Tadamasa Goto—FBI

Tadamasa Goto’s relationship with the FBI was a covert bargain linking organized-crime intelligence to access to medical treatment in the United States. Goto sought a visa that would let him receive a liver transplant at UCLA; in return, he promised information on the Yamaguchi-gumi, its business and financial networks, and North Korean activity. The FBI helped open the door, but Goto supplied only a fraction of what he had offered, and the arrangement later drew criticism from another U.S. agency for yielding little actionable intelligence.

The need for a transplant

In January or February 2001, doctors at Showa University told Goto that he would die without a liver transplant soon. He had hepatitis C and a heart condition, and the account describes him as an unlikely transplant candidate in Japan. The urgency of his medical situation gave the proposed exchange its immediate purpose: he wanted permission to travel to the United States, where he had arranged to seek treatment at UCLA.

The transplant took place against a wider scarcity. Japan’s transplant system was stringent, donors were few, and operations were rare; many people needing an organ either went abroad or died waiting. Goto’s prospects therefore raised questions that reached beyond his own health: whether a wealthy foreign patient with criminal ties could gain access to a scarce organ while others waited, and what role payment, nationality, or the process for securing a visa might play. The account presents these as unresolved ethical questions, distinct from whether the FBI itself supplied medical care. It did not: the agency’s role was to help Goto obtain entry to the country, while UCLA provided the treatment.

The proposed exchange

In April 2001, Goto approached the FBI through Hoshi Hitoshi, a former fixer for Nobusuke Kishi with deep connections to the Liberal Democratic Party. Kishi, a former prime minister, relayed Goto’s offer. The FBI wanted information about important yakuza figures because the National Police Agency had refused to share such information, citing privacy concerns. That refusal, as described in the account, left the FBI unable to monitor yakuza activity in the United States effectively.

Goto promised a comprehensive list of Yamaguchi-gumi members, associated front companies, and financial institutions, along with information on North Korean activities. In exchange, he wanted a U.S. visa so he could undergo a liver transplant at UCLA. The account distinguishes Goto’s role in arranging the UCLA treatment from the government’s role in securing travel permission: Goto had set up the medical arrangement himself, while the visa came after the FBI pressured U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to grant it. The agency did so reluctantly.

The possible intelligence value extended beyond organized crime in the United States. According to journalist and Goto associate Manabu Miyazaki, the FBI was particularly interested in what Goto knew about North Korea, which had been implicated in producing high-quality counterfeit U.S. currency. Goto was also described as having close connections to North Korea, which allegedly supplied him with drugs, guns, and money. The account notes that Goto’s offer may have been made to the FBI and another intelligence agency, but does not establish that the second agency took part in the visa arrangement.

How the account was reconstructed

The narrator learned the essential claim in November 2006, when a source inside Goto’s organization said that Goto had entered the United States because the FBI had let him in. The source supplied approximate dates and named Jim Moynihan, the legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Japan and, in practice, the FBI’s representative there, as the person who arranged it. The information came from an underworld source whose account the narrator then sought to check, rather than from a public explanation of the original deal.

In December 2006, the narrator asked Moynihan about the arrangement over dinner. Moynihan disclosed what he could, and the narrator characterized the information he received as on the record, while noting that he was not given every detail. In the summer of 2007, a detective’s accidental leak of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s file on Goto to the WINNY file-sharing network supplied further material. The narrator downloaded the files and used them, along with information from sources in the U.S. Justice Department, Japanese police, and the underworld, to assemble and corroborate the account. These later disclosures illuminated the bargain, but they were not themselves the negotiations through which the visa had been obtained.

Performance and consequences

The transplant occurred on July 5, 2001. Goto gave the FBI only a fraction of the information he had promised; after receiving the liver, he boarded a plane back to Japan and did not speak to the FBI again. The account says there were no records of his return to Japan, while also reporting that he was back before the end of the year, healthier and no longer visibly jaundiced. These details frame the bargain as asymmetrical in its outcome: Goto secured the access he sought, while the FBI did not receive the full intelligence package it had hoped for.

The narrator treats the operation as a tremendous success for Goto but not a singular success for the FBI. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had a dim view of the arrangement and believed it had produced little actionable intelligence; the agency was not willing to be exploited in the same way again. The disagreement underscores that the deal involved distinct institutional roles and judgments: FBI officials saw potential value in the information, while the agency responsible for immigration enforcement assessed the results as inadequate.

The arrangement also created a risk for Goto within his own organization. By giving U.S. authorities names, documents, information about front companies, and leads on financial institutions used by the Yamaguchi-gumi, he was betraying associates. The narrator understood that such conduct could lead to expulsion or even death, and that this risk helped explain why Goto would oppose publication of the story. The bargain thus joined a personal medical crisis to intelligence gathering, immigration discretion, and the danger of exposure inside a criminal organization; its significance rests as much in those competing consequences as in the visa itself.