Replies

1930 - Max Theiler begins work on Yellow Fever vaccination

1932 - Brazil has outbreak of 'Hepatitis' - blamed on vectors from Gambia

1935 - Max Theiler (from S. Africa) begins work on Yellow Fever vaccination
at The Rockefeller Medical Institute

1936 - Theiler uses Pasteur's Process to pass Yellow Fever through Mice
brains, rather than rabbits. (rearrangements in RNA genomes PMID: 7596811)

1937 - Japan's Ishii begins Unit 731 south of Harbin, Heilongjiang
(Manchuria)

1938 - 1 Million Brazilians now infected with Rockefeller's/Theiler's Yellow
Fever/HBV vaccination. Program was funded by Rockefeller foundation and a
very interesting book reporting this was published. The mosquitoes were thought to have been
introduced by a ship traveling from the West Coast of Africa.

1939 - Japan's General Ishii's Aide comes to NY and Rockefeller to obtain
"sample" of Yellow Fever/HBV virus. Japanese Army doctor, Dr. Ryoichi
Naito, visited the laboratory with credentials from the Japanese military
attached in Washington to obtain a sample of that strain of the Yellow Fever

virus.

1939 ~ 1945 WWII - A series of outbreaks after vaccination for measles and
yellow fever.

1940 - Rockefeller funding Medical experiments with humans in both Germany
and Japan, involved with Russians.

1941- Dec. 7th, Pearl Harbor attacked. Allied Troops to be deployed in high
Yellow Fever areas- S. Pacific, N. Africa, etc..

1942 - US begins "Defensive Biological Warfare Program".

1942 - Rockefeller's Yellow Fever/ HBV vaccine given to US Army Soldiers and
Allied Troops. 330,000 infected.
(Note from Tricia: It was later learned blood samples from the infected troops also had Hep C and it is the first record of the disease.)

1942 - Ft. Detrick's 'Defensive' Biological Warfare Program begins.

1942 - Schering taken over by the US Government.

1943 - Acute Hepatitis causes a few deaths in the Military

1943- Through sophisticated testing, the researchers pinpointed 1943 to 1949
as the years in which HCV initially spread in Japan

1944 - E.J. Cohn begins to develop first generation 'Immune Serum Globulin',
ISG. More are contaminated.

1945 - Nuclear Testing conducted in areas now high in HBV rates.

1945 - WWII Ends in Europe and Asia. Veterans go home and donate blood in
all 50 States.

1945 - Thorotrast used as a treatment for TB in England. (alpha particles
cause cancers decades later) Same trail that has the hep infected blood
also has the Thorotrast trail.

1940's - "A containment effort would seek to prevent outbreaks" (hence:
immunizations of the population..like with Yellow fever vaccination
contaminated with HBV) "successful Brazilian Anopheles gambiae effort of the
1930s...was repeated around Aswan during the 1940s" Note: Aswan is in
Egypt.....highest HCV rates in the World today. Want to bet what vaccination
they used in Egypt during the 40's and in Italy to fight Yellow Fever?

1940's - A similarly intensive post-WWII effort against endemic An.
labranchiae on Sardinia (Italy) "almost eradicated" the target insect on
that island, but did eliminate malaria. Although that extraordinary effort
did not attain its goal, it influenced anti-malaria policy profoundly. I
know of no other elimination effort that attained
its stated goal and none against an endemic vector or pest.

1946 - German War Crimes Trial

1947 - Rockefeller Manufactures 28 Million Doses of the Yellow Fever/HBV
vaccine by this date. No record of any destroyed. All used?

1947 - Mac Callum (1947): classified viral hepatitis into two types, Viral
hepatitis A - Infectious hepatitis, Viral hepatitis B - Seum hepatitis

1948 - Japan's War Crimes Trials

(Note from Tricia:
1948 Experimentation with Hepatitis
April 5, 1948 letter from C.J. Watson, M.D., Army Epidemiological Board to Dr. McLeod, with a copy to Dr. Stokes and others

Dear Dr. MacLeod: I have given careful consideration in the past few weeks to the matter of using volunteers in penal institutions for experimentation, with particular reference to hepatitis.)

1949 - Japan's Ishii shares work with US and German George Merck

1950 - Korean War begins- massive blood drives in the US.

1951- Polio push. Thorotrast used as a radioactive injectable dye- cancers.

1951 - Max Theiler wins Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on a Yellow
Fever Vaccination at the Rockefeller Institute.

1951 - German George Merck appointed to head US's, Ft. Detrick's,
'Offensive' Bio-Warfare Program.

1952 - Occupation of Japan ends.

1952 - Adenovirus magically appears only in Military basic training
recruits from the mid west- meet the "new" 1918 Spanish Flu. Half mammalian
and half avian- or bird.

1955 ~ 1956 - Massive epidemic of water-borne hepatitis occurred in Delhi,
India.

1958 - Interferons first used in cell research.

1959 - Test developed to measure elevated liver enzymes.

1962 - Cancer research begins with Adenovirus on mouse cell

1960's - Variants that cause 'serum jaundice' emerge in the research

1963 - Mass smallpox vaccinations in Poland in 1963 and the epidemic
situation of
viral hepatitis (PMID: 5858724)

1964 - Treatment of Chronic Hep (Germany) in literature.

1965 - International collaborative assay of the international reference
preparation
of anti-yellow-fever serum. (PMID: 5294595)

1965 - Blumberg discovered Australia antigen (later known to be HBsAg) in
aborigines and showed that the antigen was present at high frequency in
patients with leukemia and in children with Down's syndrome.

1965 - Blumberg reported "Australia antigen" in Australian aborigines.

1965 - "chronic hepatitis caused by serum hepatitis" - Japan Symposium on
Serum Hepatitis, PMID: 5894570

1966 - Treatments for Chronic Hep discussed (German)
- looking at ways to reduce incidence of serum hep
(Serbo-Croatian)
- Literature on Iron levels with Chronic Hep (Soviet)

1966 - Mass inoculation with Yellow fever vaccination from the Rockefeller
Institute and given by pet-o-jets.

1969 - Literature looking at Lymph involvement (Italy)

1970 - Dane discovered Dane particle (complete HBV particle).

1970 - Krugman and co-workers reported on the Willowbrook hepatitis studies
in
which live hepatitis virus injected was injected into mentally retarded
children in order to study the course of the disease process (Krugman, 1971;
Krugman & Giles, 1970).

1971 - Literature looking at Chronic Hep in Hemodialysis (Eng)

1971 - Literature looking at the pathogenesis of arthritis associated with
viral hepatitis.
Complement-component studies.

1972 - Magnius discovered HBeAg

1972 - Viral hepatitis abroad. Incidence in Catholic missionaries. PMID:
5066870

1973 - Feinstone, Purcell identified HAV.

1974 - CDC claims to have determined a Non-A, Non-B, hepatitis exists.
Begins to track it as a "non specific" hepatitis.

1975 - Antibody to the hepatitis B surface antigen in immune serum globulin.
A collection of 1,278 lots of immune serum globulin (ISG) prepared by 19
United States manufacturers between 1962 and 1974 were tested for the
hepatitis B surface antigen (HBSAg) and antibody (anti-HBS). Ten lots
(0.8%), all of which were produced between 1962 and 1965 by two different
manufacturers, were weakly positive for HBSAg (by radioimmunoassay). Seven
hundred and seven lots (55.3%) were positive for anti-HBS (by passive
hemagglutination). PMID: 1198681

1975 - Vietnam War officially ends in March- Siagon falls by May.

1975 Jul-Aug - Literature about Antibody to hepatitis B core antigen.

1975 Sep-Oct - Va cooperative study of post-transfusion hepatitis,
1969-1974: incidence and
characteristics of hepatitis and responsible risk factors. PMID: 1235478

1975 - Literature about Dental infection with hepatitis B.

1975 - Literature about severe viral hepatitis type B in infancy;.

1975 - Stated: "Unlikely that immunization against HBV will ever provide
absolute immunity" (Sierra Leone = has one of the highest HCV rates today in
the World today) Some considerations regarding active immunization with
HBsAg. Krugman has demonstrated that injection of heated serum containing
HBsAg
conferred some protection against subsequent challenge with live hepatitis B
virus (HBV). Thus newly imported animals may be incubating HB infection, and
could give rise to false positive results in inactivation trials, unless
quarantined for a four to six month period prior to use. We have therefore
established a laboratory for chimpanzee trials in West Africa, and plan to
utilize only animals captured by trapping and held in strict isolation from
the time of capture. Three chimpanzees who received a massive transfusion of
infective
plasma one year after resisting challenge with aliquots of the same plasma
inoculated intraperitoneally, all developed severe hepatitis, accompanied in
two cases by HBs antigenemia, despite strong anamnestic anti-HBs responses
in all three animals. PMID: 1204972

1975 - Ten with HBV e antibodies were blood donors- 95 units of blood. PMID:
45864

Mid
1970's - Liver Cancer rates begin to skyrocket in the US

1976 - Blumberg reported "Australia antigen" in Australian aborigines in
1965. Awarded Nobel prize in 1976.

1977 - HDV Discovered in 1977 by Rizetto, in nuclei of hepatocytes from
patients with
chronic HBV infection, and originally was thought to be HBcAg.
Superinfection: HDV infection occurs in persons with chronic HBV infection.

1977 - Rizzetto described delta antigen (HDV).

1977 - Application of a screening test for antibody the hepatitis B core
antigen.

1979 - GRID, or AIDS first described in National Media

1980's, HBV vaccinations given some attention because of AIDS

1980 - 1984, Dr. Koop Surgeon General- never speaks on hep

1981 - Literature describes patients who developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

1982 - 500 with AIDS in NY and San Fran.

1982 - PPSB = pooled human clotting preparation. "cardiac surgery (56%)
developed hepatitis"
"all cases were of the non-A, non-B type." "frequency of carriers of the
causative virus is apparently not different from that with B virus."
(because TTV = HBV lite.)PMID: 6816565

1983 - Balayan recovery of HEV.

1983 - Cutler and Baxter settle out of court in 1988 for contaminated blood

1980's - HBV vaccination contaminated with HIV here and in France. Wolf
Smuzness (Ft. Detrick) involved- now there is the Smuzness NY Blood Center.
Coincidence? Not likely.

1984 - Nation-wide vaccination on newborn babies launched in Taiwan.

1988 - HCV Discovered, Chiron group (Choo, Kuo, Houghton) cloned and
identified HCV.

1988 - HDV discovered (found only with HBV)

1988 - Cutler and Baxter settle out of court for 1983 contaminated blood
products

1988-1992 A. Novella Surgeon General (now NY Health Commissioner). Never
speaks on hep.

1989 - Literature about the prevalence of serological markers for hepatitis
B virus infection in
Australian Naval personnel.

Before 1989 - HCV diagnosis was made only by "exclusion diagnosis" ---
non-A, non-B hepatitis. Over 90 % of post-transfusion hepatitis in Taiwan
was HCV hepatitis.

1989 - HCV isolated

1989 - 1989 - First HCV generation reagent for detection of anti-HCV was
developed, containig recombinant and synthetic antigens --- C100-3 (NS3 and
NS4, NS:
non-structure)

1990 - Enomoto: HCV-K1-PT, HCV-K2a, HCV-K2b

1990 - 1st Test developed for HCV detection

1991 - Second HCV generation reagent --- C22(core), C33c(NS3), and
C200(NS3+NS4)

1991 - Reliable test developed for HCV detection in Commercial Blood

1991 ~ 1992 - Investigators in Japan reported the discovery of a new
hepatitis virus and called it as hepatitis virus F, but failed to be
substantiated in the subsequent research.

1992 - Reliable test in place to test blood supply and other blood products

1992 - Rockefeller Foundation's campaign against yellow fever in Mexico
sought "to advance the economic and political interests of U.S. capitalism"

1992 - Early 90's...AIDS Community wants Ribavirin. FDA says no.

1992 - 1993 Jocelyn Elders Surgeon General

1992 - Houghton (1992): HCV-I, HCV-II, HCV-III

1992 - Okamoto (1992): I, II, III, IV 9 major groups, and 30+ subtypes
Implications of viral factors: (genotypes, level of viremia, quasispecies
nature) controversial severity of liver damages, response to interferon
therapy, transmission from mother to infant

1993 - Uchida of Japan reported by PCR study that the so-called hepatitis
virus F might be a mutant of HBV, just could not be verified by commercially
available reagents because of the defect pre-C gene, mutation of core gene
and S gene, which come to be HBsAg (-) and anti-HBc (-) in serological
tests. (Uchida T: Microbiol Immunol 37: 425 ~ 439, 1993; J Hepatol 18: 369 ~
372, 1993)

1994 - Simmonds suggested classification system: major groupings (Arabic
numerical in order
of discovery), subtypes designated by lower-case letters previopus
classification:
Enomoto (1990): HCV-K1-PT, HCV-K2a, HCV-K2b, Houghton (1992): HCV-I, HCV-II,
HCV-III, Okamoto (1992): I, II, III, IV, 9 major groups, and 30+ subtypes,
Implications of viral factors: (genotypes, level of viremia, quasispecies
nature) controversial severity of liver damages, response to interferon
therapy, transmission from mother to infant

1994 - 1998 No Surgeon General. CDC, NIH, FDA, HHS, all left to guide
themselves. AIDS funding dominates and all large Academic Institutions get
a piece of the funding prize.

1994 - Deka reported an isolation of a virus named HFV (Hepatitis
French [origin] Virus) on intravenous inoculation of stool extract from
sporadic non-A, non-B hepatitis, in New Delhi, India, however, no follow-up
report was noted. (Deka N; et al.:J. Virol; 68:7810~5, 1994)

1995 - A model for rearrangements in RNA genomes. Theiler's (mice) murine
encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV). PMID: 2436048

1995 - Third HCV generation reagent --- C22(core), C33c(NS3), C200(NS3+NS4),
and NS5.

1995 - Genotype I (1a) found in China near Unit 731 activities and 98% in
Moldova, Russia.

1995 - Simons (Abbott) identified new novel virus termed GBV-C.

1996 - Linnen (Genelab) identified another novel virus termed HGV.

1996 - GBV-C and HGV are identified to have the same/or very similar
structure and contain two flavivirus sequences related to, but far distinct
from the HCV.

1996 - Chang's group at NTUH reported (JAMA) successful prevention of HBV
infection by nation-wide vaccination on newborn babies launched in 1984 in
Taiwan.

1997 - Chang's group at NTUH (1997): reported (NEJM) decrease in annual
incidence rate of hepatocellular carcinoma in children ascribed to
nation-wide
vaccination against HBV on newborn babies launched in 1984 in Taiwan.

1997 - Dr. Foster withdraws nomination after bruising battle for Surgeon
General Nomination

1997 - TTV--Transfusion Transmitted Virus is a new virus first reported in
Japan in 1997 by T. Nishizawa in patients with fulminate hepatitis and
chronic liver
disease of unknown etiology.

1997 - Dec. No awareness or info about HCV anywhere but on Internet.

1998 - Merck and Company earns $900 Million in HBV Vaccine sales. School
Boards and State Legislatures begin to practice Medicine and mandate HBV
shots by statutory requirement. No long term studies available. Research
says "caution" may be nervous system involvement.

1998 - Dr. Sadler appointed and confirmed Surgeon General- 1st one in 5
years.

1998 - March House VA Congressional HCV hearings with ALF, VA-Roselle,
NIH-Seeff, Koop, and Surgeon General Sadler - about a week into the job as
SGOUS. Dr. Koop not asked how many children he infected as a Surgeon in
Philly, or their health status today. Also not asked why he never spoke up
when he was
Surgeon General and instead focused on a much lesser issue- AIDS.
Deliberate?

1998 - Dr. Seeff (from S. Africa) appointed by Congress to oversee HCV
Internationally. Spends his career studying the 1942 Yellow Fever and HBV
'accident'- now will advise all on matters of HCV.

1998 - Schering granted unprecedented monopoly by FDA over only current HCV

therapy that still has only a 30% overall rate of slowing the virus'
progression in the liver: Bundling Ribavirin and Intron-A. Surprise! AIDS
Community now has the drug they wanted but FDA would not let them have years
earlier. Coincidence or a real treatment for HCV? AIDS Community will
conveniently supply Riba through their Drug Network, beginning with
Fisher's in Penn.

1998 - Proposed Veterans with Hepatitis Laws first introduced into the 105th
Congress

1998 - Naoumov, N. detected TTV-DDN in 18 (25 %) of the 72 patients with
chronic liver disease. The majority of TTV-positive cases had no biochemical
or histological evidence of significant liver damage. TTV-DNA sequencing of
nine isolates showed the same genotypic groups as in Japan: three patients
were infected with genotype 1, which showed 4 % nucleotide divergence, and
six patients were infected with genotype 2 with 15-27% divergence. Naoumov
suggests that TTV, similar to HGV, may be an example of a human virus with
no clear disease association according to the results -- the high prevalence
of active TTV infection in the general population, both in the UK and in
Japan, and the lack of significant liver damage.

1998 - FDA says only Riba (AIDS Drug) with Interferon can be used. AIDS
activists (ACT UP) rename themselves HAAC- (Hep advocacy and Awareness
Coalition) but do all they can to still the Hep message and the result is
that HCV leaders are lead to believe the combo is the way to go- with less
than 30% success rates the HCV Community is charged up to $20,000 a year for
treatments that do not work and genetically harm. AIDS Community is now
funded by HCV Community.

1998 - Superinfection of hepatitis viruses --- (Vento et al.) --- Although
most patients with chronic hepatitis B who acquired HAV infection had an
uncomplicated course, patients with chronic hepatitis C had a substantial
risk of Fulninant hepatitis and death associated with HAV superinfection.
Our data suggest that patients with chronic hepatitis C should be vaccinated
against hepatitis A. (N Engl J Med 1998;338:286-90.)

1999 - Rockefeller Health Grants - not a penny for HCV.

1999 - Proposed Veterans with Hepatitis Laws reintroduced into the 106th
Congress

1999 - Animal Serum, advised not to use in testing.

1999 - HGV, HGV-GB, Silent HBV, TTV, etc...all begin to emerge in the
research and around the Globe. Media only sees AIDS. 35 Million Worldwide
with AIDS, 3.5 Billion now, at least, with a hep virus- and growing more
rapidly as it branches.

1999 - Research emerges to show HCV not so much as a Liver Disease but a
Lymphatic tissue and Bone Marrow/Blood disorder that has wreaked havoc on
all organs and organ systems of the body for decades- liver is the first to
show effects of tissue injury, and liver is the only thing we look at and
that we fund with our research when looking for a cure. HCV is a slow
motion hemorrhagic.

1999 - less than 250,000 people with AIDS (700,000 with HIV) in the US
receive $7.11 Billion in fed NIH research funding involving every major
Academic Institution. Harvard, Rockefeller, Stanford, etc... all have AIDS
Institutes for Research.

1999- 11 Million Americans with HBV/HCV/HGV, receive $30.9 Million for fed
research. NIH explains that continued massive AIDS funding will eventually
help HCV.

1999 - Reported, 1 in 10 vets in the US have HCV. (ALF Congressional test.
6/9/99). Veteran population = 26 Million. Therefore, 2.6 Million vets have
HCV today - many are homeless.

1999 - The fix is in! CDC releases to media a 6 year old study conducted
from 1988-94 saying 2.7 Million in the US have HCV, not including any
institutions like vets or prisons... media runs with 2.7 number and only
that number. 3.9 has now been chiseled into 2.7. Simply math by their own
numbers say at least 5 Million today with HCV alone.

1999 - NEJM publishes that children with HCV can be managed early on
(interpreted as cured by the public) only if drug companies can be brought
in to profit. Koops, the AIDS poster boy, becomes our poster boy! For a
price of course.

1999 - FDA is blind deaf and dumb. No where in site. Front door left wide
open.

1999 - HHS last reported seen with Surgeon General and Red Cross- leaving
town at dusk! Driven By Rep. Chris Shays and Donna Shalala.

1999 - NIH has been bought and paid for by America's AIDS Institutes...which
needs NIH's support for continued massive funding. After all....careers are
only 10 to 15 years in the making, another 5 or 10 years of massive AIDS
Research ought to do it....... AIDS as a threat? Never was! Not a medical
issue either...political opportunity to make millions of dollars all in the
name of minority civil rights..... welcome to the year 2000! Where you now
place your life in the same hands that placed you there.

1999 - Institute of Human Virology's head, Robert Gallo, declares in mission
statement that AIDS is their top priority.

1999 Fall- ALF deliberately slashes HCV numbers in half in NY and begins a
process to blame behaviors and Drug Abuse for Liver cancer rates. ALF NY
Medical Director (Dr. Di Biscaglle- St. Louis School of medicine) blames
liver cancer rates on drug abuse and behavior from last 30 years- not on
contaminated blood and blood products that their funders initiated over 60+
years ago - and now sit in positions to educate the population and
physicians. Both they have have not done.

1999 - WHO, UN, CBS, AP, CDC, all major medias, report that AIDS is a
growing threat at 33 Million worldwide with HIV (10 Million will have AIDS).
More than 3 Billion have hep......still no message from the media except
AIDS and needles and AIDS and liver problems are an issue.

1999 - Organ Transplant laws, Nationally, will soon be changed to help Liver
Centers, not sick people. Contributors come first- not common sense.

1999 - Reported that 100% of Commercial Pig Stock is infected with Hepatitis
E (HEV) a DNA virus.....but, as usual, no matter. We'll still use pig
organs- just do not educate Americans about it.

1999 - No where can the research be found to point to an AIDS threat- not
now, not a decade ago. Africa? 5-10% infected with AIDS in Africa.
200-300% infected with hepatitis. Focus will be AIDS.

1999 - Between 5.2 Million and 8 Million Veterans have HCV- how many already
dead?

1999 End of Millennium - Patients left to educate themselves, families, and
communities, while those who are to help and are heavily funded- will not.
Hep patients are left to pay their physicians in order to educate them about
an illness they were not taught about in Medical School. Half the time hep
patients pay to educate their physicians and are told it is in their head.

Research has been public - yet the media and gov agencies have deliberately
ignored up to 155 Million American with a previous or past virus, so that
less than 250,000 with AIDS can obtain Civil Rights- or so it's claimed.
Every major Institution is being paid by the US Taxpayer for AIDS research.
People with hepatitis are now funding AIDS and the AIDS Community by means
like, Texas Prisons will now buy their Riba from Fischer's Pharm in Penn
(Aka The AIDS Community). People in Texas are paying people with HIV in New
York and San Fran. Texans with HCV are now funding AIDS, thanks to their
Politicians.

2000 - The truth? Some assistance? A Cure? Don't bet your life on
it............

Up to 20% - 31% of 26 Million US Vets have HCV. 5.2 - 8 Million that have
served have
been trashed, name called, and now the research emerges showing HCV 1b was
in the blood products they were given. Their families shamed, all to hide
the past and advance civil rights for less than 250,000 with AIDS.

Only the Drug Companies and Koop have the answers, we are told by the ALF
and others, and the Transplant Centers have a greater right to make a
financial killing- than we do to live.

Thanks for the mail. I am pasting it here:

http://www.inteldaily.com/
Declassified CIA records reveal American hand in birth of Japan's right wing
Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:26:00
A 1959 file photo of Col. Masanobu Tsuji. (AP Photo)
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/features/news/20070223p2g00m0fe006000c.html
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.

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.

The assessments in the files are far from uniform. They show evidence that other U.S. agencies, such as the Air Force, were also looking into using some of the same people as spies, and that the CIA itself had contacts with former Japanese war criminals. Some CIA reports gave passing grades to the G-2 contacts' intelligence potential.

But on balance, the reports were negative, and historians say there is scant documentary evidence from occupation authorities to contradict the CIA assessment.

The files, hundreds of pages of which were obtained last month by the AP, depict operations that were deeply flawed by agents' lack of expertise, rivalries and shifting alliances between competing groups, and Japanese operatives' overriding interest in right-wing activities and money rather than U.S. security aims.

"Frequently they resorted to padding or outright fabrication of information for the purposes of prestige or profit," a 1951 CIA assessment said of the agents. "The postwar era in Japan ... produced a phenomenal increase in the number of these worthless information brokers, intelligence informants and agents."

The contacts in Japan mirror similar efforts in postwar Germany by the Americans to glean intelligence on the Soviet Union from ex-Nazis. But historians say a major contrast is the ineffectiveness of the Japanese operations.

The main aims were to spy on Communists inside Japan, place agents in Soviet and North Korean territory, and use Japanese mercenaries to bolster Taiwanese defenses against the triumphant Communist forces in mainland China.

Some of the missions detailed by the CIA papers, however, bordered on the comical.

The Americans, for instance, provided money for a boat to infiltrate Japanese agents into the Soviet island of Sakhalin -- but the money, boat and agents apparently disappeared, one report said. In Taiwan, the Japanese traded recruits for shiploads of bananas to sell on the black market back home.

The operatives also were suspected of having murky links with the Communists they were assigned to undermine, the documents say. The CIA also said some agents sold the same information to different U.S. contacts, increasing their earnings, and funneled information on the American military back into the Japanese nationalist underground.

The files and historians strongly suggest that American lack of knowledge about Japan or interest in war crimes committed in Asia, and a reliance on operatives' own assessment of their intelligence skills, made U.S. officials, in the words of one CIA report, "easy to fool for a time."

"This was a bunch of Japanese nationalists taking the G-2 for a ride," said Carol Gluck, a specialist in Japanese history at Columbia University and adviser to the archives working group administering the papers. "One thing that was interesting was how absolutely nonsensical it was, of no use to anybody but the people involved. Almost funny in a way."

The informants, many of whom were held as war criminals after Tokyo's surrender and subsequently released, operated under the patronage of Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, a German-born, monocle-wearing admirer of Mussolini, a staunch anti-Communist and, as the chief of G-2 in the occupation government, second in power only to his boss, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Some of Willoughby's proteges were seen as prime war trial material by Allied prosecutors.

But even as the occupation authorities were recrafting Japan into a democracy, their focus was shifting to containing the Soviets. Willoughby saw the military men as key to making Japan an anti-Communist bulwark in Asia -- and ensuring that Tokyo would rapidly rearm, this time as a U.S. ally.

Historians long ago concluded that the Allies turned a blind eye to many Japanese war crimes, particularly those committed against other Asians, as fighting communism became the West's priority.

Chief among the Japanese operatives was Seizo Arisue, Japan's intelligence chief at the end of the war. Arisue had been a key figure in the pro-war camp and in forging Japan's alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the 1930s.

According to the files, Arisue was soon ensconced in G-2, working with former Lt. Gen. Yorashiro Kawabe, who was a military intelligence officer in China in 1938 -- to organize groups of veterans and others for underground operations.

These groups consisted of former war buddies and often retained the same chains of command and militarist ideology of the war machine that ground much of Asia into submission in the 1930s and '40s.

"It shows how we acquiesced to the Japanese ... in order to continue to build up Japan as our ally," said Linda Goetz Holmes, author of "Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs."

"The whole thing was Cold War fear and an awful lot of postwar compensation issues ... all of that was subservient to our total fear of Russia," said Holmes, also a historical adviser to the National Archives.

Indeed, that new focus brought some of Japan's most notorious wartime killers under U.S. sponsorship.

Tsuji, for instance, was wanted for involvement in the Bataan Death March of early 1942, in which thousands of Americans and Filipinos perished, and for allegedly co-signing an order to massacre anti-Japanese Chinese merchants in Malaya.

Yet none of that seemed to matter much to American intelligence. The U.S. Air Force attempted unsuccessfully to recruit him after he was taken off the war crimes list in 1949 and came out of hiding, and CIA and U.S. Army files show him working for G-2. In the 1950s he was elected to Japan's parliament. He vanished in Laos in 1961 and was never seen again.

The Army considered him a potentially valuable source, but the CIA was not impressed with Tsuji's skills as an agent. The files show he was far more concerned with furthering various right-wing causes and basking in publicity generated by controversial political statements.

"In either politics or intelligence work, he is hopelessly lost both by reason of personality and lack of experience," said a CIA assessment from 1954. Another 1954 file says: "Tsuji is the type of man who, given the chance, would start World War III without any misgivings."

Kodama was another unsavory player. A virulent anti-communist and superbly connected smuggler and political fixer, Kodama commanded a vast network of black marketeers and former Japanese secret police agents in East Asia.

The CIA, however, concluded he was much more concerned about making money than furthering U.S. interests. A gangland boss, he later played a major role in the Lockheed Scandal, one of the country's biggest post-World War II bribery cases. He died in 1984.

"Kodama Yoshio's value as an intelligence operative is virtually nil," says a particularly harsh 1953 CIA report. "He is a professional liar, gangster, charlatan and outright thief... Kodama is completely incapable of intelligence operations, and has no interest in anything but the profits."

Nowadays, the most powerful legacy of the U.S. occupation is the democratic freedoms and pacifism built into Japan's 1947 constitution. But the U.S. association with Japanese war criminals illustrates how Washington embraced nationalist and conservative forces after World War II, helping them reassert their grip on the government once the occupation ended in 1952.

"Its hard to imagine back in those days how intent the U.S. was on rapid remilitarization of Japan," said John Dower, historian and author of "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II."

"When we talk about the emergence of neo-nationalism or a strong right wing in Japan today, this has very deep roots and it involves a very strong element of American support," he said.

Yet the ex-war criminals failed to rebuild a militarist Japan. "Prewar right-wing activists who escaped war crime charges in fact did not have much influence in the postwar period," said Eiji Takemae, historian and author of The Allied Occupation of Japan.

To the Americans, he said, "they were in fact not very useful." (AP)

February 23, 2007