Secret Societies, Narcoterrorism, International Fascism, and the World Anti-Communist League Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the mysterious World Anti-Communist League (WACL). In a sense the League functioned not unlike long time bugaboos of the conspiratorial right such as the Round Table group and the Trilateral Commission. But whereas the Round Table groups and the Trilateral Commission were chiefly driven by American and European banking interests the WACL was thoroughly reactionary. During the 1970s and 1980s the League emerged as a powerful international body that brought together far right wing regimes across the world.

Within the United States it frequently worked in conjunction with the American Security Council (ASC, an equally mysterious group that I have written at great length on here, here, here and here), a organization that many WACL members also held membership in. Frequently the agenda of the WACL/ASC crowd would come into conflict with the highly Eurocentric and Anglophilic Round Table group and it's American branch, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

As discussed at length in part one, the origins of the WACL lay with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), a group originating in Nazi Germany and dominated by "former" Nazi Quislings; and the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (ASAPC). The ASAPC was founded by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and would eventually receive significant support from the Korean CIA, cult leader Sun Myung Moon and Japanese yakuza chief Yoshio Kodama. Much of the financial support for the ASAPC as well as Moon's Unification Church was likely provided by the Korean CIA as well as the massive profits Chiang and Kodama made from drug trafficking.

the Generalissimo (top) and Kodama (bottom)

By all accounts the opium empire that Chiang and Kodama erected was vast. German researcher Henrik Kruger would even go so far as to allege that Chiang's Kuomintang party (KMT) and other assorted over and underworld allies cornered the world opium market in the early 1970s after what Kruger dubbed the "great heroin coup." It resulted in the almost total eradication of the Marseilles-based Corsican mafia, the so-called "French Connection," that had dominated the world opium trade since the end of the Second World War.

"When the heroin flow from Marseilles was shut off in 1972-73, two new sources of supply immediately filled the vacuum. Southeast Asia – Laos, Burma and Thailand – suddenly produced vast amounts of white no. 4 heroin, the type that supposedly could only be produced by Marseilles chemists. The high quality heroin went primarily to the 40 percent of all U.S. heroin addicts who were living in New York, and who were accustomed to Marseilles heroin. The other new source was Mexico. But it's product, the less pure 'brown sugar,' served mainly to regulate the market and to generate new customers.

"The remarkable switch from Turkey-Merseilles-U.S.A. to Southeast Asia-Mexico-U.S.A. shifted billions of dollars and the power that comes with it. Such a market revolution could not have happened without astute planning and direction, which demanded political savvy and political cooperation. The plans of this tremendous heroin coup were on somebody's drawing board before Nixon and Georges Pompidou met in early 1970. They were made long before Attorney General John Mitchell and French Justice Minister Raymond Marcellin met in Paris on 26 February 1971, when they sign the anti-narcotics agreement that led to the eradication of the Corsican drug Mafia. Most probably they were in place by 1968...

"Involved in one way or another in the planning, the execution, or both, were: President Nixon and part of the White House staff; Meyer Lansky's corrupt gangster syndicate – in particular its Cuban exile wing run by Florida capo Santo Trafficante, Jr.; the Cuba/China lobby; ultrareactionary forces in Southeast Asia; primarily the Kuomintang Chinese on Taiwan and in the Golden Triangle; and intelligence and law-enforcement factions of the CIA and BNDD/DEA.

"It was, needless to say, not a willful conspiracy of all the above. But we can assert with reasonable certainty that the CIA, Trafficante, and other mafiosi, certain Southeast Asians, and some people in the White House must have been in the know."

(The Great Heroin Coup, Henrik Kruger, pgs. 121-122)

Kruger would go onto speculate that the WACL had been one of the principal groups behind this coup.

"In my opinion, the central manipulator in the whole narcotics scheme was the CIA, or rather a faction within it. It is erroneous to treat the agency as a monolith. Various lobby groups have their own agents in the company, generating internal power struggles that reflect political polarization external to the CIA. There are, doubtless, CIA factions wholeheartedly in favor of ending America's policeman and oppressor roles, and in favor of social democratic rather than right wing regimes... Within the agency there remain powerful groups promoting continued support of 'old friends' in Latin America and Southeast Asia. The China/Cuba lobby has traditionally been one of the most influential within the CIA, and there's little reason to believe that the situation seriously changed...

"The evidence suggests that the forces behind the unofficial policy were able to place many of their loyal CIA agents in the DEA, and in such private intelligence agency covers as Intertel and Wackenhut, where they continue their tasks while letting the agency washing its hands. Intelligence is still gathered by the CIA, but some of the dirtiest operations are now performed by 'former' agents.

"We cannot, of course, discount the possibility that the unofficial policy is in fact executed by former agents who had either been purged from the agency, or left in protest against its more moderate line. However, that implies that a renegade CIA faction now runs an independent secret service, aided by lobby interest – i.e., not Intertel, but an even more powerful 'third force.' If that is so, I can come up with only one lobby group with the relevant motives as well as the power to back them – the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). WACL can mobilize CIA agents closely associated with the China/Cuba/Chile lobby, especially the large contingent of former agents of the Gehlen/Vlassov organization (the intelligence agency run by Hitler's master spy Reinhard Gehen, which became the BND, the West German equivalent of the CIA).

"E. Howard was clearly the China/Cuba/Latin America lobby's, man. That he is also tied to WACL is suggested by the fact that William F. Buckley, Hunt's close friend for twenty years and the godfather of his children, was one of the WACL's top U.S. supporters. Also connected to the same lobby groups are Lucian Conein and the State Department's former intelligence chief, Ray S. Cline, who continues to be a frequent guest at the Taiwan WACL stronghold."

(ibid, pgs. 192-193)

legendary National Review publisher William F. Buckley (top), OSS/CIA/DEA assassin Lucian Conein (middle) and good old China cowboy Ray S. Cline (bottom), all early supporters of the League

But no sooner had the coup been completed than Afghanistan began to rapidly overtake the Golden Triangle as the major opium producing region of the world. That what would soon become a valuable US alley would support themselves by trafficking drugs is hardly surprising – in point of fact, this pattern had been firmly entrenched by the US's long alliance with the China lobby during the preceding years. And yet the initial support for the Afghanistan rebels seemingly came not from the China Lobby/WACL faction within the US intelligence community but from Jimmy Carter's NSA chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, a co-founder of the Trilateral Commission.

"In May 1979, the ISI put CIA in touch with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the mujahideen warlord with perhaps the smallest following inside Afghanistan. Hekmatyar was also the leading mujahideen drug trafficker, and the only one to develop his own complex of six heroin labs in an ISI-controlled area of Baluchistan (Pakistan)...

"... The question is rather why Brzezinski agreed to an alliance with this drug connection, and proceeded almost immediately to protect it from critical snoops like David Musto... It is important to establish why the United States accepted an arrangement whereby of the $2 billion It supplied to the mujahideen in the 1980s, Hekmatyar, a leading drug trafficker, is estimated to have received more than half.

"Let me clarify the blowback from Brzezinski's two decisions: Hekmatyar and Saudi-backed Islamist Abdul Rasul Sayyaf – the two principal instruments of his policies – became, far more conspicuously than Osama bin Laden, the protectors of the first al Qaeda plots against America. Al Qaeda itself can be traced principally to the thousands of Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) followers that Egypt released in the 1980s to fight in Afghanistan..."

(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pg 74)

Zbigniew Brzezinski (top) and Afghan drug lord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

While it's tempting to speculate that Brzezinski's mujahedeen represented some type of counter coup of the heroin market the reality is that elements of the WACL and the Fascist International are present just beneath the surface of the Afghan support network. The chief US lobbyist for the mujahedeen was of course Democratic Representative Charles Wilson of Texas. Wilson in turn was a member of the American Security Council, a group whose membership shares more than a little overlap with the WACL, as noted above.

"One such interest was the American Security Council, which took an active interest in lobbying for an increased effort in Vietnam in the 1960s, and in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Charles Wilson himself was a member of the American Security Council Task Force on Central America. An ASC staff member, Odilie English, toured Afghanistan several times in the 1980s, before becoming the PR director for the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, and more recently lobbyist for the Northern Alliance. The chair of the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, Major General Milnor Roberts (ret.), was vice president of the ASC."

(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 6)

Representative Charles Wilson (top) and General J. Milnor Roberts (bottom)

General Milnor Roberts was also a chairman of the United States Council for World Freedom (USCWF), the American branch of the WACL. The WACL's 1984 and 1985 conventions voted to support the mujahedeen as well. What's more, the WACL was maintaining close ties with the Middle East Security Council and the Arab League as well as the House of Saud by the late 1970s. Beyond this, the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood (which played a major role in the guerrilla war in Afghanistan against the Soviets) trace back to the Nazi regime.

"The Ikhwan settled primarily in Egypt, where they joined the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood created by Hassan Al Banna in 1928. He was a devout admirer of and corresponded with young Adolf Hitler. 'In heaven all off, on earth, Hitler' was their battle cry. Hassan's Muslim Brotherhood became a fully-integrated arm of the German intelligence and propaganda networks during WWII. They specialized in acts of terrorism and assassinations of Allied troops, promising German General Erwin Rommel that he would not find a single Allied soldier left alive when he arrived in Cairo.

"The Arab Nazis remain the only segment of the Third Reich that was never punished or even dismantled. After the war, the British Secret Service hired the Ikwahn terrorists, and used them as a fifth column in an attempt to destroy the infant state of Israel in 1948. When Gamal Nasser and the leftists took over Egypt, they banned this huge army of Arab Nazis, now numbering nearly three quarters of a million strong. In the 1950s the same Robber Barons who helped fund and create the original Saudi Ikwahn, convinced there Saudi partners to take them back. The Saudis gladly accepted the Nazi refugees from the Egypt Ikwahn and gave them citizenship...

"The Dulles brothers sold the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups to the ever-gullible Eisenhower as a counterweight to the Arab Communist. It was a tragic error. History records the Muslim Brotherhood as the parent organization of every subsequent Sunni terrorist group from Hamas to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Mohammed Qutb, the brother of the chief Nazi propagandist, was the personal tutor of young Osama bin Laden...

"The last time the Robber Barons took the Arab Nazis out of the closet was in the early 1980s, when the Muslim Brotherhood was reinforced in America to recruit the second generation of Arab fascists fight as Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, the Spiritual Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and head recruiter of the Mujahideen movement, was Osama bin Laden's religious mentor..."

(America's Nazi Secret, John Loftus, pgs. 14-16)

Further complicating the matter is the fact that the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, of which WACL mega-funder Yoshio Kodama dominated for decades, was one of the chief Asian forces behind the founding of the Rockefeller/Brzezinski-dominated Trilateral Commission. While the Trilateral Commission has typically been linked to the Round Table group and the Council on Foreign Relations it appears to be far less Anglophilic than the those groups.

The chief backer of the CFR had been the deeply Anglophilic J.P. Morgan, who had longstanding ties to the great British banking houses. The Rockefeller clan, who hailed from Ohio and who had never been entirely accepted by the nation's old guard Yankee elite, at times found themselves at odds against the J.P. Morgan faction of the American Establishment. Rockefeller and Morgan were the chief power brokers in the United States for much of the first half of the twentieth century. For years the Morgan faction had been the senior partners but the Rockefeller clan arguably became the most powerful family in America for much of the second half of the twentieth century while the Morgan faction went into decline.

John D. Rockefeller (top) and J.P. Morgan (bottom)

The Rockefeller clan did not seemingly have quite the same degree of attachment to the mother country as did Morgan and the CFR clique. The Trilateral Commission seems to have been an attempt at forging an international coalition that shared many of the same goals of the Round Table group/CFR while avoiding some of the rabid Anglo-isms of the former groups and including the emerging Asian power brokers that had long been aligned with the WACL/ASC faction. It also seems to have reluctantly embraced the more extreme measures of this latter faction as well if Afghanistan is any indication.

Trilateral Commission logo

Thus, it would seem that the Trilateral Commission and WACL wings of the international power structure were collaborating in this instance of global destabilization. Who this left ultimately in control of the region's opium trade is difficult to say but a loss of opium dollars at this point would not have adversely effected the finances of the WACL due to another surging drug market they became deeply involved in beginning in the 1970s: Cocaine from Latin America.

That various groups backed by the WACL were involved in trafficking cocaine by the 1970s there can be little doubt of. By the 1980s several of the major death squad-linked organizations aligned with the WACL were brazenly engaged in the cocaine market. The most blatant was instance of this was the support given to the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN), the largest of the Nicaraguan contras, by WACL chairman John Singlaub (a former general and CIA man who had been involved with the so-called "China cowboy" clique within the Agency).

"As chairman of the World Anti-Communist League, Singlaub made the revitalized international brotherhood the spearhead of these private groups anxious to actively combat communism everywhere; a principal target was Nicaragua.

"Since then, Singlaub claims to have raised millions of dollars in aid for the Contras and has made frequent trips to the FDN base camps on the on the Honduran border. He has also formed a private training academy for Salvadoran police forces and Nicaraguan contras, since the U.S. government will not..."

(Inside the League, Scott Anderson & John Lee Anderson, pg. 238)

General John Singlaub

Singlaub was extending WACL aid to the FDN at the same time the contra was becoming deeply involved in cocaine trafficking. The two key figures in this were Nicaraguan drug lord Norwin Meneses and Oscar Danilo Blandon, a former head of agricultural imports under Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. After Somoza was overthrown by the Sandinistas Blandon went into exile where he helped found the FDN. Meneses came up with the means by which they could raise funds for the contra.

"It was against that backdrop that Meneses and Blandon had been called to Honduras to meet with Enrique Bermudez, where they were told by the new FDN commander to raise money in California. It is understandable that they would have translated this to mean, by any means necessary. After all, crime had ensure the survival of Bermuez's legion in Guatemala. 

"And what was a little cocaine trafficking when compared to kidnapping and contract killings?"

(Dark Alliance, Gary Webb, pg. 75)

Meneses (top) and Blandon (bottom)

Blandon would ultimately engage in far more than just "a little cocaine trafficking." Webb would go on to describe Blandon as such:

"Head of multiton cocaine distribution ring in Los Angeles from 1981 to 1991. First major trafficker to make inroads into South Central Los Angeles in early 1980s, providing the street gangs with their first direct connection to the Colombian cocaine cartels. Longtime supplier to Freeway Rick Ross. Worked as part of the Meneses organization, but struck out on his own in 1985. Founded FDN chapter in Los Angeles. Arrested and convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1992, and became DEA informant..."

(ibid, pg 560)

Blandon and FDN were hardly the only League affiliates involved in cocaine trafficking. There was also Roberto D'Aubuisson, a major in the El Salvador military who would go on to found the "political party" known as Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). One of D'Aubuisson's top aides, Francisco "Chico" Guirola, would be linked to cocaine trafficking.

"... DEA records that said Guirola had been 'reportedly involved in cocaine and arms smuggling in El Salvador and Guatemala' and noted that he was a top aide to Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson...

"Guirola, who attended college in California with one of Anastasio Somoza's nephews, had allowed D'Aubuisson to use his house as a campaign headquarters when he ran for Salvadoran president in 1984. Guirola's passport, which was signed by D'Aubuisson, identified him as a 'special advisor' to the Salvadoran Assembly. He was also caring credentials from the Salvadoran attorney general's office."

(ibid, pgs. 256-257)

Roberto D'Aubuisson

Naturally D'Aubuisson and his ARENA party were members of the WACL as well as occasionally rubbing shoulders with the American Security Council.

"Roberto D'Aubuisson, closely identified with the death squads of El Salvador, is affiliated with the ARENA party and has served as that country's representative to WACL.

"During a 1981 trip to Washington, D.C., Roberto D'Aubuisson was an honored guest at an ASC conference, although D'Aubuisson had already been linked to El Salvadoran death squad activities, including the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The purpose of the D'Aubuisson visit was to enhance his support in Congress."

(Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pg. 85)

It's also possible Honduran affiliates of the League were connected to the drug trade. Juan Matta-Ballesteros, a distributor for the Medellin cartel, would turn Honduras into a major transit point for cocaine trafficking. He was also linked to the FDN.

"... SETCO, which happen to be owned by the Honduran drug kingpin Juan Matta Ballesteros, a fact that the U.S. Customs Service had known since 1983. 'SETCO was the principal company used by the Contras in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel for the FDN,' the CIA's Inspector General reported. '[Oliver] North also used SETCO for airdrops of military supplies to Contra forces inside Nicaragua.' In fact, that appears to have been the reason behind all of the State Department contracts that were awarded to cocaine smugglers: they were the same people the CIA had hired to do that work when the agency was running the show."

(Dark Alliance, Gary Webb, pg. 348)

Juan Matta Ballesteros

What's more, Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, a close alley of the League, was linked to a coup meant to restore him to power via funds generated by cocaine.

"... Jose Bueso Rosa, had been convicted in 1984 for his part in a bizarre scheme to assassinate the president of Honduras, Roberto Suazo Cordova, and stage a coup d'état, using the proceeds of a giant cocaine sell to finance it. President Suazo had drawn Bueso Rosa's wrath by dumping Honduran Army chief General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, a fanatical anti-Communist who was one of the fathers and chief supporters of the Contras. Bueso Rosa, a Honduran general, had been one of Alvarez's top aides, and the cocaine coup was intended to restore Alvarez and his men to power.

"Unfortunately for the plotters, two American military officers they hired to murder Suazo went to the FBI. In late October 1984, a collection of Cubans and Honduran arms merchants were arrested at a remote island airstrip in Florida with 764 pounds of cocaine, valued at between $10 million and $40 million wholesale..."

(ibid, pg. 344)

Gustavo Alvarez Martinez

Clearly, the League seems to have had more than a passing stake in the Latin America cocaine trade. Indeed, there are even some indications that it staged a cocaine coup not unlike the early 1970s heroin coup researcher Henrik Kruger accused the League of. In the next installment in this series I shall consider the possibility of such a cocaine coup against the Medellin cartel. Stay tuned.

Secret Societies, Narcoterrorism, International Fascism and the World Anti-Communist League Part I

The blogosphere is awash with tales of highly secretive, globalistic groups and organizations working towards some type of sinister agenda. As I'm guessing many of the regular readers of this blog have surfed more than their fair share of said conspiracy sites it is probably not worth going into an extensive examination of the usual suspects – the Round Table groups (especially the infamous American branch, the Council on Foreign Relations), the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, etc. The conspiratorial right has long accused these groups of having some type of nefarious agenda and there is no doubt a basis in reality for these accusations. That being said, the objectives of such groups probably bear little resemblance to the predictable one-world-communistic-government-under-the-UN fever dreams the conspiratorial right has long envisioned.

What's more, this particular faction of elites is not the only game in town. As was considered at great length during my examination of the American Security Council (which can be found here, here, here and here), the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) saw its influence steadily wane in relation to the former group throughout the second half of the 20th century. The ASC was hardly an isolated faction within the United States, either. Indeed, it's hierarchy shared extensive overlap with the notorious international lobby group known as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) .

the League now calls itself the World League for Freedom and Democracy, which surely indicates someone inside the League has quite a dry sense of humor

In many ways the WACL became the chief organization for international fascism in the post-World War II era. Over the course of this series we shall examine the extensive ties between the WACL and various fascist and far right groups the world over as well as the profound, if little acknowledged, impact it would have on the political course of humanity by the 1980s. The WACL was far more than a lobby group, you see, and the means by which it sought to achieve its political ends would be instrumental in the formation of modern day drug trafficking and terrorism, both of which still being a disease at the very fiber of civilization to this day.

With this in mind, let us begin our examination of the WACL by focusing in on its origins. There were chiefly two groups responsible for the formation of the international group in 1966, both of which having laid the groundwork years before the official unveiling of the WACL. These two groups were the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) and the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). As it is the older of the two groups and has a less complex legacy, I shall begin with the ABN. The roots of the ABN in turn lie with the Quislings, the Central and Eastern European groups who collaborated with the Nazis both before and during (and after?) World War II.

"... In each of those Eastern European countries, the German SS set up or funded political action organizations that help form SS militias during the war.

"In Hungary, for example, the Arrow Cross was the Hungarian SS affiliate; in Romania, the Iron Guard. The Bulgarian Legion, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Latvian Legion, and the Byelorussian (White Russian) Belarus Brigade were all SS-linked. In each of their respective countries, they were expected to serve the interests of the German Nazi Party before and during the war.

"Many of these groups formed SS divisions: the Ukrainian Nationalist formed the 14th Galician Division, Waffen SS; the Latvians formed the 15th and 19th Divisions, Waffen SS; etc. These units and related German-controlled police units had several functions. The Ukrainian division unsuccessfully tried to impede the advance of the Soviet army against the Nazi army. Others hunted down those fellow countrymen who opposed the German occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II.

"More sadistically, many units rounded up hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, and others, and conducted mass murders on the spot, sometimes decimating whole villages. They perfected 'mobile killing teams' as efficient means of mass executions. Little is known about these units compared to the concentration camps, gas chambers, and ovens, but they were an integrated component of the 'Final Solution.' Approximately one-third of the victims of the Holocaust, perhaps as many as two million, died at the hands of these units."

(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 4-5)

the Ustase-backed Croatian parliament and officials from the Catholic Church

The above-mentioned "mobile killing teams" and their tendency to appear in nations before fascist regimes come to power will be especially relevant when I discussed the WACL's role in Central America during the 1980s, so keep that in mind. But for the time being, back to the ABN. The predecessor to the ABN was founded in Nazi Germany.

"The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), which took its current name in 1946, claims direct descent from the Committee of Subjugated Nations, which was formed in 1943 by Hitler's allies, including the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

"Nonetheless, while the name changed, the membership remained the same. The dominant leadership of the ABN came from the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera (OUN-B). The ABN brought together fascist forces from Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine, the Baltic states, Slovakia, and other nations. Today the ABN unites fascist émigré organizations from Eastern and Central Europe under one umbrella. It serves as a common milieu in which many Coalition for Peace Through Strength members, associate and network. It is also the Eastern European branch of World Anti-Communist League.

"A booklet published in 1960 by the ABN acknowledged its members alliance with Hitler: 'That many of us fought on the German side against Russian imperialism and Bolshevik is an, was in our national interest... the fact that some of us fought on the German side against Russia can be justified from the national, political, and moral point of view.'

"The ABN in more recent years has maintained the impression that they opposed the Nazis and Soviet simultaneously during World War II. This historically dubious impression is conveyed by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that leads ABN. But other groups that make up the ABN do not bother with an anti-Hitler pretense."

(ibid, pgs. 73-74)

ABN stamps

The above-mentioned Coalition for Peace Through Strength was an extension of the American Security Council, a group that worked closely with the WACL throughout the years. The chief movers and shakers behind the formation of the WACL, however, was the organization known as the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). The murky origins of this group lie with Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang party (KMT), the Korean CIA (KCIA), Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church and the Japanese underworld.

"In the 1960s, five Asians made major contributions to creating and promoting a movement that would spread to nearly one nations on six continents. One was a ruthless dictator who had seen his vast domain reduced to a tiny island through corruption and a series of military blunders. Another was a former communist who had saved his own life by turning in hundreds of his comrades for execution. Two were gangster; the fifth was an evangelist who planned to take over the world through the doctrine of 'Heavenly Deception.' They weren't what one would call a sterling assortment of characters; four of the five had spent time in prison, two for war crimes, one for anti-state activities, another on a morals charge. Yet, if it weren't for the collective efforts of Chiang Kai-shek, Park Chung Hee, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, there probably would not be a World Anti-Communist League today.

"The organization that Stetsko's Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations joined forces with in 1966 was dedicated to stemming the communist tide in Asia: the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). Formed in 1954, the Asian League was dedicated to uniting conservatives from all over the continent to battle the 'Red hordes' that threatened them all. When the ABN, the APACL, and other groups merged in 1966 to form the World Anti-Communist League it did not mean the end of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, but it's stature was reduced to regional affiliate of the larger organization.

"Although the Asian League was hailed in 1954 as a private formation of concerned citizens, parliamentarians, and clergy, it was actually a creation of South Korean intelligence agents and the Chinese government-in-exile of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In many respects, South Korea and Taiwan appeared to be natural allies. Chiang's Nationalists were isolated on the tiny island of Taiwan, or Formosa, and Korea was devastated and impoverished after the Korean War; both nations were desperately seeking anti-communist allies throughout the world. An organization in which conservative leaders from the United States and Europe could meet with their Asian counterparts seemed a good avenue for this."

(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pgs. 46-47) 

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek

Of the individuals behind the formation of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, the most significant are arguably Chiang Kai-shek and Yoshio Kodama, due in no small part to the financial backing that they gave the APACL and later the WAPL throughout the years. Chiang Kai-shek in particular was something of a trailblazer. He was one of the first dictators in the post-WWII to take up the mantle of an "Apartheid" state when he created modern day "Taiwan."

"Though the mainland was not completely conquered by Mao until 1949, Chiang had established his cronies on Formosa (named by the Portuguese, meaning 'beautiful') four years earlier. The native Formosans chafed under the Kuomintang rule, which had quickly monopolize the island's economy and government. In 1947, the natives, ardently pro-American, rebelled against the 'occupiers' and pushed for greater autonomy.

"If the Formosans were hoping for moderation from the Kuomintang or assistance from the Americans, they were soon disillusioned. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek may not have been able to defeat the communist, but the unarmed Formosans were a different story; under the cover of darkness, he rushed some twelve thousand of his Nationalist soldiers to the island. The massacre that ensued were indiscriminate and vast in scale...

"The March 1947 massacre took an estimated twenty thousand lives; the fledgling Formosan independence movement had been crushed and the way was paved for Chiang Kai-shek and his soldiers retreating from the mainland to establish a government-in-exile. The atrocity also prove the efficiency of total and unconventional warfare, a mode of combat the Nationalists would later teach to other anticommunist, often through the auspices of the World Anti-Communist League.

"By 1949, nearly a million Nationalists had flooded into Formosa. There they established the Republic of China, and imposed a rigid dictatorship over the indigenous population, which outnumber them fifteen to one. The Formosans, now called Taiwanese under Chiang's decree, were completely shut out of the government process, which became the domain of the Kuomintang. Business and factories belonging to natives were taken away and given to Chiang's cronies. Taiwanese suspected of harboring communist sympathies or opposing Chiang's role (to the government, the two were virtually synonymous) were executed or exiled to the prison on Green Island on the slightest pretext; this effectively crushed any opposition that remained."

(ibid, pgs. 47-49)

the Kuomintang seal

Years before the creation of Taiwan, when he still controlled mainland China, Chiang Kai-shek also pioneered another modern style of dictatorship: the Narco-state. It all began with the Generalissimo's takeover of the city of Shanghai with the assistance of American backers and a powerful drug lord in 1927.

"... Armed with 5,000 rifles provided by Sterling Fessenden, the American in charge of Shanghai's International Settlement, members of Du Yue-sheng's  Green Gang, headquartered in the French Concession, murdered hundreds of striking dockworkers. The so-called 'White Terror' secured the city of Shanghai for the KMT and its capitalist American backers.

"Chiang's fascist Kuomintang Party then formed China's Nationalist government and created an opium monopoly that was supposed end the illicit trade in opium, but which in fact ensured that it would be entirely controlled by the Kuomintang Party through crime lord Du Yue-sheng...

"After consolidating his power, Chiang would name Du Yue-sheng – an opium addict and respected member of Shanghai's Municipal Council – as chief Communist  Suppression Agent for Shanghai and chief of the Shanghai Opium Suppression Bureau. Bribes paid by Du reached French officials in Paris. When word of the payoffs resulted in a minor scandal, a new contingent of French officials were assigned to Shanghai, but Du simply moved into the suburbs and continued his operations unabated, in league with the Chinese Navy...

"With Chiang Kai-shek's ascent, and consent, drug smuggling from China became official, albeit unstated policy, and in July 1929, while pursuing leads from the Rothstein case, federal agents arrested. Mrs. Yang Kao in San Francisco. In her luggage was a large quantity of opium, heroin, morphine base. What made the Kao case so unusual, however, was that Mrs. Kao's husband was a top official in the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco. The consulate's chancellor was convicted along with the Kaos, as was the Chinese minister in Washington.

"The Kaos and their colleagues claimed diplomatic immunity, and before the case could be brought to trial in the US, Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon referred it to Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson. Placing national security interests above those of drug law enforcement, Stimson decided that the Kaos must be returned to China for trial. In December 1929 they set sail for Shanghai and freedom. And in the process American drug law enforcement suffered yet another irreversible setback."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 13-14)

Du Yue-sheng, the longtime leader of the legendary Green Gang

Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT party would remain one of the largest heroin traffickers in the world for decades afterwards. The phenomenal amount of money they generated in this endeavor was instrumental in funding an international lobbying campaign in favor of the brutal Taiwanese dictatorship. In the United States it eventually came to be known as the China Lobby and it would have an enormous influence on the modern right.

"... Throughout the Cold War years, many anticommunist groups could trace their organizational lineages to the 'China Lobby.' The term originated as a reference to Chinese agents of the Kuomintang, who during the 1940s sought to counteract U.S. leftists' attack on Chiang Kai-shek's government. Once the Chinese Communists had formally seize power over the mainland and had driven Chiang Kai-shek's army onto the island of Formosa, the China Lobby shifted its strategy towards prevention of any kind of international diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic."

(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pg. 41)

The China Lobby would do far more than this. It actively schemed to draw the US into a re-conquest of mainland China. Such actions underscored the United State's entry into the Korean conflict.

"We have to look, first of all, at what Bruce Cumings... calls the historia abscondita or concealed history of the Korean War ('the worst of American postwar interventions, the most destructive, far more genocidal than Vietnam'). Powerful forces build up towards its outbreak in June 1950, from both the Soviet in the American side. On the American side, lobbying by Chiang Kai-shek... and others helped lead to the Korean War and the CAT role in it; this in turn led to the CAT airlift to the KMT troops in Burma.

"These events were marked by extraordinary intrigues that drew, at the time, multiple charges of diverse and opposing conspiracies. According to Cumings, the definitive chronicler of these intrigues, 'The China Lobby infiltrated the CIA, and vice versa;' and insiders knew by mid-1950 that the war would soon be coming..."

(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 60)

The above-mentioned CAT stands for Civil Air Transport, the notorious airline that would eventually be reorganized as Air America in the 1959. Air America was deeply involved in CIA-sanctioned drug trafficking, and this early incursion into Burma (which led to the Korean War) was driven by such things.

"... General Richard Stilwell. A special military advisor to the US ambassador to Italy from 1947 to 1949, Stilwell had helped the Christian Democrats and the Mafia solidify their positions. As CIA logistics chief in Asia from 1949 to 1952, he arranged for CAT to support General Li Mi's incursion from Burma into Yunnan and thus enabled the renegade general to bring to market 'a third of the world's illicit opium supply.'

"The plan to save Taiwan advanced on 7 November 1949, when privateer William S. Pawley received permission from Secretary of State Dean Acheson to lead a group of retired military officers, headed by Admiral Charles Cooke, to Taiwan to advise the KMT on security affairs. No stranger to political intrigues or the underworld, Pawley owned sugar plantations, an airline and a bus system in Cuba, and was linked to Mafia leaders who had investments there too. He was well connected to the espionage establishment as well: Bill Donovan met with Chiang Kai-shek's defense minister and secret police chief to grease the skids on Pawley's behalf, and William Bullitt in December began raising funds for the so-called Pawley-Cooke Advisory Mission – the lion share of which was provided by a group of Texas oilman led by right-wing fanatic H. L. Hunt, a one time professional gambler who, in his younger days, helped finance his empire by running a private racing wire...

"Pawley's collusion with Cooke, Donovan, Goodfellow, Bullitt, and Hunt is a textbook example of how Establishment privateers run the secret government. And naturally, the mission dovetailed with federal narcotics activities. In January 1950 Goodfellow traveled to Taipei with Cooke, and in April, Bullitt's bagman arrived. Soon thereafter, a 'Colonel Williams' introduced the bagman to Satiris Fassoulis, 'who gave him $500,000 for a PR campaign on Taiwan.'"

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 78)

Regular readers of this blog are of course already familiar with several of the personalities mentioned above. William Pawley was a major figure in the early days of the American Security Council (as noted here) while H.L. Hunt was one of the chief sugar daddies of the modern conservative movement, in terms of both "overworld" and grassroots (which I briefly addressed before in this post) elements. The "Colonel Williams" is almost surely Garland Williams, a notorious Federal Bureau of Narcotics officer (and supposedly the mentor of the even more notorious George Hunter White) who originally became involved in the US intelligence community when he served under military intelligence head General Ralph Van Deman during the First World War. General Van Deman was of course one of the chief architects of American "industrial security," a murky netherworld closely linked to the American Security Council that was addressed at length before here and here. But I digress.

William Pawley (top) and H.L. Hunt (bottom)

The KMT and their drug trafficking later helped drag the United States into Vietnam as well.

"Since 1958, KMT forces, under pressure in Burma, had relocated to towns like Ban Houei Sai and Nam Tha in northwestern Laos that would soon become opium centers and CIA bases. By March 1959, they were being supplied in Laos by what Bernard Fall called 'an airlift of "unknown planes"' – almost certainly from the Taiwanese airline Civil Air Transport (CAT), which fronted for the CIA proprietary known since 1959 as Air America. The CIA owned 40 percent of the company; KMT bankers own 60 percent. The planes had been supplying the KMT opium bases continuously since 1951.

"The result of the phony Laotian crisis of July-August 1959 was to give official White House sanction to a continuous Air America airlift to Laos. Air America planes soon  began the major airlift to Hmong (Meo) camps in northeast Laos as well. By 1965, they became the primary means of exporting the Hmong's traditional cash crop, opium, and by 1968 were also carrying heroin. Apparently most of this ended up in traditional KMT networks through Hong Kong to the United States.

"The 1959 'crisis' was the first of a series that between 1961 and 1964 would lead to greater and greater U.S. involvement in first Laos and then Vietnam. Air America's support for a drug trafficking rebel Laotian leader, Phoumi Nosavan, contributed to these crises. Clearly, the 'crises' combined stimulus from outside the U.S. government with high-level support inside it. We know now that a plan for a KMT reinvasion of South China, a plan first authorized by Truman in 1951, continued to be supported long after the Korean War by some high-level generals and CIA officials. These range from extremists like Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who wrote privately about 'nuking the chinks,' to CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, who had served as CIA station chief in Taipei. The plan was revived by right-wing oppositionists in the 1959-1962, when to the old McCarthy-ite question, Who lost China? was added a new one, Who lost Cuba?"

(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 51)

Ray Cline, a part of the so-called "China cowboys" clique inside the CIA, would be one of the chief American backers of the World Anti-Communist League during its foundation and for years afterwards. As noted before, General Curtis LeMay and Cline were both members of the American Security Council as well.

longtime CIA asset and KMT stooge Ray S. Cline (top) and General Curtis LeMay (bottom) 

As I hope these two examples illustrate, Chiang Kai-shek and his drug traffickers were able to wield an enormous degree of influence over American foreign (and even domestic) policy for years. And the scary part is, Chiang Kai-shek likely wasn't even the most powerful figure behind the WACL. Such an honor probably resided with the mysterious figure of Yoshio Kodama.

Kodama was an underworld figure who, with the backing of his patron Ryoichi Sasakawa, would become obscenely wealthy and powerful in Japan during the 1930s-1940s period, especially during the war years.

"Kodama had a lot to live for. Thanks to the war and the patronage of a political leader, Ryoichi Sasakawa, he was sitting on the fortune of over $200 million. In the years ahead, he would help create the dominant political party of Japan, make and destroy prime ministers, fund the World Anti-Communist League and be the principal figure in the greatest scandal of modern Japanese history. Working alongside him would be Sasakawa, his old mentor...

"Yoshio Kodama started  life more abjectly. An orphan who had survived by toiling in sweatshops, he found his calling among the various right-wing movements that sprouted up throughout Japan in the 1930s. Often these yakuza groups functioned more as criminal bands than as genuine ideological movements; modeling themselves after the legends of samurai warriors, they displayed their allegiance to a particular leader by covering their bodies with tattoos; they repented errors by cutting off the tips of their fingers. Bankrolled by conservative businessmen and politicians companies, these private yakuza armies broke up labor unions, 'protected' factories and offices from vandalism, and assassinated opposition leaders. The young Kodama excelled at these activities and by the time he was 15 was a terrorist leader in his own right. In 1931, he sent a dagger to a former Japanese minister of finance. 'Allow me to present you with this instrument,' the accompanying note read, 'so appropriate for our troubled times. I leave you to make up your mind as to how to use it – to defend yourself, or to commit ritual suicide.'

"The threat landed the twenty-year-old Kodama in jail, but it was not in vain; the day he was released, another yakuza succeeded in killing the former minister.

"In the 1930s both of the future League benefactors ran afoul of the law and were imprisoned, Sasakawa  for plotting the assassination of the former premier, Kodama for another murder plot, this time against the prime minister.

"As the forces of fascism took over Japan and as the war in Manchuria got under way, the talents of men like Sasakawa and Kodama were suddenly needed. Both were released in order to further the cause of the empire – Kodama to carry out intelligence missions in China and Sasakawa to resurrect his Kokusui Taishuto movement, whose followers were now clad in black shirts, the symbol of international fascism; they were to rally forces behind the government plans to rule Asia...

"In the meantime, Kodama was making a name for himself in China. Entrusted with the task of keeping the Japanese Navy supplied with raw materials, Kodama made a fortune of at least $200 million by seizing material, often at the point of a gun, and then selling it back to his own government at exuberant prices.

"At war's end, both men were sent to prison by the American Occupation Forces, classified as Class A war criminals...

"But just as they did with the Nazis in Europe, the American occupation authorities had a change of heart about Japan's war criminals. As the Cold War began, the enemy was no longer the fascist, but the communists. In Japan, as for example in Italy, the political left emerged from the war as a major power bloc with the potential for becoming the dominant political force and even, it was feared by the Americans, for leading the nation into the Soviet camp. Sasakawa, Kodama, and other prominent Japanese war criminals were quietly released from prison in 1948, and became some of the prime movers, organizers, and funders for the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, a conservative, pro-American party that has controlled the political life of Japan ever since. Through this maneuver, the old ruling circles of Japan, the men who had allied with Nazi Germany and plunged the nation into a war of military imperialism throughout Asia, were resurrected and brought back into leadership roles."

(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pgs. 59-63)

Kodama made far more than a measly $200 million off of the war. In point of fact he became deeply involved in the Golden Lily project, Imperial Japan's attempt to systematically loot all of the Asian nations they conquered during the war years.

"In the closing months of World War II in the Philippines, while General Yamashita Tomoyuki fought a delaying action in the rugged mountains of Luzon, several of Japan's highest-ranking imperial princes were preparing for the future. They were busy hiding tons of looted gold bullion and other stolen treasure in nearby caves and tunnels, to be recovered later. This was the property of twelve Asian countries, accumulated over thousands of years. Expert teams accompanying Japan's armed forces had systematically emptied treasuries, banks, factories, private homes, shops, art galleries, and stripped ordinary people, while Japan's top gangsters looted Asia's underworld and black economy. In this, the Japanese were far more thorough than the Nazis. It was as if a giant vacuum cleaner passed across East and Southeast Asia. Much of the plunder reached Japan overland through Korea. The rest, moving by sea, got no further than the Philippines as the U.S. submarine blockade became complete in early 1943. Hiding the treasure there was crucial, so that if Japan lost the war militarily, it would not lose financially. In whatever settlement concluded the war, Japan always expected to keep the Philippines. Overseen by the princes, 175 'imperial' treasure vaults were constructed throughout the island...

"Japan's looting of Asia was overseen by Emperor Hirohito's charming and cultured brother, Prince Chichibu. His organization was codenamed kin no yuri (Golden Lily), the title of one of the Emperor's poems..."

(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pgs. 2-3)

Golden Lily gold found in the Philippines

Kodama initially became involved with the Golden Lily while working in Shanghai but his operation soon branched out across various nations.

"Another great fortune discovered by US intelligence services in 1946, was $13-billion in war loot amassed by underworld godfather Kodama Yoshio who, as a 'rear admiral' in the Imperial Navy working with Golden Lily in China and Southeast Asia, was in charge of plundering the Asian underworld and racketeers. He was also in charge of Japan's wartime drug trade throughout Asia. After the war, to get out of Sugamo Prison and avoid prosecution for war crimes, Kodama gave $100 million to the CIA, which was added to the M-Fund's coffers. Kodama then personally financed the creation of the two political parties that merged into Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), strongly backed to this day by Washington."

(ibid, pg. 8)

Estimates of the total value of the Golden Lily go into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Kodama likely had access to far more of these funds than the $13 billion that he managed to accumulate during the Second World War. This black market gold was not his only source of income, however. He was also one of the largest drug lords in the world for decades.

"While literally an employee of the U.S. Government, Kodama continued to oversee Japan's postwar drug trade. Heroin labs were moved back not only from Taiwan, but from North China, Manchuria and Korea. Chinese who had collaborated with Japan in drug processing and distribution, were given sanctuary and began operating from Japanese soil. Two of the three major players in Asia narcotics soon died: Nationalist China's General Tai Li was assassinated in a 1946 plane crash; Shanghai godfather Tu Yueh-sheng died in Hong Kong of natural causes in 1951. Kodama was left as Asia's top druglord, while on the U.S. payroll. This could have been embarrassing, for Japan's dominant role in narcotics was widely known and undisputed, but a Cold War hush descended over it like an Arctic whiteout. During the occupation, U.S. propaganda characterized Asia's drug trade as exclusively the enterprise of leftist and communist agents. In truth, it was dominated by Kodama in Japan, and by Generalissimo Chiang through the KMT opium armies based in the Golden Triangle, who were under the direct control of the generalissimo's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, the KMT chief of military intelligence at the time..."

(ibid, pgs. 108-109)

old Kodama

Thus, Kodama and Chiang Kai-shek were effectively the two largest drug lords in Eastn Asia for decades – From roughly the 1930s until the mid-1970s, specifically. Kodama, especially with the access he had to revenues generated both by his opium trade as well as his black market gold, had phenomenal amounts of money at their disposal. When Kodama became involved with the World Anti-Communist League in the late 1960s, it was through a curious individual: the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.

From the very early years of his mission Reverend Moon had established close ties to the South Korean power structure, especially within the intelligence community. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency has been known as a major backer of the Unification Church for years, but it alone could not account for the phenomenal amount of money the Reverend Moon has spent in his various endeavors over the decades. Kodama's black market gold and drug money, however, would be capable of managing the largess the Reverend Moon has been known to show to various conservative causes the world over throughout the years. It would seem that Moon and Kodama did form such an alliance and that the World Anti-Communist League was their first significant collaboration together. Kodama's former patron, Ryoichi Sasakawa, was seemingly the architect of this partnership.

"In July 1967, Sasakawa arranged a secret cabal at a building he owned on a lake in Yamanashi Prefecture. Among those attending were Reverend Moon, Shirai Tameo, and Osami Kuboki. Tameo was in underworld lieutenant of Yoshio Kodama, and secretary of the innocently named Japan Youth Lectures, an organization that indoctrinated and trained young members of the yakuza gangs. Kuboki was secretary-general of Japan's Genri Undo; he also served as an advisor and lecturer to Kodama's Youth Lectures.

"The purpose of the meeting was to create in Japan a Korean-style anti-communist movement that could operate under the umbrella of the World Anti-Communist League and that would further Moon's global crusade and lend the Japanese yakuza leaders a respectable new façade. Shokyo Rengo, or 'Victory Over Communism,' was born. Ryoichi Sasakawa was made overall chairman of Shokyo Rengo, and Yoshio Kodama was its chief advisor.

"In April 1968, Shokyo Rengo was chosen as the official Japanese chapter of the League. While theoretically unaffiliated with the Unification Church, virtually its entire membership came from Moonie ranks or the yakuza minions of Kodama and Sasakawa."

(Inside the League, Scott & John Lee Anderson, pg. 69)

Ryoichi Sasakawa

It's curious to note that so many of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League founders were connected to cults or secret societies. Of course Moon himself was most definitely a cult leader, despite the mainline Christian image the Unification Church often assumes in public.

"Unification theology is a potpourri of Christianity, Confucianism, mysticism, patriotism, anti-communism, and Moon's own megalomania. In Moon's eyes, Christ technically falls into the category of a failure, for although he established a spiritual kingdom, he didn't establish a physical or political one. Moon is here to rectify that oversight; he is anointed as the man to complete Jesus' original mission.

"Because it rejected Jesus, Israel is no longer God's chosen land (though the Jews were finally cleansed by suffering six million dead in World War II); God had to find a new Messiah and a new Adam country. Moon and Korea were uniquely designed for this purpose, for one of the most original aspects of Unificationism is its attribution of spirituality and gender to nations based upon their topographic. 'It [Korea] is a peninsula, physically resembling the male... Japan is in the position of Eve. Being only an island country, it cannot be Adam. It yearns for male-like peninsular Korea on the mainland... America is an archangel country. It's mother is England, another island country in the position of Eve.'

"Today, Unification Church disciples or ''Moonies,' are, according to former members, 'love-bombed' upon induction, fed high-carbohydrate diets, and kept awake for long periods. These are basic forms of brainwashing designed to lower a person's resistance to coercion or suggestion. Initiates are kept under close surveillance, told report their every action, even their dreams, to their leaders, and, when finally trusted, offered 'redemption' by going out to raise funds for the Church. The fund-raisers, called 'Mobile Teams,' best known for relentlessly selling flowers, American flags, and magazines in airports, send headquarters a payment of ten percent 'for family support.'"

(ibid, pg. 64) 

the Reverend Moon

Kodama was head of the Japanese yakuza gangs, an international crime syndicate that emerged in the early twentieth century but originates from centuries-old Japanese secret societies. Beyond this, Kodama was also a member of the legendary Black Dragon Society. The society, whose agents were some times known as kempeitai, was an ultranationalistic, right-wing paramilitary organization that practiced an especially fanatical form of Shintoism. By the early twentieth century they had been incorporated into Japan's armed forces to assistant in the Empire's occupations of various mainland Asian nations.

"Most kempeitai agents wore civilian clothes, identified only by a chrysanthemum crest on the upperside of a lapel. Eventually Japan spawned a network of these spies, informants, and terrorists throughout Asia. At the height of World War II, 35,000 official kempeitai were deployed throughout the Japanese Empire. The unofficial number was far greater, because of close integration with Black Dragon, Black Ocean, and other fanatical sects, working together, 'like teeth and lips.'"

(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pg. 18)

the Black Dragon Society; Kodama is at the bottom right

The Black Dragon Society was actually descended from the Black Ocean Society. The Black Dragon Society was the controlling sect behind the kempeitai, which also featured many yakuza members. Beyond these Japanese secret societies it's also likely that Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT party were dominated by Chinese criminal secret societies generally known as the Triads.

"The secret societies were older by for than the KMT and have continued to function until the present, long after the KMT has ceased to be historically important. We now know from a number of excellent histories of the opium trade that in Southeast Asia since the middle of the 19th century, the opium farms were almost always connected to the secret societies that flourished in Chinese communities. It is now also generally recognized how Chiang Kai-shek's seizure of both the KMT and China was achieved with the help of the opium trafficking Green Gang of Tu Yueh-sheng, to the mutual profit of both. By the mid-1930s China was producing seven-eighths of the world's opium supply, and some of it came to the Chinese tongs in the United States and their organized crime contacts like Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.

"These contacts with the U.S. mob were apparently not wholly broken by World War II. They were clearly renewed after 1949, when Tu Yueh-sheng and the remnants of the Green Gang fled to Hong Kong, along with a rival secret society. An unconfirmed report says that Fang Chih, who visited Laos for the KMT in 1959, had been with Tu Yueh-sheng in Shanghai in the 1930s. It is certain that a high-level drug bust in 1959 in San Francisco involved the same Hip Sing tong as an earlier organized crime drug bust in 1930. Significantly, U.S. officials arranged for the ringleader Chung Wing Fong, an official of the San Francisco Anti-Communist League (a KMT front), to escape to Taiwan before local arrests were made. A subsequence U.S. report to the United Nations on the incident noted that the tong's activities possibly paralleled 'the operations of the Triad societies in Hong Kong.'

"The Hip Sing's dope and other criminal activities, like those of the On Leong, Bing Kong, and other American tongs, predated and outlasted by far the KMT linkup with the Green Gang in 1927. The 1905-1906 tong war in New York City was between the Hip Sing tong and their chief rivals the On Leong tong. Ninety years later, the organized crime of New York's Chinatown was still dominated by three tongs, two of which were the Hip Sing and the On Leong. In 1996, long after the decline of the KMT as a political force in Taiwan, the Hip Sing tong was involved in yet another major San Francisco drug bust. The KMT has faded, but the tongs and their drug connections are still... very much with us."

(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 62-63) 

Chiang Kai-shek himself has long believed to have been a member of the Green Gang, a membership that surely would have been highly advantageous to his objectives. For nearly half a century, the Chinese triads in the Japanese yakuza almost completely dominated the international opium market. And yet, decades after Afghanistan replaced the Golden Triangle as the chief source of the world's opium supply, the Chinese triads and the Japanese yakuza are seemingly as powerful as ever, despite the little attention paid to them by the mainstream media.

I suspect this is because they found another highly lucrative illegal markets to specialize in: human trafficking and sex slavery. It's no secret that the Eastern Asia, especially Thailand, has become a major Mecca for sex tourism in recent decades. Both the Chinese triads and the Japanese yakuza have long dominated organized crime in this region of the world and there are indications (such as this and this) that they are deeply involved in the sex trade there. Japan of course practiced sexual slavery on a massive scale during the Second World War (the so-called "comfort women"), a practice the yakuza were deeply involved in. But I digress.

several hundred thousand women were forced into sexual slavery at the height of Imperial Japan

It is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I'll attempt to give a broader overview of the WACL and the Fascist International's involvement in the illegal drug trade, which was quite significant. While it may seem like I'm belaboring the point, the ties to these groups with the illegal drug trade was crucial to establishing funding and an international network that was needed for carrying out the paramilitary aspirations of the League in the late 1970s and 1980s. Stay tuned.