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The military had stockpiled vast supplies of weapons and munitions on the island of Okinawa. Some sources claim that with Vice-governor Laurence Rockefeller's assistance most of the armaments were sold to the leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, for something like one U.S. dollar and Ho’s "goodwill." One might wonder why these expensive and critical military supplies were "given" to the North Koreans.
To answer that question we have to go to an almost unknown study in the 1920's prepared by a man named Herber Hoover, later to become President of the United States. The study showed that one of the world's largest oil fields ran along the coast of the South China Sea right off French Indo-China, now known as Vietnam. This was before offshore drilling had been invented and before a man named George Herbert Walker Bush was to become the CEO of a world-wide offshore drilling company.
"In the 1950's a method of undersea oil exploration was perfected which used small explosions deep in the water and then recorded the sound echos bouncing off the various layers of rock below. The surveyor could then determine the exact location of the arched salt domes which hold the accumulated oil beneath them. But if this method were used off the Vietnam coast on property Standard didn't own or have the rights to, the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Japanese and probably even the French would quickly run to the United Nations and complain that America was stealing the oil, and that would shut down the operation.
"In 1964, after Vietnam was divided into North and South, and the contrived Gulf of Tonkin incident, several U.S. aircraft carriers were stationed offshore of Vietnam and the 'war' was started. Every day jet planes would take off from the carriers, bomb locations in North and South Vietnam, and then using normal military procedure when returning would dump their unsafe or unused bombs in the ocean before landing back on the carriers. Safe ordnance drop zones were designated for this purpose away from the carriers.
After the dust had settled from the war, Vietnam divided their offshore coastal area into numerous oil lots and allowed foreign companies to bid on the lots, with the proviso that Vietnam got a percentage of the action. Norway's Statoil, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Russia, Germany and Australia all won bids and began drilling within their areas. Strange it was that none of them struck oil. However, the lots which Standard Oil bid for and won proved to have vast oil reserves. Their extensive undersea seismic research appears to have paid off.
If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil. Anywhere."
Monopoly, by Michel Collon Money laundering is another factor in the relationship between the narcotic and precious-stone trades. Even those of us with decades in this business know how difficult it can be to place a value on a gem. When that stone is in its raw form, multiply the difficulty a hundred-fold. A single valuable piece can make or break a mining operation. Those in the narcotics business face a different problem. Their goods have both a specific market price and high demand, bringing in barrels of cash, but they must find a way to turn those profits into legal income. What better way than to invest in a gem mine – a cash-and-carry business if ever there was – where a quick appearance of funds can easily be put down to the discovery of a new pocket or even a single stone. And so this is what is done, particularly at the jade mines in Burma’s Kachin State. Narcotics traders don’t mind sinking huge sums of money into losing ventures, because the money that comes out is now clean, and can be re-invested or banked without fear. All of this is done with the wink and nod of various bankers and government officials, who, with palm extended, turn bad money into good. The involvement of some of SE Asia’s largest banks and trading houses in such activities is fairly well documented (see Seagrave, 1995; Booth, 1999). It is a business that knows no political enemies, a trade where religion, race and politics are immaterial. Such laundry services often find heroin dealers queued next to Mafia dons, beside intelligence agents from the CIA, Mossad, along with terrorists and a plethora of other people from the dark side.
Further reading • Booth, Martin (1996) Opium: A History. London, Simon & Schuster, 1st English ed., 381 pp. • Booth, Martin (1999) The Dragon Syndicates: The Global Phenomenon of the Triads. New York, Carroll & Graf, 358 pp. • Castillo, Celerino & Harmon, Dave (1994) Powderburns : Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War. Mosaic Press, Oakville, Canada. • Cockburn, Alexander and St. Clair, Jeffrey (1998) White Out: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. New York, Verso, 408 pp. • Collis, Maurice (1946) Foreign Mud: Being an Account of the Opium Imbroglio at Canton in the 1830’s and the Anglo-Chinese War that Followed. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 300 pp. • Conason, J. (2001) The Bush pardons. Salon, Feb. 27. • DiNardo, John (1991) Interview with Michael Levine. Undercurrents. • Hitchens, Christopher (2001) The Trial of Henry Kissenger. Verso Books, 160 pp. • Hopsicker, Daniel (2001) Barry & ‘the Boys’: The CIA, the Mob, and America’s Secret History. Mad Cow Press, 518 pp. • Hunt, Linda (1991) Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip 1945 to 1990. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 340 pp. • Kwitny, Jonathan (1987) The Crimes of Patriots: A True Story of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. New York, W.W. Norton, 424 pp. • Irrawaddy Magazine (2000) Report: Burmese business tycoons, Irrawaddy Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 6, June, 2000. • Lee, Martin A. and Shlain, Bruce (1985) Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond. New York, Grove Press, 345 pp. • Leveritt, Mara (2001) Asa and me, Arkansas Times, May 25. • Lintner, Bertil (1994) Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948. Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 514 pp. • McCoy, Alfred W. (1972) The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. New York, Harper & Row, 472 pp. • McCoy, Alfred W. (1991) The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Brooklyn, New York, Lawrence Hill Books, 635 pp. • Parry, Robert (1999) Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth.’ Arlington, VA, The Media Consortium, 304 pp. • Seagrave, S. (1985) The Soong Dynasty. New York, Harper & Row, 532 pp. • Seagrave, Sterling (1995) Lords of the Rim: The Invisible Empire of the Overseas Chinese. New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 354 pp. • Stich, Rodney and Russell, T. Conan (1995) Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal. Hallmark Publishers, Reno, NV, 392 pp. • Stich, Rodney (1998) Defrauding America : Encyclopedia of Secret Operations by the CIA, DEA, and Other Covert Agencies. Diablo Western Press.
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