How Washington ripped-off Asia's stolen treasure

Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold
By Sterling and Peggy Seagrave
Verso, 2003
332 pages, $49.95 (hb)

REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON

In June 1945, with US tanks less than 30 kilometres away, General Yamashita, head of the Japanese occupying army in the Philippines, knew the war was lost. He held a farewell party in Luzon province for 175 Japanese chief engineers, in one of the 175 underground tunnel complexes the engineers had constructed. At midnight, with the sake and patriotic singing in full flow, Yamashita (with two of Emperor Hirohito's princes) slipped out and detonated dynamite at the tunnel's entrance. Buried 70 metres underground, the engineers had only the mute company of row upon row of gold bars, looted by the Japanese army from the territories it had conquered in Asia.

Thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilian slave labourers from Asia were also buried alive in underground caves, tunnels and mineshafts after they had built the hidden treasure vaults. The only people who knew of the secret stashes and were meant to remain alive, as Sterling and Peggy Seagrave reveal in Gold Warriors, were the Japanese military tops and the imperial family elite, who intended to recover the booty after the war's end.

Despite the murderous precautions taken to protect the secret vaults, US military intelligence officers discovered their existence and seized billons of dollars worth of gold, platinum, precious gems and cultural treasures from the hiding places. Together with Nazi war loot from Europe, the Japanese plunder was funnelled by the US into a secret “Black Eagle Trust”, named after the Nazi insignia stamped on gold bullion stolen by the Nazis.

US President Harry Truman set up a secret, high-level government team to launder the stolen assets into 176 bank accounts in 42 countries. In charge was US war secretary Henry Stimson.

The Japanese militarist regime's looting of Asia had been systematic and vast. Government treasuries, banks, factories, homes and art galleries had been raided with ruthless efficiency, exemplified by the meticulous attention paid to hammering the teeth of corpses to extract gold fillings.

Japan's top underworld crime boss, Yoshio Kodama, was made an admiral and put in charge of looting occupied Asia's gangsters. Called “Golden Lily” (after one of Hirohito's poems), the operation was headed by the emperor's brother, Prince Chicubi, and managed by some of Japan's top financial figures.

Much of the stolen wealth was taken to Japan, some to pay for the war, but most to slate the greed of Japan's elite. When a US submarine blockade of Japan stopped the flow of loot, it piled up in the Philippines.

Once discovered by the US, its was tapped to finance a post-war Japan that would be an anti-communist bastion in Asia. The Golden Lily loot now financed the clandestine Yotsuya Fund which supported a death squad of Kodama's criminal associates, headed by a US army colonel, which targeted student leaders, liberals, leftists, union organisers, journalists and others who got in the way of the revival of capitalism in Japan.

The Keenan Fund, named after Joseph Keenan, the chief prosecutor in the Tokyo war crimes trials, also drew on Golden Lily funds to bribe witnesses to falsify their testimony so that the reputations of the emperor, right-wing politicians and criminal bosses like Kodama could be refurbished and bolster pro-US and solidly conservative political influence in post-war Japan.

The fund bribed witnesses of Japan's chemical and biological warfare program to commit perjury so that the deadly knowledge they held could be kept secret and passed on to the US military. It also bribed witnesses of the Golden Lily project itself. Making common cause with the Yotsuya Fund, there were violent deaths and suspicious “assisted suicides” of those who resisted the bribes.

Both funds were eventually rolled into the M-Fund, which began at a “modest” US$2 billion, but grew quickly to be almost 10% of Japan's gross national product by 1950. The profits financed Japan's “self-defence” army and the formation of Japan's hegemonic right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

The M-Fund paid huge inducements to all LDP factions to support Nobosuke Kishi, who was actively involved in the use of slave labour as a wartime minister (and with a sideline in narcotics since the 1930s), as LDP leader against a less pro-US rival. During his three-year reign as prime minister, from 1957-1960, the LDP received $10 million each year from the CIA, chiefly drawn from the M-Fund.

The CIA also joined in the hunt for undiscovered Golden Lily loot in the decades after the war. Like bees to honey, or flies to something much less savoury, treasure hunters from Japan and the US flocked to the burial sites or the seas where treasure-laden ships were scuttled just days before Japan's surrender.

When the Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos, one of Washington's favourite despots, cut himself in on the action after 1965, he used CIA aircraft, US Air Force planes and US Navy ships to shift the bullion. He used the CIA's global network of banks (such as the Nugan-Hand Bank in Australia, which had a board packed with retired US intelligence officials) to provide refuge offshore for the “black money”.

Marcos (and Philippines President Corey Aquino in post-Marcos times) also had the help of the CIA, Pentagon-linked private US military firms and private intelligence organisations, which had joined the gold rush. As is the way with thieves, the joint ventures between the looters and politicians were often disrupted by deadly double-crossings and fatal fallings out.

US President Bill Clinton continued his predecessors' secrecy surrounding Yamashita's gold. He allowed the CIA to remove Golden Lily documents from declassified US records on the war in Asia, to avoid embarrassment for Washington. According to the Seagraves, two weeks into George Bush junior's presidency, two US Navy ships and navy commandos were despatched to the Philippines to recover more gold to replenish US gold reserves.

Swiss banks remain some of the major repositories and beneficiaries of the loot stolen by Japanese regime (and the Nazis). They cashed in on Switzerland's neutrality during the war.

One Swiss bank holds more than $190 billion (bigger than Microsoft's Bill Gates' net worth) in a covert US government account, the Seagraves report. US banks also have had their fingers deep in the golden pie, including the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank and Citibank. Just as Swiss banks have denied for decades that they were sitting on, and turning a huge profit from, gold stolen from Holocaust victims, so US banks clammed up about Yamashita's gold, hoping to wait out the death of potential claimants.

“Black gold” was secretly put to work by all US presidents 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, in short to impose America's will”, write the Seagraves. It was used by the CIA to manipulate post-war elections in Italy, Greece and Japan, to fund the dictator Diem in South Vietnam, to spread anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War, and to reinforce the treasuries of Washington's anti-communist allies.

For 50 years, the recovery of Golden Lily war loot and its continuing political deployment by Washington has been a state secret. However, Sterling and Peggy Seagrave's extensive research and investigation — as well as racy tales from the publicity-shy world of gangsters, spooks, private detectives, gold brokers and ruthless politicians — have produced a rich and painstakingly detailed (and occasionally speculative) epic of greed, cover-up and covert political intervention.

Reactionary anti-communism and war loot, which brought Washington and former Nazi leaders and Gestapo torturers together, were also the political mating signals that worked their dirty magic between Washington and Japan's war criminals and looters.

From Green Left Weekly, February 25, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

Stolen Gold
Posted By: Brian

..."So Japan looted Asia in the 1930s and 40s and hide their booty in the Phillipines and who knows where else. Someone in Japan must know where to find it today. Then Rosalinda had posted last month about Malaysia attempting to start their own gold backed currency to compete with the U.S. dollar and the Euro, found at the following link:

http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=19432 (dead link)

Now I’m putting myself in the shoes of the Japanese. I want to discard my central bank and its private currency. I need something better to offer, so I decide to use my stolen gold to back a new Asian currency. First I would have to break the yen. That was started in the 1980s, and the plan is still on track today. The entire Japanese economy has been on life support for almost 10 years. A good earthquake in Tokyo, collapse of the U.S. economy and its vast imports of Japanese products, whatever, and the yen goes down. Step two is the replacement currency I have planned, backed by gold. Now I can’t step into the limelight out of nowhere with a currency backed by tonnes of gold without being questioned as to where I got all this gold in the first place. I certainly can’t reveal that is was stolen. And there is the matter of enemies. The central bank in Japan is not going to be too thrilled about my plans, and will try with all their might to stop me. It would be better if I used a front of other people to introduce this new Asian currency. Enter Malaysia.

: Any intelligence agency worth its pay knows that when you are
: setting up an operation that you DON'T want to be blamed for, you do
: careful pre planning to make sure that the blame falls on someone else.

Rayelan makes a valid point here, one which can apply to whether you wish to destroy a couple of buildings or a national currency. So I arrange for a new currency to come out of Malaysia, fronted by an Islamic people. Should anyone question how little Malaysia could have stockpiled billions in gold to back this new Dinar, they need only point to the oil wealth in the mid-east. Muslim nations with billions of barrels, all cooperating together under the brotherhood of their faith. Japan benefits by shedding the yoke of a private currency, and also guarantees itself a steady stream of cheap Muslim oil for having provided the gold to back the Dinar. Would Japan have motive under this scenario to break the U.S. economy? Sure. Do they have the means? Sure. Was it them? I don’t know. I’m just a drunk in a bar.

Brian

12 Tons Of COMEX Gold Buried In WTC Wreckage
By Alden Bentley
9-14-01

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nearly 12 tonnes of gold appears to be buried under mountains of debris from New York City's destroyed twin towers, where experts said it was securely out of reach of  treasure hunters, looters and,for now, even the bullion trading community.

The bars, worth about $106 million, were stored in an underground warehouse near the World Trade Center and held on behalf of the COMEX metals trading division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"It's probably safer than it's ever been. It's probably buried under 107 stories of rubble," said Jonathan Potts, president at FideliTrade Inc, the Wilmington Del.-based parent of the Delaware Depository Service Co., an official COMEX warehouse for silver.

The gold is held in the vaults of ScotiaMocatta, the metals and bullion trading division of Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia (Toronto:BNS.TO - news) and one of the two official depositories that hold gold for delivery against futures contracts traded at the Comex.

A spokeswoman for NYMEX, which is still shuttered, had no comment on COMEX's warehoused gold.

According to COMEX data published by Reuters Monday night, before two hijacked aircraft demolished the Manhattan landmarks and symbols of New York's financial might, there were 379,036 Troy ounces or about 3,800 bars of 100 ounces each held in safe-keeping for the exchange by ScotiaMocatta.

"The bars are still there. Obviously, they are going to be able to dig them out -- unless they melted and disappeared," speculated one dealer at a precious metals trading firm in New York.

Larry Scott, global head of ScotiaMocatta in Toronto, told Reuters by telephone that for security reasons he could not discuss the location of precious metals on deposit with the firm.

"All our staff that work in the depository are safe and well," said Scott,"Operations are obviously not normal, but we have no concerns at this time,either security or financial.

"Everything is not normal, but everything's OK," he said.

Another 413,134 ounces of COMEX gold is in the storage facility of HSBC Bank USA, located far from the carnage.

HSBC would not comment on its storage facility.

Experts said the quantity buried downtown amounts to about 2 percent of the 600-tonne-a-day global bullion market. There would probably be little long-term disruption in physical trade if it remained temporarily unavailable for shipment, they said, even if the week's turmoil causes more safe-haven buying of gold.

"This is a futures market," Scott said. "The big movements of physical metal take place at the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. It's trivial next to the rest of the market."

In London bullion trade Thursday, spot gold ended at $280.00/$282.00 an ounce, up from London's close Wednesday at $279.00/$281.00. Volumes remained thin as dealers stayed on the sidelines, after pushing bullion sharply higher Tuesday in a spasm of flight-to-quality buying.

The COMEX, which also trades futures and options in silver, copper and aluminum, has been closed since Tuesday but NYMEX is working on getting its off-hours ACCESS trading system running on the Internet by later Thursday.

Potts said that metal could be delivered from alternative facilities at refiners elsewhere in the United States. Any remelting into the 100-ounce bars of 99.5 percent pure gold acceptable for COMEX delivery specifications would take a bit of time.

"There could be some potential squeeze on some physical products," Potts said. "I don't believe it's going to be necessarily dramatic."

"If there are settlements that are getting delayed because that metal was destined to come out of that facility, I'm sure they are coming out of alternative facilities."

The COMEX trading floor, located at One North End Avenue is in lower Manhattan. The NYMEX has said its facilities were largely undamaged by the collapse of the nearby towers.

US close to a profit on Iraq War

The US government reckons that it has found almost enough buried loot to cover its costs for the war.
   US General Battlin' Bevis told Black Flag News, "Iraq is like a grand treasure hunt. Every sealed building, every hole in the ground is yielding millions and millions of dollars in currency, jewelry, antiquities and gold bars.
   "A few more weeks like this and we'll be turning a profit."
   Things are strangely quiet in the British Zone of Iraq. Does this mean that there is no loot stashed in the south? Or has The Mugger told the British army to keep quiet about all such finds and ship them directly to his black hole in the Treasury?

Bush Explains Lack of WoMD

"They were looted."
   That's why US forces have failed to turn up any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.

http://website.lineone.net/~farrago/blakflag/200306.htm

September 12, 2003

Marines Find Interesting Bricks in Iraq

Here's an interesting story (via LTC M with Centcom) from an event that occured to some Marines in Babil (Iraq) a couple of weeks ago:

At approximately 301000Z Jul 03, the governor's brother, Ahmed (Abu Saif) Witwit, who is in charge of city hall security reported the following information to TF 1/4 XO, Maj Holahan: Three days ago, local police stopped a fuel truck because it had improper license plates. The driver was released (NFI why), and the truck impounded at the government's truck lot. This morning, the governor's brother received an anonymous phone call, offering 15 million Iraqi Dinar for the fuel truck. The governor's brother claims he
declined the offer, mustered six security personnel, and proceeded to the impound lot. At the impound lot, they inspected the vehicle. There were 6 padlocks that sealed the fuel storage tank. The fuel storage tank was empty of fuel but allegedly had "some sort of metal bricks". The truck was taken to city hall and turned over to Major Holahan.

The truck was susequently brought to Babylon. Below are the pictures of what was in the fuel truck. Sounds like a movie script. The bricks are being tested now.

http://www.blackfive.net/main/military_stuff/


Note:
Reuter's report from August 1, 2003, however, later testing of the more than 1,000 bars that were found revealed they were not gold but mostly copper and zinc.
The experts said they were melted-down shell casings. According to the Reuters report the revelation of the true content of the bars was made in a report to Congress about the reconstruction effort.

Truth or Cover-up?

We could be watching World War III in the making folks. Funny how European countries are pulling OUT of Iraq as the Asian militaries are moving in. Why? What's the lure? Gold? Not called the "Golden Week" for nothing. What would they have to gain? Troops moving out and new ones moving in. No wonder Bush and Rice look so damn worried.

Christy

Thursday, April 22, 2004 · Last updated 2:10 p.m. PT

Official: Russia seeks return of gold

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOSCOW -- Moscow aims to discuss with Tokyo the return of up to $80 billion worth of gold that Russia's last czar had shipped to Japan during the World War I, but which Japan allegedly failed to return, an official said Thursday.

Russia would like to raise the issue of the missing gold at a meeting of the so-called Council of Wise Men, a group set up to work on the countries' bilateral relations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told the Interfax news agency.

In 2000, a professor at the Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy, said that Japan still had gold that Russia sent primarily to buy weapons during World War I, according to Interfax. The Bolshevik Revolution toppled the czar before the war ended and the weapons never arrived.

"It would be quite natural to discuss the gold issue along with other subjects at the Council of Wise Men, which was set up to find efficient ways to radically promote Russian-Japanese relations," Interfax quoted Yakovenko as saying.

Russia and Japan have significantly improved relations from the Soviet days but never signed a treaty formally ending World War II because of a territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands, occupied by Soviet forces in the closing days of the war.

Soviet forces occupied the islands in the closing days of the war.

The Council of Wise Men is led by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.