Amerasia

Amerasia was a journal on Far Eastern affairs, edited by Philip J. Jaffe and Kate L. Mitchell.

Amerasia's chief financial benefactor was Frederick V. Field. Jaffe, a friend of CPUSA general secretary Earl Browder. Its staffers and writers included many Communists. Joseph Milton Bernstein, a GRU contact between Soviet agents operating in the Office of Strategic Services and the Board of Economic Warfare, was one of its ex-employees.

The Amerasia Affair

Frederick Vanderbilt Field testified that he had discussed with associates in the Institue of Pacific Relations (IPR) the project of starting Amerasia in 1937. Amerasia was established with the full approval of the Institute leaders. This property belonged to Fredrick Field and Philip Jaffe, with Field holding the controlling interest. Field testified that he owned 50 per cent of the stock, while Jaffe owned 49 per cent. A good many of Field's associates in IPR were on the editorial board of Amerasia. Field named Owen Lattimore, Kate Mitchell, Harriet Moore, T. A. Bisson, Benjamin Kizer, a trustee of the Institute, and Philip Jaffe, who also was a member of the Institute and a contributor to its periodical.

When Field made his effort to get into Army Intelligence, it was in writing on the letterhead of Amerasia, showing Field as chairman of the editorial board with Owen Lattimore and William T. Stone as members of the board. There was no change in ownership of this magazine from 1937 to 1943, when Field resigned and Jaffe took over.

There appeared in Amerasia a long account which was recognized in General William Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (the OSS) as verbatim reproduction of a government top secret document. The Amerasia Papers consist of documents seized by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents on June 6, 1945.

Six persons, Philip Jaffe, Mark Gayn, Kate Mitchell and three others who were U.S. government officials, Andrew Roth, Emmanuel Larsen, John S. Service, were arrested on conspiracy and espionage charges related to the possession of over 1,000 stolen classified Government documents. Documents from Military Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Bureau of Censorship, British Intelligence, Office of Strategic Services and the U.S. State Department were confiscated. Among these documents were military reports giving secret information on the position and disposition of Chinese Nationalist armies of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek.

This resulted in the so-called Amerasia Affair.

Because the FBI had burglarized the office of Amerasia and the homes of several individuals, the evidence was deemed tainted. Former Franklin Roosevelt intimate adviser, Thomas Corcoran, represtning several of the the accused working with the Truman Justice Department was able to obtain reduced charges for some and have others dropped. Other names connected with the Amerasia affair include:

• Joseph Milton Bernstein, Board of Economic Warfare
• T.A. Bisson, Board of Economic Warfare
• Frederick V. Field, Executive Secretary American Peace Mobilization
• Mark Gayn, The Washington Post
• Owen Lattimore

Congressional investigation

Congressional interest in the case continued, however. In 1946, a House Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Rep. Samuel F. Hobbs and, in 1950, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, or "Tydings Committee", investigated the Amerasia case. In 1955, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee asked the Justice Department to deliver the Amerasia materials to them. The records were declassified and, in 1956 and 1957, the Justice Department delivered 1,260 documents to the subcommittee.

The committee published The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China (2 vols., 1970), offering a biased summary of the case.

The highest-level government employee arrested in the Amerasia case was State Department official John S. Service, one of John Carter Vincent's "China Hands", who shared living quarters with Solomon Adler of the Treasury Department when they both served in China. Upon Service's return to the United States, Service spent time in the company of Jaffe, whom he attested he had just met, showing personal copies of his reports, and commenting to Jaffe while under audio surveillance by FBI that, "What I said about the military plans is, of course, very secret". Service later maintained that his interaction with Jaffe was for the purpose of assisting Jaffe in an article. The material Service provided was from his notes, and it was not uncommon for Washington insiders to provide such background material to journalists. Andrew Roth, also arrested in the case, was the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) liaison officer with the Department of State.

Outcome

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin years later said that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed he had an "airtight case," and Justice Department officials were ready to prosecute. The case displayed every type of security breach imaginable, and federal crime: theft of documents, policy subversion, cover-up, perjury, and obstruction of justice. However, the case fell apart under closer scrutiny and the Justice Department swept the matter under the rug. A Federal Grand jury refused to indict Service by a vote of 20 - 0, and Service was restored to State Department duties. Jaffe and Larsen received fines, and all others were not prosecuted. McCarthy maintained it was a security breach and cover-up of immense proportions.

See also

• Institute of Pacific Relations

Further reading

• Klehr, Harvey, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism, University of North Carolina Press, 1996. ISBN 0807822450

• Service, John S., The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of US-China Relations, Center for Chinese Studies, 1971.

Reference

• National Archives, Records of the Committee on the Judiciary and Related Committees

External link

• McCarthyism: Waging the Cold War in America, by M. Stanton Evans, Human Events, 05/30/1997. Updated 05/08/2003.