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Abstract
Throughout the civil war, US intelligence in China reported on the operations of the Bureau of Information and Statistics (BIS) of the regime of the Kuomintang (KMT) – the ruling Chinese National People’s Party of the Republic of China – the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Soviet intelligence (the NKVD – later the MBG and its military intelligence counterpart the GRU) in the vast urban centres of Shanghai, Nanjing, Tietsin and Beijing, as well as in key ports and coastal cities. Opponents multiplied in the complex and ruthless world of espionage, and honest allies were hard to find. The descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), the X-2 Branch (the surviving counter-intelligence branch of the OSS), Army and Naval Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) and ultimately, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were the key agencies handling secret human sources, witnessing the rapid decay of the KMT regime, the performance of its security apparatus, and the PLA’s secret activities among the urban population. US intelligence also noted the extensive recruitment of Japanese intelligence networks and operators to serve the Soviets, the KMT regime and the Communist Party of China (CPC); only a couple of years earlier Japanese spies were the enemy, and now they were deemed expert intelligence assets, to be employed without hesitation. One could say that in espionage yesterday’s fanatical enemy is tomorrow’s unscrupulous associate.
Notes
1 “Memorandum on Intelligence Activities at Shanghai,” October 15, 1945, RG 263 Entry 18, Box 18 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 3.
2 Ibid., 9.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 “Memorandum of the views of a fairly high Chinese Military Official in Shanghai as given to an American civilian acquaintance of long standing,” October 12, 1945, ibid., 1.
6 “Memorandum on Intelligence Activities at Shanghai,” October 15, 1945, ibid., 10.
7 “Memorandum on Soviet Activities in Shanghai,” October 16, 1945, ibid.
8 “Memorandum on Intelligence Activities at Shanghai,” October 15, 1945, ibid., 1.
9 Ibid., 7.
10 Ibid.
11 Matthew Aid and Jeffrey T. Richelson, US Intelligence and China: Collection, Analysis and Covert Action, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/CI/intell_and_china_essay.pdf (accessed June 2, 2012).
12 Ibid.
13 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 178.
14 See Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – The Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999); R. Bruce Craig, Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004); Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (London: Allen Lane, 1999).
15 “Counter-Espionage Section Monthly Progress Report,” March 31, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00082/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 1.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., 1, 4.
18 “Monthly Progress Report, Counter Espionage Section,” April 1946, May 1, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00109/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 4.
19 “Counter-Espionage Section Monthly Progress Report,” March 31, 1946, ibid., 2.
20 Donald G. Gillin and Charles Etter, “Staying on: Japanese Soldiers and Civilians in China, 1945–1949,” Journal of Asian Studies 42, no. 3 (May 1983): 499–500.
21 Ibid., 502.
22 Ibid., 500
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., 498.
25 “Counter-Espionage Section Monthly Progress Report,” March 31, 1946, ibid., 4.
26 Ibid., 5–6.
27 Quoted in Gillin and Etter, “Staying on,” 504.
28 “Counter-Espionage Section Monthly Progress Report,” March 31, 1946, ibid., 3–4.
29 Gillin and Etter, “Staying on,” 511–13.
30 “Penetration of United States Consulate General, Shanghai, by Chinese Intelligence Agents,” April 11, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00082/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011).
31 “Monthly Progress Report, Counter Espionage Section,” April 1946, May 1, 1946, ibid., 2.
32 Ibid., 4.
33 Ibid., 2.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., 7.
36 Ibid., 3.
37 Ibid., 6.
38 Ibid., 4.
39 Ibid., 7.
40 Ibid., 4.
41 “Chinese Government Intelligence Activities: Espionage,” May 9, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00116/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 1.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 2.
44 Ibid., 7–8.
45 “Monthly Progress Report; Counter-Espionage Section, May 1946,” June 1, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00134/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 1.
46 Ibid., 2.
47 Ibid., 3.
48 Ibid.
49 “Chinese Intelligence: Plan to Penetrate American Installations in Peiping,” July 17, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00154/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 1–2.
50 “Increasing Interest in SSU on the Part of Chinese,” August 1, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00161/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 1–2.
51 “Foreign Intelligence Activities; Memorandum for the Chief of Naval Intelligence,” September 19, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00182/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011).
52 “Soviet Intelligence and Subversive Activities; SSU Counterintelligence Summary No. 14 series II,” October 1, 1946, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00188/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011).
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 “Soviet Intelligence in Shanghai-Tsigtao Areas,” February 10, 1947, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00207/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 1.
58 Ibid., 2
59 Ibid., 3.
60 Ibid., 2
61 Ibid., 3.
62 “Interrogation of Chinese Wireless Interceptor,” August 22, 1947, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00214/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 2.
63 Ibid., 2–3.
64 Ibid., 3–4.
65 Ibid., 5.
66 Ibid., 6.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 “Intelligence Re-organisation of the Chinese Nationalists in China,” October 7, 1948, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00237/all.pdf (accessed July 28, 2011), 1.
70 “Soviet Intelligence Organisations in Manchuria,” October 18, 1948, RG 263, Entry 18, Box 26 NARA, 1–2.
71 “Chinese Communist ‘Professional Students’,” June 29, 1948, ibid.
72 “Sienhsien Espionage case,” September 15, 1948, ibid.
73 “Hawthorne to US Consulate General (Tsingtao),” December 10, 1948, ibid.
74 Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters, The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 234.
75 “Military Attaché (Nanjing) to Department of Army,” June 23, 1949, http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/nsa/documents/CI/00263/all.pdf (accessed July 27, 2011), 1.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Panagiotis Dimitrakis
Panagiotis Dimitrakis is an historian and completed his PhD in War Studies at King’s College London. He is the author of the following works: Greece and the English: British Diplomacy and the Kings of Greece (2009); Military Intelligence in Cyprus: From the Great War to Middle East Crises (2010); Greek Military Intelligence and the Crescent: Estimating the Turkish Threat – Crises, Leadership and Strategic Analyses, 1974–1996 (2010); Failed Alliances of the Cold War: Britain’s Strategy and Ambitions in Asia and the Middle East (2012); The Secret War in Afghanistan: The Soviet Union, China and Anglo-American Intelligence in the Afghan War (2013). His website is http://www.pdimitrakis.com.