Operation Paper: The United States and Drugs in Thailand and Burma

[Jan Klimkowski]

This is a very important piece.

What Peter Dale Scott's fine research has unearthed are the tentacles of a far eastern variant of the European-based Operation Gladio.

We have a nexus of rabid anti-communist types, criminal syndicates ranging from Meyer Lansky's mob to Asian (Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Thai etc) gangsters, big business such as AIG's forerunners etc. With the entire nexus being provided with protection, and often actively run, by American and British intelligence. The eminences grises are the likes of OSS Chief William Donovan, Richard Stilwell (chief of Office of Policy Coordination, Far East), Sir William Stephenson (the organizer with Donovan of the World Commerce Corporation). And, naturally, Allen Dulles.

Running ostensibly patriotic (anti-communist), but in reality criminal, enterprizes.

Speculation abounds as to the original source of funds available to Helliwell in this earlier period, ranging from the following:
1. The deep pockets of the overworld figures in the WCC. Citing Daniel Harkins, a former USG investigator, John Loftus and Mark Aarons claimed that Nazi money, laundered and manipulated by Allen Dulles and Sir William Stephenson through the WCC, reached Thailand after the war. When Harkins informed Congress, he “was suddenly fired and sent back [from Thailand] to the United States on the next ship.”35
2. The looted gold and other resources collected by Admiral Yamashita and others in Japan36 or of the SS in Germany.
3. The drug trade itself. Further research is needed to establish when the financial world of Paul Helliwell began to overlap with that of Meyer Lansky and the underworld. The banks discussed in the chapter 7, which are outward signs of this connection (Miami National Bank and Bank of Perrine), were not established until a decade or more later. Still to be established is whether the Eastern Development Company represented by Helliwell was the firm of this name that in the 1940s cooperated with Lansky and others in the supply of arms to the nascent state of Israel.37

Of these the best available evidence points tentatively to Nazi gold.

I welcome David Guyatt's comments on the likely involvement of Nazi gold.

And then there's the corrupting inlufence of greed as huge profits are made from the human misery of the drug trade....

Just as important was the role of opium profits in promoting capitalism among the Chinese businessmen of Southeast Asia (the agenda of Sir William Stephenson and the WCC). Whether the Chinese who dominated business in the region would turn their allegiance to Beijing depended on the availability of funds for alternative business opportunities. Here Phao’s banker, Chin Sophonpanich, became a source of funds for top anticommunist businessmen not only in Thailand but also in Malaysia and Indonesia:

Chin Sophonpanich created the largest bank in south-east Asia and one that was extremely profitable. A report by the International Monetary Fund in 1973 claimed that Bangkok Bank’s privileged position allowed it to make returns on its capital in excess of 100 per cent a year

Peter Dale Scott's investigation of Operation Paper and related activitities lays bare the military-financial-intelligence-complex.

In passing, I note that the core philosophy of the European-based Operation Gladio is the Strategy of Tension.

The classic MO of Gladio is the false flag atrocity designed to increase tension for geopolitical purposes, including the creation of fear to further political aims.

What was the core philosophy and MO of Operation Paper?