CIA recruited Japanese War Criminals
In a very stunning news release today by the Associated Press, newly declassified CIA documents reveal that Japanese War Criminals were recruited by the CIA during the Cold War by the American Government.
Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians and complicity in the Bataan Death March. And then he became a U.S. spy. Newly declassified CIA records, released by the U.S. National Archives and examined by The Associated Press, document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. The documents also show how ineffective the effort was, in the CIA’s view.
The records, declassified in 2005 and 2006 under an act of Congress in tandem with Nazi war crime-related files, fill in many of the blanks in the previously spotty documentation of the occupation authority’s intelligence arm and its involvement with Japanese ultra-nationalists and war criminals, historians say.In addition to Tsuji, who escaped Allied prosecution and was elected to parliament in the 1950s, conspicuous figures in U.S.-funded operations included mob boss and war profiteer Yoshio Kodama, and Takushiro Hattori, former private secretary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister hanged as a war criminal in 1948.
More than anything this article proves to me that ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ are just concepts.
The CIA also cast a harsh eye on its counterparts — and institutional rivals — at G-2, the occupation’s intelligence arm, providing evidence for the first time that the Japanese operatives often bilked gullible American patrons, passing on useless intelligence and using their U.S. ties to boost smuggling operations and further their efforts to resurrect a militarist Japan.
Click HERE for the full article.
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February 26th, 2007 at 5:09 pmFor who can read Japanese,
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BE%BB%E6%94%BF%E4%BF%A1
That is the notorious Tsuji.
It is amazing that he was not hanged as a war criminal.
He is often labelled as the ”昭和の妖怪”(phantom of the Showa period).
February 26th, 2007 at 6:30 pmTomojiro-san, yes I have heard the expression ‘Phantom’ before.
I am amazed that not only was he not imprisoned but was given power and resources to expand his ideological thinking by the same country that dropped two atomic weapons on it.
I am not surprised CIA did this. I guess just fascinated by how Do the Right thing is just an expression that doesn’t hold water in international intelligence gathering.
February 26th, 2007 at 9:16 pmI don’t think this is all that surprising given what we knew about intelligence in Germany with the Gehlen Organisation.
Our enemies in WWII spent a lot of time looking at the Soviets, more than us, so utilisation of this knowledge and these networks was deemed the best course of action.
Does not make it any more moral though.
February 26th, 2007 at 11:36 pmOh it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it . . .
February 27th, 2007 at 12:28 am