While LBJ danced a little jig & pounded Cutty Sark, Khrushchev fell to his knees and sobbed over the death of JFK

 "Lone Nutter" Brent Cooper, writing on Quora, gets one thing right, the USSR was extremely unhappy over the death of JFK. Afterall, JFK had just signed the Nuclear Test Ban treaty and was asking Congress in the winter of 1963-1964 to SELL EXCESS WHEAT to the Soviets!

Lyndon Johnson's reaction was a tad different. LBJ pounded 10-12 Cutty Sarks on the ride back from Dallas and I am sure Johnson would have taken a long, slow piss on the corpse of John Kennedy if he had been given the opportunity. 

“Lone Nutter” Brent Cooper on Quora on how did the Soviet Union react to JFK’s assassination

https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-Soviet-Union-react-to-JFKs-assassination

Brent Cooper:

QUOTE

YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVA writes that in the USSR, the assassination of Kennedy was a major problem, one that was tackled in all possible ways.

It was a warm, sunny day as the motorcade of the 35th U.S. President moved along Elm Street in Dallas, Texas. The car roof had been removed to give people a glimpse of their chosen one. Having exchanged a few words with his wife Jacqueline, Kennedy turned to the crowd and waved a couple of times. A moment later, at precisely 12:30 CST, two of three shots fired from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository struck the president, who died half an hour later in the hospital.

The news of the assassination sent shockwaves across the entire world, including the Soviet Union. General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was awakened by an aide with the words: “Kennedy’s been killed!” According to some accounts, the first thing he asked was: “Did we have anything to do with it?”

Soviet fears

The Soviet leader’s puzzling question had a certain logic to it. As it soon turned out, the accused Lee Harvey Oswald had connections with the USSR (see our article here for details).

He had lived there for two years, applied unsuccessfully for Soviet citizenship, married a Russian woman, become disillusioned with the socialist system, and then, in 1962, a year before the assassination, returned to his homeland. When the news broke, the KGB held a series of emergency meetings. Reports declassified in 2017 say that the head of the KGB residency in New York, Colonel Boris Ivanov, told his team that Kennedy’s assassination was a “problem.”

And more trouble was expected. Under Kennedy, relations between the superpowers had entered a partial thaw. Back in May 1963, five months before his assassination, Kennedy had stated: “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

He had even expressed a wish to work with the Soviet Union to put a man on the Moon. John Logsdon, a former member of Nasa’s Advisory Council, said that Kennedy suggested it to Khrushchev, but the Soviet leader refused.

Now that the U.S. president was dead, the Soviet leadership feared that radical anti-Soviet forces could take advantage of the situation. Archival documents indicate that the Kremlin was “in a state of shock and turmoil”: “The Soviet leadership was concerned that in the absence of a [U.S.] leader, some irresponsible general might launch a missile strike on the USSR.”

Let the church bells ring

The news spread like wildfire, and by morning everyone in the Soviet Union knew about the killing of Kennedy. The young, handsome, wealthy, pro-peace president and his glamorous wife were admired by the Soviet people. His assassination brought tears to many eyes. “Church bells rang in memory of President Kennedy,” recalled a U.S. intelligence source who was in Russia at the time.

On Nov. 23, 1963, the newspaper Nedelya splashed Kennedy’s portrait over its entire front page. And although photos of such size were usually reserved only for members of the Presidium, the decision was approved by the Presidium itself — they too were in mourning.

In the book Nikita Khrushchev: Reformer, the memoirs of the Soviet leader’s son, Sergey Khrushchev states that his father fell to his knees and sobbed over the killing. In life, JFK had been a hope for the Soviet Union; in death, he was a major problem.

Disowning Oswald

According to declassified documents based on reports of U.S. agents in the USSR, the Kremlin believed that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy of ultra-right elements dissatisfied with the Kennedy administration and led by then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who assumed power after the assassination. This position coincided with the 1966 investigation of Erling Harrison, the district attorney for New Orleans. Nevertheless, the opinion that the assassination was in some way linked to the USSR (as well as Cuba) was very widespread in the U.S. and fanned by the media. The Kremlin decided that it had to defend itself.

“Only a maniac could think that ‘leftist forces’ represented by the U.S. Communist Party could have killed President Kennedy,” a U.S. Department of Justice report expounds the position of the then Soviet leadership.

As for Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet political class began to call him “a neurotic maniac disloyal to his country and everyone else.” The KGB washed its hands of him. It seized all photos of him from former friends in Minsk, as well as letters, recalls Professor Ernst Titovets, who, as a medical student in the 1960s, knew Oswald.

In a joint press statement, the USSR Foreign Ministry and the KGB declared that Oswald had never been in contact with the Soviet authorities, and that the killers should be sought in the U.S. A secret note for the Politburo highlighted the Kremlin’s willingness to provide information on Oswald, should the U.S. request it. But after talks with U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewellyn Thompson, it was never published. “It is clear from everything that the U.S. government has no wish to involve us in this matter or to engage in a fight with the extreme right; it clearly prefers to bury the matter as quickly as possible... I believe that this point should be taken into account in further reports by our press,” wrote Anastas Mikoyan, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, in a secret letter.

In the end, misinformation and fake news came into play. In the 1960s, Soviet intelligence spread rumors about CIA links to the Kennedy assassination, and paid U.S. lawyer Mark Lane, author of several controversial bestsellers about the Kennedy assassination (such as Rush to Judgment, 1966), to whip up talk of alleged CIA involvement and other conspiracy theories. This is described in detail in documents held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, UK.

All this lessened the attacks on the Soviets. And an escalation of the recent Cuban Missile Crisis, much feared in the USSR, did not materialize. Subsequent investigations found no evidence of Soviet involvement in the assassination. In 1999, in Cologne, Germany, Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to U.S. President Bill Clinton 80 pages from the Soviet secret archive relating to Oswald and the Soviet Union’s reaction to the assassination. “I want to thank you for this unexpected and important gift,” stated Clinton at the time.

UNQUOTE

Doyle Whitehead: Lyndon Johnson and his people were drunk, laughing and celebrating on Air Force One in the hours following JFK’s murder

“Doyle Whitehead: Memories of serving three U.S. presidents on Air Force One” by Ruth Laney for Country Roads on October 24, 2016

https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/history/doyle-whitehead/

As a steward on Air Force One, Doyle Whitehead saw the making of history, such as this moment when Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Doyle Whitehead vividly recalls where he was on November 22, 1963, when he learned that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. He was aboard Air Force One (AF1) watching the presidential motorcade on television.

Riding in a slow-moving motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Kennedy was fatally struck when three shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository on Elm Street. His wife Jacqueline, wearing a pink Chanel suit and matching pillbox hat, was seated beside him. Riding with them were Texas governor John Connally, who was wounded, and his wife Nellie. The Lincoln Continental raced to Parkland Hospital, where doctors made a futile attempt to save Kennedy’s life. At 1 pm, he was pronounced dead.

Confusion reigned as Kennedy’s staff tried to absorb the shocking news. “We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Whitehead said in a recent interview. “We thought we might be under attack. Everything was in such chaos—you can just imagine.”

Whitehead, one of four stewards assigned to the president’s plane, had flown with JFK on every mission, including to Vienna in 1961 and Berlin in 1963, both important milestones for the JFK administration. That morning, he had flown from Fort Worth to Love Field in Dallas, where JFK and Jackie were greeted by an adoring crowd. Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his entourage had made the trip on Air Force Two. 

After the shooting, said Whitehead, Johnson, now president, boarded the plane and went straight to the cockpit, ordering pilot James Swindal to take off. According to Whitehead, Swindal refused. “I flew him [Kennedy] here, and I’m going to fly him home,” the pilot said.

About 2:45 pm, a bronze casket carrying Kennedy’s body was brought aboard. “The bulkhead and six seats had to be removed to get him on the plane,” said Whitehead. Jackie Kennedy, still in her pink suit covered with blood, appeared to be in shock. “I asked her if she wanted to change clothes, but she said no,” Whitehead recalled. 

After U. S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas Sarah Hughes (a longtime friend) had sworn in Johnson, with a stunned Jackie at his side, the plane took off. Whitehead retreated to the cabin where the president’s casket lay. Inside were Jackie and her Secret Service agent Clint Hill.

“Now comes the bad part,” said Whitehead. “Johnson and his people celebrated on the plane ride back to Washington. He was a heavy drinker. He drank about half a fifth of Cutty Sark [Scotch] on the flight back. They were laughing and talking about ‘what we gon’ do now.’ They were so loud we had to shut the door so Jackie wouldn’t hear them.”

Washington was in mourning. On Sunday, November 24, Kennedy’s new mahogany casket was placed in the Capitol rotunda. Jackie invited the AF1 crew to share their grief. “It was a crew of eighteen people,” said Whitehead. “She gave us one hour with the casket. She came in for just a few minutes and told us how much he enjoyed Air Force One. He loved that airplane.”

Whitehead, who had been a steward on AF1 since the Eisenhower years, wondered what lay ahead. Even when asked to stay on, he wasn’t sure he wanted to work for Johnson, who had a reputation for being difficult. Today Whitehead tells stories of LBJ ordering a plane to take off without his wife Lady Bird when she ran a few minutes late and tossing daughter Luci’s excess luggage onto the tarmac. “He was mean and demanding, but at times he was jovial.”

How Whitehead came to hobnob with presidents as a young man is a story that seems to amaze even him. “I guess God intended for me to be there,” he said. “I grew up on a hundred-acre farm in rural Gloster, Mississippi. We were dirt poor; we raised what we ate.” 

[Read: Richard Lipsey was an eyewitness to the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy]

After graduating from Oxford High School in 1954, Whitehead had trouble finding a job. The Korean War had ended a year earlier, and veterans were given preferred status. “The closest employment within fifty miles was in Natchez—the Armstrong Tire and Rubber plant, a paper mill, an asbestos-siding plant. Fifty, sixty, seventy-five people applied for every job. They’d come out and say, ‘We gon’ hire two, and they gon’ be veterans.’

“I said, ‘Okay, I’ll be a veteran.’ I went to the [U.S. Army] recruiting office. I wanted to be a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. The recruiter said, ‘It will be six months before I can get you in a class.’

“The Air Force guy said, ‘I can get you out today.’ So I joined the Air Force. I was in basic training, and I planned to go to school to be a heavy-equipment operator. But the Air Force had a dire need for air-traffic specialists for long flights to dangerous areas. They told us we would draw hazard pay. I would draw thirty dollars a month extra, and I needed the money.

“They had forty volunteers and they used a physical exam to do the elimination. I was five-feet-nine and weighed 132. I could put a hundred-pound bag on my shoulder and walk across a plowed field. I was one of twelve selected. My first assignment was to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. I went to Greenland, Saudi Arabia, the Azores. We were flying back and forth, moving troops.” 

Whitehead recalled a harrowing experience when he had been in the Air Force for only six months. “It was 21 December 1954. We were coming from the Azores to Bermuda, an eight-hour flight. We were hauling freight and corpses. We got just about to the point of no return [halfway through the flight] when an engine went out on the right side. After another hour, the other engine on the right side went out. We were continually dropping. We had to jettison everything, including our own baggage, into the ocean. The corpses were the only thing we did not throw out. The landing was good. I felt like getting down on my knees and kissing the ground.”

In 1958, Whitehead joined the VIP Unit in Washington. “They needed twelve people to be stewards on three jets. These were the first three Boeing 707s, with four stewards in each crew. I wound up making that twelve. I stayed four months, going through an expanded background investigation. I had to have Top Secret clearance. 

“I was still young and green and learning and eager. In 1959, President Eisenhower’s plane was scheduled to leave in two hours when one of his stewards had a heart attack. They pushed me up on Ike’s airplane and we flew Mamie to Denver. I stayed for the remainder of the Eisenhower regime.”

When JFK became president in 1961, he invited Whitehead to be on his crew. “He was a jewel, completely different from Johnson,” said Whitehead. “He loved that airplane, and he loved us. In one of the rare moments he didn’t have a lot on his mind, he asked for a beer. I gave him a Heineken. The glass held ten ounces. He asked, “What do you do with the other two ounces?’ I said, ‘We throw it away.’ We weren’t allowed to drink while on duty.”

Whitehead recalled the president’s teasing him about the name of his high school. “He would tell people, ‘Did you know I have a steward on my plane who went to Oxford?’”

JFK was rumored to have had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, and Whitehead said the actress flew on AF1 twice. “She was listed as a secretary, not by name. She was a beautiful person to look at as long as she kept her mouth shut. She talked off the wall a lot, especially if she’d had a drink.”

Whitehead recalled slipping forbidden candy to young Caroline Kennedy, whose stern British nanny Maude Shaw wouldn’t allow the children to indulge their sweet tooth. “Caroline called me Whitey,” he said.

Whitehead flew with LBJ only through mid-1966. “A lot of things went into that decision. I was never home on holidays or special days, and LBJ was a terrible person to work for.”

In 1966, Whitehead got a one-year assignment to Vietnam, where the U.S. had combat troops. “That was the only thing I ever did in the military. We would do resupply missions. I was flying dignitaries into and out of Vietnam, all over the country. My one year there, I flew 665 hours in a combat zone.”

In the fall of 1969, Whitehead was assigned to a worldwide goodwill tour with astronauts Neil Young, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, who had flown to the moon on Apollo 11 in July. “We wanted to show them to the world. We went to twenty-four different countries, thirty-three different cities. The press chartered a plane to follow us around.”

In November 1970, said Whitehead, “I flew with Mrs. Kennedy to Charles de Gaulle’s funeral. I asked her for President Kennedy’s rocking chair, and she gave it to me. It was a folding chair with cushions to support his back. It went with him on the plane. He’d sit in it when he was preparing to give a speech. After he was assassinated, the archives got everything off that airplane—sheets, towels, anything he had touched—except for that chair. I took it off the aircraft and stored it in my office in case somebody called for it. When we flew to France, I asked Jackie if I could have it, and she gave it to me.”

Whitehead’s last mission was with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In January and May 1974, Kissinger engaged in “shuttle diplomacy,” short flights among Middle East capitals to deal with the fallout of the October 1973 war. “Every day we went to Damascus, Syria, and back. Every fifth day we went to Alexandria, Egypt. Dr. Kissinger was friendly but absent-minded. He’d go to the bathroom and forget to zip his pants up. We had to look him over before he got off the airplane.”

Whitehead, now eighty, lives with his wife Barbara in Busy Corner, Mississippi. Last summer, he visited the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at the Wright-Patterson base near Dayton, Ohio. Its exhibits include SAM 26000, better known as Air Force One, which Whitehead flew on during the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson. He estimates that he flew nearly ten thousand hours during his career.

“When I became a steward in 1959, I had only been out of high school for five years,” he said. “I pole-vaulted myself from a hundred-acre farm to Air Force One in five years.” 

Air Force Steward Doyle Whitehead says Lyndon Johnson drank about “a fifth of Cutty Sark” on the flight back from Dallas to Washington, D.C. on the day of the JFK assassination. Which is the equivalent of drinking 10 beers in 2 hours which would give a 220 pound man a blood alcohol content level of .138 far above drunk driving levels (.08 in most places).

Did Texans cheer the Kennedy Assassination? By John Aravosis

https://fr-film.net/v-did-texans-cheer-the-kennedy-assassination-XWibVgLTA2s.html (link not active)

John Aravosis

QUOTE

I was watching a recent episode of the Antiques Roadshow on PBS, and saw a woman selling some of her Kennedy memorabilia. She was a staffer in John F. Kennedy's White House press office in the 1960s, and was showing the auction expert some of her White House wares when she mentioned, as an aside, that on the plane back from Dallas the day Kennedy was shot and killed, the Texas delegation was "a little happy" about Kennedy being dead. I was taken aback, watched it again, and sure enough -- that's what she said. We discuss this in this segment from my podcast, the UnPresidented Podcast.

UNQUOTE

John Aravosis

John Aravosis posted on Twitter on March 17, 2018 about a former press aide to JFK who had to ride on Air Force Two with the Texas delegation back to Washington, DC. She told Antiques Road this year that the Texas delegation was "A LITTLE HAPPY ACTUALLY" at JFK having his brains blown out in Dallas.

 

[I do not have this woman's name but someone needs to get it! – Robert Morrow]

 

Twitter link

 

https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/975180914186768384  (link not active)

 

after JFK's murder in Dallas as they flew back to Wash D.C.

https://www.pbs.org/video/antiques-roadshow-appraisal-1961-1963-john-f-kennedy-archive/

 

Her is her additional interview on JFK and what he was like

 

https://www.pbs.org/video/antiques-roadshow-owner-interview-1961-1963-john-f-kennedy-archive/

 

A Kennedy staffer was on the plane of the Texas delegation (meaning Lyndon Johnson’s people) on the plane ride back to Washington, D.C. from Dallas and she reports “THEY WERE A LITTLE HAPPY ACTUALLY. SOME OF THEM, YEAH.”

 

Here is the quote of the female JFK staffer about her experiences on Air Force Two with the Johnson delegation on the flight back to Washington, D.C. after JFK had been murdered. I do not have her name but she was basically some sort of an assistant to Pierre Salinger (not on Dallas trip) and JFK.

 

Female Pierre Salinger staffer for JFK, who was on Air Force Two for the ride back to Dallas. This had been Lyndon Johnson’s plane and it was filled to the brim with his staffers and friends:

 

QUOTE

 

I went back on the back up plane and in that case it was also the Texas delegation going back with me. It was not a very good flight. They were a little happy actually. Some of them, yeah. 

UNQUOTE

Please attend the CAPA JFK Assassination Conference - Dallas, TX Nov. 19-20, 2022!!

 Web link:

https://mailchi.mp/a315ee570405/update-for-2022-capa-jfk-conference-the-continuing-search-for-the-truth?e=b7b45d3f52 

Hey folks, I encouraged you to attend the next IN PERSON JFK Assassination conference in Dallas, TX which will be occurring in Dallas, TX on Nov 19-20th, 2022 at the spacious Crowne Plaza Hotel. 

Sadly, I just found out that James Wagenvoord, formerly of Life Magazine passed away. The reason Wagenvoord was so important was that he confirmed that the Kennedys were out to utterly destroy Lyndon Johnson in the fall of 1963 with a RFK-fed media expose into LBJ's epic corruption. I asked Wagenvoord a few years ago, how did you know that Robert Kennedy was behind this and the answer was that a JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LAWYER had been sent by Robert Kennedy to the Life magazine with a fat dossier on LBJ's corruption. Life was going to use this to take down Lyndon Johnson. LBJ knew all about the Kennedy campaign to destroy him with the media and it was the biggest reason for the JFK assassination.

Sign up using the web links below:

GREETINGS FROM CAPA!
 
Join us for the most important annual conference on the JFK assassination!
 
CAPA is having an in-person conference this year. The conference will be held in Dallas at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near Dealey Plaza. The dates for the conference are November 19 and 20. There will be a banquet on Saturday night. The room rates, discounted for our group, are as follows: deluxe renovated guest rooms with one king or two queen beds, luxury bedding, mini fridge, one cup coffee maker, multiple USB ports, and hairdryer for $139.00 per night plus tax. Room rate including cooked to order breakfast for two in the restaurant is $159 per night plus tax. Use the link below to make your reservation. Note that the hotel is offering a discounted rate before and after the conference for people who want to come early and/or stay late. There is discounted self-parking in the attached garage - normally $18 discounted to $10 per night for our group.

Booking Website:
https://book.passkey.com/e/50309916 click on Attendee

Here is what we have confirmed for the program: (New information in red.)
 
          We will be showing the new four-hour Oliver Stone documentary  “JFK – Destiny Betrayed.”
 
          Jim Di’Eugenio will be speaking about new and additional information that did not make it into the “JFK – Destiny Betrayed” film.
 
          Jeff Meek, who writes a monthly JFK assassination column for the Arkansas Hot Springs Village Voice newspaper, will speak about new evidence he found which Jim Di’Eugenio is including in his upcoming book.
 
          The title of the talk by Josiah Thompson and Gary Aguilar will be: "A Granular Account of the Last Second of the Assassination"
 
          We will be showing the 45-minute trailer from the film by Libby Handros “Four Who Died Trying” about JFK,  RFK, MLK and Malcom X.
 
          David Montague, member of the Assassination Records Review Board, will speak about how he followed up on leads, and the difference in technology between then and now.
 
          Russell Kent, who spoke last year about the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, will be speaking about the Clark Panel.
 
          Paul Bleau will be speaking about how the JFK assassination is covered in the history books at schools in North America and will also chair a panel on this subject with David Denton, Andrew Kiel, and David Montague.
 
          Steve Jaffe, the last living staff investigator of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who worked with Mark Lane to produce the revised film, “A Rush to Judgment,” and was a producer of the 1973 film “Executive Action,” will be speaking. The title will be "DA Investigator's Notebook" and will include a few stories from his experiences working with Garrison that are not commonly known. He will also talk about meeting the head of the French Secret Service and President/General De Gaulle regarding the Zapruder film as well as his contact with Robert F. Kennedy.
 
          David Mantik will be speaking about what happened to JFK’s limousine after the assassination.
 
          Max Good will be showing his documentary “The Assassination and Mrs. Paine.”
 
          Dr. Wecht, Chairman of CAPA and author of numerous books including his latest – “The JFK Assassination Dissected” co-authored with Dawna Kaufmann -  will be the keynote speaker at the banquet. CAPA has a surprise for fans of Dr. Wecht, a look back in time that will delight and inspire you.
 
We are having a mixer with a cash bar (6-7 pm) just before the banquet on Saturday night which begins at 7 pm. The mixer will be for CAPA members only and will provide an opportunity to meet and talk to the conference speakers, including Dr. Wecht.
 
We are again planning a special day for high school, college, and law school students. This will be held online, as it was the last two years, on Friday, November 18.  We are planning a program that will give them the opportunity to see what President Kennedy was like as a person and a president and educate them about the truth of the assassination. David Denton will introduce the program and answer questions from the students.
 
We are saddened to announce that former CAPA Board Advisor and speaker at our recent conferences, James Wagenvoord, has passed away. He spoke several times at our conferences. Wagenvoord was an executive editor at Life Magazine in 1963 and was one of the top editors handling the images from Dallas on November 22 and in the weeks that followed. He was extremely knowledgeable about the purchase and publication of the Zapruder film and the LIFE cover stories on the evidence.  He was in the middle of writing a book about the Kennedy assassination and his years at LIFE with co-author Steve Jaffe. He was working on a presentation for our conference this year. James was a genuine, personable, bright and kind person who was passionate about our cause. This is a significant loss to the JFK community. We will miss him very much.
 
To register for the conference and banquet, please click this link: https://capa-us.org/2022-capa-jfk-conference

CAPA ad for our conference: https://youtu.be/x1r874uYayU

We are thinking about what type of event we might have for next year’s 60^th anniversary of the assassination. A suggestion has been made that we have a film festival showing the important movies, films and documentaries about JFK at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in D.C. We would appreciate your feedback. Would you travel to an event like this or would you prefer a conference with various speakers? Please send your comments to Glenda (CAPA Program Chair) at visionsoffrance@cox.net.
 
Thank you all for your support of CAPA and its  worthy cause - Pursue the release of withheld records -  Find the Truth -  Seek Justice.

Sincerely,

Robert Morrow          512-306-1510     Austin, TX

Presidential Historian and Distinguished Fellow at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Institute for the Study of Presidential Crime

The World’s Foremost Authority on the JFK Assassination

The Top Historian in the World on Lyndon Johnson (sorry Robert Caro, it is not you …)

The Greatest Presidential Historian in American History

One of the World’s leading public intellectuals due to my sparkling expertise in the JFK assassination

America’s Premier Living Historian

Knows more about the JFK assassination than every Presidential Medal of Freedom winner EXCEPT Lyndon Johnson (1980 posthumous recipient) who orchestrated the murder of JFK.

One of the top Menches in the United States. “Mensch” being a person of integrity, honor and noble character.

The “Muhammed Ali of the JFK Assassination research community” meaning, I am the Greatest analyst in the world of JFK research and I know it.

One of the top two of the Greatest JFK Assassination Researchers of all time, superceded only by Joachim Joesten who nailed the JFK assassination in real time in the 1960’s.

Knows far more about the JFK assassination than Oliver Stone who can’t figure out that LBJ murdered JFK because “Vietnam” is Stone’s hammer and he thinks everything is a nail.

Nation’s #1 Opposition Researcher on the Clintons & the author of The Clintons’ War on Women (published 2015)

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the professors of history and politics who have ever taught at Princeton University combined.

Up and Coming Scholar on the USS Liberty Murders which were orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson and the leaders of Israel and were to be blamed on Egypt to give the USA a pretext to enter the Six Day War

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the 27 Smartest People on the Planet combined. (See “Here is a List of the 27 Smartest People On the Planet,” by Osien Kuumar)

Smarter by a country-mile, generously better informed and significantly less egotistical than the New Yorker’s (lone nutter) Lawrence Wright.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the professors at Princeton, Harvard , Yale, Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin and SMU and anyone who has ever written for the New York Times or Washington Post combined.

Can out-debate 40 Ivy League professors of history and politics on the topic of the JFK assassination at one time.

Obviously, I know more about the JFK assassination than every professor, fellow and expert at the Univ. of Virginia's Miller Center on the Presidency combined.

Significantly more intelligent than EVERY journalist I have ever met, spoken with or interacted with, with the exception of Wayne Madsen.

Runs the best blog on the internet on the many crimes of Lyndon Johnson and the topic of the JFK assassination at “Robert Morrow Political Research” blog

 A lot smarter than anyone who has ever written for Texas Monthly, the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast or the Washington Post; or who has ever reported for WFAA Dallas or KLBJ radio Austin, but not the Midlothian Mirror.

Understands Texas politics better than anyone else has in the past 60 years.

One of the USA’s top thought leaders.

Far more knowledgeable and accurate than the Sixth Floor Museum on the topic of the JFK assassination. Executive director hilarious (lone nutter) Nicola Langford and curator Steve Fagin do not know a tenth of a thimble compared to what I know.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the 8,000 scholars and scientists combined who have been fellows at the Princeton, NJ Institute for Advanced Study in its 90-year history

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of all recipients of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science which has been awarded since 1995

Knows far more about the JFK assassination than Ken Jennings (lone nutter), who won 74 consecutive Jeopardy contests and is the highest earning American game show contestant of all time.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined membership of the ultra high IQ Mega society which is only composed of people with an IQ level of one in a million.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the people who have ever been members and subject matter experts at the Council on Foreign Relations combined except for those members who were involved in the murder of JFK from their roles in U.S. intelligence

Knows more about the JFK assassination that all the people who have received MacArthur Fellow “genius grants” combined since the program began in 1981.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the people who have ever received a Whiting Writers’ Award or a Guggenheim Fellowship combined.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than any single person alive since 1963 who has a tested IQ score of 175 and above.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than Mel Kiper knows about the NFL draft.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the entire lot of the living 4,500 Rhodes Scholars who are in over 100 countries around the world.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all 250 members of the Texas Philosophical Society combined.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined membership of the Society of Fellows at the Aspen Institute as well as the entire Board of Trustees of the Aspen Institute.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the collective knowledge of all pathologists, medical examiners and ballistic experts who have ever practiced in the history of the USA.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of the current and past members of the American Historical Association, the Society of American Historians or Organization of American Historians.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of everyone who has won a Pulitzer Prize.

Knows more about the JFK assassination and Lyndon Johnson than the combined knowledge of everyone who has ever won: a Century Association Archives medal, a National Book Foundation medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a Los Angeles Book Prize in Biography, a Plutarch Award from the Biographers International Organization, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, The New York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize, a Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity from the National Institute of Social Sciences, Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Biography, a Biographers International Organization Award for major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of biography, a History Makers Medal (the highest honor of the New York Historical Society, a Bookend Award (the highest honor of the Texas Book Festival), a Gold Medal in Biography (awarded once every six years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Ambassador Book Award for Distinguished Achievement from the English-Speaking Union, the John Steinbeck Award, Carl Sandburg Literary Award (from the Chicago Public Library Foundation), the National Book Award in Nonfiction, a Pulitzer Prize, a New School for Social Research – Doctor of Humane Letters, Lifetime Achievement Award for the Guild Hall Academy of Arts, a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Washington Monthly Political Book Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, H.L. Mencken Award for Best Book, an American Institute of Architects Special Citation, Francis Parkman Prize (awarded by the  Society of American Historians), a Carnegie Fellowship at the Columbia University School of Journalism, a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, a Deadline Club Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a Society of Silurians Award for outstanding achievement in the field of public service or been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences or been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters or been inducted into any state’s or country’s Writer’s hall of fame or who has been made an honorary member of the Texas Rangers or been named a Living Landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of everyone who has received a Nobel Prize in any field.

If Professor K. Anders Ericsson (deceased) were alive, this internationally renown “experts on experts” would sure proclaim me as the “World’s Greatest Expert on the JFK Assassination.”

Unlike CFR member Max Boot I have never written a biography which proves that Gen. Edward Lansdale murdered JFK (“The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam”) and then hollered at the top of my lungs that a lone nut commie killed JFK.

Unlike Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith, I was not personal friends with the wife of the murderer of JFK, Lyndon Johnson, nor did I ever chum up to her and call her “Mrs. J” and nor have I taken money from the daughter of Lyndon Johnson, Luci Baines Johnson. [“Mrs. J,” Evan Smith, Texas Monthly, September 2007 and Texas Tribune All Time List of donors: Luci Baines Johnson & her husband Ian Turpin - $149,097 as of 1/5/2022.]

Unlike longtime columnist Michael Barnes of the Austin-American Statesman I don’t pal around with ultra wealthy Luci Baines Johnson while somehow weirdly forgetting to mention in the Austin paper for literally decades that Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK.

Unlike LBJ biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, I have never had the man who murdered JFK – Lyndon Johnson – ask me to marry him (“A Tale of Hearts and Minds, Sally Quinn, Washington Post, 8-24-75)

Unlike LBJ biographer Robert Caro, I have was never co-opted by one of the men – LBJ crony Ed Clark – who murdered JFK (see “Blood, Money, and Power” by Barr McClellan, published 2003)

Unlike LBJ biographer Robert Dallek, I do not endorse the ludicrous, machine gun-riddled Warren Report fantasy that Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, the KGB, Gerald Ford, Sen. Richard Russell, Sen. John Sherman Cooper, Cong. Hale Boggs, Sen. Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, CIA chief William Casey, JFK aides Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers, and LBJ’s inner circle mistress Madeleine Brown, LBJ kickbacks king Billie Sol Estes and and JFK’s longtime secretary Evelyn Lincoln never believed.

Unlike LBJ biographer Michael Beschloss, I was never a personal friend of Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of the man Lyndon Johnson, who murdered JFK and I have never implied that Fidel Castro might be behind the JFK assassination.

Unlike LBJ biographer Randall Woods, I have never slandered completely innocent CIA patsy Lee Harvey Oswald for the JFK assassination which was orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson (Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 417-418)

Unlike LBJ biographer Julian Zelizer, I have never defamed Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of JFK, a crime that Lyndon Johnson committed.

Unlike Senior News Reporter Jason Whitely of WFAA (Dallas) I have never pushed the fantasy that a lone nut named Oswald killed JFK.

Unlike the LBJ Library, I have not erected museum exhibits that endorse the validity and accuracy of the truly bonkers Warren Report that not even Lyndon Johnson believed for one minute.

Has an IQ closer to 140 than 130

Princeton, A.B. – History, 1987

Univ. of Texas at Austin -- MBA, 1990

Tuscaloosa Academy, graduated #3 out of 40 students. Recipient of TA’s highest academic honor, 1983

 

Star basketball player for Tuscaloosa Academy from 1980-1983, leading my teams to a 114-5 record over 4 years. The last years were an unblemished 90-0 with 3 consecutive private school state championships. I was my teams’ MVP as a freshman, junior and senior. I like losing less than Nick Saban, Vince Lombardi, Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Brady and Lyndon Johnson combined.

 

On top of ALL that, I found the “golden egg” at the Indian Hills Country Club (Tuscaloosa, AL) Easter Egg hunt TWICE in approximately 1974 and 1975 (back to back years) which meant that I received a very large stuffed bunny each time.

Robert Morrow mini essay on Gen. Edward Lansdale, who Lyndon Johnson used to murder JFK. Later LBJ advanced Lansdale's career

 Do you know what a "horse whisperer" is? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/horse_whisperer#:~:text=horse%20whisperer%20(plural%20horse%20whisperers,control%20over%20horses%20through%20whispering . 

 It is someone who has a magical ability to speak to horses or have control over horses through whispering.

 Lansdale was the Diem whisperer.

 In his mind, Lansdale blamed the Kennedys for the overthrow and murder of his horse, Diem. (LBJ also opposed the Diem coup.)

 NOT HAPPY ABOUT THAT!

 Two important books to read: Max Boot on Lansdale and Luke Nichter on Henry Cabot Lodge

1) https://www.amazon.com/Road-Not-Taken-Lansdale-American-ebook/dp/B073VXL9RV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3O4LW7GNKIAXP&keywords=the+road+not+taken+max+boot&qid=1660579664&sprefix=the+road+not+taken+max+boot%2Caps%2C97&sr=8-1 

 Lone Nutter Max Boot proves Lansdale murdered JFK and he does not even know it

 2) https://www.amazon.com/Last-Brahmin-Henry-Cabot-Making/dp/0300217803/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1UUZEF30CY5LR&keywords=luke+nichter&qid=1660579711&sprefix=luke+nich%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-1 

 Luke Nichter proves that JFK was 100% behind the coup that removed Diem. That is NOT something that Lansdale, Lyndon Johnson or hardliners in the military supported. Lansdale would have been in a RAGE over the death of Diem and it would have put Diem's death at the foot of John F. Kennedy.

 Some people, despite OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE, has not figured out that Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK. That is an epic fail. The key is knowing that both LBJ and Lansdale were involved in the JFK assassination and they were doing it because of personal grudges against the Kennedys. Also, remember Lansdale was working directly under Robert Kennedy, one of the greatest assholes of all time, in Operation Mongoose. And of course, Robert Kennedy was leading the charge to utterly destroy Lyndon Johnson in the fall of 1963 (too bad Larry Hancock has not figured this out or the extreme significance of that).

 There is a photo of Lansdale standing in between Allen Dulles and Gen. Charles Cabell – two men who had contempt for John Kennedy

There is also a photo of Edward Lansdale and Oliver North. In the 1980s the Washington Post described Oliver North as "Lansdalized."

 Out of control foreign policy of the 1960s (Lansdale) meets out of control foreign policy of the 1980s (Oliver North)

 LBJ put Edward Lansdale in charge of the “pacification program” in Vietnam. Hey, did JFK do this? LBJ shoved Lansdale down the throats and up the asses of his advisors in military, CIA and State Dept - many of whom despised "loose cannon" Gen. Edward Lansdale. Because he was a loose cannon. These were the same advisors who helped to run Lansdale out of the U.S. military on 12-31-63. Why is LBJ doing this (putting Lansdale back into positions of power over Vietnam policy)? Payback for help on the JFK assassination.

Critical point: Lansdale was the one who recovered HUGE AMOUNTS OF JAPANESE GOLD from the Philippines - This is what made Lansdale a superstar in U.S. intelligence. And two of the men who helped him launder this massive stash of gold were Clark Clifford and Texas' Robert Anderson - two men who were very close to Lyndon Johnson for a very long time.

Read pages 90-102 in Sterling Seagrave's book The Gold Warriors

 The following probably comes from Sterling Seagrave’s book the Gold Warriors

Nazi Gold
Part 10-A:The Black Eagle Trust

Continued research by the Seagraves has revealed that the United States did recover portions of the Golden Lily and Nazi treasure and used the treasure to clandestinely fund various right wing causes and covert operations.97 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.

read it all here at this address: http://www.spiritone.com/...

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 1947.98

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."99

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."109

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.102

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.

[ ROBERT MORROW INSERT HERE: Norman Anthony Schlie Find-a-Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8116987/norbert-anthony-schlei ]

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 unsavory 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.103

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.104

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. 105 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."106

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 labor 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 labor 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 labor. 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 guerilla operations in the Philippines. He also set up the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section. However, Willoughby’s incompetence in guerilla warfare was too much, even for MacArthur. MacArthur appointed his personal lawyer and crony Courtney Whitney to take over the special operations and guerilla warfare. Whitney was a very rich man and well connected in the Philippines. He proved an adept officer in managing guerilla 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. Guerilla 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.111

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 defense 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."112

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 equaled 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 731.114

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.115

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 goldbugs. 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 far-right 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?