Jim Moynihan

Jim Moynihan, a legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Japan who served as the FBI’s de facto representative, enters the narrative through a consequential intelligence bargain: Tadamasa Goto was allowed to travel to the United States for a liver transplant after offering information about the Yamaguchi-gumi and related activity. Moynihan was also Jake Adelstein’s friend and mentor. His place in the story rests on the tension between those roles: he participated in a deal involving a powerful organized-crime figure, then gave Adelstein an on-the-record account of it, while remaining someone Adelstein regarded as personally important and professionally trustworthy.

Identity and professional position

The book identifies Moynihan by his function rather than by a personal history. In November 2006, during a meeting far from Tokyo, a detective told Adelstein that the FBI had let Goto enter the United States. The detective supplied approximate dates and named Moynihan as the person who had arranged it. Adelstein knew Moynihan as a friend and mentor, which made the revelation difficult for him to accept; the detail was not an anonymous allegation about an unfamiliar official, but information implicating someone he knew.

Moynihan’s position at the U.S. Embassy was that of legal attaché, while his practical role was described as the FBI’s representative in Japan. That distinction matters to the episode: he was acting within a law-enforcement and intelligence context, but the arrangement he helped facilitate also enabled Goto’s travel for medical treatment. The narrative does not provide a full account of Moynihan’s authority, the internal deliberations behind the decision, or his precise share in negotiating each term. It establishes his role in arranging Goto’s entry and records what he later chose to explain.

The Goto arrangement

The bargain emerged against a problem in U.S.–Japan law-enforcement cooperation. The National Police Agency had refused to share information about yakuza with the FBI, citing privacy issues, leaving American authorities with limited means of tracking their activity in the United States. Goto offered information that could address that gap: a comprehensive list of Yamaguchi-gumi members, associated front companies and financial institutions, as well as information concerning North Korea. In exchange, he sought a U.S. visa so that he could receive a liver transplant at UCLA.

The book distinguishes the visa from the medical treatment itself. The FBI did not provide Goto with an organ or perform the surgery; its intervention was to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to grant the visa, which they reluctantly did. Goto had arranged the UCLA treatment independently. The transplant took place on July 5, after which he returned to Japan. The account says that he supplied only a fraction of the information he had promised and did not speak to the FBI again. These limits complicate any simple description of the deal as a successful exchange: Goto obtained access to treatment, while the promised intelligence was only partly delivered.

Disclosure to Adelstein

In December 2006, Adelstein met Moynihan for dinner and asked him, as politely as he could, why he had made a deal with Goto. Moynihan explained what he could. He did not disclose every detail, but he gave Adelstein enough information for the account to be placed on the record. That qualification is important: the conversation provided a basis for reporting, but it was not presented as a complete reconstruction of the negotiation or as a full release of the government’s information.

The disclosure also changed Adelstein’s understanding of why Goto might object to the story. Goto had reportedly supplied authorities with names of gang leaders, documents, lists of front companies and information about financial institutions used by the Yamaguchi-gumi to launder money in the United States. Informing on associates could expose Goto to expulsion from the organization or even death. The account therefore connects Moynihan’s role in enabling the visa not only to Goto’s medical journey, but also to the risk attached to the information he traded. It does not establish what Moynihan knew about every consequence for Goto or how he assessed those risks.

Relationship and later assessment

For Adelstein, the episode placed personal trust beside professional scrutiny. He knew Moynihan as a friend and mentor, yet still confronted him about a decision involving Goto. Moynihan’s willingness to provide an on-the-record explanation preserved that relationship as a source of reporting rather than making it a reason to avoid the subject. The narrative presents the conversation as candid but bounded: Moynihan shared what he could, not everything Adelstein might have wanted to know.

Adelstein’s later acknowledgment of Moynihan was not confined to the Goto story. In his thanks, he described Moynihan as honest and credited him with hard work that helped Japan partially ban child pornography. This retrospective recognition gives the portrait a second dimension without erasing the controversy surrounding the intelligence deal. Moynihan is neither reduced to the official who facilitated Goto’s entry nor presented as beyond questioning. The book retains both facts: he helped arrange a consequential agreement with a yakuza leader, and Adelstein continued to regard him as an honest friend and mentor whose public-service work deserved gratitude.