Robert Anderson

[John Simkin]

Robert Bernerd Anderson is a character who constantly comes up during my research into the assassination of JFK.

He was born in Burleson, Texas, on 4th June 1910. He graduated from the University of Texas Law School. He worked as a lawyer until he became a member of the Texas State House of Representatives in 1932. The following year he was appointed as Assistant Attorney General of Texas. In 1934 he became a Texas State Tax Commisioner.

Anderson later purchased the KTBC Radio Station. In 1943 he sold it to the wife of LBJ for $17,500. By 1951 the station was earning $3,000 a week. It became a key factor in the way that LBJ received bribes from businessmen. As Don Reynolds pointed out, in return for political favours, businessmen were forced to pay for expensive advertising with KTBC. As a result of this scam, by 1960, LBJ was actually richer than JFK. (JFK of course refused to take his presidential salary, however LBJ took it in full).

A close friend of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, Anderson became president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. When Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency, Anderson, became Secretary of the Navy. This was a post that appeared to be under the control of LBJ. The reason for this was that this post was responsible for granting large oil contracts. LBJ made sure these went to Texas oil companies. (see my postings on Suite 8 Group for further details of this scam):

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2868

From 1957 to 1961, Anderson served as President Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury. In this post he introduced legislation beneficial to the oil industry.

After leaving office, he was active in business, investment and banking affairs, and carried out diplomatic missions on behalf of President Johnson. It was also reported that he worked as a consultant and lobbyist for Sun Myung Moon and his Church of Unification.

According to Joseph Trento (Secret History of the CIA, 2001): "In April 1976, William Zylka, a New Jersey businessman' and operative for the CIA, escorted Colonel Contreas to Iran to meet with Ambassador Helms. Zylka had a long relationship with the CIA through Eisenhower Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, who informally ran dozens of businessmen as Agency assets; another of them was Zylka's friend William Casey, who later became DCI during the Reagan Administration."

In 1987, Anderson was found guilty of tax evasion. This was related to possible money laundering involving an unregistered off-shore bank that he operated. He was disbarred and sent to prison.

Robert B. Anderson died in New York City on 14 August 1989.

[Pat Speer]

As for Anderson's relationship to the Castro assassination plots and the Kennedy assassination, much has been written on the Suite 8F thread.

[John Simkin]

Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, 1984 (pages 177 and 178)

In 1961 John Foster Dulles was dead. Allen Dulles had been reappointed to head the CIA as the very first decision announced by President-elect Kennedy. And President Eisenhower retired to a 576-acre farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The farm, smaller then, had been bought by General and Mrs. Eisenhower in 1950 for $24,000, but by 1960 it was worth about $1 million. Most of the difference represented the gifts of Texas oil executives connected to Rockefeller oil interests. The oilmen acquired surrounding land for Eisenhower under dummy names, filled it with livestock and big, modern barns, paid for extensive renovations to the Eisenhower house, and even wrote out checks to pay the hired help.

These oil executives were associates of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, billionaire Texas oilmen who were working with Rockefeller interests on some Texas and Louisiana properties and on efforts to hold up the price

of oil. From 1955 to 1963, the Richardson, Murchison, and Rockefeller interests (including Standard Oil Company of Indiana, which was 11-36 percent Rockefeller-held at the time of the Senate figures referred to earlier, and International Basic Economy Corporation, which was 100 percent Rockefeller-owned and of which Nelson Rockefeller was president) managed to give away a $900,000 slice of their Texas-Louisiana oil property to Robert B. Anderson, Eisenhower's secretary of the treasury.

In the Eisenhower cabinet, Anderson led the team that devised a system under which quotas were mandated by law on how much oil each company could bring into the U.S. from cheap foreign sources. This bonanza for entrenched power was enacted in 1958 and lasted fourteen years. Officially, it was done because of the "national interest" in preventing a reliance on foreign oil.

In effect, the import limits held U.S. oil prices artificially high, depleted domestic reserves, and reduced demand for oil overseas, thereby lowering foreign oil prices so that European and Japanese manufacturers could compete better with their U.S. rivals. It is difficult, of course, for a layman to understand how any of these things is in the national interest.

Meanwhile, President Kennedy turned the State Department over to Dean Rusk, who had held various high positions in the department under President Truman. For nine years - the entire Eisenhower interregnum for the Democrats and then some - Rusk had been occupied as president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Has anybody stopped to think that from 1953 until 1977, the man in charge of U.S. foreign policy had been on the Rockefeller family payroll? And that from 1961 until 1977, he (meaning Rusk and Kissinger) was beholden to the Rockefellers for his very solvency?

[Sterling Seagrave]

It is an inescapable fact that from the beginning of the US occupation of Japan, General MacArthur, President Truman, John Foster Dulles, and others, knew all about the stolen treasure in Japan and the continuing extraordinary wealth of the Japanese elite, despite losing the war.

In an official report on the occupation prepared by MacArthur’s headquarters and published in 1950, there is a startling admission: “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 United States military custody by Japanese officials, undeclared caches of these treasures were known to exist.”

MacArthur’s staff knew, for example, of $2-billion in gold bullion that had been sunk in Tokyo Bay, later recovered. Another great fortune discovered by U.S. intelligence services in 1946 was $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio who, as a ‘rear admiral’ in the Imperial Navy working with Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was

in charge of plundering the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan’s wartime drug trade throughout Asia. Kodama specialized in looting platinum for his own hoard. As this was too heavy to airlift to Japan, Kodama also helped himself to the finest gems looted by his men, taking large bags of gems to Japan each time he flew back during the war.

After the war, to get out of Sugamo Prison and avoid prosecution for war crimes, Kodama gave over $100-million in US currency to the CIA. He was also, amazingly, put on General Willoughby’s payroll, and remained on the CIA payroll for the rest of his life, among other favors brokering the Lockheed aircraft deal that became a major scandal for Japan’s Liberal Demopcratic Party. Kodama personally financed the creation of the postwar political parties that merged into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), strongly backed to this day by Washington.

Both Kodama and his underworld associate Sasakawa Ryiochi, were then involved with the CIA in joint recoveries of Japanese war-loot from the Philippines.

On September 2, 1945, after receiving official notice of Japan’s surrender, General Yamaxxxxa and his staff emerged from their mountain stronghold in the Kiangan Pocket on Luzon, and presented their swords to a group of U.S. Army officers led by Military Police Major A.S. ‘Jack’ Kenworthy, who took them to Bilibad Prison outside Manila. Because of gruesome atrocities committed earlier by Admiral Iwabuchi Kanji’s sailors and marines in the city of Manila (after Yamaxxxxa had ordered them to leave the city unharmed), the general was charged with war crimes. During his trial there was no mention

of war loot. But there was a hidden agenda.

Because it was not possible to torture General Yamaxxxxa physically without this becoming evident to his defense attorneys, members of his staff were tortured instead. His driver, Major Kojima Kashii, was given special attention. Since Yamaxxxxa had arrived from Manchuria in October 1944 to take over the defense of the Philippines, Kojima had driven him everywhere.

In charge of Kojima’s torture was a Filipino-American intelligence officer named Severino Garcia Diaz Santa Romana, a man of many names and personalities, whose friends called him ‘Santy’. He wanted Major Kojima to reveal each place to which he had taken Yamaxxxxa, where bullion and other treasure were hidden.

Supervising Santy was Captain Edward G. Lansdale, later one of America’s best-known Cold Warriors. In September 1945, Lansdale was 37 years old and utterly insignificant, only an advertising agency copywriter who had spent the war in San Francisco writing propaganda for the 0SS. In September 1945, chance entered Lansdale’s life in a big way when President

Truman ordered the OSS to close down. To preserve America’s intelligence assets, and his own personal network, OSS chief Donovan moved personnel to other government or military posts. Captain Lansdale was one of fifty office staff given a chance to transfer to U.S. Army G-2 in the Philippines.

There, Lansdale heard about Santy torturing General Yamaxxxxa’s driver, and joined the torture sessions as an observer and participant.

Early that October, Major Kojima broke down and led Lansdale and Santy to more than a dozen Golden Lily treasure vaults in the mountains north of Manila.

While Santy and his teams set to opening the rest of these vaults, Captain Lansdale flew to Tokyo to brief General MacArthur, then on to Washington to brief President Truman. After discussions with his cabinet, Truman decided to proceed with the recovery, but to keep it a state secret.

The treasure – gold, platinum, and barrels of loose gems – was combined with Axis loot recovered in Europe to create a worldwide covert political action fund to fight communism. This ‘black gold’ gave the Truman Administration access to virtually limitless unvouchered funds for covert operations. It also provided an asset base that was used by Washington to

reinforce the treasuries of its allies, to bribe political leaders, and to manipulate elections in foreign countries.

It was not Truman’s decision alone. The idea for a global political action fund based on war loot actually originated during the Roosevelt administration, with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. During the war, Stimson had a braintrust thinking hard about Axis plunder and how it should be handled when peace came. As the tide turned against the Axis, it was

only a matter of time before treasure began to be recovered. Much of this war prize was in the form of gold looted by the Nazis from conquered countries and civilian victims. To eliminate any trace of original ownership, the Nazis had melted it down, and recast it as ingots hallmarked with the swastika and black eagle of the Reichsbank. There were other reasons why the gold was difficult to trace. Many of the original owners had died, and pre-war governments had ceased to exist. Eastern Europe was falling under the control of the Soviet Union, so returning gold looted there was out of the question.

Stimson’s special assistants on this topic were his deputies John J. McCloy and Robert Lovett, and consultant Robert B. Anderson, all clever men with outstanding careers in public service and banking. McCloy later became head of the World Bank, Lovett secretary of Defense, Anderson secretary of the Treasury. Their solution was to set up what is informally

called the Black Eagle Trust. The idea was first discussed with America’s allies in secret during July 1944, when forty-four nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to plan the postwar world economy. (This was confirmed, in documents we obtained, by a number of high-level sources,including a CIA officer based in Manila, and former CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, who knew of Santy’s recoveries in 1945. As recently as the 1990s, Cline continued to be involved in attempts to control Japanese war-gold still in the vaults of Citibank.)

After briefing President Truman and others in Washington, including McCloy, Lovett, and Stimson, Captain Lansdale returned to Tokyo in November 1945 with Robert B. Anderson. General MacArthur then accompanied Anderson and Lansdale on a covert flight to Manila, where they set out for a tour of the vaults Santy already had opened. In them, we were told, Anderson and MacArthur strolled down “row after row of gold bars stacked two meters tall”. From what they saw, it was evident that over a period of 50 years (1895-1945) Japan had looted many billions of dollars in treasure from all over Asia. A far longer period than Germany had to loot Europe. Over five decades, Japan had looted billions of dollars’ worth of gold, platinum, diamonds, and other treasure, from all over East and Southeast Asia. Much of this had reached Japan by sea, or overland from China through Korea. What was seen by Anderson and MacArthur was only some of the gold that had not reached Japan after 1943, when the US submarine blockade of the Home Islands became effective. From this it is obvious that what was looted by Japan on the Asian mainland from 1895-1943 had reached Japan and been tucked away there in what the US Army statement called “undeclared caches of these treasures ... known to exist” .

Far from being bankrupted by the war, Japan had been greatly enriched, and -- thanks to Washington’s intervention -- used this treasure to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, while its victims struggled on for decades.

The gold recovered in the Philippines was not put in Fort Knox to benefit American citizens. There has been no audit of Ft. Knox since 1950.

According to Ray Cline and others, between 1945 and 1947 the gold bullion recovered by Santy and Lansdale was discreetly moved by ship to 176 accounts at banks in 42 countries. The gold was trucked to warehouses at the U.S. Navy base in Subic Bay, or the U.S. Air Force base at Clark Field.

Preference went to the U.S. Navy because of the weight of the bullion. Secrecy was vital. If the recovery of a huge mass of stolen gold became known, the market price of gold would plummet, and thousands of people would come forward to claim it, and Washington would be bogged down resolving ownership.

The secrecy surrounding these recoveries was total. Robert Anderson and CIA agent Paul Helliwell traveled all over the planet, setting up these black gold accounts, providing money for political action funds throughout the noncommunist world. In 1953, to reward him, President Eisenhower nominated Anderson to a Cabinet post as secretary of the Navy. The following year he rose to deputy secretary of Defense. During the second Eisenhower Administration, he became secretary of the Treasury, serving from 1957 to 1961. After that, Anderson resumed private life, but remained intimately involved with the CIA’s worldwide network of “black banks”, set up by Paul Helliwell. Eventually, this led to Anderson being involved in the scandal of BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a Pakistani bank with CIA ties.

No one made better use of the recoveries than Lansdale. For his role in enabling the Black Eagle Trust, Lansdale became the darling of the Dulles brothers and their Georgetown coven, which included key officials in the CIA during the years it was run by Allen Dulles. Writing to the U.S. Ambassador in Manila, Admiral Raymond Spruance, Allen Dulles called Lansdale “our mutual friend”. In the early 1950s, Allen Dulles gave Lansdale $5-million to finance CIA operations against the Huks, rural peasant farmers fighting for land-reform in the Philippines. When he sent Lansdale to Vietnam in 1954, Dulles told Eisenhower he was sending one of his “best men”. In the late 1950s, he was in and out of Tokyo on secret missions with a hand-picked team of Filipino assassins, assassinating leftists, liberals and progressives.

Lansdale was also close to Richard Nixon, and headed efforts to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Without exception, Lansdale’s Asian adventures were costly failures. But Washington’s effort to boost the LDP in Japan was a big success.

Long time Tokyo correspondent Robert Whiting described “a secret billion-dollar slush fund … equivalent to nearly 10 percent of Japan’s 1950 GNP. ... The Japanese government also sold [on the blackmarket] great stockpiles of gold, silver and copper …which they had concealed in early 1945 in anticipation of Japan’s defeat.”

[Chris Courtwright]

Sterling -

This is all great stuff, especially about Lansdale and Anderson. Is it all sourced someplace, or is your information-filled post sort of an accumulation of your own personal research? Is it published someplace?

[Guest Tom Scully]

Sterling -

This is all great stuff, especially about Lansdale and Anderson. Is it all sourced someplace, or is your information-filled post sort of an accumulation of your own personal research? Is it published someplace?

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=82gKA...pg=6737,1545195

Treasure Chest in Japan's Loot - Gold and Jewels of untold Value

Ellensburg Daily Record - May 25, 1950 (UP)

....A subcommittee heard about the fabulous chest from former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson during unheraled hearings on legislation dealing with alien poperty and war claims.

Members disclosed the testimony. General MacArthur, Patterson testified, has the key to the chest and is awaiting orders as to the disposition of the treasure which Patterson said consists of "jewelry, precious items, gold, and foreign currency." It was seized from the Japanese at the end of the war but the committee does not know where the Japanese got it....(more)...

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TEILA...pg=3066,6447201

St. Petersburg Times - Google News Archive - Apr 29, 1952

Sunday cleared the crew, airline and air port personnel of any blame in the ... Former Secretary War Robert P. Patterson was one of the passengers killed .

Probably just a coincidence that the cause of January 22, 1952 airline crash that killed Robert Patterson was never determined.

[John Simkin]

One cannot understand the TFX Scandal and the subsequent machinations without being aware of one Robert Bernard Anderson;

Who was Robert B. Anderson?

Before I explain, at first glance adding Anderson's name to the various persons associated with the TFX Scandal, seemingly leaves one completely focused on LBJ as the big fish of the Kennedy Assassination.

There has already been a politically correct treatment of LBJ as the sacrificial big fish, to those familiar with the late E Howard Hunt's 2007 American Spy, replete with a Foreword by William F. Buckley. If that strikes anyone as slightly dubious, it should.

I would not be so naive as to be a defender of LBJ's innocence, far from it. At the same time, those enamored with the idea of the JFK Assassination being solved, in effect with the fingering of LBJ as the man responsible for the assassination, might pause to consider that he had a very real fear for his own safety in the aftermath of President Kennedy's assassination, especially from the right wing extremists. One such incident involved a motorcade where Bobby Kennedy and LBJ were both seated and a man was discovered with a rifle on the route, before the 1964 election.

But to get back to the issue of the TFX Scandal, I would venture that the best treatise on the affair ever written was documented by Peter Dale Scott in his unpublished manuscript The Dallas Conspiracy. In it he documented that although Anderson was not in Dallas on November 22, and there was nothing to link him directly to the shootings, there were ten, repeat ten connections linking him indirectly to Oswald, Ruby and those persons controlling the lives and fortunes of those two.

Robert B. Anderson was a Republican from Texas whom Sid Richardson had installed as Secretary of the Navy and of the Treasury under President Eisenhower. Anderson became a partner of Carl M. Loeb Rhoades and Co. It is also ironic that before anyone heard of AIG, or the Savings and Loans Scandals of the 1980's, there was the collapse of Penn-Central. It has been suggested that had it not been for certain stock investments on the part of Penn Central, the firm would never have imploded. It has also been proven that one of those investments was in Great Southwest Corporation

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,878372,00.html

On November 24, 1963 the new President Lyndon Johnson, had a lengthy meeting with Anderson.

I have had a fear that as the years progress, the initial body of evidence, will become a distant memory, and the focus center exclusively on other areas.

As stated earlier in this thread, there is the point raised that there were several plots active in the fall of 1963, which is why looking at Dealey Plaza in isolation, can be something of a mind-boggling experience.

[Linda Minor]

Researchers interested in this subject may find the research I did previously on Anderson helpful, beginning with the article "Tilting at Oil Wells." There are two articles at that page. "Tilting..." is the second one.

Here is an excerpt:

Golden Opportunity

FDR in 1944, most likely at the behest of is “oil adviser” Richardson, appointed Texan, Robert Bernerd Anderson, as a consultant to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson’s deputies, John J. McCloy and Robert A. Lovett, to work with Democratic Party fundraiser and California oilman Edwin Pauley on the matter of confiscated German gold. It became a simple matter six months after FDR’s death in April 1945 to convince the new President, Harry Truman, that Anderson was an expert in such matters.

Before long, however, Truman began to exhibit his feisty independence of established policies when he vetoed laws passed by his own Democratic Congress (headed by Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, a Texan from the same part of the state as Richardson). He vetoed both the Tidelands bill, which gave states title to oil found within coastal tidelands, and the Kerr gas bill, which attempted to exempt independent producers of natural gas from federal regulation. Richardson, Murchison and their friends, disgusted with Truman, had by 1949 settled upon a new conduit to Presidential power. Richardson hosted Eisenhower’s 1949 Texas vacation at St. Joseph Island, which adjoined Murchison’s Matagorda, where FDR had fished with Elliott.[12] Then in 1952 Richardson spent two weeks in Paris with General Eisenhower, planning the general’s campaign for President.

All of Richardson’s behind-the-scenes maneuvers began to pay off late in 1945, when President Truman was briefed in Washington by Col. Edward Lansdale, who, after torturing the driver of Japanese General Yamaxxxxa, had discovered where tons of looted treasure was hidden in the Philippines. Truman allowed Edwin Pauley’s assistant to reconnoiter the situation. We are told that:

“Robert B. Anderson flew back to Tokyo with Lansdale, for discussions with [General] MacArthur. After some days of meetings, MacArthur and Anderson flew secretly to Manila, where they were taken by Lansdale and Santy [severino Santa Romana, secret agent of MacArthur’s personal attorney, Courtney Whitney] to some of the sites in the mountains, and to six other sites around Aparri at the northern tip of Luzon…MacArthur and Anderson were able to stroll down row after row of gold bars.”[13]

According to the Seagraves’ C.I.A. source, Ray Cline, “Anderson apparently traveled all over the world, setting up these black gold accounts, providing money for political action funds throughout the non-communist world”—a total of 176 accounts in 42 different countries. Since McCloy and Lovett retired from their government jobs in 1945, they became private advisers to Anderson, who was later appointed by Eisenhower to serve as Secretary of the Navy and as Secretary of the Treasury.

A more innocuous man than Robert Bernerd Anderson never lived. Born in Burleson, Texas fifteen miles south of the two-room hotel suite at the Fort Worth Club that Sid Richardson called home,[14] Anderson was educated in the most mediocre facilities available to Texans of his day, matriculating at Weatherford College, located in a small town west of Fort Worth. Armed with a 1932 degree from the University of Texas Law School, he was elected to the Texas legislature, then little more than a seasonal minimum-wage job, which he supplemented by working as an assistant to the State’s attorney general, later being appointed to run the Texas Tax Commission. Including under its wing the agency responsible for collecting tax revenue from the state’s newly legalized pari-mutuel horseracing industry, the job was tailor-made for the career-minded young attorney from the same the same vicinity of Texas as horseracing’s major proponents....

[Thomas Graves]

On 6/19/2010 at 9:07 AM, Linda Minor said:

Researchers interested in this subject may find the research I did previously on Anderson helpful, beginning with the article "Tilting at Oil Wells." There are two articles at that page. "Tilting..." is the second one.

Here is an excerpt:

About ten Forum guests are reading this thread right now.  Why is that?  Why is this "Robert Anderson" so darn "hot" all of a sudden?

Was he somehow connected with Rex Tillerson?

LOL

--  Tommy

[Michael Clark]

2 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

About ten Forum guests are reading this thread right now.  Why is that?  Why is this "Robert Anderson" so darn "hot" all of a sudden?

Was he somehow connected with Rex Tillerson?

LOL

--  Tommy

I am always clicking on the "who's online" button to see what people are reading. If I see what looks to be  a Simkin profile, I'll very often click on it. Simkin's profiles are always an interesting read.

[Thomas Graves]

56 minutes ago, Michael Clark said:

I am always clicking on the "who's online" button to see what people are reading. If I see what looks to be  a Simkin profile, I'll very often click on it. Simkin's profiles are always an interesting read.

Dear Michael,

I guess that answers my question.  Not.

--  Tommy

[Michael Clark]

54 minutes ago, Thomas Graves said:

Dear Michael,

I guess that answers my question.  Not.

--  Tommy

I was suggesting that perhaps other members also look to see what other members are reading. That could explain how ten people were reading an odd-ball thread. 

You were unlikely to get any answer in my estimation. I thought I would say something so as to not leave you hangin'.

Cheers,

Michael

Edited February 17, 2017 by Michael Clark

[Thomas Graves]

1 minute ago, Michael Clark said:

I was suggesting that perhaps others also look to see what others are reading. That could explain how ten people were reading an odd-ball thread. 

Cheers,

Michael

 

Dear Michael,

That's how I knew that approximately ten people were reading that odd-ball thread at that time.

But my noticing that couldn't explain to me (or anyone else) why they were all reading that odd-ball thread at that time, could it.

--  Tommy

[Michael Clark]

4 minutes ago, Thomas Graves said:

 

Dear Michael,

That's how I knew that approximately ten people were reading that odd-ball thread at that time.

But my noticing that couldn't explain to me (or anyone else) why they were all reading that odd-ball thread at that time, could it.

--  Tommy

I guess I was offering a possible answer as to how that came about, as opposed to why.

Cheers,

Michael

Edited February 17, 2017 by Michael Clark

[Thomas Graves]

Just now, Michael Clark said:

I guess I was offering an answer as to how that came about, as opposed to why.

So how did it come about?

Expected answer:  "Because about ten people were reading it."

LOL

--  Tommy

PS  I think I see your point.  It started with just one person reading it, and then a bunch of other people noticed that, and it "went viral."  Probably because "Robert Anderson" is such a fascinating subject to JFK assassination students and researchers.