The reckless actions of a pro-Mao ‘China hand’ in the State Department.
For many years no expert on China stood higher in the opinion of American students of China, including myself, than John S. “Jack” Service. A fluent Mandarin speaker born in China, he entered the U.S. Foreign Service in his mid-20s, only to become a casualty of the McCarthy period and a subject of State Department loyalty probes.
Service, who died in 1999, was eventually judged innocent of disloyalty to the U.S. and abetting Chinese communism. But for years he was accused of being one of the State Department China hands who had “lost China” to the Communists in the 1940s. “Honorable Survivor,” by journalist Lynne Joiner, who was also his close friend, makes it clear—and this is Ms. Joiner’s chief contribution—that at a minimum Service was “recklessly indiscreet” in his contacts with Communist sympathizers in the U.S. to whom he gave documents or disclosed details of U.S. policy.
Service was in many ways the ultimate China hand. Born in Chengdu in 1909 to a missionary family, he loved China and believed that he not only knew what was best for the country but could help bring it about. In the State Department he acquired a reputation as a China expert and linguist and in 1944, when the first official American government mission flew to Mao’s guerrilla stronghold in Yan’an in north-central China, Service was a member of the group.
On their return to Chongqing and later Washington, Service and the other Americans reported that they had seen China’s future. The U.S. emissaries maintained that the Communists should be treated with at least the same respect as Chiang’s regime. Mao—amusing, dramatic, confiding, eager and mendacious—declared that he would cooperate with the Nationalists and not fight a civil war. According to Ms. Joiner, Service said: “I was almost taken off my feet by the warmth and fervor and earnestness” of Mao’s entreaties for American support.
Service’s dispatches impressed his State Department superiors. But it was those dispatches and others that convinced his enemies in government that he was a Communist dupe. Becoming increasingly disillusioned with President Roosevelt’s pro-Nationalist China policy, Service began leaking information and airing his opinions to anyone who would listen—including Communist agents and sympathizers. Ms. Joiner’s biography shows how certain Service was that the U.S. could “fix” China if only Washington knew what it was doing. She argues that this self-confidence, combined with recklessness, led Service to begin giving documents to leftist and probably Communist contacts who played him.
What he didn’t know was that the FBI was tapping the phones of the offices of Amerasia, a leftist journal edited by Phillip Jaffe, a devoted Stalinist who, although not a party member, later admitted that he was “giving information to . . . the Soviet intelligence agents.” It was at the Amerasia offices one day that Service gave Jaffe information that he warned was “top-secret.” In June 1945, Service was arrested and charged with spying based on the Amerasia wiretaps. Testifying under oath repeatedly over several years, Service said that he had revealed no real secrets to Jaffe and others.
Eventually all charges were dropped, but Service was nevertheless dismissed from the State Department in 1951 because of doubts about his loyalty. He was rehired in 1957 at the instruction of a federal judge because the official case against him had collapsed. But Service was never again given a policy-making or China-related post, and he was not promoted. Although he was supported by some senior State Department officers and public figures, including the diplomat and presidential adviser George Kennan, he also had a number of implacable foes, including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In 1973, Service received a standing ovation at a State Department luncheon for retired China experts.
Worn out by the years of suspicion and questioning, Service had retired from the State Department in 1963 and spent the last years of his professional life at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was admired by students and colleagues and regarded as a witch-hunt victim.
But Jack Service was more than that. In two phone interviews with me shortly before he died a decade ago, Service admitted that in the 1940s he had given Jaffe a top-secret document revealing the Nationalist Order of Battle, which showed the exact disposition of the forces facing Mao’s troops. When I observed that some might regard this as treason (I made no accusation), Service said he knew it. “I want to get this off my chest,” he said, explaining: “I was gullible, and trusting, and foolish.” He also told me that he had purposely ignored Mao’s persecution, including executions, of his perceived enemies at Yan’an. Why cover for the supposedly moderate Communist leader? “I wanted them to win. I thought they were better than the Nationalists and that if we always opposed them we would have no access to the next Chinese government.”
Service pressed me to publish our conversation, but friends of his said that it would be very painful. I agreed and after some time forgot the whole episode, until Ms. Joiner’s book came my way. His stunning admission that he did supply classified intelligence to Jaffe, whom he must have assumed would pass it on, puts his later career—and Ms. Joiner’s book—in a different light. If what Service told me near the end of his life is true, he can no longer be viewed as an innocent victim.
Mr. Mirsky is a former East Asia editor for the Times of London.
__________
Full article and photo: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598443437286438.html
No comments:
Post a Comment