Changes

Alger Hiss (view source)

Revision as of 14:01, November 28, 2009

7,809 bytes removed , 14:01, November 28, 2009

→‎Yalta: moved material to separate articles

Line 168: Line 168:

During pre-conference negotiations with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, regarding the war with Japan, "Mr. Hiss brought up the question of China," according to Stettinius, "and stressed the importance which the United States attaches to U.S.-British-Soviet encouragement and support for an agreement between the [[Comintern|Commintern]] [sic] and the Chinese Congress [sic]."<ref>[[#refStettinius75|Stettinius 1975]]: 229. The official State Department record uses the passive voice to expunge Hiss' role in this maneuver: "The desirability of unity being achieved between the [[Kuomintang]] and the [[Communists]] was raised, and reference was made to the President having some doubts as to whether the British desired this unity." Meeting of the Foreign Ministers, February 1, 1945, 10:30 A.M., on Board H. M. S. "Sirius" in Grand Harbor. [[#refFRUS45|FRUS 1945]]: [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1945&isize=XL&submit=Go+to+page&page=502 502] Press accounts relying on this bowdlerized official account thus reported, e.g.: "Alger Hiss, whose role at the Yalta conference long has been a subject for hostile speculation, spent his time there [http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F40C11F6345A107A93CAA81788D85F418585F9 exclusively on planning for the United Nations]."</ref> The British, due to their interests in Hong Kong and Singapore, had influence with the [[Kuomintang]], but none with the [[Communists]]; the Soviets, who did have influence with the Communists, were not present (because they were [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/s1.asp not at war with Japan]). The only effect Hiss had in bringing up the issue therefore was to co-opt the British to pressure the Chinese government into acquiescing to a [[Kremlin]]-backed power-sharing arrangement with the rebels, thus granting a measure of legitimacy to forces dedicated to its destruction—a policy that would prove [http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?1c1d76bb-290c-447b-82dd-e295ff0d3d59 catastrophic for the Chinese].<ref>After the fall of the Nationalist Chinese government, Communist Chinese dictator Mao Zedong "was responsible for [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1069136,00.html well over 70 million] deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th-century leader," according to Jung Chang, a former [http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/ommoverride/teacher_guide_wild_swans.pdf member of Mao's Red Guards]. [[#refChang05|Chang 2005]]: 3</ref>

−

This U.S. policy of support for the Communists in China was based on reports from sources such as State Department official [[John Stewart Service]]<ref>Edward M. Collins, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=YRa3Y2m_wrwC Myth, Manifesto, Meltdown: Communist Strategy, 1848-1991]'' (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger/Greenwood, 1998) ISBN 0275959384, p. 93</ref> (arrested in the ''[[Amerasia]]'' spy case after being caught on FBI surveillance passing confidential government documents to secret Communist<ref>Philip Jaffe, ''The Amerasia Case from 1945 to the Present'' (New York: Philip J. Jaffe, 1979), p. 1</ref> Philip Jaffe)<ref>"Service, according to the microphone surveillance, apparently gave Jaffe a document which dealt with matters the Chinese had furnished to the United States government in confidence." Report of the Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1950), appendix, p. 2051</ref> and his roommate<ref>"A highly confidential source has advised that Sol Adler was the roommate in Chungking, China, of John Stewart Service." (FBI [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/COMRAP%20SUMMARY.pdf COMRAP Summary], p. 20 [PDF p. 24]) "During 1944, Service was sharing a house in Chungking with Solomon Adler." Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=tfrTpBLdl50C The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism]'' (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0807822456, p. 21. Cf. Service's testimony before the State Department Loyalty-Security Board ("I moved into an apartment in the city [Chungking] with Solomon Adler") reprinted in the appendix to the Tyding committee report (p. 1969) and in the Senate Internal Security subcommittee report, ''The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China'' (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1970), p. 592.</ref> [[Solomon Adler]]—a Soviet agent (so identified [[#refBerle|by Whittaker Chambers]], Elizabeth Bentley,<ref>[[#refSilv6|Statement of Elizabeth Terrill Bentley]], November 30, 1945 (FBI file: Silvermaster, Volume 6), [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster006_Folder/Silvermaster006_page27.pdf p. 26 (PDF p. 27)]</ref> Soviet archives<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 40; Trans. 78; cf. [[#refBLH05|Bachman, Leich, Haynes 2005]]; [[#refLowCher|Lowenthal, Chervonnaya 2005]]</ref> and [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1945/4jan_kgb_policy.pdf Venona]) who, after the fall of China to the Communists, would defect to Beijing, where he would spend the next 20 years as a Communist Chinese espionage official.<ref>[[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 144</ref> These Service-Adler reports were flatly contradicted by first-hand observers.<ref>Adler (attributing information to Service) reported: "The Communists have successfully resisted the Japanese for seven years... with no active support from Chungking." ([[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 99-106). Compare: "No Communist Chinese forces fought in any major battles of the Sino-Japanese war," reported General Albert Wedemeyer, [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/20/obituaries/gen-albert-c-wedemeyer-92-noted-military-planner-for-us.html commander of American forces in China]. "Chinese Communist leaders were not interested in fighting the Japanese," he wrote; "their main interest was to occupy the territory which the Nationalist forces evacuated in their retreat." (Albert C. Wedemeyer, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=64s_HgAACAAJ Wedemeyer Reports]'' [Holt, 1958], p. 285) "[T]he war was to [Mao] an opportunity to have Chiang destroyed by the Japanese.... He ordered Red commanders to wait for Japanese troops to defeat the Nationalists, and then, to seize territories below the Japanese line." ([[#refChang05|Chang 2005]]: 211) As Mao put it, “Our determined policy is 70 percent self-development, 20 percent compromise, and 10 percent fight the Japanese”; in July-August 1943, 20,000 Chinese troops were wiped out at Shantung when attacked simultaneously by the Japanese from the north and the Communist rebels from the south. (Robert Henry Winborne Welch, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=V_i2OwAACAAJ Again, May God Forgive Us]'' [Belmont, Wash.: Belmont Pub. Co., 1971], cited in James Perloff, "[http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/history/world/1464 China Betrayed Into Communism]," ''The New American,'' July 24, 2009; cf. Felix Wittmer, ''[http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/yaltabet.html The Yalta Betrayal: Data on the Decline and Fall of Franklin Delano Roosevelt]'' [Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1961] p. 37) In May 1945, an [[OSS]] team (code-named "Spaniel") that parachuted into China to link up with Communist forces was instead taken prisoner by the Communists, whom they found coexisting with Japanese troops. The Americans were held incommunicado until October, some two months after the end of the war. When finally freed, they reported, "The amount of actual fighting being carried on by the 8th R.A. [the “Eighth Route Army,” i.e., Communist Chinese rebels] has been grossly exaggerated. It was their policy to undertake no serious campaign against the Japanese..." (Maochun Yu, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=NJcolGHWfzoC OSS in China]'' [Yale University Press, 1997] ISBN 0300066988, pp. 220-223) Even so [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Diplo&month=0508&week=b&msg=TnHrvJBDZ3%2buWcV2D1Mwgw&user=&pw= ardent a pro-Communist] as Theodore White—to whom [[Edward C. Carter|Edward Carter]] confided (in the midst of the [[Nazi-Soviet pact]]): "A trusted member of the [[Institute of Pacific Relations|IPR]] staff is about to take a journey on my behalf to certain countries that are not too popular at the moment in [[Wall Street]] or in [[Jewish]] circles" (Edward C. Carter to Theodore H. White, January 8, 1940 [FBI file: [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/IPR54.11.pdf Institute of Pacific Relations, Vol. 54, Sec. 11], PDF p. 120])—would have to admit, "The Communists...claimed that they held down most of the Japanese troops in China and that they bore the main weight of resistance; this was untrue." In fact, wrote White, "it was the weary soldiers of the Central Government who bore the shock, gnawed at the enemy, and died." (Theodore Harold White, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=ipdPd6kY7XwC Thunder out of China]'' [Da Capo Press, 1980] ISBN 0306801280, p. 210)</ref>

−

Ultimately, [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] made a secret agreement with [[Stalin]] ([[Winston Churchill|Churchill]] was [http://www.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/in-depth/the-conferences.html#Argonaut2 not informed]), giving [[Moscow]] rights to the main Manchurian railroad and territory in northern China.<ref>Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=XjW49VTRhxQC The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals]'' (Stanford University Press, 2007) ISBN 0804754276, p. 156</ref> U.S. Ambassador to China Patrick J. Hurley resigned in protest, alleging the existence of a "[http://www.usdiplomacy.org/history/service/chinahands.php Communist conspiracy] within the [State] Department." Hiss would later deny under oath any role in China policy at Yalta, or in the subsequent State Department proclamation calling for "peace and unity with the Communists in China," saying "It was not in my area of activity at all." Hiss admitted that he "had been connected with far eastern affairs before," but protested that after "about February 1944, [a year before he "stressed the importance" of unity with the Communists] I was assigned to United Nations work and specialized entirely in that field thereafter."<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 657 (PDF 167)</ref>

On [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/index.php?action=chrono February 4, 1945], Hiss accompanied [[FDR]] to his meeting with [[Winston Churchill]] and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. According to Sudoplatov, "One of the officials [at Yalta] we had established confidential relations with was Alger Hiss," who was "highly sympathetic to the interests of the Soviet Union."<ref>[[#refSudoplatov95|Sudoplatov 1995]]: 227</ref> According to confidential [[GRU]] sources, during the conference, Hiss gave daily briefings to Stalin's military adviser, General Mikhail Abramovich Milshtein (deputy director of the GRU), revealing not only the American negotiating strategy but insights into the attitudes of the American negotiators.<ref>[[#refSchecter02|Schecter 2002]]: 130</ref> Sudoplatov added:

FOIA

SkipCaptcha, Automoderated users, edit

7,178

edits