Sterling Seagrave

Arriving at a probable number of Japan’s war victims who died is difficult for several interesting reasons, which have to do with Western perceptions. Both Americans and Europeans fell into the unfortunate habit of seeing WW1 and WW2 as separate wars, failing to comprehend that they were interlaced in a multitude of ways (not merely that one was the consequence of the other, or of the rash behavior of the victors after WW1). Wholly aside from this basic misconception, most Americans think of WW2 in Asia as having begun with Pearl Harbor, the British with the fall of Singapore, and so forth. The Chinese would correct this by identifying the Marco Polo Bridge incident as the start, or the Japanese seizure of Manchuria earlier. It really began in 1895 with Japan’s assassination of Korea’s Queen Min, and invasion of Korea, resulting in its absorption into Japan, followed quickly by Japan’s seizure of southern Manchuria, etc. - establishing that Japan was at war from 1895-1945. Prior to 1895, Japan had only briefly invaded Korea during the Shogunate, long before the Meiji Restoration, and the invasion failed. Therefore, Rummel’s estimate of 6-million to 10-million dead between 1937 (the Rape of Nanjing) and 1945, may be roughly corollary to the time-frame of the Nazi Holocaust, but it falls far short of the actual numbers killed by the Japanese war machine. If you add, say, 2-million Koreans, 2-million Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, many East European Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazy), and others killed by Japan between 1895 and 1937 (conservative figures), the total of Japanese victims is more like 10-million to 14-million. Of these, I would suggest that between 6-million and 8-million were ethnic Chinese, regardless of where they were resident. So, the late Iris Chang and many others have been correct in concluding that the Japanese holocaust is in every way the equal of the Nazi holocaust, even in terms of the bizarre, grotesque, and barbaric manner in which these ethnic Chinese were murdered. It goes beyond ethnicity, because hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were slaughtered in equally grisly fashion by the Japanese, as were ethnic Indonesians and Malays. I count myself very lucky, indeed, because my father spirited me and my mother and brother off to Rangoon, where we got aboard the last refugee ship to Calcutta (my father staying behind to care for wounded), so when the Japanese arrived at our town on the Chinese border, they were only able to find our two Irish terriers. After summoning the entire local population together, they hung the two terriers up in a banyan tree, and hacked them apart with their swords, as our proxies.

Larry Stern was a close friend of mine, and became assistant managing editor of the WashPost. He was by far their star investigative reporter, and made a lot of enemies during the LTV scandal, the Bobby Baker scandal, and many others. He knew who had been involved in the JFK assassination. It was because he was totally straight (and a true champion of the underdog) that he was not chosen to become managing editor. Eventually, it was decided to get rid of him, so the Agency (or the Enterprise – meaning the privatized part of the Agency) had Larry shot with a compressed air rifle firing a tiny dart, the same method used on Schlei, and on many others. The choice of poisons varies, depending on the objective. This almost invisible dart has a much greater range than the jeweler’s watch bearing fired by the equivalent Soviet assassination weapon, used on the Bulgarian emigres. If you find this hard to believe, look closely at the snuffing of Dr. Richard Kelly in UK. As to Phil Graham, he was up to his ears in the manipulation of JFK in behalf of LBJ and the Robber Barons – as you’ve shown. Like several other big players, he began to go bonkers with the burden of what he had been involved in, was drinking heavily, whoring around so that Kay Graham was mightily pissed, and there were many of us at the WashPost who concluded that his purported suicide did not wash. It was an assisted suicide. My expertise on this topic comes from my research for YELLOW RAIN during which I became a very close friend of the chief forensic pathologist at the Agency, Dr. Christopher ("Kit") Green, who was here visiting last year with his second wife. During that period (late 1970s, early 1980s) I was able to study snuffing methods of both the KGB and the Agency, and the pharmacopia, discussing much of this with Kit. Larry Stern's death was described in the press as an incident while jogging on a beach in Martha's Vineyard with a friend, wearing a bathing suit. He suddenly felt a beesting on his calf, halted and reached down presumably to brush off the bee (or whatever), and fell over dead. It was postulated that he died from a coronary caused by a blood clot or something, and as I recall there was no autopsy because it was portrayed as a perfectly natural thing to happen. Sometimes when you get a coronary, you feel it first as a sharp pain in some other part of the body. But as you learn fro studying snake venoms, neurotoxic venoms from vipers kill you in seconds, while haemotoxic venoms like those from cobras take as much as a minute or longer to travel through your bloodstream from your ankle or calf to your heart. This would obviously be the case with a blood clot. The key here is that Larry (and Norbert Schlei and others I've studied) felt a sting on the ankle, calf or thigh and then fell down dead in a matter of four or five seconds. Larry had a lot of enemies in high positions, including some at the WashPost where Larry always was a champion of the Post's labor unions. Larry's father had spent his life as a typesetter at the WashPost, so Larry was a champion of the underdog. And, as you know, champions of the underdog are often seen as pariahs by the Oligopoly. It was Larry who broke the Ling-Temco-Vought and Bobby Baker scandals, and many others, and the powers that be at the WashPost disliked him enough to by-pass him when it came time to appoint one of the Assistant Managing Editors to be the new Managing Editor. The guy they chose was a total, devious, scumbag, perpetual turncoat. Then, of course, when Kay died, little Donny took over the WashPost, and little Donny had grown up inside the Poohbah cabal. For many years, Donny made the WashPost a far right antithesis of what it had seemed to be during the Bobby Baker and Watergate years. But it was ALWAYS an Establishment/Cabal newspaper, merely posing as champion of Liberalism. Much as Averell Harriman posed as a Liberal, and member of the Democratic Party, when he was the owner of NEWSWEEK during the years NEWSWEEK colluded in the rescue of Hirohito, the snuffing of war crimes investigators, and the rescue of indicted war criminals from Sugamo Prison. See our THE YAMATO DYNASTY for all of that.

My expertise on this topic comes from my research for YELLOW RAIN during which I became a very close friend of the chief forensic pathologist at the Agency, Dr. Christopher ("Kit") Green, who was here visiting last year with his second wife. During that period (late 1970s, early 1980s) I was able to study snuffing methods of both the KGB and the Agency, and the pharmacopia, discussing much of this with Kit. Larry Stern's death was described in the press as an incident while jogging on a beach in Martha's Vineyard with a friend, wearing a bathing suit. He suddenly felt a beesting on his calf, halted and reached down presumably to brush off the bee (or whatever), and fell over dead. It was postulated that he died from a coronary caused by a blood clot or something, and as I recall there was no autopsy because it was portrayed as a perfectly natural thing to happen. Sometimes when you get a coronary, you feel it first as a sharp pain in some other part of the body. But as you learn fro studying snake venoms, neurotoxic venoms from vipers kill you in seconds, while haemotoxic venoms like those from cobras take as much as a minute or longer to travel through your bloodstream from your ankle or calf to your heart. This would obviously be the case with a blood clot. The key here is that Larry (and Norbert Schlei and others I've studied) felt a sting on the ankle, calf or thigh and then fell down dead in a matter of four or five seconds. Larry had a lot of enemies in high positions, including some at the WashPost where Larry always was a champion of the Post's labor unions. Larry's father had spent his life as a typesetter at the WashPost, so Larry was a champion of the underdog. And, as you know, champions of the underdog are often seen as pariahs by the Oligopoly. It was Larry who broke the Ling-Temco-Vought and Bobby Baker scandals, and many others, and the powers that be at the WashPost disliked him enough to by-pass him when it came time to appoint one of the Assistant Managing Editors to be the new Managing Editor. The guy they chose was a total, devious, scumbag, perpetual turncoat. Then, of course, when Kay died, little Donny took over the WashPost, and little Donny had grown up inside the Poohbah cabal. For many years, Donny made the WashPost a far right antithesis of what it had seemed to be during the Bobby Baker and Watergate years. But it was ALWAYS an Establishment/Cabal newspaper, merely posing as champion of Liberalism. Much as Averell Harriman posed as a Liberal, and member of the Democratic Party, when he was the owner of NEWSWEEK during the years NEWSWEEK colluded in the rescue of Hirohito, the snuffing of war crimes investigators, and the rescue of indicted war criminals from Sugamo Prison. See our THE YAMATO DYNASTY for all of that.

Yes, as we explain in much greater detail later in the book, McCloy was part of the group that used Nazi looted gold and Jap looted gold to set up the Black Eagle Trust and a multitude of slush funds growing out of it. We identify most of these people in our book, and they are essentially the same people you include in your excellent Assassination text. Webster Tarpley and Tony Chaitkin also identify them in THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE BUSH. And they’ve been identified in other books we list in our bibliography, such as those about the Dulles claque and the Carlisle Group. It’s a network that includes the actual owners of The Fed and The Bank of England, Brown Brothers Harriman, Morgan-Chase, Citibank, Rockefeller Holdings, Bilderbergs, Bohemian Grove, Alpine Lodge, etc. etc. I think of the apex of this group as the Druids. Below them are their servants. People like McCloy, the Dulles Brothers, were just outsiders who became insiders because they had talent and could do the leg work. We added two additional chapters to the trade paperback from Verso, which explains a lot about these networks. We’ve dealt with them in the past in ALL our nine books, in different ways, which means we’ve spent thirty years writing about them in various manifestations. The more we learn, the more interesting it becomes (and the more depressing).

Larry was a close friend of mine, and became assistant managing editor of the WashPost. He was by far their star investigative reporter, and made a lot of enemies during the LTV scandal, the Bobby Baker scandal, and many others. He knew who had been involved in the JFK assassination. It was because he was totally straight (and a true champion of the underdog) that he was not chosen to become managing editor. Eventually, it was decided to get rid of him, so the Agency (or the Enterprise – meaning the privatized part of the Agency) had Larry shot with a compressed air rifle firing a tiny dart, the same method used on Schlei, and on many others. The choice of poisons varies, depending on the objective. This almost invisible dart has a much greater range than the jeweler’s watch bearing fired by the equivalent Soviet assassination weapon, used on the Bulgarian emigres. If you find this hard to believe, look closely at the snuffing of Dr. Richard Kelly in UK. As to Phil Graham, he was up to his ears in the manipulation of JFK in behalf of LBJ and the Robber Barons – as you’ve shown. Like several other big players, he began to go bonkers with the burden of what he had been involved in, was drinking heavily, whoring around so that Kay Graham was mightily pissed, and there were many of us at the WashPost who concluded that his purported suicide did not wash. It was an assisted suicide.

Larry was a close friend of mine, and became assistant managing editor of the WashPost. He was by far their star investigative reporter, and made a lot of enemies during the LTV scandal, the Bobby Baker scandal, and many others. He knew who had been involved in the JFK assassination. It was because he was totally straight (and a true champion of the underdog) that he was not chosen to become managing editor. Eventually, it was decided to get rid of him, so the Agency (or the Enterprise – meaning the privatized part of the Agency) had Larry shot with a compressed air rifle firing a tiny dart, the same method used on Schlei, and on many others. The choice of poisons varies, depending on the objective. This almost invisible dart has a much greater range than the jeweler’s watch bearing fired by the equivalent Soviet assassination weapon, used on the Bulgarian emigres. If you find this hard to believe, look closely at the snuffing of Dr. Richard Kelly in UK. As to Phil Graham, he was up to his ears in the manipulation of JFK in behalf of LBJ and the Robber Barons – as you’ve shown. Like several other big players, he began to go bonkers with the burden of what he had been involved in, was drinking heavily, whoring around so that Kay Graham was mightily pissed, and there were many of us at the WashPost who concluded that his purported suicide did not wash. It was an assisted suicide.

Larry was a close friend of mine, and became assistant managing editor of the WashPost. He was by far their star investigative reporter, and made a lot of enemies during the LTV scandal, the Bobby Baker scandal, and many others. He knew who had been involved in the JFK assassination. It was because he was totally straight (and a true champion of the underdog) that he was not chosen to become managing editor. Eventually, it was decided to get rid of him, so the Agency (or the Enterprise – meaning the privatized part of the Agency) had Larry shot with a compressed air rifle firing a tiny dart, the same method used on Schlei, and on many others. The choice of poisons varies, depending on the objective. This almost invisible dart has a much greater range than the jeweler’s watch bearing fired by the equivalent Soviet assassination weapon, used on the Bulgarian emigres. If you find this hard to believe, look closely at the snuffing of Dr. Richard Kelly in UK. As to Phil Graham, he was up to his ears in the manipulation of JFK in behalf of LBJ and the Robber Barons – as you’ve shown. Like several other big players, he began to go bonkers with the burden of what he had been involved in, was drinking heavily, whoring around so that Kay Graham was mightily pissed, and there were many of us at the WashPost who concluded that his purported suicide did not wash. It was an assisted suicide.

Sure. Allen Dulles was a servant of the people who set up the Fed, and Edward Lansdale also. Lansdale was extremely close to HL Hunt and the Murchisons, and to Bill Pawley, Meyer Lansky, Nixon, Santo Trafficante, Shackley and Clines. Col. Fletcher Prouty, who firstmet Lansdale in Manila in 1945 and later became the primary liaison between DIA and CIA, while also being a VIP pilot of Air Force One, was a crucial source for our research. He personally identified Lansdale in the crowd at Dealey Plaza. You may not know this, but if they had failed at Dealey Plaza, JFK was supposed to go hunting with the Texas Robber Barons the following day. I could go on and on and on.

Yes, as we explain in much greater detail later in the book, McCloy was part of the group that used Nazi looted gold and Jap looted gold to set up the Black Eagle Trust and a multitude of slush funds growing out of it. We identify most of these people in our book, and they are essentially the same people you include in your excellent Assassination text. Webster Tarpley and Tony Chaitkin also identify them in THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE BUSH. And they’ve been identified in other books we list in our bibliography, such as those about the Dulles claque and the Carlisle Group. It’s a network that includes the actual owners of The Fed and The Bank of England, Brown Brothers Harriman, Morgan-Chase, Citibank, Rockefeller Holdings, Bilderbergs, Bohemian Grove, Alpine Lodge, etc. etc. I think of the apex of this group as the Druids. Below them are their servants. People like McCloy, the Dulles Brothers, were just outsiders who became insiders because they had talent and could do the leg work. We added two additional chapters to the trade paperback from Verso, which explains a lot about these networks. We’ve dealt with them in the past in ALL our nine books, in different ways, which means we’ve spent thirty years writing about them in various manifestations. The more we learn, the more interesting it becomes (and the more depressing).

Normally, we have written about China, so after the initial outrage and very serious death threats over THE SOONG DYNASTY, and the banning of the book in Taiwan, things calmed down. The Chiangs and Soongs fell from grace, the KMT fell from power, and three different Chinese translations of SOONG were done in Taiwan. But when we published THE YAMATO DYNASTY about Japan’s imperial family, and the way it was manipulated by the JP Morgan and Rothschild clique starting in the mid 19th century (exactly as they did during the same epoch in America), and how they used the Quaker network in the palace to keep Hirohito on the throne after WW2, we quickly found that we had instantly become the enemies of the Chrysanthemom Club. This is the Japan lobby, very similar to the Taiwan lobby, but different players. We exposed one of the key players, the DCM at the US Embassy in Japan, who was married to the daughter of Japan’s finance minister. To avoid scandal, he was immediately recalled to Washington where he used his new position at DoS to attack us. Starting by planting extremely negative and false reviews of YAMATO in the NYT and WashPost. So, when word got out that we were working on GOLD WARRIORS, we began to be sabotaged in advance. We were deceitfully approached by a NYC publisher who then had our book vetted by a Washington attorney closely tied to the CIA – so the CIA knew all about it. We discovered we were blocked at every major publisher in the USA. We tried UK publishers and Transworld (which had sold over 60,000 copies of LORDS OF THE RIM), refused even to look at GOLD WARRIORS. So, we knew we’d been slipped the Black Spot. We decided to let our usual French publisher launch the book in French. Both YAMATO DYNASTY and GOLD WARRIORS did very well in French and were widely reviewed. Because so many WW2 victims were dying of old age, we felt compelled to get an English language edition out, so we published one in trade paper format at a French printer, which we sold on-line at our website. When Verso Books read it, they freaked and immediately bought it from us, saying it was « your incredible book ». Verso did a very fine job, both in UK and the US where they had a standing distribution deal with WW Norton. There was a flurry of impressive reviews, all to be seen at our website www.bowstring.net but Chalmers Johnson, doyen of Japan scholars in the US, chose to review it in the London Review of Books rather than the New York Review of Books or the Los Angeles Times. He was a great admirer of Norbert Schei, but had been a consultant to the CIA for decades, so he was wary about giving the book such a positive review inside America.

Hughes and I had mutual friends with Ian Fleming (people who worked with him in SOE during WW2) so Hughes talked a lot about Fleming and his brother Peter Fleming who had written a deeply flawed book about the Boxer Rebellion in China. Hughes said he gave Fleming the idea for a James Bond novel set in Japan, steered Fleming to a number of sources in Japanese intelligence (which at that time was called the Cabinet Information Office), and kicked around plot ideas. I also recall that Hughes became a friend of John LeCarre and gave him a lot of ideas for THE HONORABLE SCHOOLBOY, set in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia (Thailand mostly). But we did not discuss Burgess and MacLean.

About the death of Danny Casolaro in a hotel room in West Virginia, which was reported as a suicide -- that’s simply not true. He was murdered. I have this from the chief forensic pathologist of the CIA at that time, Dr. Christopher Green, who participated in the Casolaro autopsy and examined his hotel room. Green assured me that there had obviously been a violent struggle in the hotel room, Casolaro’s body was badly bruised, and although he was found in the bathtub with his wrists slashed there was very little blood -- so as in the case of Dr. David Kelly, Casolaro’s heart had stopped beating before his wrists were slashed. Dr. Green was the pathologist who discovered how the Bulgarian emigres work-ing for the BBC were targeted for assassination. It was reported that the one who died in London had been “poked” with an umbrella while crossing the bridge in from of Parliament, but during his autopsy Dr. Green (invited by MI6 to participate) saw a zits on the thigh of the corpse and dug at it, heard a ping as something fell onto the stainless surface and rolled toward the drain. He stopped it with his hand. Under an electron microscope it turned out to be a jeweler’s watch-bearing with two tunnels hollowed out with a laser and once covered with wax. But they were now empty. Whatever toxin had been inside had been metabolized by the body before the man died. A few months later in winter, another Bulgarian emigre, this time in Paris, was descending into the Metro at the Place de l’Etoile wearing a heavy ski sweater. He felt a “beesting” on his shoulder and was sick for several days, but survived. French and British intelligence agencies again invited Green over, and when Green dug at the place where the “beesting” had left a zits, another watch bearing popped out. This time, because of the heavy sweater, it had not penetrated beneath the surface layer of skin and fat, so only some of the wax melted off the tunnels. Green and a leading Norwegian expert in toxins applied the remaining content of the tunnels to a pig, which reacts in ways similar to humans, and all the signs and symptoms that ensued proved that the toxin was ricin, a substance left after the oil (castor oil) has been squeezed out of the castor bean, which grows on the Castor Bean Plant common to many gardens. Ricin causes death after 24 hours, with symptoms like food poisoning, but the toxin is matabolized, so it cannot be detected during autopsy.

Once FDR died, there was a great sea-change, and the pre-war pro-Nazi arch conservatives and Wall Street venture capitalists began to resume control in America. War crimes investigators in Asia suffered fatal accidents or plane crashes at sea, journalists opposed to the Chiang regime or the reinstatement of war criminals in control of postwar Japan were blacklisted, diplomats like John Service had their careers destroyed, and OSS agents who had worked happily with Mao and Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese were replaced by opportunists like Lansdale who sucked up to the Dulles brothers and Brown Brothers Harriman. I saw a re-run re-cently of a George Raft movie with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre during the Nazi occupation of Istanbul, and one of Raft’s lies was “I’m not interested in your New World Order.” It resonated of George Bush and the Carlisle Group. Maybe the Cold War is really what’s going on in America.

I remember Edgar Snow’s wife talking about Carlson. But once FDR died, there was a great sea-change, and the pre-war pro-Nazi arch conservatives and Wall Street venture capitalists began to resume control in America. War crimes investigators in Asia suffered fatal accidents or plane crashes at sea, journalists opposed to the Chiang regime or the reinstatement of war criminals in control of postwar Japan were blacklisted, diplomats like John Service had their careers destroyed, and OSS agents who had worked happily with Mao and Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese were replaced by opportunists like Lansdale who sucked up to the Dulles brothers and Brown Brothers Harriman. I saw a re-run re-cently of a George Raft movie with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre during the Nazi occupation of Istanbul, and one of Raft’s lies was “I’m not interested in your New World Order.” It resonated of George Bush and the Carlisle Group. Maybe the Cold War is really what’s going on in America.

Yes, I knew Richard Hughes well, enjoyed him very much, and used to get blasted with him at the press club in Hong Kong.The ultimate Old China Hand, and incomparable raconteur. He knew all the dirt. An attitude like Humphrey Bogart in a carcass like Sydney Greenstreet.

Bill Pawley did not found the AVG. The sequence was that Mme. Chiang wanted to create an air force for KMT China, not because she knew anything about air forces, but because she wanted to play a glamorous role in the “defense” of China against the Japanese, who had been encroaching on China for decades - long before America became involved. Her husband, Generalissimo Chiang, “gave” Mme. Chiang the fledgeling KMT air force as her toy, partly to placate her and keep her off his back. She made inquiries in America, looking for somebody who could train her air force. The KMT military attache took her to an air show where Chennault (forced out of the US Army Air Corps for being a blowhard) and his group were performing, she was impressed, asked to meet Chennault, charmed him, and made him an offer on the spot. Chennault accepted so eagerly that he left for China without bothering to inform his wife and family, whom he abandoned. His initial effort to create a KMT air force and train its pilots was a fiasco when they bombed their own people instead of the Japanese. Chennault and Mme. Chiang asked Henry Luce and Tommy Corcoran to help, and Corcoran asked FDR to make fighter aircraft available, and experienced American pilots to fly them. P-40s already destined for Britain were diverted to Burma by FDR’s intercession. FDR then approved the creation of a pseudo “mercenary” air force by taking a number of pilots out of active service and sending them to Burma. To increase their number, trouble-making pilots who were in military stockades were freed on the condition that they go to Burma to fly in China against the Japanese. This was all sub rosa, because America was then not at war with Japan. The so-called “American Volunteer Group” was portrayed as freelance or “mercenary”, but they were actually on a covert mission. Pawley was brought in by Tommy Corcoran to head CAMCO, the engineering company that would assemble the crated airplanes to be flown by the AVG pilots. Since the OSS did not exist at that time, all this was done under the aegis of the intelligence service of the Department of State, supported by the Office of Naval Intelligence which was active on the China coast, and Secretary of War Stimson (who had previously been governor-general of the Philippines and was a friend of Corcoran, Luce, Pawley, United Fruit and Dole Pineapple, and an admirer of Mme. Chiang). Eventually the AVG got its act together and evolved into the Flying Tigers. When the US declared war on Japan, Chennault was reinstated to the Army Air Corps responsible to General Stilwell. All but a handful of the Flying Tigers refused to re-join the Air Corps and mutinied. The mutiny was kept secret until the late 1970s. They were disbanded, many returning to America to get on with their lives, others drifting into Chennault’s airlift over the Hump from India to China, during which gold, drugs and diamonds were carried aboard some of the planes. Among those who were eyewitnesses was John D. McDonald, who later became famous as a novelist. There was a mob of British and American spooks in Chungking and Kunming, where Alsop (given a commission in the US Army) served as Chennault’s mouth-piece to hype the image of the Flying Tigers. The famous name was adopted for all Chennault’s fighter pilots, and was implicit in his choosing the name China Air Transport (CAT) for the OSS subsidized cargo airline Chennault used to smuggle heroin out and wepons in to KMT controlled areas. After the Chiangs fled to Taiwan, CAT became Air America. Pawley didn’t pay for the JFK assassination. That’s an oversimplification. You could just as well say that H.L.Hunt and the Murchisons paid for it. Or that Pawley’s pals Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante (those intimate friends and backroom financiers of Richard Nixon) financed it. Or that it was financed by Edward Lansdale’s friends Nelson Rockefeller and the Rothschilds. Or Paul Helliwell’s off-the-books black banking network. You’ve done a superlative job of laying out many of the people who colluded, so who paid for it is not especially relevant. The real irony is that when Governor Connelly was hit by a ricochet he yelped, “They’re going to kill ALL of us.” (Meaning: “They’re not just going to kill Jack, as we planned.”)

Bill Pawley did not found the AVG. The sequence was that Mme. Chiang wanted to create an air force for KMT China, not because she knew anything about air forces, but because she wanted to play a glamorous role in the “defense” of China against the Japanese, who had been encroaching on China for decades - long before America became involved. Her husband, Generalissimo Chiang, “gave” Mme. Chiang the fledgeling KMT air force as her toy, partly to placate her and keep her off his back. She made inquiries in America, looking for somebody who could train her air force. The KMT military attache took her to an air show where Chennault (forced out of the US Army Air Corps for being a blowhard) and his group were performing, she was impressed, asked to meet Chennault, charmed him, and made him an offer on the spot. Chennault accepted so eagerly that he left for China without bothering to inform his wife and family, whom he abandoned. His initial effort to create a KMT air force and train its pilots was a fiasco when they bombed their own people instead of the Japanese. Chennault and Mme. Chiang asked Henry Luce and Tommy Corcoran to help, and Corcoran asked FDR to make fighter aircraft available, and experienced American pilots to fly them. P-40s already destined for Britain were diverted to Burma by FDR’s intercession. FDR then approved the creation of a pseudo “mercenary” air force by taking a number of pilots out of active service and sending them to Burma. To increase their number, trouble-making pilots who were in military stockades were freed on the condition that they go to Burma to fly in China against the Japanese. This was all sub rosa, because America was then not at war with Japan. The so-called “American Volunteer Group” was portrayed as freelance or “mercenary”, but they were actually on a covert mission. Pawley was brought in by Tommy Corcoran to head CAMCO, the engineering company that would assemble the crated airplanes to be flown by the AVG pilots. Since the OSS did not exist at that time, all this was done under the aegis of the intelligence service of the Department of State, supported by the Office of Naval Intelligence which was active on the China coast, and Secretary of War Stimson (who had previously been governor-general of the Philippines and was a friend of Corcoran, Luce, Pawley, United Fruit and Dole Pineapple, and an admirer of Mme. Chiang). Eventually the AVG got its act together and evolved into the Flying Tigers. When the US declared war on Japan, Chennault was reinstated to the Army Air Corps responsible to General Stilwell. All but a handful of the Flying Tigers refused to re-join the Air Corps and mutinied. The mutiny was kept secret until the late 1970s. They were disbanded, many returning to America to get on with their lives, others drifting into Chennault’s airlift over the Hump from India to China, during which gold, drugs and diamonds were carried aboard some of the planes. Among those who were eyewitnesses was John D. McDonald, who later became famous as a novelist. There was a mob of British and American spooks in Chungking and Kunming, where Alsop (given a commission in the US Army) served as Chennault’s mouth-piece to hype the image of the Flying Tigers. The famous name was adopted for all Chennault’s fighter pilots, and was implicit in his choosing the name China Air Transport (CAT) for the OSS subsidized cargo airline Chennault used to smuggle heroin out and wepons in to KMT controlled areas. After the Chiangs fled to Taiwan, CAT became Air America. Pawley didn’t pay for the JFK assassination. That’s an oversimplification. You could just as well say that H.L.Hunt and the Murchisons paid for it. Or that Pawley’s pals Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante (those intimate friends and backroom financiers of Richard Nixon) financed it. Or that it was financed by Edward Lansdale’s friends Nelson Rockefeller and the Rothschilds. Or Paul Helliwell’s off-the-books black banking network. You’ve done a superlative job of laying out many of the people who colluded, so who paid for it is not especially relevant. The real irony is that when Governor Connelly was hit by a ricochet he yelped, “They’re going to kill ALL of us.” (Meaning: “They’re not just going to kill Jack, as we planned.”)

Walter Jenkins had been arrested repeatedly for soliciting, but other Washington Post police reporters new to the beat didn’t recognize his name or associate him with J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, Bobby Baker, and Joe Alsop. So, it was only when the senior police reporter, who had been covering police headquarters for many years, spotted Jenkins’ name on a soliciting arrest that it hit the fan. The Washington Post did publish the story immediately, but only after Al Friendly and Russ Wiggins cleared the treatment of it with LBJ over the phone, as I described. Note also that Wiggins, Friendly, columnist Chalmers Roberts, and other senior Post management and staff had served in the same WW2 intelligence unit with Phil Graham, so when Graham took over management of the Washington Post from Kay Graham’s father, Eugene Meyer, you had a perfect example of Operation Mockingbird at work.

I believe it was the Washington Star that published the story that was ignored by the Washington Post. LBJ liked to employ people he could blackmail. One can understand why Walter Jenkins was so loyal to LBJ. I like the story of how J. Edgar Hoover sent Jenkins a bouquet of flowers and expressed his regret that he had lost his job. Are you suggesting that Alsop, Hoover and Jenkins were sexually involved with each other? Walter Jenkins had been arrested repeatedly for soliciting, but other Washington Post police reporters new to the beat didn’t recognize his name or associate him with J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, Bobby Baker, and Joe Alsop. So, it was only when the senior police reporter, who had been covering police headquarters for many years, spotted Jenkins’ name on a soliciting arrest that it hit the fan. The Washington Post did publish the story immediately, but only after Al Friendly and Russ Wiggins cleared the treatment of it with LBJ over the phone, as I described. Note also that Wiggins, Friendly, columnist Chalmers Roberts, and other senior Post management and staff had served in the same WW2 intelligence unit with Phil Graham, so when Graham took over management of the Washington Post from Kay Graham’s father, Eugene Meyer, you had a perfect example of Operation Mockingbird at work. As for sexual orientation, Alsop, Jenkins and Hoover were all gay. I am not informed about LBJ’s preferences, but Bobby Baker (as you’ve indicated elsewhere) essentially had a brothel where there were ongoing parties for members of Congress, often involving women working as secretaries and clerks on Capitol Hill. This sometimes resulted in women getting pregnant, but Baker had that covered by setting up an abortion clinic in Puerto Rico called the San Jorge Clinic, to which Congressional office staff could be sent on “holidays”, all expenses paid, and return unpregnant. Baker’s brothel included getting still and movie footage of Congressmen carousing, which went into LBJ’s filing system controlled by Baker, probably a better blackmail file than J. Edgar had. Larry Stern, Les Whitten and I attempted to hijack the filing cabinets from Baker’s station wagon when he decided to get them out of Washington. But our hopes that Baker would stop somewhere for coffee on his way to Florida were disappointed. As to how The Washington Star handled the Jenkins story, I can’t remember. They might have broken it in the evening, obliging the Washington Post to cover it the following morning. It was amusing to see all the Washington Post top brass running around in brown trousers, and getting their instructions from LBJ.

Eugene Meyer who was head of the Fed was the father of Katherine (Meyer) Graham. As I recall, Meyer owned the Times-Herald and bought the Washington Post, merged the two papers, and essentially turned them over to his daughter's husband Phil Graham after WW2 when Phil Graham returned from Air Force Intelligence with some of his cronies, including Russell Wiggins, Chalmers Roberts, and others. I worked at the Post for about five years in the 1960s during the JFK assassination and the Bobby Baker case. I understood that Phil Graham was snuffed, not a suicide. Assistant Managing Editor Larry Stern, with whom I worked, along with Les Whitten, was later snuffed while jogging on a beach at Martha's Vineyard, exactly the same MO as the snuffing of Norbert Schlei while jogging on the beach at Malibu -- the "beesting" on the bare leg, followed by the coronary. Similar to the compressed air gun attacks on the Bulgarian expat BBC employees, but using a fast acting seasnake venom on Schlei and Stern, while the Bulgarians were hit with the much slower acting enhanced Ricin.

I was in the newsroom standing over the tickers when JFK was hit, and saw a lot of stuff in short takes that later vanished (only some of it resurfacing later), including the motorcycle cop chasing two or three guys with rifles running down the railway tracks till he got knocked off his bike when his front tire hit a sleeper. I did the first big story in the Post on Jack Ruby, which got played nationwide. Larry and Les and I tried very hard to hijack Bobby Baker's staionwagon when he moved all of LBJ's filing cabinets from the Capitol Hill office suite to Florida, hoping Baker would stop for coffee somewhere, but he didn't.

The last time I was in touch with Pawley was in 1961 after he'd fled Cuba with his crony Meyer Lansky, and Pawley was living in Miami as owner of the Transit Company. Pawley was always one of the key links of Tommy the Cork, Donovan, the Dulles brothers, and that whole bunch of nutbags, between the OSS/CIA, Meyer Lansky, and the KMT underworld, as represented by General Tai Li in Chungking, the Ku brothers, and the Chen brothers (all top Green Gang cadres of Du Yueh-sheng). One Ku brother became chief of staff of the KMT armies, while the other ran the Green Gang in Shanghai and the Yangtze Valley during the Jap occupation. One Chen brother controlled the KMT bureaucracy while the other controlled the secret police. Chennault was immersed in all this, Tai Li supplying him with Anna as a sleeping dictionary. That penultimate scumbag joe Alsop was Chennault's flack in Chungking. I have seen the evidence that Alsop was paid by TV Soong and May-ling Soong to draft the poison pen letter to FDR signed by Chiang Kai-shek, which resulted in Stilwell's recall and humiliation. As an officer in the US Army under Stilwell, Alsop should have been court martialed for treason. The evidence is in Alsop's own diary, part of the papers he left to a guy in the Agency.

I first met Bill Pawley when I was 4 years old at my father's hospital in Namhkam, Burma, which was just across the Shweli River Valley from the AVG airbase at Loiwing on the Chinese side of the river. I got to know all Pawley's people in CAMCO, and all the AVG pilos and mechanics, because having Americans so nearby was a rare thing for my mother and father, and they partied together a lot. The AVG guys gave me and my brother a baby tiger (which we let go into the jungle when it reached three months age). When the Japs flew up from Hanoi to bomb Loiwing, they always saved some bombs for our hospital, so I have vivid memories of being bombed and strafed and running to trenches in the jungle. I later renewed my acquaintance with a lot of the AVG and CAMCO guys as an adult, particularly when I was doing some books for Time-Life in which the Flying Tigers, Chennault, Stilwell, and the CBI Theatre figure heavily. The last time I was in touch with Pawley was in 1961 after he'd fled Cuba with his crony Meyer Lansky, and Pawley was living in Miami as owner of the Transit Company. Pawley was always one of the key links of Tommy the Cork, Donovan, the Dulles brothers, and that whole bunch of nutbags, between the OSS/CIA, Meyer Lansky, and the KMT underworld, as represented by General Tai Li in Chungking, the Ku brothers, and the Chen brothers (all top Green Gang cadres of Du Yueh-sheng). One Ku brother became chief of staff of the KMT armies, while the other ran the Green Gang in Shanghai and the Yangtze Valley during the Jap occupation. One Chen brother controlled the KMT bureaucracy while the other controlled the secret police. Chennault was immersed in all this, Tai Li supplying him with Anna as a sleeping dictionary. That penultimate scumbag joe Alsop was Chennault's flack in Chungking. I have seen the evidence that Alsop was paid by TV Soong and May-ling Soong to draft the poison pen letter to FDR signed by Chiang Kai-shek, which resulted in Stilwell's recall and humiliation. As an officer in the US Army under Stilwell, Alsop should have been court martialed for treason. The evidence is in Alsop's own diary, part of the papers he left to a guy in the Agency.

I was in the Washington Post newsroom when our senior police reporter spotted the arrest file on Walter Jenkins, for soliciting, recognized the name, and caused panic in the newsroom. Al Friendly and Russ Wiggins managed to get a phone call through to LBJ who was at a banquet in Manhattan, and LBJ told Wiggins and Friendly how he wanted them to play the outing of Walter Jenkins. (I was sitting three feet from Wiggins while he was on the horn with LBJ.) Of course, LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover were neighbors before LBJ moved into the White House. Joe Alsop and J. Edgar and Walter Jenkins were intimate friends for decades.

For Paul Helliwell, Singlaub, and the CIA drug-money black-banking network, see my LORDS OF THE RIM, THE MARCOS DYNASTY, and GOLD WARRIORS.