of employ­ing “nar­co-mili­tias” such as the Hmong tribes­men as com­bat­ants against the Pathet Lao. This counter-insur­gency war­fare was com­ple­ment­ed by a mas­sive aer­i­al bomb­ing cam­paign.

JFK’s pol­i­cy vis a vis the war of inde­pen­dence being waged by the French in Alge­ria is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance.

The pro­gram  reviews Kennedy’s stance on Alge­ria. A French colony in North Africa, Alger­ian inde­pen­dence forces waged a fierce guer­ril­la war in an attempt at becom­ing free from France. Once again, Kennedy opposed the West­ern con­sen­sus on Alge­ria, which sought to retain that prop­er­ty as a French pos­ses­sion.

The French peo­ple were divid­ed over the Alger­ian strug­gle, and those divi­sions led to the fall of the Fourth Repub­lic and the rise of Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle grant­ed Alge­ria its inde­pen­dence and then faced down the lethal oppo­si­tion of the OAS, a group of mil­i­tary offi­cers ground­ed in the fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tionist pol­i­tics of Vichy France. De Gaulle sur­vived sev­er­al assas­si­na­tion attempts against him and there are a num­ber of evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing between those attempts and the forces that killed Kennedy.

Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin–one of Guy Ban­is­ter’s investigators–boasted of hav­ing trans­ferred a large sum of mon­ey from the CIA to the OAS offi­cers plot­ting against De Gaulle. In addi­tion, Jean Souetre–a French OAS-linked assas­sin was in the Dal­las Fort Worth area on 11/22/1963.

JFK, Alge­ria and oper­a­tional links between JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and OAS attempts on De Gaulle’s life are dis­cussed in FTR#1162.

Note that JFK told the French that he could not con­trol his own intel­li­gence ser­vices.

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of JFK’s poli­cies with regard to Africa, the Con­go in par­tic­u­lar. This top­ic is pre­sent­ed at greater length in our next inter­view with Jim.

FTR#1261 Bong-Bong and the Marcos Continuum

Explor­ing a deep polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ic, this pro­gram sets forth fun­da­men­tal aspects of what the late, bril­liant Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave called “The Mar­cos Dynasty.”

This pro­gram excerpts two of their excel­lent books–which Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends. There are links pro­vid­ed with each text excerpt to facil­i­tate the acqui­si­tion of the books, which, again, Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends.

Recent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines (with close rel­a­tives of for­mer pres­i­dent Duterte as aides), Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Jr.—nicknamed Bong-Bong—has net­worked with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and renewed an invig­o­rat­ed, anti-Chi­na alliance.

Essen­tial for an under­stand­ing of the Bong-Bong/Blinken liai­son is aware­ness of Mar­cos, Jr.’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in his dic­ta­tor father’s phe­nom­e­nal­ly lucra­tive recov­er­ies of Gold­en Lily war gold secret­ed in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. 

This sub­ject is cov­ered in the land­mark text Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688, 689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the sub­ject mate­r­i­al of that con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant book.)

Fer­di­nand, Sr.’s rise was aid­ed by his “god­fa­ther,” Judge Chua, who was his bio­log­i­cal father in an out-of-wed­lock liai­son. This was rel­a­tive­ly com­mon in the Philip­pines and not stig­ma­tized as in many oth­er soci­eties.

Judge Chua’s posi­tion in the Chua fam­i­ly gave him great influ­ence. In turn, the clan asso­ci­a­tions of Chi­nese in the Philip­pines were fun­da­men­tal to the pro­fes­sion­al and social under­tak­ings of mem­bers of that com­mu­ni­ty.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the strong affil­i­a­tion of the clans with the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-shek, impart­ing a fas­cist ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion to them. This was a major deep polit­i­cal influ­ence on Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr., the out-of-wed­lock son of the influ­en­tial Judge Chua.

Next, we present the deep polit­i­cal back­ground that shaped Fer­di­nand Mar­cos and an explo­ration of the man­ner in which eco­nom­ic class con­sid­er­a­tions shaped alliances dur­ing the Japan­ese fas­cist occu­pa­tion of the Philip­pines and its after­math.

In FTR#‘s 905, 970, among oth­er pro­grams, we explored how the U.S. reha­bil­i­tat­ed and resus­ci­tat­ed the Japan­ese fas­cist infra­struc­ture from that nation’s World War II impe­r­i­al state.

We have spo­ken of promi­nent Japan­ese fas­cists Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in numer­ous pro­grams.

Com­bined with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s reac­tionary stance, those reha­bil­i­tat­ed Japan­ese fas­cists con­sti­tut­ed the crit­i­cal foun­da­tion of America’s Cold War in Asia.

The MacArthur team in the Philip­pines dur­ing the Cold War was culled from the col­lab­o­ra­tionist milieu who worked with the Japan­ese dur­ing the occu­pa­tion. This includ­ed the head of the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment, Jose Lau­rel, as well as Benig­no Aquino Sr. and Manuel Rox­as.

Fol­low­ing the ouster of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr. the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment was head­ed by Cory Aquino, the wid­ow of slain CIA agent Benig­no Aquino, Jr. and Sal­vador Lau­rel, the son of Jose Lau­rel.

Col­lab­o­ra­tor Manuel Rox­as was MacArthur’s “favorite son” to man­age post­war Philip­pine gov­ern­ment.

“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.

Rest In Peace, Heartfelt Thanks and Admiration: Peggy and Sterling Seagrave

In FTR #446, we high­light­ed the seri­ous death threats, harass­ment, and covert dis­rup­tion expe­ri­enced by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave in con­nec­tion with their writ­ing. 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. 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.” Peg­gy passed in 2016 and Ster­ling in the spring of 2017. Listeners/readers may hon­or these heroes by read­ing their con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant books.

What Were John Foster Dulles and Kodama Yoshio Doing in Seoul on the Eve of the Outbreak of the Korean War?

In our last post, we high­light­ed the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agree­ment which false­ly main­tained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occu­pied dur­ing World War II and that the (already) boom­ing nation was bank­rupt and would not be able to pay repa­ra­tions to the slave labor­ers and “com­fort women” it had pressed into ser­vice dur­ing the con­flict. In the con­text of the fan­tas­tic sums loot­ed by Japan under the aus­pices of Gold­en Lily and the incor­po­ra­tion of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Kore­an War raise some inter­est­ing, unre­solved ques­tions. One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the loot­ing of occu­pied Asia dur­ing World War II was the remark­able Kodama Yoshio. Net­worked with the pow­er­ful Yakuza Japan­ese orga­nized crime milieu, the Black Drag­on soci­ety (the most pow­er­ful of the patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties), the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese mil­i­tary and the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, Kodama loot­ed the Chi­nese under­world and traf­ficked in nar­cotics with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s fas­cist nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship. We can but won­der about Kodama Yosh­io’s pres­ence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Fos­ter Dulles at nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War. ” . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . ”