Lisa Pease on Freeport Sulphur, the Castro Plots and the Indonesia Coup

[David Guyatt]

David:

Lisa does mention Ferrie, Shaw and Freeport, its in Part One.

If you look at the chart on page 26, of Part 2, you will see that LBJ stopped the bill on Kennedy's desk shortly after he assumed office, the aid to Indonesia, and he also stopped NSAM 179.LBJ was in the pocket of Long and Whitney.

But I totally agree about the whole Dulles vs non aligned movement which Sukarno started. Thanks for the tip on the bank proposal, will look into that.


Dawn:

I confine myself to the four assassinations of the sixties and JFK's foreign policy. If I cannot be really good at something, I just don't really go there.

BTW, I just adopted JFK's foreign policy about two years ago since no one really specialized in it. We were all just rolling around in the dark with Vietnam and Cuba etc. Lisa's article above broke the logjam and then I discovered Mahoney's book about JFK and the Congo.

BTW, did you see my talk at the Wecht conference at the anniversary? It brought the house down. Its still online I think.

Thanks Jim. I missed that then, I did check but couldn't see Ferrie's name in either of the two Pease article. Time for a visit to the optician's I guess. Or a brain scan...

Very interesting, I think, about NSAM 179 being cancelled by LBJ. I note that JFK referenced in that document an "economic stabliziation" in relation to Indonesia - and this reminded me that the Exchange Stabliziation Fund (possibly not the same fish at all?) has been used in the gold market to manipulate the price (see HERE) and also effect cloaked transactions with other nations. I have no idea if it was used in the Indonesian case, but it certainly existed then, as it dates from 3ist January 1934.

Interestngly enough, that date coincides with the Gold Reserve Act dated 30th January 1934 - a day of infamy amongst "goldbugs" - in that this Act transferred ownerhsip of all monetary gold (bullion and coins) held in US private hands to the US government at a set price. In other words the Act and the Fund were birthed at the same time for the same reason. More significantly, the US was clearly in dire need of more and more monetary gold, which came to public light when Nixon closed the gold window after the French asked for their gold back that had been sent to the US for safe-keeping prior to the outbreak of WWII. The closing of the gold window by Nixon had the effect of disentangling the US dollar currency from precious metals which hitherto it had been backed with in the past. Henceforward the dollar would just be a paper symbol based on confidence and nothing more.

So there might well be some smoke in that Hilton Hotel agreement - and even if the earlier linked document I posted is a fake, and I fell sure it is/was, this doesn't mean that it wasn't based on an actual meaningful document. I have seen many documents, paperwork and court records over the years during my gold investigation, and it is not unknown for documents that look fake, and are said to be fake by the authorities, are in reality genuine.

I know of one case where the US government arrested and held an eldery Indonesian gentleman in jail and tried him for fraud, but let him go free only when he had signed over ownership to them of what that "fake" gold certificate, that was notionally worth billions of dollars (and was one of many he held power of attorney over). He had taken the certificate to the Fed in Texas to negotiate it being honoured by the US. My guess is that they freaked when he revealed his business, since the US never had any intention to honour these obligations, so they had him arrested by a Treasury officer. The point to bear in mind here is that no government has to go through legal manouvres to take ownership of a fraudulent document. If it's truly fraudulent, they just take it as evidence - just like they would a handgun or a fake cheque.

That Indonesian gentleman, by the way, was Edison Daminik, previously a close associate of Suharto.

Anyway, I hope this does not lead you into a "Culdees Sac" but it seemd worthwhile, in this case, to air this after all these years.