Book reveals past U.S. secret acts in China, Korea

By Edward Neilan

STANFORD, Calif. (JP): A recently-published book based on newly declassified documents fills in huge gaps that have existed in the history of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and its activities in China near the end of World War II.

The OSS was the forerunner of today's Central Intelligence Agency or CIA.

So what? You are justified in asking that. There has been so much water flowing under Asia bridges since the OSS was disbanded October 1, 1945 that much of what the OSS did then and there might be seen today as impossibly hazy, irrelevant and even moot.

But in an impressive scholarly work, OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War, Yale University Press, New Haven and London; 1996; 278 pp.), U.S. Naval Academy assistant professor Maochun Yu has proven to be an effective fogcutter.

His book explains how the OSS experience demonstrated the need for a single intelligence agency, how OSS chief Bill Donovan's reluctant dealings with Korean exile leader Kim Ku resulted in Donovan's own firing, the importance of not relying on a foreign nation's intelligence reports, a clear revelation of how American hero Capt. John Birch was murdered by Chinese Communists and used by left and right political extremists in their arguments over "who lost China," and some inadvertent hints for dealing with the current regime in Beijing.

It also spells out once again that American bureaucracy and inter-service rivalry are the United States' major enemies. Indeed, many Asian observers -- including quite a few Japanese -- have expressed dismay that U.S. executives in war or peace can get anything accomplished in the face of such lack of harmony.

In the case of Kim Ku, the Korean leader of an exile government is Shanghai, Donovan had to deal with him as a possible alternative to Syngman Rhee, the U.S. official choice. Before a Ku-Donovan meeting could be arranged, the desperate Ku wrote a long letter to U.S. President Harry S. Truman detailing all that was wrong with American intelligence operations in Asia.

Truman became angered at Donovan for allowing Ku to use U.S. communications channels. The incident became a sort of "last straw" for OSS and for Donovan in Truman's mind and he decided to eliminate the agency.

There is a grim description of the murder of John Birch, hands tied behind his back. After shooting him in the leg and then the head, his captors bayoneted his face repeatedly to make identification difficult.

Even more revealing were the lies told to General Albert C. Wedemeyer when he demanded answers to the incident directly from Chinese Communist leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Wedemeyer's insistence finally led to the return of Birch's body and those of other members of an OSS team captured and killed by the Chinese Communists.

Wedemeyer may have been too soft for the spy business or for dealing with the likes of Mao and Zhou. Once on a shared aircraft, Zhou fell asleep and his secret notebook slipped from his grasp and fell under his seat. He told Mao of the incident and volunteered take punishment.

Wedemeyer's aide found the notebook and the general later returned it to Zhou. The latter was surprised that Wedemeyer had not shown its contents to Chiang Kai-shek.

Let us hope that some young scholar will come along to do a "CIA in Asia" some day as thoroughly as Professor Yu has done with his "OSS in China."

You and I would like to see particularly the chapters on Japan and Korea and Taiwan and Indonesia and the subchapters on Nobusuke Kishi and Hayato Ikeda; on Park Chung-hee and Kwangju; on Chiang Ching-kuo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling) and on Sukarno and Subandrio and of course Dewi Sukarno.

Edward Neilan is a Tokyo-based analyst spending part of the summer as a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.