One of the historical details of the last 80 years or so is the close funding relationship between the American christo-fascist right and a cabal of East and South East Asian gangster/fascists empowered by US intelligence, theoretically to combat communism.

'One of the more undiscussed details,' I mean. But you knew that.

Included in the cabal were fascist druglord Chiang Kai-Shek, war criminal, Yakuza gangster and avowed fascist Kodama Yoshio and christo-fascist grifter/arms dealer Sun Myung Moon, with some others, operating under the collective name of the East Asian Anti-Communist League.

The US embrace of these and other similar allies tied large swaths of the CIA to the international drug trade, almost from its birth.

The CIA was a newborn in 1947 when Gen. Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's second in command and chief of US intelligence in Japan recruited war criminals Kodama, Kishi, and Sasakawa from prison and put them in charge of organized crime while also acting as CIA agents. 1/

The advantage of using organized crime as intelligence assets is that they are largely self-funded, requiring only that police leave them alone. The disadvantage is that you, the intelligence service, are now in the drug business, too. And an irresistible torrent of money begins.

Complicating the situation was that Willoughby was a proud and outspoken fascist, a fan of Mussolini and Franco. He saw the massively swelled ranks of the postwar Yakuza as a deniable street army in the war against the rising labor movement in Japan, busting heads and disrupting.

meetings and political rallies and the like.

The Yakuza (japanese organized crime) leaders were all avowed fascists, and were to lesser or greater extent founders of the Anti Communist League, influencing things all thru Asia. In Japan they were instrumental in forming the LDP, which remains as Japan's dominant party.