Marcos Ferdinand Edralin - Gold warriors : Americas secret recovery of Yamashitas gold

CHAPTER EIGHT

DIRTY TRICKS

Discovery of the Santa Romana recoveries suggests that anti-communist hysteria may not have been the only motivation behind the murders and collusion of the postwar years. Another factor may have been the great sums of money derived from this black gold, for which there was no need to account. Hard evidence now emerging shows that America set up secret political action funds in Japan that were used to influence the imperial family, the ruling elite, the underworld, and to support a rightwing regime and keep it in power. Documents show that these funds, originally under the control of senior U.S. Army officers at MacArthurs headquarters, were used to bribe witnesses at the Tokyo war crimes trials, and almost certainly were used to pay for the murder of liberal politicians and left-wing organizers. As we documented in The Yamato Dynasty, Japans right-wing leaders were fully aware of Americas anti-communist fears and cravings during that period, and responded to them with enthusiasm and cleverness. The democratization of Japan was reversed, its government given back to indicted war criminals specifically the group surrounding Kishi Nobosuke. His political party, the Liberal Democratic Party or LDP, created and funded by underworld godfather Kodama from treasure he amassed during the war, was vigorously backed by Washington and kept supplied with virtually limitless unvouchered funds.

Once millions of dollars derived from black gold were in this covert pipeline, hidden by national security, nobody had to keep track of the way it was spent. Whatever the original strategic purpose of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, the funds fell into the hands of corrupt people who could use them any way they wished, with little concern about discovery. Raising fears of communism at every turn did keep citizens of both countries from questioning deals that were made by the two governments. Invoking national security did allow officials making these deals to hide the documents, forbidding anyone to look at them until deep into the twenty-first century. Anyone protesting this in America was ridiculed as a Japan Basher, or more recently as a terrorist. In Japan, anyone who might reveal too much became a victim of assisted suicide.

Meanwhile, Japan and the rest of the world were flooded with news stories and other propaganda to create a false impression. Initially through the SCAP-controlled press, and through tame journalists beholden to MacArthurs backers on Wall Street, Japan was portrayed as a poverty-stricken country unable to pay reparations or compensation to its victims. Had Washington acknowledged the existence of the great mass of treasure it knew Japan had stolen, much of it slumbering in vaults throughout the Home Islands, it would have been obvious that Japan had plenty of money. (Not to mention all the stolen art and cultural treasures that could have been converted into cash, or returned in place of cash.) It now seems inescapable that the 1951 Japan Peace Treaty was falsely contrived to buy Tokyos cooperation in the Cold War, by assuring Japans elite that they would not be obliged to part with their private hoards of plunder. This was done by adding Article 14 to the Treaty, which says: 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. [Therefore] the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan. [Our italics.] From this it became dogma that individual victims could not expect compensation for their years of torture and brutalization as POWs or as civilian slave laborers toiling for giant Japanese corporations like Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Sumitomo. To this day the State Department and the Justice Department, shielding the government and zaibatsu of Japan, still invoke Article 14 of the 1951 Peace Treaty to block any attempt by victims to sue these immensely rich corporations. In fact, as the Santa Romana recoveries demonstrate, the Treaty is invalid because it is based on lies and deceptions.

Japan is not the only example of how Washington used Axis war loot for political action during the first years of the Cold War. The Italian elections of 1948 are another.

In postwar Italy, CIA agent James Jesus Angleton recovered Ethiopian treasure plundered by Mussolinis forces. Instead of returning this loot to the desperately impoverished Ethiopian people, it was appropriated by the CIA and used to finance pro-American and anti-communist candidates in Italys 1948 elections. In addition, the Agency raised a great deal of money in Europe from the sale of surplus U.S. war materiel, and gave this money to the Vatican, earmarked explicitly for the war on communism in Italy. The Agency then arranged for the Pope to provide 100-million lira from this personal account to back the anti-communist ticket during the elections. This comes as no surprise because it is now known that the Vatican bank sheltered Hirohitos assets and Nazi assets during the war. It also is one of the 42 countries to which Ray Cline said the recovered Golden Lily bullion was shipped during 1945-1947. And it is one of the banks named as having accounts in Santys various names.

By the 1960s, Angleton was back in Washington running the counterintelligence staff of the CIA, often wryly referred to as The Gestapo, which had its own very secret slush fund that was never audited. The CIAs historical intelligence budget information (how it actually spent covert funds) remains one of its biggest secrets to this day, apparently on the premise that it can never reveal who was bribed, coerced, or paid off, no matter how many decades pass, or what misjudgments, folly, and corruption, were involved. We may well wonder whether this really is intended to protect the recipients, or the American officials who fiddled the funds.

Covert actions like manipulating the Italian elections of 1948 were the dark side of the so-called Truman Doctrine, the backbone of every U.S. administrations foreign policy since 1948, when President Truman declared Americas commitment to global hegemony, and made it clear that the Cold War would set the tone of future U.S. foreign and military policy.

Similar U.S. covert intervention occurred in Greece, when Britain gave notice that her empty treasury compelled her to end all financial and military aid to the eastern end of the Mediterranean, quitting her role in Greece and Turkey. Fearing the spread of communism, London appealed to Washington to step into the vacuum. Greece was in the throes of civil war, and Turkey might be next to fall, in what Secretary of State Dean Acheson called the rotten apple in the barrel syndrome (later the domino theory). Truman called a joint session of Congress and asked for $400-million in aid for Greece and Turkey. At the present moment he said, nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

Secretly, Truman simultaneously authorized the use of Axis war loot and other unvouchered funds to do precisely that to interfere in the political life of sovereign nations, to buy elections, to undercut the rule of law, to control the media, to carry out assassinations, and to impose Americas will on countries with whom it was not at war.