Larry Schnapf is misusing a document

[Joseph Backes]

The doc in question is RIF#104-10326-10050.  

Schnapf has claimed on more than one occasion ( most recently on Black Op Radio episode #1154 ) that in this document Walter Mondale, then U.S. Ambassador to Japan is urging the US not to release JFK assassination records.

This is not exactly true.  It's a little more nuanced and complex. And it's in regard to a specific type of information that need not be disclosed.  

The document still has many redactions so it's not easy to read.  What is really going on is that the CIA does not want to release any of their records that show that Japan and the CIA have a relationship and shared intelligence.  Why? Because it would disrupt (then) current counterterrorist and counterintelligence operations by confirming such a relationship. It would become a national scandal in Japan. It would create a political sh#t show in Japan.  It would endanger (then) current agents and assets.  Why? Because the [redacted] but most likely Japanese government does not even officially acknowledge that it collects intelligence, nor, and this is right out in the open "not admit to having liaison relationships with US intelligence agencies."  So, any official confirmation that would negate the official story of the then conservative ruling party in Japan would be used like a club by the out of power Left wing party. This would be damaging to the US-Japan mutual security treaty and the presence of US forces in Japan.  At the time the US President was going to visit Japan soon.  There were (then) current, delicate negotiations overs US military bases in Japan.  All would be at risk if a document was releases confirming a CIA relationship with Japan intel agencies.

So, no, this is not Walter Mondale saying don't release JFK assassination records.  In fact, there's no evidence any of this is coming from Mondale at all.  It's a CIA cable.  

Now, of course, we had relationships with Japan.  The CIA flew U-2s out of Atsugi, Japan and we have many bases in Japan.  And Oswald was at Atsugi.  So, it's insane to deny a relationship. But, the conservative party in Japan did.  Not Walter Mondale.  So, Ambassador Mondale was put in a difficult spot.  

It is disingenuous to say Mondale was trying to stop disclosure of JFK assassination records.  

It is the CIA, today, that is still redacting this record.  

[Benjamin Cole]

3 hours ago, Joseph Backes said:

The doc in question is RIF#104-10326-10050.  

Schnapf has claimed on more than one occasion ( most recently on Black Op Radio episode #1154 ) that in this document Walter Mondale, then U.S. Ambassador to Japan is urging the US not to release JFK assassination records.

This is not exactly true.  It's a little more nuanced and complex. And it's in regard to a specific type of information that need not be disclosed.  

The document still has many redactions so it's not easy to read.  What is really going on is that the CIA does not want to release any of their records that show that Japan and the CIA have a relationship and shared intelligence.  Why? Because it would disrupt (then) current counterterrorist and counterintelligence operations by confirming such a relationship. It would become a national scandal in Japan. It would create a political sh#t show in Japan.  It would endanger (then) current agents and assets.  Why? Because the [redacted] but most likely Japanese government does not even officially acknowledge that it collects intelligence, nor, and this is right out in the open "not admit to having liaison relationships with US intelligence agencies."  So, any official confirmation that would negate the official story of the then conservative ruling party in Japan would be used like a club by the out of power Left wing party. This would be damaging to the US-Japan mutual security treaty and the presence of US forces in Japan.  At the time the US President was going to visit Japan soon.  There were (then) current, delicate negotiations overs US military bases in Japan.  All would be at risk if a document was releases confirming a CIA relationship with Japan intel agencies.

So, no, this is not Walter Mondale saying don't release JFK assassination records.  In fact, there's no evidence any of this is coming from Mondale at all.  It's a CIA cable.  

Now, of course, we had relationships with Japan.  The CIA flew U-2s out of Atsugi, Japan and we have many bases in Japan.  And Oswald was at Atsugi.  So, it's insane to deny a relationship. But, the conservative party in Japan did.  Not Walter Mondale.  So, Ambassador Mondale was put in a difficult spot.  

It is disingenuous to say Mondale was trying to stop disclosure of JFK assassination records.  

It is the CIA, today, that is still redacting this record.  

"It is the CIA, today, that is still redacting this record."--JB

I will not take issue with the specifics of your post. You know your stuff. 

But it is Biden-Garland that has done a snuff job on the entirety of the JFK Records.  

Biden has authority to make public any record in the federal government at any time (possibly excepting certain IRS records, or other specific items). 

Under law, all the JFK Records were to be released.

Biden-Garland fabricated a "Transparency Board" (after consulting with Orwell) and pretended to transfer authority for disclosure there.

I share your ire at the CIA, but they answer to the President. 

Instead we have a puppet president, answering to the CIA. 

 

 

[Matt Allison]

Ben- if I was surfing the web and just happened upon this site, I'd wager your mandate was to post "Biden-Garland" "snuff job" as many times as possible...

[Benjamin Cole]

12 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Ben- if I was surfing the web and just happened upon this site, I'd wager your mandate was to post "Biden-Garland" "snuff job" as many times as possible...

I only post here. You are the lucky recipient on my wisdom. 

I might have the same sentiments as you, regarding the posts of some here, but I am too polite to say so. 

[W. Niederhut]

5 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Ben- if I was surfing the web and just happened upon this site, I'd wager your mandate was to post "Biden-Garland" "snuff job" as many times as possible...

Yes, unfortunately for us, Ben has always been into the old advertising/propaganda Repeat-the-Jingle thing.  

What amazes me is that anyone who lived through the sleazy, inglorious Bill Barr years of Trump DOJ history would be myopic, or disingenuous, enough to now impugn the integrity of a jurist like Merrick Garland.

But, then again, Ben fell for the "Russia-gate is a hoax," and "J6 was a patriot purge" MAGA narratives-- and he repeated those MAGA propaganda tropes endlessly.

So, now we're stuck with Ben's daily "Biden/Garland" MAGA trope.

 

[Robert Montenegro]

 

The modern Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations (formerly, the Directorate of Plans), had it's beginnings in an organization called "Katō Kikan," whose headquarters was originally based at Naval Air Station Atsugi, which, by 1955, housed Marine Air Control Squadron 1, where Mr. Lee Oswald was attached to forward operations targeting Chinese airspace.

The following entry should be read with the most supreme sobriety, for it displays a glimpse of what is being hidden by modern US intelligence, concerning the history of covert operations, surveillance and "executive action," from an article called, "Democracy's Porous Borders: Espionage, Smuggling and the Making of Japan's Transwar Regime (Part I)" by Tessa Morris-Suzuki.

QUOTE—

"...The “almost generic” problem of inter-service rivalry in the world of secret operations was very familiar to CIA operatives in Japan, because the same problem also plagued US intelligence operations in Japan during the occupation era. The CIA had been created in July 1947, but during the first years of its existence, its influence in Japan was circumscribed by the presence of a number of other US intelligence agencies, with whom its relations were often frosty. In the early stages of the occupation of Japan, the most powerful intelligence organizations were the Allied Occupation Authority’s Civil Intelligence Section (CIS) and the US Army’s intelligence section, G2, with its various subordinate bodies.

G2 was headed by the irascible and vehemently anti-communist Major General Charles A. Willoughby (1892-1972). Willoughby, who was the son of a German father and American mother and whose birth name was Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach, had moved to America at the age of eighteen and become a naturalized US citizen. As Takemae Eiji notes, “fellow Occupationaires mocked the General’s stiff Prussian bearing, referring to him alternately as ‘Sir Charles’ and ‘Baron von Willoughby’… Regarded as a martinet by his subordinates – he took a perverse pride in the epithet ‘Little Hitler’, and even MacArthur dubbed him ‘my loveable fascist’ – the volatile Willoughby nonetheless enjoyed the Supreme Commander’s full confidence”. Willoughby responded to his critics in kind, reserving his fiercest invective for the liberal press, whose journalists he called “bastards” and “pen prostitutes”, and accused of furnishing “aid and comfort to the enemy”. Occupying a dual role as head of intelligence both for US army forces in Japan and for the US Far Eastern Command, Willoughby possessed intelligence and counter-intelligence powers that encompassed the entire East Asian region. Jack Canon’s Z Unit, created in 1947, was just one of a large number of organizations through which he exercised those powers.

But after the establishment of the CIA, and particularly after the outbreak of the Korean War, Willoughby found himself having to share his turf with a growing number of other US intelligence organizations, and both he and his superior General Douglas MacArthur deeply resented the intrusion. The CIA gained its first significant foothold in Japan in 1948 via the blandly named Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a special unit created to engage in psychological warfare operations, and the Agency’s influence grew rapidly after the Korean conflict erupted in June 1950. In 1949, the first head of the CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, expressed optimism that “we have finally reached a satisfactory agreement with Willoughby, and I hope that it will keep up”. But the hope was forlorn. Relations between Willoughby and the CIA remained tense for decades. Willoughby was irked by the power of the CIA, but at the same time longed to be a part of the action, and after his departure from Japan in 1951 continued to bombard CIA Director Allen Dulles with offers of help and suggestions on how the Agency could improve its cooperation with the military: suggestions to which Dulles replied in the tone of courteous forbearance that bureaucrats often reserve for those they deeply dislike. As Willoughby explained to Dulles in 1961, “it was quite clear to me, based on my efforts to fit CIA into the MacArthur command structure in Japan, that you will always be in collision, overt or covert, with the [Armed] Services”. Meanwhile, intelligence gathering was also being carried out by a range of other US groups including the US Far East Air Forces (FEAF) and by several separate signals intelligence and communications units.

Eventually, it was the CIA that gained the upper hand in the struggle for intelligence control. Immediately after MacArthur’s dismissal in April 1951, Willoughby too returned to the United States in a state of “nervous slump”, handing over to the CIA his files, many of his contacts in Japan, and his messages of concern about the need to continue protecting and nurturing the former senior Imperial Army officers whom he considered “essential for rearmament”.

To the Victors, the Spies: Intelligence and the Transwar Regime

The making of Japan’s transwar regime began even before the formal surrender was signed. On 19 to 20 August 1945, a sixteen-person Japanese delegation traveled to Manila to negotiate with Douglas MacArthur, Charles Willoughby and others about the transfer of power to the incoming occupation forces. The delegation was led by the Imperial Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Kawabe Torashirō (1890-1960). Meanwhile, the Imperial Army’s chief of intelligence, Arisue Seizō (1895-1992), who on 8 August had been the first senior military official sent to Hiroshima to inspect the effects of the atomic bombing, was given the task of preparing the reception for MacArthur and his staff when they arrived at Atsugi Airbase.

Despite Arisue’s first-hand experiences in Hiroshima, his attitude to the victors, like Kawabe’s, was so welcoming that both men quickly won the trust of the US command. Charles Willoughby, an outspoken admirer of Benito Mussolini, may also have been attracted to Arisue by the fact that the former intelligence chief had once served as Japanese Military Attache in Rome, where he had developed a similar enthusiasm for Italian Fascism and reportedly attempted to develop a joint Japanese-Italian strategy towards the Muslim world. Rather than being investigated for war crimes, therefore, Arisue was “interrogated, then called in for consultation very early in the occupation”, and “a working relationship apparently developed”.

Arisue was soon installed by Willoughby in a section of G2’s headquarters in the NYK Building in central Tokyo, where his ostensible task was to collect and analyze archives and write monographs about Japan’s wartime activities. One advantage of this appointment was the opportunities it provided, not only to unearth and preserve the archive of Japan’s military actions in Asia, but also to make parts of it disappear from the record (so continuing a process which had begun with the destruction of many documents during the last days of the war). A US official note from May 1946 advises that some Japanese War Ministry documents “of a special nature” are absent from the catalogue of files that had been drawn up, “having been left in the charge of Arisue.”

Arisue’s new position of trust with the American forces enabled him to provide financial support to Kawabe Torashirō, who also soon became a key informant to the occupation forces; and Arisue then proceeded to recruit a number of other leading former military figures, including Hattori Takushirō, who had held key positions in the Imperial army general staff, and later Tsuji Masanobu, a wartime colonel and military strategist who was regarded as one of the architects of the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, and had gone into hiding during the early occupation era after being listed as a Class A war criminal. As Willoughby later wrote, these people had been “the brains” of the former Imperial Japanese general staff: “monographs were just a cover, to keep them from starving”. Equally importantly, the research activities of Arisue, Kawabe, Hattori, Tsuji and others enabled them to become crucial conduits of information for the US occupiers – a role to which they took with enthusiasm. They rapidly reestablished their authority over now unemployed former military subordinates, creating a web of private intelligence organizations which provided information to the Americans in return for a variety of monetary and other rewards. This web, as we shall see, extended across borders into many parts of the former Japanese empire.

Kawabe Torashirō had no previous intelligence background, but, the CIA observed, “as the last active representative of the Japanese General Staff free to act on behalf of the Army, he has the authority to order cooperation from such Japanese as he might choose, and he has apparently chosen well”. By 1948, Kawabe’s private intelligence gathering organization was working in close cooperation with those of Arisue and others, in a powerful combination sometimes known as the KATO Organization (Katō Kikan), after the initials of its four core ex-military leaders: Kawabe, Arisue, and former senior military officers Tanaka Ryūkichi and Ōikawa Genshichi. The Katō Kikan cooperated and competed with a host of similar though less powerful secret or semi-secret organizations, many of them created by former military officers. The process by which these groups were formed and re-formed is outlined by the 1951 CIA report on the Japanese intelligence services: “An ‘expert’, contacted by an American agency, would form a group out of personnel known to him who happened to be available and willing. Often such groups would include non-professionals. Associations in the underground became fluid as they received the backing of first one prominent political and military figure and then another”. At least for part of the occupation period, organizations like Kawabe’s were largely (and covertly) funded by US authorities..."

—END QUOTE

As you can see, the precursor to the CIA's assassination capabilities were set up under a United Army Counterintelligence operative named COL. Joseph Young "Cactus Jack" Canon, whose "Z-Unit" hunter-killer assassination team was absorbed by the Office of Policy Coordination, later the Directorate of Plans.

A photograph of COL. Canon from 1946.

COL. Canon's "Z-Unit" was supported by an autonomous intelligence organization called, "Katō Kikan," whose commander was a savagely cruel Imperial Japanese war criminal by the name of Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue.

A photograph of Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue from 1944.

Both the Katō Kikan and Z-Unit would later be completely absorbed by a joint CIA-Japanese intelligence organization called, "Naikaku Chōsa-Shitsu," or in English, "Cabinet Research Office."

The liaison to the CIA until 1955 within the innocuously titled "Cabinet Research Office" was Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue—that is until he was replaced by the new CIA Chief of Covert Action in Tokyo, Japan, Everette Howard Hunt Jr., who took over CIA assassination operations in Japan under the cryptonym BGSAMURAI.

Perhaps the above information is why the Japanese CIA files surrounding President Kennedy's murder are so sensitive?

Unravel the Japanese covert action thread, and the whole show is blown.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Robert Montenegro

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Robert Montenegro said:

 

The modern Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations (formerly, the Directorate of Plans), had it's beginnings in an organization called "Katō Kikan," whose headquarters was originally based at Naval Air Station Atsugi, which, by 1955, housed Marine Air Control Squadron 1, where Mr. Lee Oswald was attached to forward operations targeting Chinese airspace.

The following entry should be read with the most supreme sobriety, for it displays a glimpse of what is being hidden by modern US intelligence, concerning the history of covert operations, surveillance and "executive action," from an article called, "Democracy's Porous Borders: Espionage, Smuggling and the Making of Japan's Transwar Regime (Part I)" by Tessa Morris-Suzuki.

QUOTE—

"...The “almost generic” problem of inter-service rivalry in the world of secret operations was very familiar to CIA operatives in Japan, because the same problem also plagued US intelligence operations in Japan during the occupation era. The CIA had been created in July 1947, but during the first years of its existence, its influence in Japan was circumscribed by the presence of a number of other US intelligence agencies, with whom its relations were often frosty. In the early stages of the occupation of Japan, the most powerful intelligence organizations were the Allied Occupation Authority’s Civil Intelligence Section (CIS) and the US Army’s intelligence section, G2, with its various subordinate bodies.

G2 was headed by the irascible and vehemently anti-communist Major General Charles A. Willoughby (1892-1972). Willoughby, who was the son of a German father and American mother and whose birth name was Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach, had moved to America at the age of eighteen and become a naturalized US citizen. As Takemae Eiji notes, “fellow Occupationaires mocked the General’s stiff Prussian bearing, referring to him alternately as ‘Sir Charles’ and ‘Baron von Willoughby’… Regarded as a martinet by his subordinates – he took a perverse pride in the epithet ‘Little Hitler’, and even MacArthur dubbed him ‘my loveable fascist’ – the volatile Willoughby nonetheless enjoyed the Supreme Commander’s full confidence”. Willoughby responded to his critics in kind, reserving his fiercest invective for the liberal press, whose journalists he called “bastards” and “pen prostitutes”, and accused of furnishing “aid and comfort to the enemy”. Occupying a dual role as head of intelligence both for US army forces in Japan and for the US Far Eastern Command, Willoughby possessed intelligence and counter-intelligence powers that encompassed the entire East Asian region. Jack Canon’s Z Unit, created in 1947, was just one of a large number of organizations through which he exercised those powers.

But after the establishment of the CIA, and particularly after the outbreak of the Korean War, Willoughby found himself having to share his turf with a growing number of other US intelligence organizations, and both he and his superior General Douglas MacArthur deeply resented the intrusion. The CIA gained its first significant foothold in Japan in 1948 via the blandly named Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a special unit created to engage in psychological warfare operations, and the Agency’s influence grew rapidly after the Korean conflict erupted in June 1950. In 1949, the first head of the CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, expressed optimism that “we have finally reached a satisfactory agreement with Willoughby, and I hope that it will keep up”. But the hope was forlorn. Relations between Willoughby and the CIA remained tense for decades. Willoughby was irked by the power of the CIA, but at the same time longed to be a part of the action, and after his departure from Japan in 1951 continued to bombard CIA Director Allen Dulles with offers of help and suggestions on how the Agency could improve its cooperation with the military: suggestions to which Dulles replied in the tone of courteous forbearance that bureaucrats often reserve for those they deeply dislike. As Willoughby explained to Dulles in 1961, “it was quite clear to me, based on my efforts to fit CIA into the MacArthur command structure in Japan, that you will always be in collision, overt or covert, with the [Armed] Services”. Meanwhile, intelligence gathering was also being carried out by a range of other US groups including the US Far East Air Forces (FEAF) and by several separate signals intelligence and communications units.

Eventually, it was the CIA that gained the upper hand in the struggle for intelligence control. Immediately after MacArthur’s dismissal in April 1951, Willoughby too returned to the United States in a state of “nervous slump”, handing over to the CIA his files, many of his contacts in Japan, and his messages of concern about the need to continue protecting and nurturing the former senior Imperial Army officers whom he considered “essential for rearmament”.

To the Victors, the Spies: Intelligence and the Transwar Regime

The making of Japan’s transwar regime began even before the formal surrender was signed. On 19 to 20 August 1945, a sixteen-person Japanese delegation traveled to Manila to negotiate with Douglas MacArthur, Charles Willoughby and others about the transfer of power to the incoming occupation forces. The delegation was led by the Imperial Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Kawabe Torashirō (1890-1960). Meanwhile, the Imperial Army’s chief of intelligence, Arisue Seizō (1895-1992), who on 8 August had been the first senior military official sent to Hiroshima to inspect the effects of the atomic bombing, was given the task of preparing the reception for MacArthur and his staff when they arrived at Atsugi Airbase.

Despite Arisue’s first-hand experiences in Hiroshima, his attitude to the victors, like Kawabe’s, was so welcoming that both men quickly won the trust of the US command. Charles Willoughby, an outspoken admirer of Benito Mussolini, may also have been attracted to Arisue by the fact that the former intelligence chief had once served as Japanese Military Attache in Rome, where he had developed a similar enthusiasm for Italian Fascism and reportedly attempted to develop a joint Japanese-Italian strategy towards the Muslim world. Rather than being investigated for war crimes, therefore, Arisue was “interrogated, then called in for consultation very early in the occupation”, and “a working relationship apparently developed”.

Arisue was soon installed by Willoughby in a section of G2’s headquarters in the NYK Building in central Tokyo, where his ostensible task was to collect and analyze archives and write monographs about Japan’s wartime activities. One advantage of this appointment was the opportunities it provided, not only to unearth and preserve the archive of Japan’s military actions in Asia, but also to make parts of it disappear from the record (so continuing a process which had begun with the destruction of many documents during the last days of the war). A US official note from May 1946 advises that some Japanese War Ministry documents “of a special nature” are absent from the catalogue of files that had been drawn up, “having been left in the charge of Arisue.”

Arisue’s new position of trust with the American forces enabled him to provide financial support to Kawabe Torashirō, who also soon became a key informant to the occupation forces; and Arisue then proceeded to recruit a number of other leading former military figures, including Hattori Takushirō, who had held key positions in the Imperial army general staff, and later Tsuji Masanobu, a wartime colonel and military strategist who was regarded as one of the architects of the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, and had gone into hiding during the early occupation era after being listed as a Class A war criminal. As Willoughby later wrote, these people had been “the brains” of the former Imperial Japanese general staff: “monographs were just a cover, to keep them from starving”. Equally importantly, the research activities of Arisue, Kawabe, Hattori, Tsuji and others enabled them to become crucial conduits of information for the US occupiers – a role to which they took with enthusiasm. They rapidly reestablished their authority over now unemployed former military subordinates, creating a web of private intelligence organizations which provided information to the Americans in return for a variety of monetary and other rewards. This web, as we shall see, extended across borders into many parts of the former Japanese empire.

Kawabe Torashirō had no previous intelligence background, but, the CIA observed, “as the last active representative of the Japanese General Staff free to act on behalf of the Army, he has the authority to order cooperation from such Japanese as he might choose, and he has apparently chosen well”. By 1948, Kawabe’s private intelligence gathering organization was working in close cooperation with those of Arisue and others, in a powerful combination sometimes known as the KATO Organization (Katō Kikan), after the initials of its four core ex-military leaders: Kawabe, Arisue, and former senior military officers Tanaka Ryūkichi and Ōikawa Genshichi. The Katō Kikan cooperated and competed with a host of similar though less powerful secret or semi-secret organizations, many of them created by former military officers. The process by which these groups were formed and re-formed is outlined by the 1951 CIA report on the Japanese intelligence services: “An ‘expert’, contacted by an American agency, would form a group out of personnel known to him who happened to be available and willing. Often such groups would include non-professionals. Associations in the underground became fluid as they received the backing of first one prominent political and military figure and then another”. At least for part of the occupation period, organizations like Kawabe’s were largely (and covertly) funded by US authorities..."

—END QUOTE

As you can see, the precursor to the CIA's assassination capabilities were set up under a United Army Counterintelligence operative named COL. Joseph Young "Cactus Jack" Canon, whose "Z-Unit" hunter-killer assassination team was absorbed by the Office of Policy Coordination, later the Directorate of Plans.

A photograph of COL. Canon from 1946.

COL. Canon's "Z-Unit" was supported by an autonomous intelligence organization called, "Katō Kikan," whose commander was a savagely cruel Imperial Japanese war criminal by the name of Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue.

A photograph of Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue from 1944.

Both the Katō Kikan and Z-Unit would later be completely absorbed by a joint CIA-Japanese intelligence organization called, "Naikaku Chōsa-Shitsu," or in English, "Cabinet Research Office."

The liaison to the CIA until 1955 within the innocuously titled "Cabinet Research Office" was Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue—that is until he was replaced by the new CIA Chief of Covert Action in Tokyo, Japan, Everette Howard Hunt Jr., who took over CIA assassination operations in Japan under the cryptonym BGSAMURAI.

Perhaps the above information is why the Japanese CIA files surrounding President Kennedy's murder are so sensitive?

Unravel the Japanese covert action thread, and the whole show is blown.

RM--

Thank you for opening up yet another window into CIA (and precursor) ops.

Obviously, deposing leaders or candidates, by character assassination or the real thing, is CIA old hat, and continues to this day, offshore and domestically.  

I see the BGSAMURAI reference in the doc you presented.

But how do we know E Howard Hunt was conducting assassinations in Japan or neighboring regions, from this doc? 

[Robert Montenegro]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

But how do we know E Howard Hunt was conducting assassinations in Japan or neighboring regions, from this doc? 

Well, right off the bat, Mr. Cole, the job title that E. Howard Hunt operated under in 1955, while stationed in Tokyo, Japan, was literally "Chief of Covert Action."

No need to expound on what that entails, he was literally in charge of all covert operations—psychological warfare, political action, paramilitary support, studies & surveillance, establishing fronts & safe-houses and wet-works—that all falls under the umbrella of covert operations.

Now, it must be understood that the CIA's operations in Japan were more of less, of a support capacity—that is to say, by 1955, the Japanese government of the Liberal Democratic Party, was running covert operations autonomously on a parallel track to CIA ops, via Naikaku Chōsa-Shitsu. 

This was accomplished due to the covert machinations an Imperial Japanese Class-A war criminal, turned CIA asset (and while E. Howard Hunt was DDP Chief in Tokyo, Hunt subordinate) named Rear Admiral Yoshio Kodama.

RADM Kodama was Lt. Gen. Arisue's subordinate under COL. Canon's Z-Unit operation.

Unfortunately, I do not have the time to get into all of RADM Kodama's covert operations in support of E. Howard Hunt's CIA tenure in Tokyo, however, I can point you to a very good resource:

http://visupview.blogspot.com/search?q=kodama 

(Full disclosure, I am a silent contributor to the VISUP blog, if that is any consolation).

Plus, read the volumes of CIA documents on RADM Kodama:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/search/site/Kodama Yoshio

 

Edited July 8, 2023 by Robert Montenegro

[Lawrence Schnapf]

@Joseph Backes  I dont think you are reading the document properly or at least you viewing this through your usual political bias.

Paragraph 2 of this March 1996 cable refers to Ambassador Mondale's concerns. Moreover, paragraph 3 of the next very document (10051) states "we recommend that quotes from Ambassador Mondelle supporting [redacted] position, should also be included."

yes-these are cables from CIA but I am correct that Ambassador Mondale objected to release of certain assassination documents because it would cause problems with the Japanese relationship- which was his job to protect and preserve.   

There is nothing wront with saying Ambassador Mondale objected to release of assasination records. it does not remove him from the pedestal you seem to have created for him. It is simply a reality check. 

You are a good researcher but you stumble when you try to inject politics into your analysis. and why you feel compelled to take such cheap shots at me is disappointing. I frequently call on you in the JFK Facts podcasts to share your expertise. You could have discussed this on the podcast instead of this broadside which has taken me away from preparations for our upcoming oral argument.    

[Leslie Sharp]

On 7/7/2023 at 8:27 PM, Robert Montenegro said:

 

The modern Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations (formerly, the Directorate of Plans), had it's beginnings in an organization called "Katō Kikan," whose headquarters was originally based at Naval Air Station Atsugi, which, by 1955, housed Marine Air Control Squadron 1, where Mr. Lee Oswald was attached to forward operations targeting Chinese airspace.

The following entry should be read with the most supreme sobriety, for it displays a glimpse of what is being hidden by modern US intelligence, concerning the history of covert operations, surveillance and "executive action," from an article called, "Democracy's Porous Borders: Espionage, Smuggling and the Making of Japan's Transwar Regime (Part I)" by Tessa Morris-Suzuki.

QUOTE—

"...The “almost generic” problem of inter-service rivalry in the world of secret operations was very familiar to CIA operatives in Japan, because the same problem also plagued US intelligence operations in Japan during the occupation era. The CIA had been created in July 1947, but during the first years of its existence, its influence in Japan was circumscribed by the presence of a number of other US intelligence agencies, with whom its relations were often frosty. In the early stages of the occupation of Japan, the most powerful intelligence organizations were the Allied Occupation Authority’s Civil Intelligence Section (CIS) and the US Army’s intelligence section, G2, with its various subordinate bodies.

G2 was headed by the irascible and vehemently anti-communist Major General Charles A. Willoughby (1892-1972). Willoughby, who was the son of a German father and American mother and whose birth name was Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach, had moved to America at the age of eighteen and become a naturalized US citizen. As Takemae Eiji notes, “fellow Occupationaires mocked the General’s stiff Prussian bearing, referring to him alternately as ‘Sir Charles’ and ‘Baron von Willoughby’… Regarded as a martinet by his subordinates – he took a perverse pride in the epithet ‘Little Hitler’, and even MacArthur dubbed him ‘my loveable fascist’ – the volatile Willoughby nonetheless enjoyed the Supreme Commander’s full confidence”. Willoughby responded to his critics in kind, reserving his fiercest invective for the liberal press, whose journalists he called “bastards” and “pen prostitutes”, and accused of furnishing “aid and comfort to the enemy”. Occupying a dual role as head of intelligence both for US army forces in Japan and for the US Far Eastern Command, Willoughby possessed intelligence and counter-intelligence powers that encompassed the entire East Asian region. Jack Canon’s Z Unit, created in 1947, was just one of a large number of organizations through which he exercised those powers.

But after the establishment of the CIA, and particularly after the outbreak of the Korean War, Willoughby found himself having to share his turf with a growing number of other US intelligence organizations, and both he and his superior General Douglas MacArthur deeply resented the intrusion. The CIA gained its first significant foothold in Japan in 1948 via the blandly named Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a special unit created to engage in psychological warfare operations, and the Agency’s influence grew rapidly after the Korean conflict erupted in June 1950. In 1949, the first head of the CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, expressed optimism that “we have finally reached a satisfactory agreement with Willoughby, and I hope that it will keep up”. But the hope was forlorn. Relations between Willoughby and the CIA remained tense for decades. Willoughby was irked by the power of the CIA, but at the same time longed to be a part of the action, and after his departure from Japan in 1951 continued to bombard CIA Director Allen Dulles with offers of help and suggestions on how the Agency could improve its cooperation with the military: suggestions to which Dulles replied in the tone of courteous forbearance that bureaucrats often reserve for those they deeply dislike. As Willoughby explained to Dulles in 1961, “it was quite clear to me, based on my efforts to fit CIA into the MacArthur command structure in Japan, that you will always be in collision, overt or covert, with the [Armed] Services”. Meanwhile, intelligence gathering was also being carried out by a range of other US groups including the US Far East Air Forces (FEAF) and by several separate signals intelligence and communications units.

Eventually, it was the CIA that gained the upper hand in the struggle for intelligence control. Immediately after MacArthur’s dismissal in April 1951, Willoughby too returned to the United States in a state of “nervous slump”, handing over to the CIA his files, many of his contacts in Japan, and his messages of concern about the need to continue protecting and nurturing the former senior Imperial Army officers whom he considered “essential for rearmament”.

To the Victors, the Spies: Intelligence and the Transwar Regime

The making of Japan’s transwar regime began even before the formal surrender was signed. On 19 to 20 August 1945, a sixteen-person Japanese delegation traveled to Manila to negotiate with Douglas MacArthur, Charles Willoughby and others about the transfer of power to the incoming occupation forces. The delegation was led by the Imperial Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Kawabe Torashirō (1890-1960). Meanwhile, the Imperial Army’s chief of intelligence, Arisue Seizō (1895-1992), who on 8 August had been the first senior military official sent to Hiroshima to inspect the effects of the atomic bombing, was given the task of preparing the reception for MacArthur and his staff when they arrived at Atsugi Airbase.

Despite Arisue’s first-hand experiences in Hiroshima, his attitude to the victors, like Kawabe’s, was so welcoming that both men quickly won the trust of the US command. Charles Willoughby, an outspoken admirer of Benito Mussolini, may also have been attracted to Arisue by the fact that the former intelligence chief had once served as Japanese Military Attache in Rome, where he had developed a similar enthusiasm for Italian Fascism and reportedly attempted to develop a joint Japanese-Italian strategy towards the Muslim world. Rather than being investigated for war crimes, therefore, Arisue was “interrogated, then called in for consultation very early in the occupation”, and “a working relationship apparently developed”.

Arisue was soon installed by Willoughby in a section of G2’s headquarters in the NYK Building in central Tokyo, where his ostensible task was to collect and analyze archives and write monographs about Japan’s wartime activities. One advantage of this appointment was the opportunities it provided, not only to unearth and preserve the archive of Japan’s military actions in Asia, but also to make parts of it disappear from the record (so continuing a process which had begun with the destruction of many documents during the last days of the war). A US official note from May 1946 advises that some Japanese War Ministry documents “of a special nature” are absent from the catalogue of files that had been drawn up, “having been left in the charge of Arisue.”

Arisue’s new position of trust with the American forces enabled him to provide financial support to Kawabe Torashirō, who also soon became a key informant to the occupation forces; and Arisue then proceeded to recruit a number of other leading former military figures, including Hattori Takushirō, who had held key positions in the Imperial army general staff, and later Tsuji Masanobu, a wartime colonel and military strategist who was regarded as one of the architects of the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, and had gone into hiding during the early occupation era after being listed as a Class A war criminal. As Willoughby later wrote, these people had been “the brains” of the former Imperial Japanese general staff: “monographs were just a cover, to keep them from starving”. Equally importantly, the research activities of Arisue, Kawabe, Hattori, Tsuji and others enabled them to become crucial conduits of information for the US occupiers – a role to which they took with enthusiasm. They rapidly reestablished their authority over now unemployed former military subordinates, creating a web of private intelligence organizations which provided information to the Americans in return for a variety of monetary and other rewards. This web, as we shall see, extended across borders into many parts of the former Japanese empire.

Kawabe Torashirō had no previous intelligence background, but, the CIA observed, “as the last active representative of the Japanese General Staff free to act on behalf of the Army, he has the authority to order cooperation from such Japanese as he might choose, and he has apparently chosen well”. By 1948, Kawabe’s private intelligence gathering organization was working in close cooperation with those of Arisue and others, in a powerful combination sometimes known as the KATO Organization (Katō Kikan), after the initials of its four core ex-military leaders: Kawabe, Arisue, and former senior military officers Tanaka Ryūkichi and Ōikawa Genshichi. The Katō Kikan cooperated and competed with a host of similar though less powerful secret or semi-secret organizations, many of them created by former military officers. The process by which these groups were formed and re-formed is outlined by the 1951 CIA report on the Japanese intelligence services: “An ‘expert’, contacted by an American agency, would form a group out of personnel known to him who happened to be available and willing. Often such groups would include non-professionals. Associations in the underground became fluid as they received the backing of first one prominent political and military figure and then another”. At least for part of the occupation period, organizations like Kawabe’s were largely (and covertly) funded by US authorities..."

—END QUOTE

As you can see, the precursor to the CIA's assassination capabilities were set up under a United Army Counterintelligence operative named COL. Joseph Young "Cactus Jack" Canon, whose "Z-Unit" hunter-killer assassination team was absorbed by the Office of Policy Coordination, later the Directorate of Plans.

A photograph of COL. Canon from 1946.

COL. Canon's "Z-Unit" was supported by an autonomous intelligence organization called, "Katō Kikan," whose commander was a savagely cruel Imperial Japanese war criminal by the name of Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue.

A photograph of Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue from 1944.

Both the Katō Kikan and Z-Unit would later be completely absorbed by a joint CIA-Japanese intelligence organization called, "Naikaku Chōsa-Shitsu," or in English, "Cabinet Research Office."

The liaison to the CIA until 1955 within the innocuously titled "Cabinet Research Office" was Lt. Gen. Seizō Arisue—that is until he was replaced by the new CIA Chief of Covert Action in Tokyo, Japan, Everette Howard Hunt Jr., who took over CIA assassination operations in Japan under the cryptonym BGSAMURAI.

Perhaps the above information is why the Japanese CIA files surrounding President Kennedy's murder are so sensitive?

Unravel the Japanese covert action thread, and the whole show is blown.

Great dive into this history, Robert. 
 
For the purpose of distilling down its relevance to the specifics of Lancelot Project - the successful plot to assassinate Kennedy in Dallas  — and relying on Lafitte's 1963 datebook for guardrails lest we slip down fox holes, Hank Albarelli uncovered that Lafitte was acting as liaison / project manager on behalf of strategist N-zai Otto Skorzeny and CI James Angleton's crew including Wm King Harvey and Tracey Barnes  — the following from  Albarelli's final investigation: Coup in Dallas, pub. November 19, 2021, fleshes out the details.

(note: General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's favorite little fascist, appears in a total of 11 entries in Lafitte's 1963 record.)

The following excerpts from Coup underscore the professional history — some of which is highlighted in Monté's historical review — shared by Willoughby and General Edwin Walker and those who pulled off the assassination of Kennedy in Dallas outside any structure other than that necessary for the success of the specific plot, relying solely on the common bonds of blind-loyalty, coordinated skills and trust, and above all, ideology.

Excerpts:
Between October 1st, when Lafitte says that he sent a cable to Madrid that all was ok, and to tell Tom D. (Davis), he then notes, O. says come to Madrid.  Eight days later, in the most incriminating statement written by Lafitte to date reveals a recap of Otto’s strategy, worth repeating once again now that we have Otto’s role as tactician in context:  

OSARN_OSARN_OSARN_

OSARN-get Willoughby-Litt- 

plus Souetre, others (Hungarians)

Lancelot proj - kill squads Dallas,

New York, Tampa-(Labadie) -T says 

called Oswald to purpose [sic]- weapons- 

Walker. Davis in N.O. with 

swamp groups Florida (Decker, 

Bender, Vickers, K of M)---

 

To underscore the ideology driving Otto Skorzeny's choice for involvement in the plot to kill Kennedy, one that unites all those named on October 9 including Lafitte, the history of the Secret Organization of National Revolutionary Action (OSARN) as presented in Chapter 1 warrants repeating as well: 

OSARN was closely aligned with Benito Mussolini and Hitler. OSARN’s purpose was stated: “We want to build a new Europe in cooperation with national socialist German and all other European nations freed from liberal capitalism, Judaism, Bolshevism and French Masons . . . to regenerate France and the French race . . . to ensure that Jews who stay in France are subject to harsh laws, preventing them from infesting our race. . . . OSARN was also closely associated with Reinhardt Heydrich, head of the dreaded National Socialist Gestapo.” 

By 5th of November, within a day or two of Tom and Carolyn Davis’s arrival in Madrid, Otto had told Pierre that Lancelot is a “go,” adding reference to a “phone booth.”  This is particularly telling if the Davis couple had just delivered detailed schematics of Dealey Plaza and the kill zone.  By November 15th, Otto seems to have reconsidered the tech building - phone booth/bridge, telling Lafitte to “turn them.”  That is the last mention of Otto or Ilse Skorzeny until the 28th, when Pierre makes a note to “call Madrid.” The 1st of December, he is sending cables to New York and Madrid.

 

Hired Guns

Askins?

—Lafitte datebook, September 12, 1963

 

Askins - Willoughby OK

—Lafitte datebook, October 2, 1963

 

Canon-- S + V?

—Lafitte datebook, September 14 1963

 

Willoughby team – Canon (Z org) D.

—Lafitte datebook, November 21, 1963

 

 

“Cactus Jack” Canon

 The November 21 entry in the 1963 records of Pierre Lafitte constitutes an “endgame” in his running chronicle of plans to assassinate the president. These authors are convinced that Z Org is the unit long controlled by Col. Joseph (Jack) Young Canon. 

            Described as a taciturn, gun-loving Texan, Canon served under Gen. Charles Willoughby during the US Army occupation of Japan, running a Gestapo-like institution called the “Z Unit.” Canon and his subordinates engaged in some of the same kinds of torturous practices that would later be seen during the United States’ occupation of Iraq. He and Willoughby were busily fighting the Cold War in Southeast Asia at an early stage, and doing so with very little supervision because their commanding officer, General Douglas MacArthur was also slavishly devoted to the anti-communist cause. Although Unit Z was formally dissolved in 1952, with Canon moving on to assignments in the Middle East, including Cairo, “many of its operations continued thereafter, and Canon continued to visit Japan at least until the mid-1950s,” writes historian Teresa Morris-Suzuki. . . . 
 

Col. Charles “Boots” Askins, Jr.

Boots Askins was a storied gunman in Texas since the early 1930s, and had moved within far-right circles all his life. Author Jeffrey Caufield, in his study of the assassination of JFK, features a letter from Joseph Milteer (himself a racist and far right associate of Willoughby and Walker) to Charles Askins pertaining to a forthcoming meeting of one of the myriad clandestine organizations that the radical right was running during the ’60s, indicating very “hush-hush” stuff. 

            Born in October 1907, the son of a prominent hunter and writer, Askins Jr. followed in his father’s footprints and, according to legend, "left some marks deeper than his dad."  Prior to enlisting in the US Army, Askins had served in the US Forest Service and Border Patrol in the American Southwest.  

            During WWII, he served as a battlefield recovery officer, making landings in North Africa, Italy, and D-day. Following the war, he was posted in Spain as an attaché to the American embassy, assisting Franco’s administration in rebuilding the arms and ammunition factories after the war. This is but one clue that Askins was well known to General Willoughby and through that connection, he knew fellow Texan “Cactus Jack” Canon. In his role at the embassy in Madrid, Askins undoubtedly encountered Johannes Bernhardt of SOFINDUS, Otto Skorzeny, and Victor Oswald, all of whom need no further introduction to our reader. As attaché, Askins would also have been familiar with US Embassy officials including CIA agent Al Ulmer, and fellow attaché Jere Wittington, Otto and Ilse’s close friend and minder. 

As I've exceeded my EF allotment to attach links from private images, the images of Askins and Canon post-military service can be found here:
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/askins-on-the-1911/
https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/inside-story-of-us-black-ops-in-post-war-japan/