The blogosphere is awash with tales of highly secretive, globalistic
groups and organizations working towards some type of sinister agenda.
As I'm guessing many of the regular readers of this blog have surfed
more than their fair share of said conspiracy sites it is probably not
worth going into an extensive examination of the usual suspects – the
Round Table groups (especially the infamous American branch, the
Council on Foreign Relations), the
Trilateral Commission, the
Bilderberg Group,
etc. The conspiratorial right has long accused these groups of having
some type of nefarious agenda and there is no doubt a basis in reality
for these accusations. That being said, the objectives of such groups
probably bear little resemblance to the predictable
one-world-communistic-government-under-the-UN fever dreams the
conspiratorial right has long envisioned.
What's more, this particular faction of elites is not the only game in
town. As was considered at great length during my examination of the
American Security Council (which can be found
here,
here,
here and
here),
the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) saw its influence steadily
wane in relation to the former group throughout the second half of the
20th century. The ASC was hardly an isolated faction within the United
States, either. Indeed, it's hierarchy shared extensive overlap with
the notorious international lobby group known as the
World Anti-Communist League (WACL) .
 |
| the League now
calls itself the World League for Freedom and Democracy, which surely
indicates someone inside the League has quite a dry sense of humor |
In many ways the WACL became the chief organization for international
fascism in the post-World War II era. Over the course of this series
we shall examine the extensive ties between the WACL and various
fascist and far right groups the world over as well as the profound, if
little acknowledged, impact it would have on the political course of
humanity by the 1980s. The WACL was far more than a lobby group, you
see, and the means by which it sought to achieve its political ends
would be instrumental in the formation of modern day drug trafficking
and terrorism, both of which still being a disease at the very fiber of
civilization to this day.
With this in mind, let us begin our examination of the WACL by focusing
in on its origins. There were chiefly two groups responsible for the
formation of the international group in 1966, both of which having laid
the groundwork years before the official unveiling of the WACL. These
two groups were the
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
(ABN) and the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). As it is
the older of the two groups and has a less complex legacy, I shall begin
with the ABN. The roots of the ABN in turn lie with the
Quislings, the Central and Eastern European groups who collaborated with the Nazis both before and during (and after?) World War II.
"... In each of those Eastern European countries, the German SS set up
or funded political action organizations that help form SS militias
during the war.
"In Hungary, for example, the Arrow Cross was the Hungarian SS
affiliate; in Romania, the Iron Guard. The Bulgarian Legion, the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Latvian Legion, and
the Byelorussian (White Russian) Belarus Brigade were all SS-linked. In
each of their respective countries, they were expected to serve the
interests of the German Nazi Party before and during the war.
"Many of these groups formed SS divisions: the Ukrainian Nationalist
formed the 14th Galician Division, Waffen SS; the Latvians formed the
15th and 19th Divisions, Waffen SS; etc. These units and related
German-controlled police units had several functions. The Ukrainian
division unsuccessfully tried to impede the advance of the Soviet army
against the Nazi army. Others hunted down those fellow countrymen who
opposed the German occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II.
"More sadistically, many units rounded up hundreds of thousands of Jews,
Poles, and others, and conducted mass murders on the spot, sometimes
decimating whole villages. They perfected 'mobile killing teams' as
efficient means of mass executions. Little is known about these units
compared to the concentration camps, gas chambers, and ovens, but they
were an integrated component of the 'Final Solution.'
Approximately one-third of the victims of the Holocaust, perhaps as many
as two million, died at the hands of these units."
(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 4-5)
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| the Ustase-backed Croatian parliament and officials from the Catholic Church |
The above-mentioned "mobile killing teams" and their tendency to appear
in nations before fascist regimes come to power will be especially
relevant when I discussed the WACL's role in Central America during the
1980s, so keep that in mind. But for the time being, back to the
ABN. The predecessor to the ABN was founded in Nazi Germany.
"The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), which took its current name
in 1946, claims direct descent from the Committee of Subjugated Nations,
which was formed in 1943 by Hitler's allies, including the Organization
of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
"Nonetheless, while the name changed, the membership remained the
same. The dominant leadership of the ABN came from the leadership of the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera (OUN-B). The ABN brought
together fascist forces from Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine,
the Baltic states, Slovakia, and other nations. Today the ABN unites
fascist émigré organizations from Eastern and Central Europe under one
umbrella. It serves as a common milieu in which many Coalition for Peace
Through Strength members, associate and network. It is also the Eastern
European branch of World Anti-Communist League.
"A booklet published in 1960 by the ABN acknowledged its members
alliance with Hitler: 'That many of us fought on the German side against
Russian imperialism and Bolshevik is an, was in our national
interest... the fact that some of us fought on the German side against
Russia can be justified from the national, political, and moral point of
view.'
"The ABN in more recent years has maintained the impression that they
opposed the Nazis and Soviet simultaneously during World War II.
This historically dubious impression is conveyed by the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that leads ABN. But other groups that make
up the ABN do not bother with an anti-Hitler pretense."
(ibid, pgs. 73-74)
 |
| ABN stamps |
The above-mentioned Coalition for Peace Through Strength was an
extension of the American Security Council, a group that worked closely
with the WACL throughout the years. The chief movers and shakers behind
the formation of the WACL, however, was the organization known as the
Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). The murky origins of this
group lie with
Chiang Kai-shek and his
Kuomintang party (KMT), the
Korean CIA (KCIA),
Sun Myung Moon's
Unification Church and the Japanese underworld.
"In the 1960s, five Asians made major contributions to creating and
promoting a movement that would spread to nearly one nations on six
continents. One was a ruthless dictator who had seen his vast domain
reduced to a tiny island through corruption and a series of military
blunders. Another was a former communist who had saved his own life by
turning in hundreds of his comrades for execution. Two were gangster;
the fifth was an evangelist who planned to take over the world through
the doctrine of 'Heavenly Deception.' They weren't what one would call a
sterling assortment of characters; four of the five had spent time in
prison, two for war crimes, one for anti-state activities, another on a
morals charge. Yet, if it weren't for the collective efforts of Chiang
Kai-shek, Park Chung Hee, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and the
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, there probably would not be a World
Anti-Communist League today.
"The organization that Stetsko's Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations joined
forces with in 1966 was dedicated to stemming the communist tide in
Asia: the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). Formed in 1954,
the Asian League was dedicated to uniting conservatives from all over
the continent to battle the 'Red hordes' that threatened them all. When
the ABN, the APACL, and other groups merged in 1966 to form the World
Anti-Communist League it did not mean the end of the Asian People's
Anti-Communist League, but it's stature was reduced to regional
affiliate of the larger organization.
"Although the Asian League was hailed in 1954 as a private formation of
concerned citizens, parliamentarians, and clergy, it was actually a
creation of South Korean intelligence agents and the Chinese
government-in-exile of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In many respects,
South Korea and Taiwan appeared to be natural allies. Chiang's
Nationalists were isolated on the tiny island of Taiwan, or Formosa, and
Korea was devastated and impoverished after the Korean War; both
nations were desperately seeking anti-communist allies throughout the
world. An organization in which conservative leaders from the United
States and Europe could meet with their Asian counterparts seemed a good
avenue for this."
(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pgs. 46-47)
Of the individuals behind the formation of the Asian People's
Anti-Communist League, the most significant are arguably Chiang Kai-shek
and
Yoshio Kodama,
due in no small part to the financial backing that they gave the APACL
and later the WAPL throughout the years. Chiang Kai-shek in particular
was something of a trailblazer. He was one of the first dictators in
the post-WWII to take up the mantle of an
"Apartheid" state when he created modern day "
Taiwan."
"Though the mainland was not completely conquered by Mao until 1949,
Chiang had established his cronies on Formosa (named by the Portuguese,
meaning 'beautiful') four years earlier. The native Formosans chafed
under the Kuomintang rule, which had quickly monopolize the island's
economy and government. In 1947, the natives, ardently pro-American,
rebelled against the 'occupiers' and pushed for greater autonomy.
"If the Formosans were hoping for moderation from the Kuomintang or
assistance from the Americans, they were soon disillusioned.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek may not have been able to defeat the
communist, but the unarmed Formosans were a different story; under the
cover of darkness, he rushed some twelve thousand of his Nationalist
soldiers to the island. The massacre that ensued were indiscriminate and
vast in scale...
"The March 1947 massacre took an estimated twenty thousand lives; the
fledgling Formosan independence movement had been crushed and the way
was paved for Chiang Kai-shek and his soldiers retreating from the
mainland to establish a government-in-exile. The atrocity also prove
the efficiency of total and unconventional warfare, a mode of combat the
Nationalists would later teach to other anticommunist, often through
the auspices of the World Anti-Communist League.
"By 1949, nearly a million Nationalists had flooded into Formosa. There
they established the Republic of China, and imposed a rigid dictatorship
over the indigenous population, which outnumber them fifteen to one.
The Formosans, now called Taiwanese under Chiang's decree, were
completely shut out of the government process, which became the domain
of the Kuomintang. Business and factories belonging to natives were
taken away and given to Chiang's cronies. Taiwanese suspected of
harboring communist sympathies or opposing Chiang's role (to the
government, the two were virtually synonymous) were executed or exiled
to the prison on Green Island on the slightest pretext; this effectively
crushed any opposition that remained."
(ibid, pgs. 47-49)
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| the Kuomintang seal |
Years before the creation of Taiwan, when he still controlled mainland
China, Chiang Kai-shek also pioneered another modern style of
dictatorship: the
Narco-state. It all began with the Generalissimo's takeover of the city of
Shanghai with the assistance of American backers and a powerful drug lord in 1927.
"... Armed with 5,000 rifles provided by Sterling Fessenden, the
American in charge of Shanghai's International Settlement, members of Du
Yue-sheng's Green Gang, headquartered in the French Concession,
murdered hundreds of striking dockworkers. The so-called 'White Terror'
secured the city of Shanghai for the KMT and its capitalist American
backers.
"Chiang's fascist Kuomintang Party then formed China's Nationalist
government and created an opium monopoly that was supposed end the
illicit trade in opium, but which in fact ensured that it would be
entirely controlled by the Kuomintang Party through crime lord Du
Yue-sheng...
"After consolidating his power, Chiang would name Du Yue-sheng – an
opium addict and respected member of Shanghai's Municipal Council – as
chief Communist Suppression Agent for Shanghai and chief of the
Shanghai Opium Suppression Bureau. Bribes paid by Du reached French
officials in Paris. When word of the payoffs resulted in a minor
scandal, a new contingent of French officials were assigned to Shanghai,
but Du simply moved into the suburbs and continued his operations
unabated, in league with the Chinese Navy...
"With Chiang Kai-shek's ascent, and consent, drug smuggling from China
became official, albeit unstated policy, and in July 1929, while
pursuing leads from the Rothstein case, federal agents arrested. Mrs.
Yang Kao in San Francisco. In her luggage was a large quantity of opium,
heroin, morphine base. What made the Kao case so unusual, however, was
that Mrs. Kao's husband was a top official in the Chinese Consulate in
San Francisco. The consulate's chancellor was convicted along with the
Kaos, as was the Chinese minister in Washington.
"The Kaos and their colleagues claimed diplomatic immunity, and before
the case could be brought to trial in the US, Treasury Secretary Andrew
W. Mellon referred it to Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson. Placing
national security interests above those of drug law enforcement, Stimson
decided that the Kaos must be returned to China for trial. In December
1929 they set sail for Shanghai and freedom. And in the process American
drug law enforcement suffered yet another irreversible setback."
(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 13-14)
Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT party would remain one of the largest heroin
traffickers in the world for decades afterwards. The phenomenal amount
of money they generated in this endeavor was instrumental in funding
an international lobbying campaign in favor of the brutal Taiwanese
dictatorship. In the United States it eventually came to be known as the
China Lobby and it would have an enormous influence on the modern right.
"... Throughout the Cold War years, many anticommunist groups could
trace their organizational lineages to the 'China Lobby.' The term
originated as a reference to Chinese agents of the Kuomintang, who
during the 1940s sought to counteract U.S. leftists' attack on Chiang
Kai-shek's government. Once the Chinese Communists had formally seize
power over the mainland and had driven Chiang Kai-shek's army onto the
island of Formosa, the China Lobby shifted its strategy towards
prevention of any kind of international diplomatic recognition of the
People's Republic."
(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pg. 41)
The China Lobby would do far more than this. It actively schemed to draw
the US into a re-conquest of mainland China. Such actions underscored
the United State's entry into the
Korean conflict.
"We have to look, first of all, at what Bruce Cumings... calls the historia abscondita
or concealed history of the Korean War ('the worst of American postwar
interventions, the most destructive, far more genocidal than Vietnam').
Powerful forces build up towards its outbreak in June 1950, from both
the Soviet in the American side. On the American side, lobbying by
Chiang Kai-shek... and others helped lead to the Korean War and the CAT
role in it; this in turn led to the CAT airlift to the KMT troops in
Burma.
"These events were marked by extraordinary intrigues that drew, at the
time, multiple charges of diverse and opposing conspiracies. According
to Cumings, the definitive chronicler of these intrigues, 'The China
Lobby infiltrated the CIA, and vice versa;' and insiders knew by
mid-1950 that the war would soon be coming..."
(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 60)
The above-mentioned CAT stands for
Civil Air Transport, the notorious airline that would eventually be reorganized as
Air America in the 1959. Air America was deeply involved in CIA-sanctioned drug trafficking, and this early incursion into
Burma (which led to the Korean War) was driven by such things.
"... General Richard Stilwell. A special military advisor to the US
ambassador to Italy from 1947 to 1949, Stilwell had helped the Christian
Democrats and the Mafia solidify their positions. As CIA logistics
chief in Asia from 1949 to 1952, he arranged for CAT to support
General Li Mi's incursion from Burma into Yunnan and thus enabled the
renegade general to bring to market 'a third of the world's illicit
opium supply.'
"The plan to save Taiwan advanced on 7 November 1949, when privateer
William S. Pawley received permission from Secretary of State
Dean Acheson to lead a group of retired military officers, headed by
Admiral Charles Cooke, to Taiwan to advise the KMT on security affairs.
No stranger to political intrigues or the underworld, Pawley owned sugar
plantations, an airline and a bus system in Cuba, and was linked to
Mafia leaders who had investments there too. He was well connected to
the espionage establishment as well: Bill Donovan met with Chiang
Kai-shek's defense minister and secret police chief to grease the skids
on Pawley's behalf, and William Bullitt in December began raising funds
for the so-called Pawley-Cooke Advisory Mission – the lion share of
which was provided by a group of Texas oilman led by right-wing fanatic
H. L. Hunt, a one time professional gambler who, in his younger days,
helped finance his empire by running a private racing wire...
"Pawley's collusion with Cooke, Donovan, Goodfellow, Bullitt, and Hunt
is a textbook example of how Establishment privateers run the secret
government. And naturally, the mission dovetailed with federal narcotics
activities. In January 1950 Goodfellow traveled to Taipei with Cooke,
and in April, Bullitt's bagman arrived. Soon thereafter, a 'Colonel
Williams' introduced the bagman to Satiris Fassoulis, 'who gave him
$500,000 for a PR campaign on Taiwan.'"
(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 78)
Regular readers of this blog are of course already familiar with several of the personalities mentioned above.
William Pawley was a major figure in the early days of the American Security Council (as noted
here) while
H.L. Hunt
was one of the chief sugar daddies of the modern conservative movement,
in terms of both "overworld" and grassroots (which I briefly addressed
before
in this post) elements. The "Colonel Williams" is almost surely Garland Williams, a notorious
Federal Bureau of Narcotics officer (and supposedly the mentor of the even more notorious
George Hunter White) who originally became involved in the US intelligence community when he served under military intelligence head General
Ralph Van Deman during the
First World War.
General Van Deman was of course one of the chief architects of American
"industrial security," a murky netherworld closely linked to the
American Security Council that was addressed at length before
here and
here. But I digress.
 |
| William Pawley (top) and H.L. Hunt (bottom) |
The KMT and their drug trafficking later helped drag the United States into
Vietnam as well.
"Since 1958, KMT forces, under pressure in Burma, had relocated to towns
like Ban Houei Sai and Nam Tha in northwestern Laos that would soon
become opium centers and CIA bases. By March 1959, they were being
supplied in Laos by what Bernard Fall called 'an airlift of "unknown
planes"' – almost certainly from the Taiwanese airline Civil Air
Transport (CAT), which fronted for the CIA proprietary known since 1959
as Air America. The CIA owned 40 percent of the company; KMT bankers own
60 percent. The planes had been supplying the KMT opium bases
continuously since 1951.
"The result of the phony Laotian crisis of July-August 1959 was to give
official White House sanction to a continuous Air America airlift to
Laos. Air America planes soon began the major airlift to Hmong (Meo)
camps in northeast Laos as well. By 1965, they became the primary means
of exporting the Hmong's traditional cash crop, opium, and by 1968
were also carrying heroin. Apparently most of this ended up in
traditional KMT networks through Hong Kong to the United States.
"The 1959 'crisis' was the first of a series that between 1961 and 1964
would lead to greater and greater U.S. involvement in first Laos and
then Vietnam. Air America's support for a drug trafficking rebel Laotian
leader, Phoumi Nosavan, contributed to these crises. Clearly, the
'crises' combined stimulus from outside the U.S. government with
high-level support inside it. We know now that a plan for a KMT
reinvasion of South China, a plan first authorized by Truman in 1951,
continued to be supported long after the Korean War by some high-level
generals and CIA officials. These range from extremists like Air Force
General Curtis LeMay, who wrote privately about 'nuking the chinks,' to
CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, who had served as CIA station chief in
Taipei. The plan was revived by right-wing oppositionists in the
1959-1962, when to the old McCarthy-ite question, Who lost China? was
added a new one, Who lost Cuba?"
(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 51)
Ray Cline, a
part of the so-called "China cowboys" clique inside the CIA, would be
one of the chief American backers of the World Anti-Communist League
during its foundation and for years afterwards. As
noted before, General
Curtis LeMay and Cline were both members of the American Security Council as well.
 |
| longtime CIA asset and KMT stooge Ray S. Cline (top) and General Curtis LeMay (bottom) |
As I hope these two examples illustrate, Chiang Kai-shek and his drug
traffickers were able to wield an enormous degree of influence over
American foreign (and even domestic) policy for years. And the scary
part is, Chiang Kai-shek likely wasn't even the most powerful figure
behind the WACL. Such an honor probably resided with the mysterious
figure of Yoshio Kodama.
Kodama was an underworld figure who, with the backing of his patron
Ryoichi Sasakawa, would become obscenely wealthy and powerful in Japan during the 1930s-1940s period, especially during the war years.
"Kodama had a lot to live for. Thanks to the war and the patronage of a
political leader, Ryoichi Sasakawa, he was sitting on the fortune of
over $200 million. In the years ahead, he would help create the dominant
political party of Japan, make and destroy prime ministers, fund the
World Anti-Communist League and be the principal figure in the greatest
scandal of modern Japanese history. Working alongside him would be
Sasakawa, his old mentor...
"Yoshio Kodama started life more abjectly. An orphan who had survived
by toiling in sweatshops, he found his calling among the various
right-wing movements that sprouted up throughout Japan in the 1930s.
Often these yakuza groups functioned more as criminal bands
than as genuine ideological movements; modeling themselves after the
legends of samurai warriors, they displayed their allegiance to a
particular leader by covering their bodies with tattoos; they repented
errors by cutting off the tips of their fingers. Bankrolled by
conservative businessmen and politicians companies, these private yakuza
armies broke up labor unions, 'protected' factories and offices
from vandalism, and assassinated opposition leaders. The young Kodama
excelled at these activities and by the time he was 15 was a terrorist
leader in his own right. In 1931, he sent a dagger to a former Japanese
minister of finance. 'Allow me to present you with this instrument,' the
accompanying note read, 'so appropriate for our troubled times. I leave
you to make up your mind as to how to use it – to defend yourself, or
to commit ritual suicide.'
"The threat landed the twenty-year-old Kodama in jail, but it was not in vain; the day he was released, another yakuza succeeded in killing the former minister.
"In the 1930s both of the future League benefactors ran afoul of the law
and were imprisoned, Sasakawa for plotting the assassination of the
former premier, Kodama for another murder plot, this time against the
prime minister.
"As the forces of fascism took over Japan and as the war in Manchuria
got under way, the talents of men like Sasakawa and Kodama were
suddenly needed. Both were released in order to further the cause of the
empire – Kodama to carry out intelligence missions in China and
Sasakawa to resurrect his Kokusui Taishuto movement, whose followers
were now clad in black shirts, the symbol of international fascism; they
were to rally forces behind the government plans to rule Asia...
"In the meantime, Kodama was making a name for himself in China.
Entrusted with the task of keeping the Japanese Navy supplied with raw
materials, Kodama made a fortune of at least $200 million by seizing
material, often at the point of a gun, and then selling it back to his
own government at exuberant prices.
"At war's end, both men were sent to prison by the American Occupation Forces, classified as Class A war criminals...
"But just as they did with the Nazis in Europe, the American occupation
authorities had a change of heart about Japan's war criminals. As the
Cold War began, the enemy was no longer the fascist, but the communists.
In Japan, as for example in Italy, the political left emerged from the
war as a major power bloc with the potential for becoming the dominant
political force and even, it was feared by the Americans, for leading
the nation into the Soviet camp. Sasakawa, Kodama, and other prominent
Japanese war criminals were quietly released from prison in 1948, and
became some of the prime movers, organizers, and funders for the
Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, a conservative, pro-American party
that has controlled the political life of Japan ever since. Through this
maneuver, the old ruling circles of Japan, the men who had allied with
Nazi Germany and plunged the nation into a war of military imperialism
throughout Asia, were resurrected and brought back into leadership
roles."
(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pgs. 59-63)
Kodama made far more than a measly $200 million off of the war. In point
of fact he became deeply involved in the Golden Lily project, Imperial
Japan's attempt to systematically loot all of the Asian nations they
conquered during the war years.
"In the closing months of World War II in the Philippines, while General
Yamashita Tomoyuki fought a delaying action in the rugged mountains of
Luzon, several of Japan's highest-ranking imperial princes were
preparing for the future. They were busy hiding tons of looted gold
bullion and other stolen treasure in nearby caves and tunnels, to be
recovered later. This was the property of twelve Asian countries,
accumulated over thousands of years. Expert teams accompanying Japan's
armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories,
private homes, shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while
Japan's top gangsters looted Asia's underworld and black economy. In
this, the Japanese were far more thorough than the Nazis. It was as if a
giant vacuum cleaner passed across East and Southeast Asia. Much of the
plunder reached Japan overland through Korea. The rest, moving by sea,
got no further than the Philippines as the U.S. submarine blockade
became complete in early 1943. Hiding the treasure there was crucial, so
that if Japan lost the war militarily, it would not lose financially.
In whatever settlement concluded the war, Japan always expected to keep
the Philippines. Overseen by the princes, 175 'imperial' treasure vaults
were constructed throughout the island...
"Japan's looting of Asia was overseen by Emperor Hirohito's charming and
cultured brother, Prince Chichibu. His organization was codenamed kin no yuri (Golden Lily), the title of one of the Emperor's poems..."
(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pgs. 2-3)
Kodama initially became involved with the Golden Lily while working in
Shanghai but his operation soon branched out across various nations.
"Another great fortune discovered by US intelligence services in 1946,
was $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama
Yoshio who, as a 'rear admiral' in the Imperial Navy working with
Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering the
Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan's
wartime drug trade throughout Asia. After the war, to get out of Sugamo
Prison and avoid prosecution for war crimes, Kodama gave $100 million
to the CIA, which was added to the M-Fund's coffers. Kodama then
personally financed the creation of the two political parties that
merged into Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), strongly
backed to this day by Washington."
(ibid, pg. 8)
Estimates of the total value of the Golden Lily go into the hundreds
of billions of dollars. Kodama likely had access to far more of these
funds than the $13 billion that he managed to accumulate during the
Second World War. This black market gold was not his only source of
income, however. He was also one of the largest drug lords in the world
for decades.
"While literally an employee of the U.S. Government, Kodama continued
to oversee Japan's postwar drug trade. Heroin labs were moved back not
only from Taiwan, but from North China, Manchuria and Korea. Chinese who
had collaborated with Japan in drug processing and distribution, were
given sanctuary and began operating from Japanese soil. Two of the three
major players in Asia narcotics soon died: Nationalist China's General
Tai Li was assassinated in a 1946 plane crash; Shanghai godfather Tu
Yueh-sheng died in Hong Kong of natural causes in 1951. Kodama was left
as Asia's top druglord, while on the U.S. payroll. This could have been
embarrassing, for Japan's dominant role in narcotics was widely known
and undisputed, but a Cold War hush descended over it like an Arctic
whiteout. During the occupation, U.S. propaganda characterized Asia's
drug trade as exclusively the enterprise of leftist and communist
agents. In truth, it was dominated by Kodama in Japan, and by
Generalissimo Chiang through the KMT opium armies based in the Golden
Triangle, who were under the direct control of the generalissimo's son,
Chiang Ching-kuo, the KMT chief of military intelligence at the time..."
(ibid, pgs. 108-109)
 |
| old Kodama |
Thus, Kodama and Chiang Kai-shek were effectively the two largest drug
lords in Eastn Asia for decades – From roughly the 1930s until the
mid-1970s, specifically. Kodama, especially with the access he had to
revenues generated both by his opium trade as well as his black market
gold, had phenomenal amounts of money at their disposal. When Kodama
became involved with the World Anti-Communist League in the late 1960s,
it was through a curious individual: the Reverend Sun Myung Moon,
founder of the Unification Church.
From the very early years of his mission Reverend Moon had established
close ties to the South Korean power structure, especially within the
intelligence community. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency has been
known as a major backer of the Unification Church for years, but it
alone could not account for the phenomenal amount of money the Reverend
Moon has spent in his various endeavors over the decades. Kodama's
black market gold and drug money, however, would be capable of managing
the largess the Reverend Moon has been known to show to various
conservative causes the world over throughout the years. It would seem
that Moon and Kodama did form such an alliance and that the World
Anti-Communist League was their first significant collaboration
together. Kodama's former patron, Ryoichi Sasakawa, was seemingly the
architect of this partnership.
"In July 1967, Sasakawa arranged a secret cabal at a building he owned
on a lake in Yamanashi Prefecture. Among those attending were Reverend
Moon, Shirai Tameo, and Osami Kuboki. Tameo was in underworld
lieutenant of Yoshio Kodama, and secretary of the innocently named Japan
Youth Lectures, an organization that indoctrinated and trained young
members of the yakuza gangs. Kuboki was secretary-general of
Japan's Genri Undo; he also served as an advisor and lecturer to
Kodama's Youth Lectures.
"The purpose of the meeting was to create in Japan a Korean-style
anti-communist movement that could operate under the umbrella of the
World Anti-Communist League and that would further Moon's global crusade
and lend the Japanese yakuza leaders a respectable new
façade. Shokyo Rengo, or 'Victory Over Communism,' was born. Ryoichi
Sasakawa was made overall chairman of Shokyo Rengo, and Yoshio Kodama
was its chief advisor.
"In April 1968, Shokyo Rengo was chosen as the official Japanese
chapter of the League. While theoretically unaffiliated with the
Unification Church, virtually its entire membership came from Moonie
ranks or the yakuza minions of Kodama and Sasakawa."
(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pg. 69)
 |
| Ryoichi Sasakawa |
It's curious to note that so many of the Asian People's Anti-Communist
League founders were connected to cults or secret societies. Of course
Moon himself was most definitely a cult leader, despite the mainline
Christian image the Unification Church often assumes in public.
"Unification theology is a potpourri of Christianity, Confucianism,
mysticism, patriotism, anti-communism, and Moon's own megalomania. In
Moon's eyes, Christ technically falls into the category of a failure,
for although he established a spiritual kingdom, he didn't establish a
physical or political one. Moon is here to rectify that oversight; he is
anointed as the man to complete Jesus' original mission.
"Because it rejected Jesus, Israel is no longer God's chosen land
(though the Jews were finally cleansed by suffering six million dead in
World War II); God had to find a new Messiah and a new Adam country.
Moon and Korea were uniquely designed for this purpose, for one of the
most original aspects of Unificationism is its attribution of
spirituality and gender to nations based upon their topographic. 'It
[Korea] is a peninsula, physically resembling the male... Japan is in
the position of Eve. Being only an island country, it cannot be Adam. It
yearns for male-like peninsular Korea on the mainland... America is an
archangel country. It's mother is England, another island country in
the position of Eve.'
"Today, Unification Church disciples or ''Moonies,' are, according to
former members, 'love-bombed' upon induction, fed high-carbohydrate
diets, and kept awake for long periods. These are basic forms
of brainwashing designed to lower a person's resistance to coercion or
suggestion. Initiates are kept under close surveillance, told report
their every action, even their dreams, to their leaders, and, when
finally trusted, offered 'redemption' by going out to raise funds for
the Church. The fund-raisers, called 'Mobile Teams,' best known for
relentlessly selling flowers, American flags, and magazines in airports,
send headquarters a payment of ten percent 'for family support.'"
(ibid, pg. 64)
 |
| the Reverend Moon |
Kodama was head of the Japanese
yakuza gangs, an
international crime syndicate that emerged in the early twentieth
century but originates from centuries-old Japanese secret societies.
Beyond this, Kodama was also a member of the legendary
Black Dragon Society. The society, whose agents were some times known as
kempeitai, was an ultranationalistic, right-wing paramilitary organization that practiced an especially fanatical form of
Shintoism.
By the early twentieth century they had been incorporated into Japan's
armed forces to assistant in the Empire's occupations of various
mainland Asian nations.
"Most kempeitai agents wore civilian clothes, identified only
by a chrysanthemum crest on the upperside of a lapel. Eventually Japan
spawned a network of these spies, informants, and terrorists throughout
Asia. At the height of World War II, 35,000 official kempeitai
were deployed throughout the Japanese Empire. The unofficial number was
far greater, because of close integration with Black Dragon, Black
Ocean, and other fanatical sects, working together, 'like teeth and
lips.'"
(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pg. 18)
 |
| the Black Dragon Society; Kodama is at the bottom right |
The Black Dragon Society was actually descended from the
Black Ocean Society. The Black Dragon Society was the controlling sect behind the
kempeitai, which also featured many
yakuza
members. Beyond these Japanese secret societies it's also likely that
Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT party were dominated by Chinese criminal
secret societies generally known as the
Triads.
"The secret societies were older by for than the KMT and have continued
to function until the present, long after the KMT has ceased to be
historically important. We now know from a number of excellent histories
of the opium trade that in Southeast Asia since the middle of the 19th
century, the opium farms were almost always connected to the secret
societies that flourished in Chinese communities. It is now also
generally recognized how Chiang Kai-shek's seizure of both the KMT and
China was achieved with the help of the opium trafficking Green Gang of
Tu Yueh-sheng, to the mutual profit of both. By the mid-1930s China was
producing seven-eighths of the world's opium supply, and some of it came
to the Chinese tongs in the United States and their organized crime
contacts like Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.
"These contacts with the U.S. mob were apparently not wholly broken by
World War II. They were clearly renewed after 1949, when Tu Yueh-sheng
and the remnants of the Green Gang fled to Hong Kong, along with a rival
secret society. An unconfirmed report says that Fang Chih, who visited
Laos for the KMT in 1959, had been with Tu Yueh-sheng in Shanghai in
the 1930s. It is certain that a high-level drug bust in 1959 in San
Francisco involved the same Hip Sing tong as an earlier organized crime
drug bust in 1930. Significantly, U.S. officials arranged for the
ringleader Chung Wing Fong, an official of the San Francisco
Anti-Communist League (a KMT front), to escape to Taiwan before local
arrests were made. A subsequence U.S. report to the United Nations on
the incident noted that the tong's activities possibly paralleled 'the
operations of the Triad societies in Hong Kong.'
"The Hip Sing's dope and other criminal activities, like those of the On
Leong, Bing Kong, and other American tongs, predated and outlasted by
far the KMT linkup with the Green Gang in 1927. The 1905-1906 tong war
in New York City was between the Hip Sing tong and their chief rivals
the On Leong tong. Ninety years later, the organized crime of New
York's Chinatown was still dominated by three tongs, two of which were
the Hip Sing and the On Leong. In 1996, long after the decline of the
KMT as a political force in Taiwan, the Hip Sing tong was involved in
yet another major San Francisco drug bust. The KMT has faded, but the
tongs and their drug connections are still... very much with us."
(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 62-63)
Chiang Kai-shek himself has long believed to have been a member of the
Green Gang, a membership that surely would have been highly advantageous
to his objectives. For nearly half a century, the Chinese triads in the
Japanese
yakuza almost completely dominated the international opium market. And yet, decades after
Afghanistan replaced the
Golden Triangle as the chief source of the world's opium supply, the Chinese triads and the Japanese
yakuza are seemingly as powerful as ever, despite the little attention paid to them by the mainstream media.
I suspect this is because they found another highly lucrative illegal markets to specialize in:
human trafficking and
sex slavery. It's no secret that the Eastern Asia, especially
Thailand, has become a major Mecca for
sex tourism in recent decades. Both the Chinese triads and the Japanese
yakuza have long dominated organized crime in this region of the world and there are indications (such as
this and
this) that they are deeply involved in the sex trade there. Japan of course practiced sexual slavery on a massive scale
during the Second World War (the so-called "
comfort women"), a practice the
yakuza were deeply involved in. But I digress.
 |
| several hundred thousand women were forced into sexual slavery at the height of Imperial Japan |
It is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment
I'll attempt to give a broader overview of the WACL and the Fascist
International's involvement in the illegal drug trade, which was quite
significant. While it may seem like I'm belaboring the point, the ties
to these groups with the illegal drug trade was crucial to establishing
funding and an international network that was needed for carrying out
the paramilitary aspirations of the League in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Stay tuned.
