On the M-Fund:

A high-ranking senior minister at the Ministry of Finance (MOF) who spoke only on condition of anonymity: "It [the M-fund] is nonsense."

Hajime Takano, Japanese investigative journalist and author of M-Fund: The Unknown World of Underground Finance: (Re: the MoF statement) "They would say that! I spent a lot of time investigating it and I believe there's a core of truth to it. There was definitely a lot of money floating around the time of Lockheed. But there is also a lot of myth obscuring what went on and a lot of people who used it to extort money."

Gillian Tett, former Financial Times Japan correspondent: "The whole thing is a can of worms. There is a fabulously interesting web of intrigue, but the real story for me is why have the conditions been laid for so many conspiracies to flourish. And that's because US-Japan relations are filthy. There are so many dark areas. The US could clear this up, but they've refused to declassify a whole bunch of documents from the 50s and 60s.

"When I was writing, a lot of very odd things happened. I went to Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, which was the name that appeared on the bonds, to interview an official. He was your absolutely conventional official -- but there were three heavies in the room when I arrived. And when I presented my meishi they said 'Oh, we don't give meishis.' And they sat there for the whole interview. It was the only time in five years that anything like that happened to me in Japan."

Karel Vanwolferen, Author and Japan Commentator: "I heard about it, most people do. There are an awful lot of things that are still in the dark in Japan about that era and relations with the U.S., and this is one of them."

Akira Isozaki, financial consultant: "It doesn't exist. If it did, the Japanese economy wouldn't be in the state it's in now. If all that money was floating around, do you think they'd let banks fail?"

Eiji Takemae, veteran historian and author of the 700-page Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy (New York: 2002), which contains no mention of the M-Fund: "I've heard of it of course, but it's too opaque to research properly. There is no trustworthy evidence -- just a lot of rumors with no proof the fund existed. As an academic, it's not a subject about which I can publish."