A Grand Unified Theory of Corruption and Treachery

 

Gold Warriors, The Covert History of Yamashita's Gold : How Washington Secretly Recovered it to Set Up Giant Cold War Slush Funds and Manipulate Foreign Governments, by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, originally published 2002 by Bowstring Books, 3rd edition 2010, 617 pages...

How did our CIA become so immensely powerful and so immensely corrupt?

This book tells a story that feels essentially relevant to me. Nevertheless, it is a story that has not been incorporated into narratives of any of the skeptical and well-informed independent journalists whom I most respect. It is 20 years old now, and the book is as exceedingly readable as it is meticulously documented. 

Through wars of conquest beginning in the 19th Century, Japan systematically looted staggering quantities of gold from China, Korea, and SE Asia. Anticipating defeat in WWII, members of the Japanese imperial family sent the Emperor’s cousin, Prince Chichibu, to bury gold and jewels at dozens of remote sites on occupied Philippine islands. At the conclusion of the war, the driver of Chichibu’s jeep was captured and tortured to disclose the locations of some of the underground sites. In the Seagraves’ account, the amount of gold is many hundreds of thousands of tons, equivalent in value to the GDP of the entire world today. A portion of this loot funded the Black Eagle Trust, a secret account used to create the CIA and support its clandestine operations, fomenting wars and overthrowing popular governments around the world on behalf of the world’s largest corporations. The M-Fund was used to kickstart “democracy” in Japan by supporting the election of war criminals and reliable anti-communists. Another major share passed through the personal holdings of Ferdinand Marcos, an American-supported President and then dictator in the Philippines from 1965 - 1986. Other beneficiaries included evangelist Sun Myung Moon, VP Richard Nixon, mobster Meyer Lansky, and Pope Pius XII. In the Seagraves’ story, everyone who came in contact with this treasure was corrupted, participating in murder, treachery, and unspeakable cruelty.  (more...)

A Grand Unified Theory of Corruption and Treachery