Wayne Madsen has more -- much more

Many dismissed Wayne Madsen's spectacular charges, but a growing number of people are taking a second look at his information, especially after his Q-and-A session on Democratic Underground. Keith Olbermann tried to assail Madsen's work. Alas, as Brad Friedman has noted, Olbermann attacked without making any attempt to contact Madsen. (It's not as though the guy refuses to answer email -- both Friedman and I got through to him.)

Now he has published a third article about the mysterious Five Star Trust and related issues.

Madsen has not yet mentioned J.R. Horn (the Kentucky fraudster and one-time Republican politico who received mysteriously lenient treatment) although I remain convinced that the "Five Star Trust" in that case is the same as the one Madsen has focused on.

He does, however, direct our attention to one Robert Ferrera, also convicted of wire fraud ($11 billion in counterfeit Mexican promissory notes -- ye gods!). This Ferrera fellow, according to court records, "assigned and delivered some of the Mexican notes to an associate in Lexington, Kentucky, who owned Five Star Investments, Ltd."

Horn made Lexington, Kentucky his home grounds, so we must be dealing with the same shady bunch. Madsen goes on to say:

Ferrera's name also surfaced in a 1994 Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of Northstar Investors' Trust of Bellevue, Washington. In that case, Grady Lewis Hand was indicted for a $3 million investment fraud. However, Hand was defended by the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's secret "CENTAC" unit, Dennis Dayle. Hand and Dayle claimed the investment fraud was actually a CIA front to fund off-the-books intelligence operations being hidden from Congress. They said the money actually went to "General Robert L. Ferrera," said then to have worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA.

Here's where it gets really (really really) hairy:

New information obtained from knowledgeable U.S. intelligence sources reveal that much of ex-Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos's billions of embezzled gold and money made its way into Five Star Trust, which was actually established in the late 1980s as a Houston-based repository for Marcos's ill-gotten loot. Some of the Marcos money was stashed in accounts in the Cook Islands, a dependency of New Zealand that has its own banking and corporation laws. Cook Islands accounts have been associated with some of the money used in the Votergate scandal.

Stop rolling your eyes. I have reason to believe that this is the real shit.

Now is not the time to tell the story of what is erroneously known as "Yamashita's Gold." Suffice it to say that this is no fairy tale -- the Japanese really did secret unbelievably massive amounts of gold during World War II -- an amount so massive that revealing its existence might well depress the price of gold. The loot also included much silver, jewelry, and artworks. (Japan had no other real source of funding during the war.) In the post war era, right-wingers have secretly been locating the many caches of this booty, located in Indonesia and the Philippines. Some of you may recall the news accounts which reported that General John K. Singlaub was involved with the recovery efforts in the late 1980s.

I have reason to believe that this money was used to create the infrastructure of our present right-wing media monster. To be specific: This money funded Murdoch.

Yes, I know that such a claim sounds ridiculously conspiratorial -- the sort of thing you might hear from a Sindey Greenstreet-type over snifters of brandy. I had planned to write about this subject at a later date, when I had time to make my case.

Right now, I can only plead with doubters to read the books of a courageous man named Sterling Seagrave. You can listen to a fascinating interview with his wife and co-author, Peggy Seagrave, if you go here and scroll down to FTR-428. A written summary of the interview's information exists here.