While the Philippines is undergoing its own brand of peaceful reforms, it cannot be denied that the defeated agents of the Imperial Crown and the Puppet Masters are still inside the country, trying their best to malign the president from time to time. Fortunately, the president is not letting every shot in the bow unanswered.
He recently asked the most fundamental question, “Who is this stupid god?,” which reminds us of the good old George Carlin…
This latest tit for tat is sure to occupy the airwaves for some time, but it is always good to remind the country of how the Jesuits operate through the CIA and various NGOs to undermine even the most popular government in the country to date.
There is an ongoing effort to forge a unified action between the Vatican Church and the Communists to topple Duterte from power. That should not come as a surprise looking back the country’s history with the foreign occupiers. This should also explain why the CPP founder, Jose Ma. Sison, is enjoying his retirement in Europe instead of North Korea or China, while his cadres provide the funding through the “revolutionary taxes” regularly collected through banditry in the countryside.
It is not too far fetched to say that the church is providing support to the communist organization considering the fact that several of its priests have acknowledged themselves to be members of the movement.
The Philippines’ most popular president ever is doing his best to wake up his people to the true nature of the enemy by shaking the foundation of the country’s subservience to the Vatican. Will he survive the last 4 years of his term?
Covert Operations and the CIA’s Hidden History in the Philippines
By Roland G. Simbulan, Convenor/Coordinator, Manila Studies Program
University of the Philippines
(Lecture at the University of the Philippines-Manila, Rizal Hall, Padre Faura, Manila, August 18, 2000.)
For a long time, Manila has been the main station, if not the regional headquarters, of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for Southeast Asia. This is perhaps so because the Philippines has always been regarded as a stronghold of US imperial power in Asia. Since the Americanized Filipinos were under the spell of American culture, they were easy to recruit without realizing they were committing treason to their own people and country. And from the beginning of the 20th century to 1992, there were the US military bases, the mighty symbols and infrastructure of American power.
CIA human intelligence assets in Manila are said to have provided vital information at crucial times. According to declassified documents under the Freedom of Information Act, on Sept. 17, 1972, a CIA asset in the Philippines who was in the inner circle of Marcos informed the CIA station in Manila that Ferdinand Marcos was planning to proclaim martial law on Sept. 21,1972. The CIA station in Manila was also provided in advance a copy of Proclamation 1081–the proclamation that declared martial law in the country–and a list of the individuals whom Marcos planned to arrest and imprison upon the declaration of military rule.
I would like to mention –without going into any conclusions–that, so accurate was the CIA’s assessment about the Sept. 21, 1972 declaration of martial rule that it boosted the prestige of the CIA station in Manila. Upon his retirement a few years later, Henry Byroade, the American ambassador to Manila when martial law was declared, was honored by the CIA headquarters in Langley,Virginia–a tribute that is said to be very rarely given to any retiring ambassador. Also, in 1982, the CIA was able to verify from a high-ranking Philippine immigration officer the names of the two doctors who visited the Philippines to treat Marcos for kidney failure, giving the CIA a clear picture of Marcos’s health problems. (Richelson, 1999).
It is important to expose US imperialism’s clandestine apparatus in the Philippines. If the activities of this sinister agency are not meticulously documented, there is a tendency to mythologize, or even Hollywood-ize, its notoriety and crimes against the Filipino people and Philippine national sovereignty. The CIA is the covert overseas intelligence agency of the United States government and is likewise an “action-oriented ” vehicle of American foreign and military policy. The 1975 Church Committee Report of the US congressional investigations into the CIA’s covert activities abroad revealed how countless foreign governments were overthrown by the CIA; how the CIA instigated a military coup d’etat and assassinated foreign political leaders like Chilean President Salvador Allende, who merely tried to safeguard the interests of their own country; and how “special ops” and paramilitary campaigns contributed to the death, directly or indirectly, of millions of people, as a result of those actions.
The 1974-75 US congressional investigations also uncovered CIA intervention in the domestic politics of target countries–from the overthrow of governments, attempted assassinations, to subsidies and financial support for the media, political parties, trade unions, universities and business associations–all designed “to clandestinely influence foreign governments, events, organizations or persons in support of US foreign policy.” (Robinson, 1996; Richelson,1999). The CIA has gone beyond its original mission of gathering intelligence and was conducting Mafia-type operations not only in its own territory but against foreign governments and their leaders.
Doing covert action that undermines Philippine national sovereignty and genuine democracy in order to prop up the tiny pro-US oligarchical minority that has cornered most of the wealth in their poor country is what the CIA is all about and is the real reason for its existence. It is no longer just the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence which is officially its mandate under the US National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA.
The CIA in the Philippines has engaged in countless covert operations for intervention and dirty tricks particularly in Philippine domestic politics. On top of all this is the US diplomatic mission, especially the political section that is a favorite cover for many CIA operatives. CIA front companies also provide an additional but convenient layer of cover for operatives assigned overseas. In general, wherever you find US big business interests (like Coca-Cola, Ford, Citicorp, United Fruit, Nike, etc.), you also find a very active CIA. But the covers often used are diversified.
Desmond Fitzgerald, for instance, a former CIA chief of station in Manila was said to have fronted as a legitimate businessman of an American multinational company. Joseph Smith, a top CIA agent assigned to the Philippines in the early 1960s, posed as a “civilian employee” of the Clark Airforce Base’s 13th Air Force Southeast Asia Regional Survey Unit .On the other hand, CIA operative Gabriel Kaplan’s initial cover was really more “civilian”–with the CIA-created Asia Foundation (formerly the Committee for a Free Asia), then later as resident director of another CIA creation, the COMPADRE both of which we shall be dealing with more extensively later.
On the other hand, CIA operative David Sternberg fronted as a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper based in Boston, the Christian Science Monitor, when he assisted Gabriel Kaplan in managing the presidential campaign of Ramon Magsaysay in the ’50s.
The Agency’s assets and technical infrastructure in Manila have been drastically affected by the withdrawal of the bases by 1992 because, before this, the CIA operated jointly with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) major listening posts into most of Indochina and southern China. The joint CIA/DIA structure called the Strategic Warning Staff, is headquartered in the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) and operated a number of similar posts as the one in Manila. The Manila station includes very sizeable logistical capabilities for a wide range of clandestine operations against Asian governments.
The loss of the bases in the Philippines was a tremendous blow to the CIA’s Asian infrastructure, if not a major setback. From the mid-50s, the US bases in the Philippines served as operational headquarters for “Operation Brotherhood” which operated in Indochina under the direct supervision of the CIA’s Col. Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conien, and it involved several Filipinos who were recruited and trained by the CIA. Lansdale was the classic CIA operative in Southeast Asia who was romanticized in Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American. Lansdale was even appointed by former President Ramon Magsaysay as his “military adviser” but was, in fact, his speechwriter as well, who determined Magsaysay’s foreign and military policy. So successful was the CIA in pulling the strings thru Lansdale that in 1954, a high-level US committee reported that, “American policy in Southeast Asia was most effectively represented in the Philippines, where any expanded program of Western influence may best be launched.”
Examples of such programs were the Freedom Company of the Philippines, Eastern Construction Co. and “Operation Brotherhood,” which provided “a mechanism to permit the deployment of Filipino personnel in other Asian countries, for unconventional operations covertly supported by the Philippines.” (Shalom, 1986). The CIA also actively used Philippine territory, particularly Clark Air Base, for the training and launching of operatives and logistics in the late 1950s, where the US covertly supported dissident Indonesian colonels in the failed armed overthrow of Indonesian President Sukarno. The CIA then established supply, training and logistical bases on several islands in the Philippines, including an airstrip in the Tawi-Tawi Island of Sanga-Sanga. A CIA-owned proprietary company, the Civil Air Transport, was actively used by the CIA from Philippine territory to give direct assistance to Indonesian military rebel groups attempting to overthrow Indonesian President Sukarno in the late 1950s.
Manila was also the center of operations for the Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc., a CIA outfit operating along the Burma-China border against the People’s Republic of China. Using the Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc. as a front company, the CIA recruited for this operation in the early 1950s several Filipino aviators who were World War II veterans, including operatives of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Military Intelligence Service (MIS) who were still in active service.
In his memoirs, former Philippine Ambassador to Burma Narciso G. Reyes narrates that one of these Filipino “undercover” MIS agents posed as the labor attache at the Philippine embassy in Rangoon even before this was formally established. The Filipino CIA undercover agent was also reporting to the American ambassador to Burma from whom he was also getting paid! (Reyes, 1995).
Side by side with CIA proprietary companies Civil Air Transport, Sea Supply Co. and Western Enterprises Co., the agency used Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc. in an attempt to invade the People’s Republic of China in the early 1950s, using the mercenary Chinese warlord Gen. Li Mi as leader of the invasion force. After a few skirmishes with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Gen. Li Mi later on “retired” and pocketed the US financial and military assistance for an invasion against China and concentrated on the lucrative opium trade along the Burmese-Thai border.
US military advisers of the Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) and the CIA station in Manila designed and led the bloody suppression of the nationalist Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB) which was vehemently opposed to the post-war Parity Rights amendment and the onerous military agreements with the United States. The CIA’s success in crushing the peasant-based Huk rebellion in the 1950s made this operation the model for future counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam and Latin America. Colonel Lansdale and his Filipino sidekick, Col. Napoleon Valeriano were later to use their counterguerrilla experience in the Philippines for training covert operatives in Vietnam and in the US-administered School of the Americas, which trained counterguerrilla assassins for Latin America. Thus, the Philippines had become the CIA’s prototype in successful covert operations and psychological warfare.
After his stint in the Philippines using propaganda, psywar and deception against the Huk movement, Lansdale was then assigned in Vietnam to wage military, political and psychological warfare. It was Lansdale’s view that the tactics that he used to solve the problem in the Philippines were applicable to Vietnam. He was wrong. In 1975, after two decades of protracted warfare, the Vietnamese people defeated the strongest superpower on earth.
The CIA’s actions and activities in its Manila station have never been limited to information gathering. Information gathering is but a part of an offensive strategy to attack, neutralize and undermine any organization, institution, personality or activity they consider a danger to the stability and power of the United States. The late Senator Claro M. Recto was believed to have been a victim of the CIA’s dirty tricks department because of his staunch crusade against the US military bases in the Philippines. It is now a well-documented fact that General Ralph B. Lovett, then the CIA station chief in Manila and the US ambassador, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, had discussed a plan to assassinate Recto using a vial of poison. A few years later, Recto was to die mysteriously of heart attack (though he had no known heart ailment) in Rome after an appointment with two Caucasians in business suits. Before this, the CIA had made every effort to assure the defeat of Recto in the 1957 presidential election wherein the CIA manufactured and distributed defective condoms with a label that said, “Courtesy of Claro M. Recto–the People’s Friend.” Could it be that Recto was a victim of the CIA’s covert operations, or what they call “executive action” against those perceived as dangerous enemies of the United States?
It was also during the time of Recto and the Huks that the CIA covertly sponsored the Security Training Center as a “countersubversion, counterguerrilla and psychological warfare school” on the outskirts of Manila. CIA funds concentrated on the sensitive area of “rural development” and funds were channeled to the National Movement for Free Elections’ (Namfrel) community centers, the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) and a rural development project called Committee for Philippine Action in Development, Reconstruction and Education (COMPADRE) thru CIA fronts and conduits like the Catherwood Foundation and the “Committee for a Free Asia (CFA), later renamed the Asia Foundation.” (Shalom, 1986).
In the late 1980s, the CIA assigned Vietnam veteran U.S. General John Singlaub to organize anti-communist vigilante groups all over the country for mass terror, particularly as part of the Philippine government’s “total war policy” against people’s movements. General Singlaub posed as an American “treasure hunter” and even secured all the necessary official permits for treasure hunting in the Philippines. Another operative active in the “total war” operations in the Philippines was Vietnam counterinsurgency specialist Col. James Rowe, Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) adviser, whose cover was blown off when he was ambushed in 1989 by urban guerrillas of the New People’s Army in Timog Avenue, Quezon City. Rowe was clandestinely involved in the organization of anti-communist death squads like Alsa Masa and vigilante groups patterned after “Operation Phoenix” in Vietnam which had the objective of eliminating legal and semi-legal mass activists and their political sympathizers that constituted the political infrastructure of the insurgency movement.
The CIA lost its huge telecommunications installation at Clark Air Base–the Regional Relay Station when the Philippine Senate rejected on Sept. 16, 1991, the proposed treaty for the bases’ renewal. Before 1970, according to a former CIA operative, the sprawling Subic Naval Base was the site of a China operations group of the CIA and “the agency even constructed 100 expensive modern homes, a large two-story office building and a big warehouse at Subic Bay.” (Smith, 1976)
There is, however, a vital covert installation that the CIA was able to retain and maintain: the “Regional Service Center” (RSC). Located along Roxas Boulevard in Manila at the Seafront Compound about a mile south from the US Embassy, the RSC fronts as a facility of the United States Information Service (USIS), formerly called the US International Communications Agency. This ultra-modern printing facility functions as a secret CIA propaganda plant. It has the ability to produce large quantities of high-quality color offset magazines, posters, leaflets and the like in at least 14 Asian languages.
During the Vietnam War, the RSC was ceaselessly involved in economic sabotage against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) or North Vietnam. The RSC was involved in counterfeiting North Vietnamese currency which were airdropped all over the DRV to sabotage the economy and weaken the country’s resistance. The CIA’s Technical Services Division maintains close liaison with the RSC, which still actively operates within the Seafront Compound along Roxas Boulevard. The post-Vietnam War and later on, the post-bases era has only increased the importance of Manila as a major listening post and regional headquarters of the Agency.
A former junior case officer of the CIA, Janine Brookner, who was stationed in Manila described the capital city of the Philippines as “a wild place” for CIA operatives who spent a lot of time in bars, sex shows and brothels. This was because, according to her, the standard CIA procedure for recruiting targets was to “get him drunk, get him laid, and then get him on the Agency’s dole.” Brookner was an attractive but determined blonde who claimed to have developed assets in both the government and the Communist Party during her assignment to the Philippines. Brookner was also a very productive recruiter who, as a handler of important assets and as a CIA case officer, claims to be able to make her targets confess everything. “You take care of them,” Brookner recalls, “and they tell you their fears and nightmares…I’m good at people depending on me.” In fact, her targets, especially high-ranking Philippine government officials, often propositioned her. (Starobin, 1997)
Cultural Fronts
The CIA has long utilized in the Philippines sophisticated or subtle means for clandestine propaganda, such as the manipulation of trade unions and cultural organizations, rather than heavy-handed activities such as paramilitary operations, political assassinations and coups as they had done extensively in Africa, Latin America and Vietnam. During my interview in 1996 with Ralph McGehee, a former CIA agent, and other former CIA operatives assigned to the Manila station, I was told that the CIA had many unheralded successes in the Philippines such as the manipulation of the trade union movement through the Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) and through funds which were channeled thru the USAID, Asia Foundation and National Endowment for Democracy.
In a recent article in the Journal of Contemporary Asia, American sociologist James Petras describes how progressive non-government organizations can be neutralized, if not coopted, thru US government, big business-backed funding agencies or CIA fronts and conduits masquerading as foundations. The purpose, according to Petras, is “to mystify and deflect discontent away from direct attacks on the corporate/banking power structure and profits toward local micro-projects …that avoids class analysis of imperialism and capitalist exploitation.” Neo-liberalism today, according to Petras, encourages NGOs to “emphasize projects, not movements; they ‘mobilize’ people to produce at the margins, not to struggle to control the means of production and wealth; they focus on the technical financial aspects of projects not on structural conditions that shape the everyday lives of people.” While using the language of the Left such as “people empowerment,” “gender equality,” “sustainable development” etc., these NGOs funded by USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Asia Foundation, etc. have become linked to a framework of collaboration with donors and even with government agencies with whom they have partnerships that subordinate activity to nonconfrontational politics, rather than militant mass mobilization. (Petras, 1999)
It must be emphasized that the US places high premium on the ideological legitimation of its continuing neo-colonial domination over the Philipines and, as such, depends heavily on US-financed and US-sponsored institutions, especially on the ideological front. Thus, grants are generously poured in by such agencies like USAID, NED, Asia Foundation and the big business-sponsored Ford Foundation. The objective is to constantly lure and lull the masses into the elite-dominated electoral process, thus legitimizing the neo-liberal economic system and its political apparatus, producing a fragile social peace and a “peaceful” mechanism for competition among the Filipino elite and oligarchy. In his book on French colonialism in Algeria titled, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote:
“Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in itsgrip, and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content.By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.”
One of the most critical moments of the CIA station in Manila was the immediate post-Marcos years when they tried to dissociate US links with the Marcoses and politically influence the contours of the post-Marcos era. Financial, technical and political support for the pro-US “agents of influence” assured the dominance of pro-US local elites and institutions as a counterweight to the progressive anti-imperialist, anti-Marcos forces that threatened to define and restructure the architecture of the post-Marcos neo-colonial regime.
USAID was directed to grant the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) with a generous financing so it could formulate a position paper on an economic program anchored on “the partnership between labor and capital.” USAID even temporarily set up an agrarian reform office, working closely at TUCP offices. Political analysts of the CIA and USAID wanted to design an agrarian reform program that would not disrupt the agro-export sector and one which could be synchronized with the counterinsurgency program and defuse peasant unrest. The CIA and US military advisers also wanted a deeper role in the design and command of counterinsurgency. These funds were supplemented by the so-called “democracy promotion” initiatives of the NED which poured in heavy funding for TUCP, Namfrel, the Women’s Movement for the Nurturing of Democracy (KABATID) and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI). The NED gave a total of $9 million from 1984-1990 to these institutions and organizations.
Following the ouster of Marcos, the US set about to transform the “new” Armed Forces of the Philippines into an effective counterinsurgency force that would integrate military, political, economic and social initiatives, including broad “civic action” campaigns, psychological operations, military aid and training. It was a massive comeback of the low-intensity conflict years of the Magsaysay-Lansdale era! Between 1987-1990, Washington reportedly authorized stepped-up clandestine CIA operations against the Left in the Philippines, including a $10 million allocation to the AFP for enhanced intelligence-gathering operations. There was also an increase in the number of CIA personnel, from 115 to 127, mostly attached as “diplomats” to the US embassy in Manila. (Oltman and Bernstein, 1992)
In general, US military and economic aid are used quite effectively and they remain key elements of US policy in the Philippines. The CIA station handles political aid and political matters. This means, according to the CIA’s Intelligence Memorandum on the 1965 Philippine presidential elections for instance, assuring that the victorious national candidates who are acceptable to the US should be “western-oriented and pledge to continue close and equitable relations with the US and the West on matters of mutual interest.” (Bonner, 1987) The CIA station also conducts widespread covert operations, among them: stage-managed national elections to assure preferred US outcome; payoffs to government officials under the guise of grants; financing for favored business and civic groups and pro-US propaganda campaigns among the population; the supply of intelligence information on activists and dissidents to the Armed Forces of the Philippines and so on. (Robinson, 1996)
Among the most prominent CIA fronts in Manila is the Asia Foundation with offices at Magallanes Village, Makati. According to a former US State Department bureaucrat William Blum in a recent book, the “Asia Foundation is the principal CIA front” and funding conduit in Asia. The Asia Foundation funds and supports known anti-communist groups or influential personalities, i.e. academics, journalists, local officials, etc. and institutions. (Blum, 1999) According to the former executive assistant to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations Victor Marchetti in his book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the Asia Foundation had the objective “to disseminate throughout Asia a negative vision of Mainland China, North Vietnam, and North Korea.” (Marchetti and Marks, 1980 edition). New York Times investigative journalist Raymond Bonner has also identified the Asia Foundation as “a CIA creation” and “front” in one of his books, Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (1987). My interviews with former CIA operatives in the Philippines in 1996 confirm the active use of this foundation for the “Agency.”
But the most credible and authoritative source that I have come across identifying the Asia Foundation as a CIA front and conduit is Marchetti’s book where the CIA-Asia Foundation link is defined in no uncertain terms:
“Another organization heavily subsidized by the CIA was the Asia Foundation. Established by the agency (CIA) in 1956, with a carefully chosen board of directors, the foundation was designed to promote academic and private interest in the East. It sponsored scholarly research, supported conferences and symposia, and ran academic exchange programs, a CIA subsidy that reached $88 million dollars a year. While most of the foundation’s activities were legitimate, the CIA also used it…to recruit foreign agents and new officers. Although the foundation often served as a cover for clandestine operations, its main purpose was to promote the spread of ideas which were anti-communist and pro-American–sometimes subtly and stridently…Designed–and justified at budget time–as an overseas propaganda operation, the Asia Foundation also was regularly guilty of propagandizing the American people with agency views on Asia. The Agency’s connection with the Asia Foundation came to light just after the 1967 exposure of CIA subsidies to the (American) National Student Association. The foundation clearly was one of the organizations that the CIA was banned from financing and, under the recommendations of the Katzenbach committee, the decision was made to end CIA funding. A complete cut-off after 1967, however, would have forced the foundation to shut down, so the agency made it the beneficiary of a large ‘severance payment’ in order to give it a couple of years to develop alternative sources of funding. Assuming the CIA has not resumed covert funding, the Asia Foundation has apparently made itself self-sufficient now…. during the 1960s, the CIA developed proprietary companies for use in propaganda operations. These proprietaries are more compact proprietaries and more covert than the now exposed fronts like Asia Foundation and Radio Free Europe.” (Marchetti and Marks, pp.157-158)
The CIA-linked Asia Foundation has long been active in the Philippines. It has generously funded academic seminars, researches, study tours, and conferences in most of the leading Philippine universities, most especially among many colleagues and programs at the University of the Philippines (UP).
You name it, they have their fingers stuck into it! Many nongovernment organizations, journalists, local governments and civic organizations have had their projects funded by Asia Foundation. This is what makes it strategic and well-placed, thus naturally, a matter of great concern and alarm to friends and colleagues in both the academe and the NGO sector who may be very upset by this information on the origins and CIA links of the Asia Foundation. But I did not invent this issue about the CIA-created Asia Foundation. I merely documented the previous testimonies from mostly open sources. It is part of the CIA’s history in this country, which I have documented from the accounts of former CIA agents and operatives. Many recipients of Asia Foundation grants as well as the Filipino staff of the Asia Foundation in Manila may not even be aware of its notorious history. But now we know a little better.
It is important to note that in 1961, the chief of the CIA’s Covert Action Staff wrote that books were “the most important weapon of strategic propaganda.” Tens of thousands of books have been produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA and its conduits such as the Asia Foundation in support of US foreign and military policy.
Project Echelon
Together with the National Security Agency, the CIA also maintains “Project Echelon,” the most sophisticated and the most technologically advanced eavesdropping system that has ever been devised. Through a relay system of satellites and spook stations in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and United States, the US intelligence system is able to intercept all telephone, fax, e-mail, Internet and cellphone transmissions worldwide. Its nerve center is located at Fort Meade in Maryland where the NSA maintains its headquarters. This has grave implications for both our public and private security.
The National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States has developed a global surveillance system, Echelon, which is a powerful electronic net operated by super-computers that intercept, monitor and process all phone, fax, e-mail and modem signals. The European Parliament in a 1998 report entitled, “An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control” has listed serious concerns and has recommended an intensive investigation of US-NSA operations. The NSA Echelon system provides awesome potential for abuse against civilian targets and governments worldwide, even against allies of the United States.
It can be recalled that under the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the coverage for special privileges and criminal immunity includes not only US armed forces personnel but also “civilian personnel who are employed by the US armed forces and who are accompanying the US armed forces.” These US “civilians” include technicians of the secretive US National Security Agency which, during the existence of the US bases here, operated the spy communications facilities at Clark, Subic and Camp John Hay, among others. (Simbulan, 1985) All private citizens’ and government communications are intercepted and monitored by the Echelon System.
According to Nicky Hager’s book, Secret Power (1986) which deals with the international electronic spy network, the US has not only been using its NSA Echelon system to collect political, military and economic intelligence against its enemies, but it also targets its own allies. According to Hager:
“…there is extensive interception of the ASEAN countries, including the Philippines….ASEAN meetings receive special attention with both public and private communications of these countries being intercepted to reveal the topics discussed, positions being taken and policy being considered.”
Through the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the US plans to fully restore its Echelon system in the Philippines which was greatly interrupted by the pullout of US military facilities and bases in 1992. The CIA heavily relies on the Echelon Project for its technologically advanced Signal Intelligence or SIGNIT, which is managed by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
Conclusion
Every CIA station is virtually an infrastructure for political, military, cultural and even economic intervention. In the Philippines, the CIA has not only functioned as a listening post but has been actively used to engage in covert operations, sabotage and political intervention to undermine Philippine sovereignty and self-determined national policies. Former CIA operatives in the Philippines confirm the use of official “diplomatic covers,” especially in the political section of the US Embassy where they are given secure communications, protected files and diplomatic immunity. They have also used “non-official covers,” disguised as businessmen in US firms. Covers under the guise of US naval or air force personnel are now minimal after the US bases and military facilities in the Philippines were dismantled. But as we can now see, the CIA has long been operating with virtual impunity and has always gotten away with its deep involvement in Philippine domestic affairs. Shall we allow this continued intervention in Philippine political and economic life?
Bibliography
Books
- Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press,1995.
- Hager, Nicky. Secret Power. New Zealand: Craig Porton Publishing, 1996.
- McGehee, Ralph. Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA. New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1983.
- Reyes, Narciso G. Memories of Diplomacy:A Life in the Philippine Foreign Service. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing Inc.,1995.
- Richelson, Jeffrey T. The US Intelligence Community. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999.
- Robinson, William I. Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- Shalom, Stephen. The United States and the Philippines: A Study of Neo-colonialism. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1986.
- Simbulan, Roland. The Bases of Our Insecurity: A Study of the US Military Bases in the Philippines. Quezon City: Balai Foundation, 1983.
- Smith, Joseph Burkholder. Portrait of a Cold Warrior. Toronto: Longman Canada, Ltd., 1976.
Articles
- Petras ,James. “NGOs in the Service of Imperialism,” Journal of Contemporary Asia. Vol. 29, No. 4 (1999).
- Oltman J. and Bernstein, R. “Counter-insurgency in the Philippines,” Covert Action Information Bulletin. No. 4, 1992, pp. 18-21
- Starobin, Paul. “Agent Provocateur,” George Magazine. Oct. 1997, pp.86-91.
Interviews
- Ralph McGehee, former CIA operative assigned to the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand; Herndon, Virginia, April-May 1996.
- Interviews with former CIA operatives in the Philippines at McLean and Herndon,Virginia, April-May 1996.
Highly Recommended Websites:
- CIABASE (use alltheweb.com or dogpile.com as search engines)
- http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
- http://www.pir.org (click Freedom of Information Act documents)
- http://www.boondocksnet.com (click U.S. as a World Power)
- http://www.Heavens-above.com (for U.S. spy satellites)
- http://www.dtic.mil/defenselink/ (U.S. Department of Defense)
- http://www.Nuclear Files.org (FOIA documents on nuclear issues)
- http://www.odci.gov (the CIA’s World Factbook)
- http://www.bullatomsci.org
Thank you very much, Wilson.
FUNNY!…The STOLEN country now called the USA has always considered ANY country that does not run their affairs as THEY want them to is called an “Evil Empire”…when in FACT, the USA is one of the MOST EVIL Empires in global history!
Completely controlled by the VATICAN JESUITS and ZIONIST…Luciferian/Satanist operating from a SECRET Space Program/Force using AI technology in an attempt to high-jack the whole “Disclosure Project” to FAKE a “Return of a WHITE Christ”, via “Project Blue Beam”!
WHAT a Joke!
THE ONLY WAY THIS COUNTRY WILL EVER BECOME “GREAT AGAIN” WOULD BE TO TELL THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT “THEIR HISTORY”…THEN REPENT AND RESTORING THE POWER AND WEALTH IT HAS STOLEN FROM ITS “REAL AMERICANS”…THE “ORIGINAL AMERICANS”…THE “NATIVE AMERICANS”!
REAL history has exposed the FACT that AFRICA WAS THE FOUNDING CIVILIZATION OF THE ENTIRE PLANET!
STOP!…Messing with the Philippines and the REST of this planet…THIS PLANET IS “NOT” YOUR PROPERTY…IT IS A CREATION OF “DIVINE PROVIDENCE;PRIME SOURCE CREATOR!
For every pimp, there’s a whore.
Brett Kavanaugh covered-up the Vince Foster death investigation involving the Clintons and needs to be removed from the SCOTUS list!
Religion Is Destroying Humanity……Religion has been a part of humanity since the first astronomers peered into the sky and created elaborate stories to define the movements of our universe. It made its way into our minds as we fearfully created devils and demons to explain the danger lurking in the darkness of night. It has both enchanted and burdened us as we attempt to define our world with the information available to us as we work our way through history.
However, things are quickly changing. For a growing number of us worldwide, what was once indescribable is now easily explained by the vast data we have gathered as we work towards refining our understanding. We are becoming painfully aware that, although our religions gave us a starting place for thinking about how our world functions, they no longer serve us in that process; and in fact, have left a trail of destruction in their historic path.
Here are 11 ways religion is destroying humanity:
1.) The assumption of truth.
Most of our world’s major religions each assume that it is their faith alone that is the “absolute truth” and refuse to concede that those traditions may be mistaken. Instead, they discover ways to force conflicting information to adapt to their own doctrine; no matter how effective the evidence is at actually disproving the rationality of that particular religion.
Many religious adherents have no problem understanding the irrationality of others beliefs, but are unable to apply the same logic when observing their own doctrine. Instead, every effort is made to justify why it is their – and only their – religion that is void of any fault. If they were to observe their own faith with the same set of scrutinizing eyes that they see through when evaluating other’s faiths, they would understand what many of us have already concluded – all of our religious texts were written by people, not gods. They are the stories and traditions that we created in order to explain our world in the past.
For instance, the majority of Christians would agree that the idea of Mohammad riding a flying horse into the heavens is an impossible fairy-tale; while simultaneously, they are unable to see how their own story of a talking snake or a man living inside a fish for three days is also impossible. We know that horses can’t fly. They are not airborne animals, they are land animals. We know that snakes can’t speak – they lack the vocal cords to produce the sounds necessary for speech. We also know that the digestive mechanisms of the fish would make it impossible for a man to actually live (let alone breathe) inside of a fish for three days. These stories, some of them with deep and purposeful meanings, cannot be understood, let alone correctly interpreted for beneficial use, when they are assumed to be truth, rather than for the allegories that they are.
The problem with this is that by insisting that (an obviously fabricated story) is absolute truth, the opportunity of arriving at the actual truth is greatly diminished. It creates a world where stories are placed above reality and reality is never within reach. It creates a mental mindset in people that is driven by misinformation and then passed on to future generations where misguided concepts are perpetuated.
2.) The promise of reward.
The faith of many followers hinges on the idea that there is some reward for devotion to their deity. For the Islamic gentleman, it is a promise of virgins after death. For the Christian, it is a perfect place of infinite peace and comfort. For Hindus, it is escaping the grueling task of reincarnation; and for the Buddhist it is reaching Nirvana.
How many of these same enthusiasts would subscribe to their religion if there were not a reward for their commitment? Without a reward, the faith does not carry the same power to control its congregate. There must be a conclusion to every religious story – a reason for carrying the belief to its completion.
It’s not difficult to understand why this is necessary for the ongoing functioning of a religion. Human beings are rarely motivated to commit to anything without a reward for their commitment. We work diligently through school for the reward of a career and money. We work hard in our relationships for the reward of satisfying unity with other human beings. We work attentively on our goals for the gratification of living a purposeful, meaningful and accomplished life. We take time daily to exercise and eat healthy to maintain a fit and healthful body. We humans do everything to reap the rewards of doing that thing.
…And those who create the religions our world follows know this well. Without the reward, the base of followers cannot sustain itself. This is a problem because it keeps people hinged to a system that they never question because they are so immersed in the promise of the reward that they never stop to question if the reward is real, or human-conceived.
Religion keeps people bonded to beliefs that may actually hinder human progress rather than helping procure our growth. It prevents individuals from progressing beyond antiquated thinking. Only they cannot see the problem because no matter what personal sacrifice is made in this life – there is a reward in the end – even if they can’t see that reward until the life they now have is gone from them.
3.) The superiority complex.
Religion enables people to act callously and inflict mental punishment on those they label “evil” without consequence to their hatred; and then permits them to honestly believe that their hatred is defensible as “good moral conduct”.
I remember when I first left my religion. People who I thought were friends and close family members labelled me as “wicked” simply for leaving my faith. Suddenly, I “needed” the prayers of family and friends, even though I had not said that I was going through anything difficult. “I’ll pray for you” became a common theme in many of my talks with these people. Pray for me? Have I done something wrong? Have I made some kind of mistake? Why do I need your prayers?
This is the illusory carrot of religion: an eternal reward for an elected few, and infinite punishment for everyone else. It is a narcissistic mindset that keeps adherents both comforted and terrified; a virtual mental prison to which the follower is consciously unaware. It saturates their relationships, often keeping those relationships from ever truly holding any love and kindness when those they interact with do not agree with their religious interpretations.
This is not always completely true for more kindly religious adherents; but unfortunately, even the kinder followers can sometimes hold internal judgements against their non-believing counterparts – simply for not believing.
4.) The usefulness of control.
Most religious supporters are not mindful of the fear that has been instilled in them, often from birth. It is a fear that is so subtle that it goes undetected for much of the follower’s life. It is so deeply embedded that it is not even recognized as fear, but as truth; when in reality, it is a most destructive form of control.
For those who take the time to study the origins of religious beliefs, they are well aware of how, when and for what purpose a religion began. They are aware of the common themes and beliefs during the time the religion was created. They know what literary archetypes the religion was taken from in order to create the new doctrine. They understand the historic flow of language and the written word and how it has influenced our world – including our many religions.
Unfortunately, a great number of religious followers are either prevented from or discouraged from learning the truth about how their religious system was established. This is highly evident in modern theocracies where citizens are restricted from viewing numerous websites that would offer the information that would reveal the truth about the origin of their religion.
There is a very fundamental reason why many religions insist that their followers do not look elsewhere for answers to life’s questions. It is the questioning that leads to the answers that free people and give them an understanding of the whole picture rather than the narrow view from a small corner of their mind. It is the refusal to ask the questions that keeps them devoted to one specific answer. Take away the questioning and you ensure a future of followers. How do you take away the questioning? You make everything else evil. You make everything scary and frightful so that the follower is actually afraid of swaying from that one answer they have been given. You take away their desire to ask the questions.
Why do many believers refuse to study ancient religions, cultures, science, and philosophy? Why do they refuse to befriend or feel scornfully towards those who do not share their beliefs? Why are these things, these other people around them, these conflicting ideas automatically wrong? Have they been taught this mindset?
Anything that fervidly opposes diligent inquiry is not representative of the truth.
Former believers are most aware that the reason for this fear is that their god, their family or peers, their religious leaders and their own internal self-judgement will be discontent with their “inappropriate” curiosity. They fear that it is “the enemy” tempting them away from their faith by introducing them to ideas that conflict with their religion’s version of the truth. They have been taught (often from birth) that questioning is wrong – that seeking answers and gaining knowledge was not meant for us. These concepts are so deeply embedded in their thought that they can even feel guilty just thinking about questioning their faith. Many rarely stop to think about why they have been discouraged from asking questions and understanding things outside their religious sphere. Does the truth need restrictions if it is the truth? No, not unless the truth is being hidden in order to perpetuate the misconception in order to reap the benefits of the purpose of hiding that truth. This becomes overwhelmingly obvious to those who do ask the questions and honestly think about the answers. How obvious this becomes when we recognize how hiding the truth can profit those who discourage their followers from questioning the validity of their beliefs.
‘How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us’.~ Pope Leo X (1513 -1521)
Even those who have chosen to leave a religion must deal with the remnants of fear until it has been sufficiently purged from their life; that is, until they consciously choose to stop believing in monsters and ghosts and demons and the devil and feathered angels and ask the questions that they have spent much of their life needlessly fearing.
When you keep people from asking questions, you maintain control of them. Kings and queens know this. Religious leaders know this. Governments who restrict internet access that provides many of those answers know this. The wise know this. It’s time religious followers know this too. It’s ok to ask questions. It’s ok to find the answers. Asking questions is where you truly find freedom.
5.) The distraction of division.
As most propagandists understand, by separating individuals from their peers, they are usually able to think more clearly and logically about the information being presented to them. However, when consistently surrounded by their peers, if they are not cautious, they may likely fall prey to being persuaded into believing a “truth” that is not true at all. Religion depends on this human herd mentality in order to maintain its stronghold. When you keep a person within a specific religion, reinforce the ideas of that group and then make everyone else outside of the group somehow immoral, maintaining control of hatred towards others is effortless. The best way to do this is by teaching followers the religion’s concepts from birth; and then reinforcing those ideas throughout the entirety of their life.
Religion segregates people into clusters of believers and non-believers, making human unity and peace nearly impossible. It teaches people that those who disagree with them on a variety of life’s issues are perceptively evil and unworthy of their friendship, or even of their humanity.
The problem with this is that it perpetuates a cycle of division in societies. That division causes an insurmountable distraction that enables the internal corruption that destroys nations. Those in power are well aware that a community divided amongst itself has no strength to withstand tyranny or corruption. But, a society unified and aware is able to make lasting changes to benefit all.
For human unity and peace to ever become a part of our experience, we must become more aware of how our beliefs divide us and work to reconcile this division by placing our humanity above our religious contentions.
6.) The threat of theocracy.
Many individuals who support religious leaders and concepts do not realize the impact that a theocracy will have on their own lives and freedoms. Some people simply follow certain political and religious leaders and trust that they have their best interest in mind; but, in reality, the agenda they support will both further corrupt and further oppress their own country and its people.
A modest study of modern and past theocratic societies easily demonstrates how oppressive religiously governed countries are towards their people. How many more societies do we need to watch crumble beneath the stranglehold of religious oppression? How many more women are to be disparaged, mutilated and controlled by governments whose religious rule makes such atrocities acceptable? How many more religiously motivated wars, massacres, stonings, bombings, inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades, bigotry, intentional suppression of knowledge and tyrannical and inhumane policies do we need to experience before we will finally realize that theocratic government rule is a horrific way to live as a citizen?
7.) The illusion of love.
Is it? There may be some parts that describe love and encourage positive relationships amongst members of the human race; but, what about all the other parts? Are we to ignore some things and only identify with the good?
Here is the problem: Many of our most revered religious texts have hundreds of verses where the deity of the story literally instructs people to abduct and rape young girls whose family members they have just murdered, kill disobedient children, kill disobedient women, commit genocide and infanticide, subdue and silence women, commit incest, oppress mass communities, force marriage on rape victims, torture people, enslave people and loot and pillage entire societies. All by the instruction of or in the name of their god.
Here is the bigger problem: It’s one thing that these words are written, but it is a terrifying thought that many people in this world actually excuse this behavior simply because a god they worship did it or authorized it. They rationalize that this behavior is acceptable if an all knowing being approves it or that their god was punishing “sinful” people who did not agree with the same teachings they follow. This enables atrocious people to justify inhumane actions if they commit those actions in the name of their god. Many even go as far as to change the meaning of the (quite plainly written words) to mean something else than what is written outright in order to justify the action, rather than facing the reality of what their text is actually communicating.
If a human being were to commit these same types of offenses as listed above, we would label them sadistically insane and sentence them to death; yet, many dismiss the corrupt nature of these horrifically unethical crimes when it applies to a deity.
In their defense, many people are raised with their religious background and taught that it is completely about love. At the same time, the religious leaders that instruct them do not even attempt to discuss the negative characteristics of their text. Often, when they do, it is glossed over and never given full thought as to the magnitude of what is being described. If we really thought about it, we would be able to draw the same conclusions for the wrongdoings of our man-made deities as we do for those human beings who choose to commit similar hideous acts.
Instead, the most horrific parts of our text are ignored – or sugar-coated – and then wrapped in an illusion and fed to the people in a mental package labeled “god is love”. It is not love; and it skews our interpretation of love when we agree that sadistic and violent acts against people are justified because a god instructed those actions.
A scenario to consider: Suppose you were to have a serious conversation with a parent who told you that, since their child did not obey, love and trust them – they were going to take the child to the basement and burn him until he learned his lesson. Would you turn that parent in to child protective services for potential child abuse? If you heard or read that some parent had tortured their child for not behaving, what would you think of that parent. How would you feel for the child who endured that punishment? Of course you would turn the parent in; of course you would feel awful to hear about such a tragic story! You would want to protect the child because you know that no loving human being would ever do that to their child, no matter how awful they’ve behaved.
Yet, children across the world are forced to endure hideous mental intrusions on a consistent basis in one of our world’s largest belief structures. If they do not believe in their religious deity, he will take them down to hell and torture them forever and ever. They will live in a place of fear and anguish for eternity.
If you would not threaten this to your own child as a punishment you personally would inflict upon them, why tell them someone else will? Is it acceptable because it is not you who will do it?
Another scenario to consider: If your friend told you that she was raped and that her rapist paid her Father for the injustice and is now forcing her to marry the person who raped her, what would you tell your friend? Would you encourage her to follow through with the marriage or would you encourage her leave both the rapist and her Father behind and move on with her life? Would you help her find a safe place to go in order to flee the situation? Or, would you encourage her to follow through with the dreadful plans? Of course you would discourage your friend from following through with such a horrible situation for her life. You would likely even encourage her to file charges against the perpetrator.
Yet, this is the exact instructions found in one of our world’s most popular holy text. One of many scriptures only recently coming to the forefront of religious debates as countless people are becoming more aware of the unethical ideas written in many of our ancient books. (See Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)
If you have to explain or justify why a horrible atrocity was committed by the deity you worship; what does love really mean to you? Love is…
8.) Justification for inequality.
A simple and honest study of our world’s theocracies (and countries such as America where those issues are being debated) reveals how our holy texts are used to discriminate against women, LGBTs, and foreigners. Our top three world religions’ texts are full of discrimination against these groups. In fact, it is openly used as justification for that discrimination.
Religion facilitates erroneous rationalization of the attempts to remove basic rights from others. It prevents people from living in peace as a community and within their own lives. It forces entire groups of people to work tirelessly to create and preserve rights that should be available to them already.
Many of our religions treat women as subhuman property rather than the part of the human species that gives life to every one of us – a position that deserves respect. Many of our world’s countries have so drastically restricted the rights of women that they are not allowed to attend school to earn an education, drive a car, be seen in public without a male family member, hold a career, or even speak their own thoughts. In each instance where this gender based bigotry is enforced, it is always attached to a religiously based belief system.
Religion also treats the LGBT community with disdain, even to the point where some countries prescribe death as a punishment for not following that religion’s definition of what sex should look like. The problem with this is that homosexuality can be found in many species, not just amongst humanity. Anyone who has done their research knows this. Unfortunately, religion has not caught up to this reality. Although homosexuality has existed for millennia, religion still persists in fighting what comes natural to much of nature. Is it a god that gave us permission to interrogate and murder people based on sexual orientation, or is it the people who wrote our religious texts and simply did not understand or agree with that part of nature?
Sadly, our religious texts have been used to discriminate against a vast assortment of people, including, tribes, minorities and foreigners. People outside of a religion’s belief structure or cultural background have been tortured, enslaved and stripped of their human rights – all in the name of a god and the religion that god represents.
Religion gives followers justification for treating others who are not like them in inhumane ways. It enables our world to perpetuate the cycles of hatred towards others and justify our efforts in restricting the happiness of our fellow human beings.
9.) The subjugation of advancement.
We are moving towards a time where we no longer need to base our ideas on things that we cannot see or explain (faith). We can explain much more than ever and our ability to explain our world is expanding rapidly.
Now that science can explain our world, we no longer need mythology to do it for us.
We have a plethora of information available to us today. Information that enables us to become aware of the origins of our religions, the origins and functionings of our planet and of our universe. We understand how weather works and that it is not simply the anger of our gods being poured upon us as our early ancestors believed. We can interpret weather patterns, send people into space, and predict future atmospheric, economic, planetary and biological disruptions and much much more.
Unfortunately, religion has never been much a friend to human knowledge and advancement. Even now we are plagued by leaders who seek to oppress our access to and progression of our knowledge. Religion is known for insisting that it is not humankind’s place to understand things – to seek knowledge of our world. In fact, it makes seeking that understanding wrong and it’s not difficult to find followers who will even quote text supporting why we should not explore our world, ask questions and look for answers.
This is a religious tactic that keeps people in ignorance; and it has worked for thousands of years. Since we know that it is people who wrote the concepts that make up our holy texts; it makes much more sense that it is not god who wanted to keep us in ignorance – it is those who wrote our holy books, created our religious doctrines and insisted that knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge is evil. Religion perpetuates ignorance in societies. It hinders humanity’s mental progression and, thus the quality of our lives, health and environments.
10.) The fear of “end times”.
For thousands of years, religion has used the fear of “end times” to control the masses. What began as mythology that told gruesome stories of a horrific end to our world has evolved into periodic religious mania over an impending doom lurking above the future of humanity.
Fortunately, we have grown enough in our understanding to realize that prophesies of war, famine, atmospheric disruptions, pandemics and expulsion of redundant belief structures are effortless formulations when one comprehends that these occurrences have been and will remain a repetitive element of the human experience. In other words – it is not difficult to predict the future when you understand how human beings think and how nature functions. Anyone who understands the natural world and the mind of human beings can make a fairly accurate prediction of what will occur 10, 20, 100 or even 5,000 years from now. History does repeat itself. Nature repeats itself. This is the cyclical part of life – when you understand the cycle, you are never shocked by the result.
The problem is, we are still living amongst an assortment of end times theories and religious fables that insist we are living in that time. Strangely, every generation since the stories were created lives in that time. Even more menacing is how an entire community of believers can completely ignore the time frame in which their own text plainly states that the horrid event will occur, and then apply the same story to every future generation. Why? Because the story always perpetuates itself – it must perpetuate itself in order to survive. If the story is fulfilled, the story ends and we all move on. It must continue generation after generation in order to live on in the minds of human beings. This is how religion works.
Here’s the painful truth. When you have a story that billions of people believe, there will inevitably be some people who have the power and the invested interest in making that story appear as fact. This doesn’t make the prediction true – it makes it a purposeful effort. It is a problematic illusion where those who want it to be true work to make it true; and those who are unaware of the work others have done to make the illusion appear real – believe it is real.
If our world is truly going to explode in a fiery furnace of wrath and agony – it will be by our own hands when we destroy one another by our human hatred. Or, it will be by the mechanisms of our universe; a common way planets and stars actually do experience their “end times”.
11.) The oppression of terror.
It would be easy for some to look at the violence in religion today and point fingers at one specific religion. The propagandist that dominate many of our mainstream news outlets ensure this. But, the truth is, many of our religions have already asserted themselves through force and violence in the past. This is not merely a modern problem.
Humanity’s most vicious ambitions have been carried out in the name of gods no one has ever seen and beliefs followers are not willing to question and investigate. Until humankind learns to more closely examine their beliefs, wars waged in ignorance will continue to plague our species and prevent lasting peace.
Our history is full of examples of this religious human dilemma; and is even written in the pages of some of our own holy text. It is a truth that many deny because it is easier to deny atrocity then to face it; especially when that barbarism has been committed by the very same faith that we follow. Our religions excuse the terror and oppression we inflict upon our fellow human beings. It’s time our excuses are called out for what they are – irrational thinking based upon archaic concepts that no longer serve our human advancement towards a sustainable and peaceful future.
It’s time to let go and rise above the outdated and cruel exploits of our past that we inherited from our ancestors and realize that our early misinterpretations of our world do not have to define the future of humanity. We have grown. We have reached a time in our history where the misunderstandings of the past must be reconciled and the truth about the origins of our early beliefs must be revealed. It’s time that our world’s religions face the tragic horrors of their past and make honest progression towards love and kindness for all of humanity. Our world, our peace and our growth all depend upon us and our ability to move forward in our understanding. It’s time to embrace our humanity and cultivate the harmonious future we all deserve.
EXCELLENT post here and it ALL was created by the so-called “Fallen Ones/Angels’ ” who attempted to subvert “Divine Providence” to their own selfish desires…Now “Confined” here until they are shut down, SOON.
I know how powerful the “Disease of Religion” can be because I was a minister for over 48 years!
Gold for gold. Find the gold. Share the gold. Philippine Islands are “Riches Country in the World!” There are 950,000 metric tons of gold ( declared missing in the International Court of Justice in Hague) picked up by Yamashita from its European Ally, Hitler and another 250,000 metric tons of the Japanese loot around Southeast Asia are both now in the Philippines. Very few Filipinos knows this( Wall Street Journal, November 15,1985 issue wrote: “ Two Thirds of all the gold in the world is in Philippines and One third is divided among the rest of the countries of the world”) ; During A TALK SHOW in a U.S. TV , the week following the bombing of the New York Twin Towers, President George Bush was asked this question: Which is the richest country in the world today? With a smile he said; “The Philippines.” In a US TV interview as well with President Barrack Obama, in his “700 Billion USD stimulus funds” for US economy, he was asked a question where will he get the billion dollar substantial funds needed and quoted saying. “We have friends outside US who will support us”.
The branded Yamashita Treasure was considered “booty”. There were varied country claimants who are victims of the said WWII loots and these countries filed protest and claims after the war in the International Court of Justice. Though, there was a passage of law for thirty years starting 1946, that without a valid claim against it this “booty” it would belong to its new possessor. That would have been in 1976. However, the International Criminal Court (ICC) extended the deadline of the claims to 10 years up to 1986. With the conspiracy of the International Banking Cartel, neither the ICJ denied the existence of these gold and claims. Sadly, Successive governments of the Philippines denied its existence and failed to acknowledged the gold. For almost 24 years, Information has been conspired to keep from being known to Filipino people.
This country is approximately a holder of estimated 1.2 Million Metric Tons of buried Gold excluding gold bullions way back to history of the “Maharlika” time. Only some of the Yamashita and Prince Chichibu buried gold in the Philippines has been found and the bulk of it is still around all over the archipelago to this day. Up to now, thousands of local individuals, company and foreign groups ventured secretly digging for it, including Japanese Treasure Hunters.
These gold loots are kept, transported, hoarded, concealed and buried in said to be 175 “imperial” vaults constructed in a maze of underground tunnels in the Philippines under the command and implementation of General Chichibu . The looting started in December 1937 in China’s Chinese Capitol of Nanking up to the advent and action of WWII .
Prince Chichibu is the younger brother of Emperor Hirohito and had been selected to head the ultra-secret treasure recovery team. The Prime Minister, Prince Asaka had come from the Emperor with instructions to fully implement the plan. This led to the Rape of Nanking and the death of 300,000 Chinese civilians and military. Many had been tortured to reveal the locations of treasures and summarily executed. This secret team was given a code name of the Golden Lily after a poem the Emperor had once written. 6000 metric tons of gold were recovered from Nanking alone plus silver and precious stones.
Prince Chichibu
Top military and government officials meet in Mukden, Manchukuo in late 1936 to discuss the forthcoming war with the Chinese, Americans, Netherlands and French. The Emperor of Japan and others had developed a plan to finance the expansion of their military and to construct the ships, planes and other military hardware that would be required in order to implement their plans.
In December 1937 Japan had openly declared war on China and had surrounded the Chinese Capitol of Nanking. Prince Chichibu, the younger brother of Emperor Hirohito had been selected to head the ultra-secret treasure recovery team code name: Golden Lily.
In July 1940, Winston Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain, met with Lord Beaverbrook. France had just fallen to Hitler’s blitzkrieg. The Germans had amassed their troops in the ports of France ready to cross the English Channel and invade Britain. Churchill had learned that the French had transferred their national treasures to French Indochina just before they had signed an armistice with the Germans. He had also learned from the Queen of The Netherlands that they had moved their treasures to the Dutch East Indies. He and the King of England decided to move the British treasures to the supposedly safe island fortress of Singapore off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula.
In 1941, Japan had sunk most of the American Pacific fleet with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 1941 Christmas Day, Japan had taken most of the major port cities of China and had forced the British into surrendering Hong Kong. By early January 1942 Japan’s victories had been nothing short of miraculous. Guam and Wake lands had fallen. Japan had assimilated Thailand and the northern part of French Indochina. The Japanese had launched a vigorous invasion of the Philippine Islands and were pushing the Americans into a final defensive position on Bataan. Her armies were fighting their way down the Malay Peninsula approaching Singapore. Although the Japanese were encountering little resistance they were greatly outnumbered by the British and Indian troops. The Golden Lily team had been greatly expanded to handle these rapidly changing situations. It is fair to say that they were actually overwhelmed.
Emperor Hirohito had requested Prince Chichibu to fly to Hanoi in French Indochina to meet with his younger brother Prince Mikasa.
The Japanese secret police had learned that France had sent their National Treasures there.
But, where were they hidden? Prince Chichibu had ordered the torture of the Bankers and former Diplomats in order to find out. They learned the treasure had been sent to Saigon by rail just before the Japanese troops had moved into Hanoi. The treasure had been hidden in the ruins of an ancient temple at the end of track. The excitement of this recovery was only overshadowed by later events.
The fortress of Singapore fell to General Yamashita and with General MacArthur being ordered out of the Philippines, the last American and Filipino troops on Bataan and Corregidor surrendered to General Homma. The infamous Death March began. The Japanese victories on all fronts were extremely heady. They began to believe in their own invincibility. Burma was now in Japanese hands and invasion plans had been drawn up for a move into Northern Australia. Asia and Southeast Asia and most of the Islands in the Pacific were as good as theirs.
Prince Chichibu in Singapore was elated when his team found the treasures of Britain stored in the banks. The collection of wealth throughout the conquered lands continued. With over 5000 years of Asia’s antiquity to pillage, the amounts collected were astronomical. Far surpassing what was thought to be the total amount of gold ever mined throughout history. With Shanghai in their hands the Golden Lily team found themselves stretched to the limit in keeping up with the collection and melting down of the precious metals. Another surprise experienced by Prince Chichibu was the discovery that the Dutch had moved their treasures to Batavia in the Netherlands East Indies. Now, not only did Japan have the wealth of the Asian continent, but they were rewarded with much of the European treasures as well. Hitler’s loss was Japan’s gain.
Japan’s luck had begun to run out by May 1942. Their first setback was the Battle of the Coral Sea where the Allies had forced Japan to turn back her invasion fleet which they had planned to land in New Guinea. The following month they suffered a further major setback with the Battle of Midway where Japan lost four of her front line fleet carriers and the cream of her trained aviators. These were the same ships and pilots that had attacked Pearl Harbor five months earlier. In August 1942 the Americans landed an invasion force on Guadalcanal. Japan tried for months to dislodge the stubborn American Marines but eventually had to concede this unknown but important island base. After that Japan could never again launch another major offensive anywhere. The war would continue for another three years while the Japanese slowly lost the lands that they had conquered. Japan’s dream was over and their nightmare had begun.
By mid-1942 American submarines and aircraft had begun to take a serious toll on Japanese shipping. Prince Chichibu could no longer send the many tons of treasure back to Japan with any guarantee that it would get there and not end up on the bottom of the ocean floor. Actually he had to revise his thinking about where to send the treasures after the Midway fiasco. Following a meeting with his brother, the Emperor, it was decided that the treasures should be hidden in the Philippine Islands. Why the Philippines? Because Japan was certain that they would end up with these islands during surrender negotiations with the Allies. Also, it was the shortest distance from Hong Kong and Singapore where the material was being processed.
Prince Chichibu had begun shipping material to the Philippines even before this decision was made. It was originally intended to be sent on to Japan in returning war ships. The Prince was still nervous about these shipments even after the decision was made. He commandeered four large freighters and had them painted all white with a red cross on their sides. These were “hospital” ships which he loaded with the many treasures. To be absolutely sure that even these ships were not molested he announced their movement on a clear radio channel so that the Americans would know their times of departure and their courses.
PRINCE CHICHIBU IN THE PHILIPPINES
Prince Chichibu had moved his Headquarters to Manila in the Philippines. He had entrusted his younger brother Prince Mikasa and his cousin Prince Asaka to continue the collection of the treasures. Before he left he had begun to cut up the many golden pagodas and Buddha’s which were being melted down and poured into 75 kilo bars. This amassing of the treasures would continue until Japan ultimately surrendered.
Prince Chichibu was now faced with new challenges, Where and how to hide the treasures so that they could not be accidentally discovered after the war. The Prince was not as certain as his brother, the Emperor that Japan would end up with the Philippine Islands following their defeat. He decided that these treasures would have to be hidden in deep, well-engineered tunnel systems. He had no experience in mining and basically that was what was going to be required.
Major Nakasone was the only member of the Golden Lily team who had any mining background. He had studied mining engineering but never had any on the job training. He sent for him anyway. In the meantime he asked The Emperor for help and he responded by having someone locate twenty experience men in underground excavation in Japan who were quickly sent to the Philippines. If the Prince needed more workers, he would have to get them from the Filipinos. In addition the Emperor had reminded Chichibu that the POWs of the Americans and the British contained a lot of engineering experts especially those who served in the construction battalions.
Manpower was the least of his problems. There were thousands of POWs who the Japanese considered expendable. If that wasn’t enough then there were millions of Filipino males that could be used. As soon as here received his experts he immediately began work in a dozen locations. While this was going on the treasure ships were arriving weekly and their precious cargo had been added to the other treasure already stored in heavily guarded warehouses. There were other problems; the movement of the cargo from the ships to the warehouses attracted a lot of attention. Chichibu decided to construct an underground tunnel system from the piers to the warehouses which were in the capture American base named Fort McKinley. Eventually this tunnel would branch out under Manila and run for 35 miles. The entrance was in Intramuros, the ancient walled city of the Spaniards, which was near the docks. It terminated at MacArthur’s headquarters in Fort McKinley.
Prince Chichibu had to make some other major decisions. Why not hide all the treasure in one large location? The Emperor had answered that question. Security!!! Too many people who had worked on the location would know where it was, also if someone should accidentally find the location all would be lost. Early on the Prince had made the decision that except for a few foreign engineers the entire work force would have to be exterminated. The next question was where could this work be done where the local population would not be aware of what was going on there. Japanese military bases were perfect. Only the military had access to them and most bases had POW camps nearby. Prince Chichibu visualized that when the Americans returned to recapture the Philippines that there would be massive bombings. The map makers needed permanent landmarks in order to relocate these sites after the war. The Americans had shown in Europe that they would avoid bombing historical buildings. The four hundred year old historical Spanish Churches and fortifications were perfect. But just to make sure he would house American POWs in them, mainly women and children. He would then arrange for clear radio communications to announce this fact. It worked, the Americans spared these sites.
Major Nakasone was at Fort Santiago, a 16th century Spanish fortification, collecting slave labors from the Kempeitai Headquarters’ dungeons and torture chambers. One of the physically strong Filipino’s he selected was Leopoldo Giga. Nakasone knew a Colonel Kantaro Giga who was one of his instructors at the military academy. Out of curiosity he decided to personally interview Giga. He found him an intelligent, 28 year old, who spoke fluent Japanese. He also learned he was a nephew of his academy instructor. Giga’s father was the brother of the instructor who was a minor diplomat who had been attached to the Japanese Embassy in the Philippines 1913. Giga’s mother had met the Diplomat and had become his common-law wife. Another advantage that Nakasone found in Giga was that he spoke two of the main dialects of the Filipino people. Instead of making him a slave laborer he assigned him to his staff. Giga came to the attention of Prince Chichibu who had him commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the Imperial Army. He was sent to Japan to attend schooling on tunneling and inventorying the treasure. He returned a Captain and worked on most of the treasure sites.
Prince Chichibu was in Nueva Vizcaya in early 1942. He was examining a major excavation outside of the town of Bambang. He and his staff had a young Filipino boy who had come down with a fever and had died. He had been a houseboy who did the laundry of the Prince and his staff as well as kept their boots and other equipment cleaned and polished. He sent his aide out to locate a replacement. The Aide came back with a 14 year old uneducated farm boy whose name was Benjamin Valmores. During the next three and a half years Valmores traveled with the Prince to many of the sites all over the Philippines. He learned Japanese and a smattering of English. He was never allowed to go down into the tunnels, but he watched them being constructed and filled with the treasures. He and Giga would survive the war.
As the war reached its inevitable climax in early 1945 the Japanese were receiving more treasure than they could prepare sites for in which to hide it. Their warships became useless due to the American air- superiority, so they loaded them with these newly arrived treasures and pretended they were being sent back to Japan. Instead the Japanese deliberately sank or scuttled these ships and machine-gunned their own men so that the ships would go down in predetermined locations and no witnesses would be alive to tell the tale. There were thirteen of these planned sinking’s. Some of these went down in Manila Bay; others were sunk in not to deep Philippine Waters throughout the archipelago.
The bloody war was over. The hopes of Emperor Hirohito and others to force the Americans to agree to a treaty that would allow Japan to keep some of the lands they had taken by conquest had been shattered. They had planned the final battle that they were certain would cause the Americans over a million casualties when they invaded the Japanese home islands. The two atomic bombs and Russia’s invasion of Manchuria in an attempt to annex some of Japan’s conquered lands had cause the Emperor to agree to an unconditional surrender. Now the conquerors wanted to bring to justice those who were responsible for the many atrocities. Over 4000 war criminals were charged. Of these 2400 received a prison sentence of three years or more and 809 were ultimately hung.
THE BRANDING OF “YAMASHITA GOLD”
The famous Yamashita Gold treasure trove takes its name from General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who assumed command of Japanese forces in the Philippines only in 1944, a year before the war ends. But, the irony of it, the whole treasure troves was not all buried by Yamashita as many believe. There are team of Japanese Officers and Generals assigned who lead the 14th Army in the Philippines ahead of him since the Japanese invasions and occupations in 1941 .
These generals were Lt. General Masaharu Homma ; Vice Admiral Ibo Takahashi; Vice Admiral Nishizo Tsukahara; Lt. General Shizuiki Tanaka; Lt. General Shigenori Kuroda and some of their Chief of Staffs Major Gen. Takaji Wachi; Lt General Haruki Isayama; Lt. Gen. Tsuchino Yamaguchi; Lt Gen. Ryuzo Sakuma and Lt. Gen. Akira Muto were burying already the bulk of gold loots carried over by the command and implementation of Prince Chichibu or General Chichibu way back starting 1942 up to early 1945. Only why it was branded as “Yamashita Gold” due to first news informed treasure recoveries in the late 70’s particularly of “Roxas – His Golden Budda” and the gold recoveries of “Sta Romana” in Northern Luzon buried by Yamashita who also was in charge then for the quick burying concealment because Japan is already losing the war . He was as well-known as “Tiger of Malaya” and strongly identified as the general tasked to transport the bulk of gold loots from Singapore to Philippines by Japanese Navy Fleets carrying himself to his new command post in the Philippines in September 1944 as 14th Area Army Commander. And the fact that, Yamashita was the last General on command of the Japanese forces in the Philippines during the unconditional surrender of Japan in 1945. The “gold” includes many different kinds of valuables looted from banks, depositories, mosques, temples, churches, shops, museums and private homes. It was intended that loot from South East Asia would finance Japan’s war effort. Most of the loot was first shipped to the port of Singapore, where it was then relayed to the Philippines. From the Philippines, it was intended that the treasure would be shipped to the Japanese home islands which did not materialized.
When the gold was buried, it was done in anticipation that the Americans would defeat the Japanese and the underground vaults, tunnels, and entrances were booby trapped with gas, explosives, and water. The water traps were created by digging 300 – 350 feet underground in the dry months, at which time the water table was at its lowest.
As the Pacific War progressed, Allied submarines and aircraft took a heavy toll on Japan’s shipping. Some ships carrying gold loots back to Japan were sunk. The Japanese military began to hide the loot in caves and underground complexes throughout the Philippines, hoping to recover it after the war was over. Many of those who knew the locations of the loot were either executed or incarcerated for war crimes, including Yamashita. Thus, the whereabouts of the treasure locations were lost. Many years later, Former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos located some of the treasure and obtained part of his personal fortune from it. His recoveries are known as the “Marcos Gold “or “Marcos Wealth”. Aside from these finds, others finds are not sufficiently documented.
HITLER’S NAZI LOOT OF EUROPE, THE VATICAN AND ANTONIO DIAZ STA ROMANA CONTROVERSY:
In the early 1930’s, Europe was in depression and Germany was financially bankrupt, An unknown party leader emerged and promise the German people that he could create jobs and boost the economy. The Germans dared him and put him in power. His name is Adolf Hitler. In 1933, the Vatican and Hitler, a Roman Catholic signed a concordat and mutual protection and enhancement. That was apparently that Vatican was spared of the ruins of war in Europe during WWII. “Hitler was loaded with gold and money”. He built a massive army and manufactured weapons of war. Then Hitler took Poland. Before 1918 there was no Poland. That land was part of Germany and used as a buffer zone to separate Germany from Russia. But when Hitler reclaimed it, England declared war on Germany.
By the advent of the WWII, Germany and Japan made strong allies and positioned their army forces and manufactured weapons not only for war or expanding their empire but conquest for wealth and connived for the European and Asian Looting.
After the War, accordingly “Fr. Jose Antonio Diaz,”aka Fr Hayes; Severino Garcia Sta Romana, et al and other used names formerly of the OSS and CIA was entrusted by the Vatican to take charge of Vatican gold buried on the Philippines. The claims of the “Vatican gold” was identified as bullion that had been “captured by Hitler” and that had belonged to the royal families of Europe and been placed under the trusteeship of the Vatican. It also includes gold bullions that was plundered by the Japanese under General Chichibu and buried in the Philippines.
Fr. Diaz had “assumed several names when he moved to the Philippines.” One of these was “Col. Severino Sta. Romana.” Being with the OSS after the war, he was able to retrieved, unlock on only some of the buried gold bullion treasures in Northern Part of Luzon, Philippine Island. By peacetime, he was also the major catalyst for the safe return of 640,000 metric tons of Gold owned by the royalty family of the former “maharlika” or the Philipines borrowed by the Vatican in 1939 and facilitated its return to the original owners in Philippines and rewarded with paid commissions of 30% of the returned gold. The value of the gold now estimated at $4 trillion in which anyone could raise eyebrows its existence. Where it is now? It was noted that Sta. Romana during that time had “hired the young Marcos as his lawyer and trustee.” By 1949, It was said the Two (2) richest man in the world were Fr. Jose Antonio Diaz and Atty. Ferdinand E Marcos . Perhaps, there is a good reason to believe now for people who defended and stay on hold to the programs of the former “strong man” that his wealth is “Not Ill-Gotten”.
In 1974, Fr, Jose Antonio Diaz, alias Severino Sta. Romana died and all that 30% commission in gold become the legendary “MARCOS GOLD”. In power, after providing for his family in Marcos “Letter of Instruction”, the whole wealth derived from this was supposed to be given to the FILIPINO PEOPLE. However, the “MARCOS GOLD or MARCOS WEALTH” was labeled as “Ill-Gotten” as some of Philippine Politicians and Churchmen kept on saying. There was nothing secret about the said.. “Marcos Secret Account”. History of and by the said “Letter of Instructions”, will show that the money was not stashed away and inaccessible but available to truly deserving Filipinos. Filipinos should know this. The grand scheme of these with these International banking cartels with the backdrop control of Superpower Nations with so much interest no less than by greed so that this country and its people will remain a slave and shackled to these foreign powers. They don’t want our country to be made a “ First World Country”. The phony scheme of the CIA backed EDSA “PEOPLE POWER REVOLUTION” exhibition in 1986 continually blinded FILIPINOS up to now and keep repeating that MARCOS was a thief so that those hundreds of billions of “ MARCOS WEALTH” will remain froze and not given to the Filipino people.
WHO SHOULD OWN THE GOLD TREASURES IN THE PHILIPPINES?
Apparently, after 1986 under the International Court of Justice, the gold treasure buried in the Philippines or in other nations will be owned by the possessor of it. Who are they? For Filipinos, It’s us Filipinos who have the control of private or government land allegedly to contain of these buried gold loots. However, in reality, we have to accept the fact that it was not ours since time in memorial this gold was owned by varied international country claimants. But who to prove it that it’s theirs? Even the International Court of Justice up to now denied its existence for reason how will they prove it? To “someone” who had accumulated the German and Japanese plundered gold gathered in by General Chichibu and General Yamashita obviously preferred not to come forward with their claims because such claims would possibly reveal the source of such wealth. To take note the Japan’s ravage of the war in Burma and Asian neighbors where their historical and ancient gold was looted , was cut , stripped, melted and formed into another gold bars. The war was over and it would be difficult to identify the actual ownership of these gold if found. However, gold hallmarks can do so, and the hallmarks still carry international warrants for claims. The come and go to the Philippines of mandates and representatives by the international gold bullion buyers from Europe, China, America etc. are taking advantage of huge buying % discounts from who would be finders and holders/sellers of the gold loots. To note, before transporting these items , a must buying policy that these hallmarks of gold identity would be first erased or removed and re-melted again into new dory or plain bars form before shipment and payments. Other buying schemes would have it shipped out after making any financial payment guarantees to the sellers and after re-smelting and refining, payments can be done off-shore. Thus, legalizing and documenting said gold treasures would be easy for them.
THE BLACK EAGLE TRUST
Continued research has revealed that the United States did recover portions of the Golden Lily and Nazi treasure and used the treasure to clandestinely fund various causes and covert operations. This enormously large secret slush fund became known informally as the Black Eagle Trust.
Up until September 1945, Edward Lansdale had remained an immaterial advertising copywriter, who had spent the war writing propaganda for the OSS. In September, with the disbanding of the OSS, he was offered an opportunity to transfer to the US Army’s G2 operation in the Philippines.
On transferring to the Philippines, Lansdale was placed in charge of supervising a Filipino-American intelligence officer named Severio Garcia Diaz Sanata, better known as Santy. Yamashita had surrendered and was arrested for war crimes relating to gruesome atrocities committed by Admiral Iwabuchi Kanji’s sailors while evacuating Manila. There was no mention of the Golden Lily or war loot during Yamashita’s trial. It was impossible to torture a war criminal without it being exposed in the subsequent trial. Yamashita’s driver however, fell under special scrutiny. He had driven Yamashita everywhere since Yamashita’s arrival in the Philippines.
Santy proceeded to torture the driver, Major Kojima Kashii, to find the burial sites of the Japanese treasure. Lansdale soon joined the torture sessions as an observer and participant. In October, Kojima broke down and led Santy and Lansdale to the location of a dozen sites in the mountains north of Manila. Two of the sites were easily opened and revealed a prodigious quantity of gold, precious metals, and gems.
While Santy and his teams started to open the other sites, Lansdale flew to Japan to brief MacArthur and then on to Washington to brief President Truman. After a cabinet discussion, Truman decided to proceed with the recovery. However, the recovery would be kept a state secret.
The decision was not Truman’s alone. Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, first proposed using gold recovered from the Nazis as a secret slush fund during the Roosevelt administration. The Nazis had already did the dirty work and re-smelted the gold, making it hard trace the gold’s origin. Many of the owners had perished in the war and many of the pre-war governments had ceased to exist. With many of the eastern countries falling under the influence of the Soviet Union, returning any gold to these countries was out of the question with the cold warriors.
Stimson’s special assistants on this topic were John McCloy, Robert Lovett, Clark Clifford, and Robert Anderson. Both McCloy’s and Lovett’s backgrounds have been discussed in previous chapters. Anderson was a former Texas Republican legislator. In 1953, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Eisenhower, and in 1954, Secretary of Defense. Some sources say he was appointed as Secretary of the Navy based solely on the need to move gold from the Philippines. In 1957, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury. In 1987, he pled guilty to running an off shore bank after being caught up in the BCCI scandal. The same scandal also ensnared Clark Clifford.
The idea of the Black Eagle Trust was first discussed with the Allies in secret during July 1944, at Bretton Woods. This has been confirmed by CIA Deputy Director, Ray Cline, who as late as the 1990s has sought to control Japanese war booty sitting in the vaults of Citibank.
After briefing Truman, Stimson, Lovett, and others Lansdale returned to Tokyo with Anderson in November. From there MacArthur and Anderson accompanied Lansdale on a secret flight to Manila. Santy had by then already opened the sites and MacArthur and Anderson strolled down row after row of gold bullion stacked two meters tall. This was only the gold that had not reached Japan once the home islands were blockaded in the war.
Cline and others have confirmed that the gold recovered by Santy and Lansdale was covertly moved by ship to 176 accounts in 42 different countries. Truman had been informed that if such a large quantity of gold became public knowledge that the fixed $35 an ounce price would collapse. Other documents show large deposits of gold and platinum were made in various Swiss banks between 1945 and 1947.
Secrecy was vital to the success of the Black Eagle Trust. The United States declared Japan was broke from the very beginning. The United States elite lead by Herbert Hoover, wanted to maintain Japan as a staunch anticommunist state in the Far East. The Japanese elites were hard-core conservatives and alarmed by the communist threat. The most ardent of the anti-communist were the indicted war criminals. As noted earlier only a few Japanese war criminals were ever punished due to a large part of the interference by MacArthur in cleansing the Emperor of all crimes.
Such secrecy led to immediate abuses and the misleading of the American and Japanese people. Those most responsible for the war were left in power. The 1951, peace treaty between the Allies and Japan was greatly skewed by considerations for the Black Eagle Trust. To shield Japan from war reparations, John Foster Dulles secretly negotiated the treaty with three Japanese officials. One later became Prime Minister and served repeatedly as Minister of finance, Miyazawa Kiichi.
Article 14 of the peace treaty states as follows:
It is recognized that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognized that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient… the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan.
By signing the treaty, Allied countries waived all rights to any claims, including claims by their citizens and service men forced into slave labor by the Japanese warlords.
Because the Black Eagle Trust and the political actions funds that it has spawned remain off the books and invisible, the potential for abuse by falling into unscrupulous hands remain high to this day. In 1960, Vice President Nixon gave one of the largest funds, the M Fund, to the leaders of the Japanese Liberal Party in return for kickbacks to his election campaign. The fund, then valued at $35 billion and now estimated as worth over $500 billion, has served to keep the Liberal Party in power and effectively reduce politics in Japan to a one party dictator with a block on any meaningful reforms.100 This is readily evident in the troubled economic state of Japan. Even after sliding into an economic abyss fifteen years ago, Japan has still not addressed their economic policies in any meaningful manner. In effect, Nixon’s action has left Japan with an inept, corrupt and weak regime that has not even confronted its role in starting WWII.
The immense wealth of the Japanese war loot is confirmed in a 1950 report prepared by MacArthur’s headquarters. An excerpt appears below:
Japanese owned gold and silver…property that was acquired by Japan under duress, wrongful acts of confiscation, dispossession or spoliation…property found in Japan and identified as having been located in an Allied country and removed to Japan by fraud or coercion by the Japanese or their agents…great hoards of gold, silver, precious stones, foreign postage stamps, engraving plates…precious metals and diamonds stockpiles owned or controlled by the Japanese…30,000 carats of diamonds in one stash, and a single find of 52.5 pounds of hoarded platinum …
One of the spectacular tasks of the occupation dealt with collecting and putting under guard the great hoards of gold, silver, precious stones, foreign postage stamps, engraving plates, and all currency not legal in Japan. Even though the bulk of this wealth was collected and placed under Untied States military custody by Japanese officials, undeclared caches of these treasures were known to exist.
MacArthur’s staff was well aware of the Japanese treasures, including the $2 billion of gold laying on the bottom of Tokyo Bay. Another large hoard, discovered in 1946 by U.S. intelligence was the $13 billion cache of underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio. Yoshio was made a rear admiral during the war and placed in charge of looting the Asian underworld. After the war Kodama was arrested for war crimes and imprisoned. To avoid trial and imprisonment, Kodama offered the CIA a $100 million dollar bribe. The money was added to the M-Fund and Kodama was freed. He later financed the creation of two political parties that later merged into the Liberal Party.
Following the death of Santy in 1974, some of the biggest black gold accounts were placed in Lansdale’s name. Curiously, Lansdale had retired from the CIA before 1974.
Much of the information about the Black Eagle Trust has seeped to the surface in several lawsuits. Citibank CEO John Reed has been named in several of those suits. Another lawsuit initiated by Rogelio Roxas, a Filipino locksmith, sued President Marcos for seizing a one ton golden Buddha that he had found. In another legal battle, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Norbert Schlei had to fight for his survival after being stung by the Treasury Department for asking too many questions about Japan’s secret M-Fund.
Shlei was a key lawyer during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Shlei was the attorney that found legal grounds for the Cuba blockade during the missile crisis. He was the principal author of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Likewise, he was the primary author of the following landmark bills: the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration Reform Act of 1967.
Schlei was acquitted of eight counts, including wire and bank fraud and money laundering, but was convicted by a jury of conspiracy and securities fraud. The charges stem from Shlei negotiating a settlement for a client based on a gold certificate backed by the M Fund. In 1998, The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the judgment, in effect admitting that Shlei was innocent of the charges and a victim of partisan politics.
While Shlei was being indicted, prosecuted, and forced into bankruptcy, former Secretary of State, Alexander Haig went to Japan and negotiated a certificate based on the M-Fund. This was the very same action that led to Shlei’s arrest. Haig carried with him a personal letter from then President George H.W. Bush.
Haig was the ideal choice to negotiate the certificate. In 1947, Haig was assigned as an aide to General MacArthur and undoubtedly had firsthand knowledge of the Golden Lily and the various secret funds created from it. While in Japan, Haig married the daughter of General Alonzo Fox, MacArthur’s deputy chief of staff.
While many aspects of WWII still remain partially shrouded in fog due to censorship and government secrecy, the financial treachery and extortion surrounding the Golden Lily and the financial dealings with post-war Japan are confined to a black hole of government secrecy. Western archives and databases have been purged of records of Japan’s looting and economic treachery. Such reports still remain classified and hidden from the public. Moreover, the reports that do exist will not be made public for another half century. Recent efforts by Congress to force the release of documents from WWII has met with only limited success, as the CIA still retains the right to filter out documents that may reveal an unsavoury American collusion with the Japanese warlords. However, bits and pieces of the puzzle have emerged in recent years to present a partial view.
At the time the Philippines fell to the Japanese, the Philippine National Treasure consisted of over 51 metric tons of gold, 32 metric tons of silver bullion, 140, ton of silver coins, and $27 million in U.S. Treasury notes. These were evacuated to Corregidor in December 1941, and stored in the tunnel complex there. General Willoughby’s wife helped inventory the gold. Willoughby will figure prominently later on. On February 3, 1942, a submarine, the USS Trout, arrived at Corregidor delivering munitions, food, and medical supplies. Before departing, the skipper requested that he needed ballast. The sub was loaded with the private gold, and 16 tons of silver pesos, along with other paper securities including some Treasury notes. The USS Trout then continued its patrol, sinking two Japanese vessels before returning to Pearl Harbor. There the gold and securities were turned over to the San Francisco Mint. It never occurred to the defenders of Corregidor to hide or conceal the remaining treasure in the tunnel complex. When the Japanese captured Corregidor, the treasure was still there in plain view.
Japan used the same tactics that the Nazis did in laundering looted gold. Japan moved looted gold through Swiss banks in Tokyo, Portuguese banks in Maco, and banks in Chile and Argentina. The gold was moved to South America in large cargo submarines. The Portuguese cleverly omitted Maco in the Bretton Woods agreement.
Journalist Paul Manning had an opportunity to see Emperor Hirohito’s financial records when they were still in the custody of the occupation authorities. The records indicated that the Japanese advisors to the Emperor began moving his gold out of Japan in 1943, about the same time Bormann began moving Nazi loot out of Germany. Historian James Mackay concludes that the Emperor’s accounts included $35 million in South America banks, $20 million in Swiss accounts, and $45 million in Portuguese, Spain, and Vatican accounts.
Any account of the Golden Lily and Japanese war loot is incomplete without a look at Japan’s use of slave labor. All of the various treasure sites in the Philippines were built with slave labor, including Allied POWs. Once a site was complete and ready to be sealed, the slaves would be herded into the tunnels. The tunnel was then blown shut, leaving the prisoners to die a slow agonizing death from suffocation.
The Japanese were especially brutal with their POWs, even more so than the Nazis. Over thirty percent of the Allied POWs died in captivity at the hands of their tormentors. In comparison, only three percent of Allied POWs died in Nazi camps. Allied POWs were deliberately left to die untreated from beriberi and other tropical diseases. In a prisoner of war camp on Hainan Island, the camp commandant, Captian Kikuchi Ichiro, withheld Vitamin B capsules to prevent beriberi and calculated the minimum amount of food to keep the POWs barely alive.
Thousands of POWs were transported to Japan on the Hell Ships, sealed in the cargo holds under conditions so grim that it was not uncommon for ten percent of the POWs to die before reaching Japan. Ships carrying POWs were supposed to have been marked as such, but Japan refused to mark its Hell Ships, so when they were attacked and sunk, the POWs still locked in the cargo holds would drown. At least 16 Hell Ships were sunk mistakenly by the Allies. A total of 17,036 Allied POWs were lost aboard these 16 Hell Ships.
By mid-1942, Japan held 140,000 Allied POWs, about a half-million western civilians, and over a million overseas Chinese. The Chinese were singled out for exceptional brutality. Prisoners were forced into slave labor for a variety of uses. Besides being used to bury the stolen gold, prisoners were used to mine gold and coal. Others were used to operate factories including Mitsui, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi, Nippon Steel, Showa, Denko, and others. Mitsui was by far the largest employer of slave labor. Operators of the Hell Ships include the following corporations: NYK Line, KKK Line, and Mitsui. These corporations have never been obligated to pay compensation to their victims. Tokyo and Washington have blocked all attempts at compensation.
Japan dragooned about a million Chinese and another million Koreans to work in mines. The Japanese forced Korean women and young girls into prostitution. Known as comfort girls they were slaves to the military. After the Philippines the Japanese rounded up wealthy women and young girls and raped them as much as fifty times in a day. Held for ransom, the rapes would continue until the family came up with the ransom.
When Japan was liberated, the U.S POWs were taken to Guam where they were browbeaten until they signed papers agreeing they would tell no one of their experiences. For some unknown reason, Tokyo and Washington both wanted total silence surrounding the abuse of POWs. Further documentation supporting this comes from the files captured by the British Royal Marines in 1945. In the files is a revealing document written by a commander of a POW camp at Taihoku, in Tawain. He had just received emergency instructions from the 11th Unit of Formosa. His instructions read as follows:
Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, drowning, decapitation or what… it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all and not to leave any traces.
Obviously, Tokyo was adamant on silencing all aspects of their abuse of POWs. Washington’s concurrence however, is perplexing. The war was over, and Japan had been vanquished, what cities that didn’t lie in ruins from the massive fire bombing lay in ashes from the two atomic bombings. The only possible motives for Washington’s agreement are bribery or blackmail. Meanwhile, those American GIs that suffered in brutal slave labour camps and those that were murdered in those camps were betrayed by the leaders in Washington and left no means of recourse.
It is almost impossible to keep something the size of the Golden Lily secret. Periodically reports of stolen loot have surfaced. One of the first reports concerned Dutch silver. In 1946, American sources informed the Dutch military mission that 110 cases of Dutch coins was known to have been transferred from Yokosuka Bank to the Bank of Japan. In 1947, Lieutenant General Schilling of the Dutch military mission reported to his government that thirty tons of Dutch silver had been recovered from Tokyo Bay. The Japanese 16th Army on Java seized this silver and shipped it aboard fake hospital ships to the Osaka Mint. Additional Dutch ingots were recovered from Etchugina Bay.
Due to post-war detective work by the former Dutch POW, Lieutenant A. Looijen, 187 tons of Dutch silver was eventually returned to the Netherlands. Looijen had traced the silver bullion from Java to the Bank of Japan. Another Dutch POW, C. Broekhuizen, was forced into slave labour and reported that it was the Japanese government’s intention to conceal the gold and silver until after the war and then to melt it down and recast it in order to launder it. Other Dutch and American POWs have attested to seeing a warehouse full of coins from the various countries of Asia and the South Pacific. The warehouse had previously been owned by Standard Oil. Still other POWs reported seeing copper coins re-smelted at a Hitachi factory.107.
Along with the gold and silver coinage, POWs reported seeing copious amounts of diamonds and other precious gems. The finest were culled and set aside. The smallest were consigned for industrial use. The remainders were poured back into oil drums for storage in private vaults. Almost all of the loot was hidden in either private vaults or tunnels and bunkers in the Japanese Alps. Little was deposited in Japanese banks, as the elite was not about to share the wealth with the lower classes.
The largest tunnel complex is at Matsushiro near Nagano, the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. The tunnel complex is ten kilometers long with over 60,000 cubic feet of underground space. It was originally built to house the imperial family, members of the aristocracy, and all government agencies. The tunnel complex was dug with slave labor from Korea. The slaves were never seen after the complex was completed, an all too frequent occurrence with the Japanese treasure sites. They were probably buried alive in a side tunnel. The complex was also used to hide treasure from the Golden Lily.
After the war, allied investigators learned that on August 2, 1945, just days before Japan’s surrender, 387 allied POWs were buried alive on the Japanese island of Sado. They had been forced to work in a gold and coal mine. Lieutenant Tsuda Yoshiro described the event to investigators. The mine was operated by Mitsubishi, which had a notorious reputation for brutal treatment of their slave labour. In another gold mine on Sado, also operated by Mitsubishi, one-thousand Korean slave workers were buried alive. Their fate was uncovered from company records released in 1991, covering the Mitsubishi’s distribution of cigarette rations to its slave labor.108
In 1947, General MacArthur brought a number of gemologists to Japan. Edward Henderson was one of the gemologists. He was invited to appraise some $50 million in gems that the U.S. Army had recovered. According to journalist Robert Whiting, roughly 800,000 karats of diamonds were transferred from the Bank of Japan to MacArthur’s command. No record of the fate of these diamonds has ever been found. 110
To better understand how such a large treasure as the Golden Lily has been suppressed and how the Black Eagle Trust came into being, a closer look at the liberation of the Philippines is required. While only part of the Nazi gold was ever officially recovered and returned to its rightful owners, almost none of the Emperor’s loot has been recovered and returned.
The primary difference between the Asian and European theaters during the war, was the OSS, was Eisenhower allowed to operate in Europe. The recovered Nazi loot was due largely to the efforts of the OSS and the gold teams in Europe. Once the initial gold teams were displaced, what gold that was found in Europe seems to have disappeared into a black hole.
MacArthur, however, would not allow any OSS agent to operate within his theater of command. When Lansdale arrived, the OSS was being disbanded and Lansdale had been officially transferred to the army.
MacArthur’s intelligence operation was under the formal command of General Charles Willoughby. MacArthur referred to Willoughby has his “little fascist.” Willoughby had been born in Germany. He was a love child between Baron T. Scheppe-Weindenbach and Emma Willoughby of Baltimore, Maryland. When MacArthur was promoted to the U.S. Far Eastern Command, Willoughby chose to follow his idol. Both had been assigned to the Philippine command. Impressed by Willoughby’s loyalty MacArthur appointed him as his assistant chief of intelligence.
After Japan attacked the Philippines, Willoughby moved to Corregidaor with MacArthur and then was evacuated with MacArthur to Australia. Willoughby was generally inept and not even remotely prepared for many of the assignments. However, MacArthur demanded absolute control over intelligence and special operations, and Willoghby was ready and able to deliver MacArthur total control and loyalty. Willoughby was also clever at hiding his blunders and promoting his successes. In later years after the war, Willoughby became a member of just about every fringe far right-wing group that came into existence.
In Australia, Willoughby set up the Allied Intelligence Bureau to run guerrilla operations in the Philippines. He also set up the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. However, Willoughby’s incompetence in guerrilla warfare was too much, even for MacArthur. MacArthur appointed his personal lawyer and crony Courtney Whitney to take over the special operations and guerrilla warfare. Whitney was a very rich man and well connected in the Philippines. He proved an adept officer in managing guerrilla operations in the Philippines. To sooth Willoughby’s hurt feelings MacArthur promoted Willoughby to a general.
Severio Garcia Diaz Sanata or “Santy” was born in Luzon and educated in California. While in California, Santy married the wealthy heiress Evangeline Compton. In 1930, the couple returned to the Philippines. During this time, Santy became a fringe member of the social click around MacArthur and Whitney. During the war, Santy became one of Whitney’s most effective agents inside the Philippines.
Another key figure in MacArthur’s Manila circle was Joseph McKickling, a law partner of Courtney Whitney. After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, McKickling was made an officer of G2 under the command of Willoughby. He was also evacuated with MacArthur to Australia. During the torture of Major Kojima, McKickling was Santy’s immediate superior. About the time Santy was uncovering the treasure from the Golden Lily, McKickling became fabulously wealthy. He married the wealthy heiress Mercedes Zobel. McKickling masterminded the Zobel-Ayala acquisition of global real estate, creating one of the world’s great fortunes. While the Zobel-Ayala clan was far from poor, the real money in launching their world-class fortune came from McKickling.
The first detection of the Golden Lily came from a team of guerillas smuggled into the Philippines. Disguised as a fisherman, U.S. Navy Warrant Officer John Ballinger observed a heavily laden Japanese hospital ship heading for Subic Bay. He photographed the ship and identified it as the Hazi Maru, a fast liner. Guerrilla hero, Captain Medina, led Ballinger’s unit. The unit then observed the crew unloading heavy crates from the ship onto truck convoy.
Ballinger’s team then followed the convoy and observed the Japanese unloading the cargo and storing it in a mountain cave. Once they had finished unloading the trucks, the Japanese blew the entrance to the cave shut. It took the guerillas several days to reopen the cave, where they found rows upon rows of boxes filled with 75-kilo gold bars. They resealed the cave and reported their findings to MacArthur’s headquarters in Australia.
After the American landing of troops on Leyte, Medina’s guerrillas watched the Japanese hurriedly unloading heavy boxes into a tunnel near a hospital. Media’s guerrillas attacked the Japanese soon routed them, blowing the tunnel shut with many of the Japanese still trapped inside the tunnel. A report of this action was sent to MacArthur’s headquarters.
Thus, it seems certain that MacArthur and his command staff were well aware of the existence of the Golden Lily treasure long before the Japanese surrender. What is not known due to the extreme secrecy surrounding the treasure was if MacArthur had been privy to Stimpson’s plan to use recovered treasure to finance a global political action fund before the surrender. The extreme secrecy over the POW issue from the very beginning of the surrender seems to suggest he was.
MacArthur’s knowledge of Japanese treasury surely played a part in the war crimes trial of General Yamashita. Yamashita was innocent of the charges as stated earlier. However, MacArthur and his staff were eager to see the trial proceed and badgered the trial tribunal, urging that hearsay evidence be allowed and to quicken the proceedings. Yamashita’s defence team appealed the death sentence to the Supreme Court. His sentence was not overturned, but two justices dissented. Dissenting Justice Murphy’s words follows.
The Petitioner was rushed to trial under an improper charge, given insufficient time to prepare an adequate defense, and there was no serious attempt to prove that he committed a recognized violation of the laws of war. He was not charged with personally participating in the acts of atrocity or with ordering or condoning their commission. Not even knowledge of these crimes was attributed to him.
Judge Rutledge, the other dissenting judge, was equally critical of the conviction. Following a failed appeal to President Truman, Yamashita was hung. Obviously Yamashita’s knowledge of the treasure provided a hidden motive for MacArthur to dispose of the wrongly charged general. Being charged with war crimes, Yamashita could not be tortured without it being exposed in his trial. However, his driver Major Kojima Kashii was brutally tortured.
It is unknown how McCloy, Anderson, Clifford, and Lovett administered the Black Eagle Trust in the years following the war. However, the rest of the world was battered and bankrupt at the end of the war. It seems certain that from the work of the Seagraves that Britain’s re-entry into the world gold market must have been based on the trust. At the end of the war the Untied States held 60 percent of the world’s official gold reserves. Thus, Washington was in a position to manipulate and force other countries to go follow the Washington line.
By 1960, it was clear to European central banks that they soon would be holding dollars in excess of the official U.S. gold reserves. Until the 1960s the U.S. gold reserves and the secret Black Eagle Trust allowed the United States to browbeat any nation into complying with U.S. wishes and desires. By 1960, the printing of fiat money nearly equalled the U.S. gold reserves. The dwindling ratio of the U.S. gold reserves to the money supply allowed other nations to escape from under Uncle Sam’s heavy hand. As a result starting around 1960 various nations began striking out on their own course, most notably France. The role of gold in the Cold War is perhaps one of the most unrecognized factors in the entire Cold War era. While the Black Eagle Trust still could fix election globally, the U.S. was forced by their dwindling gold stocks to ease the heavy repression of the 1950s, both domestically and globally. The result was an almost spontaneous global protest leading to one of the most tumultuous decades of the 20th Century. It was French demands to exchange dollars for gold that led to Nixon closing the gold window.
The 1948 Italian election is the first known example of the use of the Black Eagle Trust to fix an election. CIA agent Jesus Angleton had recovered Ethiopian treasure, plundered by Mussolini. Angleton did not return the treasure to impoverish Ethiopia; he appropriated it for the CIA. Angleton arranged for the Vatican to provide 100 million liras to back anticommunists’ candidates in the election. Some of the funds likely came from the Black Eagle Trust considering the Vatican was one of the 42 countries the recovered gold was shipped to in 1946-47. 113
Manipulating elections and other covert operations was the black side of the Truman Doctrine. Following London’s appeal to Washington that it had no money for military aid to Greece and Turkey, Truman appealed to Congress for a $400 million aid package. Secretly, Truman simultaneously authorized the use of funds from the Black Eagle for covert operations to defeat the communist uprising.
Frank Wisner was the man put in charge of the CIA covert operation in Europe following WWII. Wisner was the person to first come up with hiring ex-Nazis to create a fifth column against the Soviet Union. By 1952, he had operations in forty-seven countries and an official budget of $84 million, and a staff of three-thousand. It is unknown how much funding he may have received from the Black Eagle. Wisner was supported by powerful friends: the Dulles brothers, George Keenan, Averell Harriman, Joe and Stewart Alsop.
Likewise, in Japan funds recovered from the Golden Lily were used in the immediate post war period. Three secret funds existed during the military occupation—the M-Fund, the Yotsuya Fund, and the Keenan Fund. MacArthur was instrumental in establishing the M-Fund. Initially, it was believed to have been as large as $2-billion. Money for it came from the sale of confiscated gold, silver, gems, and other strategic materials.
The M-Fund named after General William Fredi Marquat, chief of SCAP’s Economic and Scientific Section. In theory, Marquat headed the U.S. unit that was to punish Japanese corporations that had made obscene profits off the war. In practice, Marquat spent considerable time and effort in concealing the profits for the businesses. Maquat, like Willoughby, was grossly incompetent. However, he was inside MacArthur’s circle, where loyalty counted more than competency.
Marquat did little in the way of shutting down the profit mongers during the war. He was also in charge of bringing the war criminals from Unit 731 to justice. Unit 731 was Japan’s biological and chemical warfare division that used victims to test their warfare agents on. Instead of fulfilling his outlined duties, Marquat presided over the transfer of Unit 731to Fort Dietrich. All information on the unit was withheld from the American and Japanese public, and the War Crimes Tribunal.
The M-Fund was created to buy elections. Its first big application came in the late 1940s when the socialists won the election. The M-Fund immediately began dispensing great sums to discredit the socialist cabinet. Later, the fund was again used to discredit Tokyo’s consideration of opening relations with the People’s Republic of China.
The Yoshida Fund was established with an entirely different objective. It was used to finance the Japanese underworld for “wet work”—kidnapping and murder. General Willoughby controlled the Yoshida Fund. Moneys from this fund were used to silence union leaders and organizers. Willoughby also took on the job of falsifying the Japanese military history to conform to the needs of the American Cold Warriors. His work in this effort was published by the U.S. government under the title of The Japanese Monographs and Japanese Studies in World War Two.
Joseph Keenan, another figure from MacArthur’s inner circle, controlled the Keenan Fund. Keenan was the chief prosecutor in the Tokyo war crimes trials. The sole purpose of the Keenan Fund was to bribe witness at the war crimes trials. Unlike the swift trial of Yamashita in the Philippines, the Tokyo trials were dragged out for three years. Witnesses were bribed to prevent any testimony implicating the Emperor. Witnesses that could not be bribed met with violent and sudden deaths. The fund was also used to prevent testimony of Unit 731.
In 1956, the Eisenhower administration used the M-Fund again to place Kishi as head of the newly merge Liberal-Democratic Party and as Japan’s new Prime Minister. Kishi had been a signer of the Japanese Declaration of War against the United States. He had actively been involved in slave labor and was part of the hard core ruling clique in Manchuria. He was one of the most prominent war criminals arrested in post-war Japan. However, he was freed with bribe money from Kodama.
Harry Kern, Eugene Dooman, Compton Packenham and other members of Averell Harriman’s group had groomed Kishi for ten years. Despite all the grooming by Harriman, Kishi lost in the 1956 to Ishibashi Tanzan. Washington widely regarded Tanzan as the least favorable candidate. Annoyed, Eisenhower personally ordered the CIA to destroy Tanzan. After a year of paying bribes to all the factions within the Liberal-Democrat Party, the Eisenhower administration was successful in placing their man in the prime minister’s chair.
During Kishi’s term (1957-1960) the Liberal-Democrat Party received $10 million annually from the CIA, chiefly from the M-Fund. While Nixon was negotiating the Mutual Security Treaty, Nixon promised Kishi that not only would he turn over the M-Fund to the Liberal Democrat Party, but he would also return Okinawa to Japan if Kishi would help the Nixon 1960 election campaign with black money. Upon the conclusion of the security treaty Nixon did turn over the control of the M-Fund and in 1973, as President, Nixon returned Okinawa to Japanese rule.
In 1972, Nixon and Kissinger arranged a deal with Premier Chou En-lai to keep China out of the conflict over Taiwan. In return for standing down, Nixon offered China a large quantity of gold provided by Marcos. At the time, China’s economy was in very bad shape and China also lacked foreign currency to purchase any foreign goods, including grain to relieve the widespread famine in China’s rural areas. According to the CIA and Pentagon analysts, China was about to invade Taiwan to gain badly needed assets and foreign currency. At the same time, the United States was bogged down in Vietnam and the public was demanding peace.
Although the details are sketchy and the exact amount is uncertain, Kissinger apparently offered China $68 billion in gold. Supporting evidence for the deal comes from numerous bank accounts, held by members of the Black Eagle Trust, which were being moved to mainland banks inside China. These rabid anti-communists would have had no other reason to move their accounts to China at the height of the Cold War.
All presidents, from Truman to George W. Bush, have used the Black Eagle Trust to fund covert operations. While these black operations are badly odoriferous and criminal, the real danger comes in keeping the gold out of the hands of private individuals. Yet, from the beginning, the gold was held in private individual accounts. When President Kennedy sacked Lansdale over his operations against Cuba, Lansdale did not give up his covert activities. He merely went private. He still had enough contacts in the military and the CIA to remain a player in covert operations. In practice, this left Lansdale as a private individual with the power to overthrow foreign governments and even the ability to plunge inadvertently or deliberately the country into an unwanted war.
The ability of private individuals or groups to essentially wage war was enhanced by President Reagan. Early in his first term, Reagan signed Executive Order 12333 at the urging of Bill Casey. This authorized the CIA and other government agencies to contract with private military firms. Furthermore, the agency did not have to reveal the contract or arrangement.
Such contracts set a dangerous precedent that allows the president to bypass congress’s ability to declare war, and was immediately used by Reagan to wage war in Nicaragua. The resulting aftermath became known as the Iran/Contra scandal.
By 1980, there were plenty of individuals like Lansdale that had been terminated from government service to staff private military or intelligence firms. Starting in 1972, after John Schlesinger replaced Richard Helms as CIA Director, hundreds of agents that had been engaged in the dirty tricks clique of Helms were forcefully retired. Once it became known the CIA had been involved in Watergate and other domestic break-ins, Schlesinger ordered an investigation. The report termed The Family Jewels led to leaks about assassination programs, death squads like Phoenix, and other embarrassing operations. Over a thousand agents were terminated because of the investigation.
Further investigations in the 1970s led to more dismissals, not only at the CIA but also from the Pentagon. Under President Carter, additional CIA and military personnel were dismissed. Among those dismissed were General John Singlaub, Ray Cline, and General George Keegan. Many of these men regrouped privately in such radical far right-wing organizations as the John Birch Society, the World Anti-Communist League, and the Moonies. Singlaub has became some what of an icon among the far right.
Casey is a good example of these ex-agents. Casey was one of the original OSS crowd. He was Singlaub’s case officer during WWII, while Paul Helliwell was Casey’s immediate superior. In addition, Casey was friends with the Dulles brothers and had worked with Cline. He became involved with Lansdale during the torture of Major Kojima, making Casey one of key players in implementing the Black Eagle Trust.
After the war, Casey founded his own Wall Street law firm. His continued involvement with former intelligence agents allowed him to form Capitol Cities in 1954, just as the CIA was pouring millions of dollars into media companies. Casey benefited from some of that money. It is likely that Casey never left the CIA. In 1973, Nixon appointed Casey as the chief of the Security and Exchange Commission. While SEC chief, Casey worked closely with Stanley Sporkin, who was later appointed by Casey as the CIA’s general counsel in the Schlei case. In 1978, Casey founded the Manhattan Institute a think tank that absorbed several former CIA agents. In 1980, Casey left Capitol Cities to become head of the Reagan campaign. Reagan appointed Casey as CIA Director.
By 1980, private military and intelligence firms had proliferated to such an extent that they became known during the Iran/Contra scandal as “The Enterprise.” Marcos had connections that extended beyond the CIA into this loosely confederated network.
In the mid-1970s, Marcos became pathologically greedy. He was already a billionaire from clandestinely recovering some of the Golden Lily’s treasure. However, the only means he had of selling it was through the CIA or Japan. Both would take the odd sized ingots without the standard paper trail required in the legitimate gold market, but only at a steep discount.
To bypass the CIA and Japan and sell in the open market, Marcos had to have the gold resmelted and the fingerprint from impurities altered so the gold would appear to have a Philippine origin.
By 1975, Marcos had already formed the Leber group (rebel spelled backwards) to uncover the Golden Lily treasure from 34 of the known 172 sites. Due to Marcos’s personal fascination with psychics, the group included Olof Jonsson, a psychic from Chicago. Marcos then contacted Robert Curtis, a mining engineer from Sparks, Nevada.
Curtis had developed a process to extract platinum and reclaim more gold from the mining tailings in the Sierras, which made him a moderately wealthy man. He was also an expert at changing the fingerprint of gold bullion. At first, Curtis turned down Marcos’s offer to resmelt the gold.
However, Curtis was amazed at the amount of gold that was being discussed in the offer. It was ten times the amount of the average gold that the Philippine mines had ever produced. After several offers, Marcos finally revealed to Curtis that the gold came from Japanese looting during WWII. The idea of recovering Japanese gold fascinated Curtis and he accepted the job, arriving in the Philippines at the end of February 1975.
On March 25, 1975, Curtis signed a contract with the Leber group. As part of his participation, Curtis agreed to supply two smelters. Curtis needed a loan to cover the expenses of the smelters and turned to a previous contact inside the John Birch Society. Curtis had been contacted earlier in the 1970s by Jerry Adams, Robert Welch, Jay and Dan Agnew, and Floyd Paxton. Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society. It was a fringe group on the far right of mostly consisting of wealthy businessmen, far right politicians, ex-military, and intelligence officers. Lansdale was a member.
The members of the Birch Society were also gold bugs. After Nixon allowed citizens to own gold, the Birch Society developed a backdoor through Canada to buy overseas gold and smuggled it into the U.S. through Canada. The Birch Society then used the gold to fund their own private vigilante force. The vigilante force was something similar to a private FBI. The John Birch Society has always maintained some type of blacklist, which is typical of all hard right groups. From time to time, news articles have appeared about the Birch blacklist. Generally, these right wing blacklists receive a wink and nod from the FBI as they view such blacklists as helpful.
Curtis was unaware the inner circle of the Birch Society knew about the Black Eagle Trust and previous recoveries of gold. They knew because one of the founding members was Colonel Laurence Bunker, who had succeeded General Bonner Fellers position in MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo.
The Birch Society arranged the financing for Curtis through Washington State Senator, Floyd Paxton and his son, who ran Kwik Lok Corporation. Another participant was Jerry Adams, the head of the Great American Silver Corporation, a company associated with the Hunt brothers. Welch and Congressman Larry McDonald told Curtis that they had cleared the loan personally. MacDonald was the head of the Anti-Communist League before he died in a plane crash. The loan was unsecured except for Curtis’s promise to return a 22 percent of his Leber share.
By the time Curtis had opened the first treasure site, the John Birch Society placed new demands on him for additional security for the loan. Curtis offered them the titles to his heavy equipment in Nevada. He also was obligated to give the Birchers the exclusive right to market up to $20 billion of any gold recovered. The Birchers told Curtis that the gold would be sold through Commonwealth Packaging Ltd, located in the Bahamas and owned by Kwik Lok. The proceeds would be deposited in the Nassau branch of the Royal Bank of Canada and finally transferred to a branch in Kelowna Canada. There the money would be smuggled into the U.S. by a key financial expert of the Birch Society.
The sudden demands of the Birch Society were triggered by July 4 and 5, 1975 columns by Jack Anderson, who reported that Marcos was recovering gold with the help of several Americans. Curtis barely escaped from the Philippines with his life.
Later, Curtis learned that Marcos had recovered 22,000 metric tons of gold bullion. Marcos had the treasure resealed without recovering two gold Buddhas and the barrels of gemstones.
While Curtis was still in the Philippines he learned that the Gold Cartel had offered Marcos a Mafia style deal—either kill Curtis and let the Cartel handle the gold or Marcos would be in trouble. The Cartel refers to the alliance of prime banks, gold companies, and national treasuries (including the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England) that dominate the world gold market. In the end, Curtis was left broke. Johnson Mathey-Chemicals (and a part of the Cartel) now owned his two Philippine smelters.
About the same time, things turned bad for Marcos. Marcos was trying to blackmail the Japanese over the Showa Trust at the Sanwa Bank. The Trust had come from treasures recovered from the Golden Lily. At the time, the Showa Trust was so large that it was generating a billion dollars a year in interest. Exposure of the trust would be embarrassing for both Washington and Tokyo. Apparently, Marcos was successful in his blackmail, as several accounts with his name appeared in the Hong Kong branch of the Sanwa Bank shortly after his negotiating team had visited Tokyo.
In his first year in office, Reagan declared that he would restore the gold standard. Reagan had long standing ties to the Birch Society, dating back to the 1950s. The Reagans were also long time friends with Marcos. To make his plan for a new gold standard work, Reagan needed a large stock of gold. He asked Marcos privately to lend part of his hoard of black gold for his plan. Marcos however, demanded a higher commission than what Reagan was willing to pay.
In combination with Marcos blackmailing the Japanese and his demand for a high commission to Reagan, Marcos had sealed his fate and was shortly removed from office. Once under siege in Manila, Senator Paul Laxalt offered Marcos an ultimatum forfeit his gold in return for being rescued by the U.S. That evening, after accepting the ultimatum, barges were towed alongside the presidential palace and loaded with gold from the palace. The barges were then towed to Subic. Then Marcos were rescued and taken to Hawaii where authorities seized billions of dollars worth of gold certificates.
Marcos’s high flying days playing wild and loose with black gold ended in Hawaii. However, the Reagan administration’s interest in the Golden Lily treasure buried in the Philippines continued. In January 1987, Curtis was contacted by Alan Foringer to talk about Philippine treasure.
After meeting Curtis, Foringer and his aid John Voss informed Curtis they were with the Nippon Star. The Nippon Star had been formed by General John Singlaub to search for treasure in the Philippines. Curtis wanted no part of dealing with the CIA or any CIA connected fronts. However, Curtis was then informed by a phone call from General Schweitzer that President Reagan had personally endorsed the Nippon Star and the Phoenix Exploration groups. Reagan couldn’t publicly endorse the explorations but had fully briefed the U.S. Embassy in Manila, and the commanders at Subic Bay Naval Base, and the Clark Air Force Base. Others involved in the exploration included Colonel Dick Childress, General Daniel Graham, General Jack Vessy, and Ray Cline.
Curtis reluctantly agreed to meet them in Hong Kong. However, this time he demanded to tape-record the meeting to protect himself. Once again, the John Birch Society was financing the operation. Curtis also discovered that Singlaub had been duped and was using false maps. Curtis had retained the maps for all the sites from his earlier trip to the Philippines. Desperate to dig himself out of a financial hole, Curtis suggested to first try a site on Corregidor. After digging had proceeded for five days, Philippine Army helicopters swooped down and demanded the treasure hunters leave at gunpoint. Curtis then returned home.
Curtis returned the third time to the Philippines as a partner with Charles McDougal, a former Green Beret. Once again, as he was about to strike gold, Curtis was forced to leave the Philippines. Later, his former partners recovered roughly $4.5 billion in gold that Curtis had located.
Further evidence of the Reagan’s administration’s involvement with recovering Golden Lily treasure comes from a suit filed by Mel Beli over gold deposits held by Citibank. Beli had concluded that Citibank’s John Reed had joined with President Reagan, James Baker, Bill Caset, and Prime Minister Margaret Thacher to use Golden Lily treasure to finance covert operations by the U.S. and Britain. Beli referred to the plan as “The Purple Ink Document.” Unfortunately, Beli died before the case could proceed. However, the case is still pending.
The danger now is that the Black Eagle Trust is no longer fully in the hands of the government. Instead, several groups have access to it and can use it to further their radical agenda. Furthermore, they know more treasure is to be found in the Philippines. Undoubtedly, some of the political shift to the right in the United States since, the 1980s has been funded with parts of the Black Eagle Trust.
In 2001, George W. Bush sent a Navy Seal team to the Philippines to retrieve a portion of the loot. The younger Bush has been a player in the black market for gold for sometime. His representative to purchase the gold was William S. Parish, his nominee as ambassador to Great Britain, and the manager of his blind trust. James Foley was appointed as ambassador to Haiti by George W. prior to the Bush inspired revolt in 2004. Foley was another player in the Black Eagle Trust. Which leads to the question, did money from the Black Eagle Trust finance the arming of the Haitian rebels?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kXf59MXl18
[https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVP.1U7SND9lVFmCViP1lxUirgHfFn&pid=Api]
Billy (goat) Graham and his Tranny Wife and Life http://www.youtube.com (Re-upload) Graham and his trannified family.
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Fascinating. Well researched & what a world of espionage, deceit & corruption all in the name of greed & power….thank you
No doubt the writer has a serious and well considered agenda. However to describe the Philippines as going through its own ”
peaceful” reforms is seriously under informed and the writer obviously does not live there and or obviously lives in a glass bubble. Using carefully worked research pieces along with under researched generalizations can kill an article stone dead, before it begins. The writer aligns Duterte with the forces of good, just because the CIA have been active in his country? That’s preposterous.