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[[Image:Ft296nb15t 00003.jpg|right|300px|thumb|American communists and New Deaters [[Philip Jaffe]], [[Owen Lattimore]], Agnes Jaffe, and [[Thomas Bisson]] with [[PLA]] founder Zhu De (also Chu Teh, in center), in Yan'an, China, June 1937.]] 
'''Thomas Arthur Bisson''' was an [[Asia]] specialist working in the [[World War II]] [[Board of Economic Warfare]] (BEW) and later the [[Institute of Pacific Relations]] (IPR).  He was an [[American]] citizen who as a [[Soviet]] spy reported to the [[New York]] [[GRU]] (Soviet Military Intelligence) in 1943.  Bisson was a founding editorial board member of ''[[Amerasia]]'' and ''China Today''.  

Bisson supplied the GRU in 1943 through [[Joseph Bernstein]] confidential BEW reports including a joint British-American evaluation of the military situation on the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Soviet-German front]], as well as reports on American strength in the [[China Burma India Theater of World War II|China theatre]] of operations, a report by the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. on trade between Chinese nationals in Japan and Chinese mainland industrialists, a report by an American consul on conditions in Vladivostok, a report on [[Chiang Kai-shek]]'s war with the [[CCP]], and internal United States government discussions regarding direct contact with [[Maoist]] forces to arrange establishment of air bases in territories fallen under their control.<ref>''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America,'' John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Yale University Press, 1999.</ref>

When, on June 15, 1943, [[Owen Lattimore]] instructed [[Joseph Barnes]]<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,791284,00.html ''Tongue-Tied''], [[Time magazine]], Feb. 07, 1944.</ref> to replace the non-Communist Chinese of the [[Office of War Information]] (OWI) with Communists, OWI did so. On July 14 Bisson, in the [[Institute of Pacific Relations]] publication, ''Far Eastern Survey'', referred to Moaist forces as the "democratic China."   The [[disinformation]] was widely repeated among journalists and academics.  In July and August 1943, the Chinese Communist forces—in the midst of the war—joined with the [[Japanese]] armies to inflict a serious defeat on the [[Kuomintang]] troops allied with the United States.<ref>[http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/yaltabet.html ''The Yalta Betrayal''], Felix Wittmer, Claxton Printers, 1953, pg. 36.</ref>

In a transmission from Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) in New York to Moscow, a Venona decryption reads:
<blockquote style="background: #F9F9F9; border: 1px solid #AAAAAA; padding: .3em;">
Marquis ([[Joseph Bernstein]]) has established friendly relations with T.A. Bisson (hereafter Arthur). . . who has recently left BEW; he is now working in the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) and in the editorial offices of Marquis’ periodical [Amerasia]. . . Arthur passed to Marquis . . . copies of four documents: (a) his own report for BEW with his views on working out a plan for shipment of American troops to China; (b) a report by the Chinese embassy in Washington to its government in China. . . . (c) a brief BEW report of April 1943 on a general evaluation of the forces of the sides on the Soviet-German front. . . . (d) a report by the American consul in Vladivostok. . ." 
</blockquote>
In the 1950s, [[Senator Joseph McCarthy]] made accusations against Bisson, not knowing the full extent of Bisson's complicity in Soviet espionage.<ref>[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=455 McCarthyism: Waging the Cold War in America], by M. Stanton Evans, ''Human Events'', 05/30/1997. Updated 05/08/2003.</ref>

==Further reading==

*T.A. Bisson, ''American Policy in the Far East, 1931-1941'', Institute of Pacific Relations

==See also==
*[[Yan'an rectification movement]]

=== References ===
<references/>


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[[Category:KGB Agents and Sources]]
[[Category:Propagandists]]