Posing as Journalists, Soviet Agents Deliver China to Destruction: The Amerasia Case

One skill needed for successful covert operations is the ability to establish a good ‘front’ — a seemingly innocuous activity or organization, behind which an intelligence agency can assemble its destructive efforts. Such was the case of the magazine Amerasia, which managed to hide the workings of both Soviet agents and Maoist insurgents.

Aside from its obvious pro-communist prejudices, the periodical seemed to be an innocent enough collection of articles about the politics and policies of east Asia. In reality, however, the offices of the journal served as a junction for a network of spies. Once detected, the web of individuals and other ‘front’ organizations connected to Amerasia showed itself to be both large and significant.

As reported in the Taiwan Today newspaper, the unraveling of the magazine’s facade began when one of its articles contained text which could have only come from a confidential source:

The strange case of Amerasia, like many a fictional spy thriller, opened quite accidentally. One day in February, 1945, Kenneth E. Wells of the Office of Strategic Services picked up a recent issue of the magazine, dated January 26, and found himself quoted — but not cited. Wells was head of the Southern Asian Section of the research branch of the OSS. To his amazement he read, in an article entitled “The Case of Thailand,” the very language he had used in a highly classified memorandum describing the lack of harmony between British and American policies in that part of the world. The article contained, verbatim, whole paragraphs out of a secret OSS report prepared by Wells himself some months earlier. Obviously, the magazine writer must have had the document itself be­fore him as he wrote.

It was clear that secret government documents had been stolen and were in the hands of people who had no clearance to have them. Further, passages from those documents had been published. This was a crime, a breach of national security, and posed a danger to the lives of both Americans and Chinese.

The need for immediate action was obvious, as Taiwan Today explains:

Wells properly called the matter to the attention of Archibald Van Beuren, OSS security chief, who was sufficiently alarmed to fly to New York on February 28. There he instructed his director of investigation, Frank Brooks Bielaski, to find out how and why the document had gotten out of OSS files. Bielaski was given a list of the names of some 30 persons to whom copies had been sent. Most of them were in the OSS, but a few were in the Department of State, and at least one in both Army and Navy Intelligence. Copies had gone also to a half-dozen Foreign Service officers on duty in the Far East. With secretaries and assistants counted, perhaps 100 employees of the United States Government had access to the OSS report on Thailand. Biela­ski’s task was to locate the leak. Figuring that it would take 10 men to maintain a close watch on each person in Washington, Bielaski estimated that he would need at least 1,000 OSS agents for the job. Such a force was not available. It was decided, therefore, to make a preliminary investigation of the magazine itself. An agent was sent to the New York Public Library to analyze past issues of Amerasia, and its editorial offices at 225 Fifth Avenue were put under round-the-clock surveillance. Bielaski himself made some inquiries re­garding the staff of the magazine.

Already early in the case, a number of OSS agents were involved: Kenneth E. Wells, Archibald Van Beuren, and Frank Brooks Bielaski. Soon more OSS operatives would be part of the events, as well as FBI agents and eventually investigators acting on behalf of the U.S. Congress.

The cast of characters on the other side would grow as well. What began as a question about a small and even obscure little publication would turn into a catalogue of many of the most dangerous Soviet agents of the era.

The Soviet Socialists understood that the future success or failure of Mao’s insurgents would not only shape the history of China, but also the history of the United States. In turn, America’s policies toward China would nudge Mao’s terrorists in one direction or the other: toward success or toward failure. The Amerasia case uncovered one of Stalin’s key weapons in this struggle: Soviet agents acting covertly — as “moles” — inside the U.S. government. Those who shaped America’s policies toward China were acting, not on reliable information provided by honest civil servants, but rather on fabrications and opinions provided by Soviet espionage agents planted within the U.S. State Department.

Even as the battles of WW2 still raged, the Soviets were planning the postwar destruction of the Chinese government and the creation of Mao’s Marxist dictatorship.

OSS agents investigating Amerasia found not only that the publication’s staff had obtained stolen documents, but that many of the magazine’s writers were actually Soviet agents, part of a larger network which led to still more Soviet agents in the government and in other organizations, as Time magazine reports:

Chunky, spectacled Frank Bielaski, an ex-Wall Street broker turned Government secret agent, had handled many cases for OSS during the war. One midnight, tracing down the document quoted in Amerasia, Bielaski and four aides let themselves into a dark, empty building at 225 Fifth Avenue. They took an elevator to the eleventh floor and there, by what Bielaski later called “deceit and subterfuge,” entered Amerasia’s office. Once inside, they began a careful inspection. They found one room fitted out with photocopy equipment, a desk in another room spread with copies of Government documents. Behind a door were a bellows-type suitcase and two briefcases packed with other papers — altogether close to 300 originals and copies of documents stolen from the Offices of Naval Intelligence and Censorship, G2, OSS, State Department and British Intelligence. A few of them were marked “Top Secret” and “Secret”; all of them were labeled for official scrutiny only.

Clearly, there were moles at work inside the State Department. In addition to Amerasia, secrets were being passed on to the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), a policy think-tank, and to the IPR’s publications. The IPR’s main publication was a periodical titled Pacific Affairs.

The Soviet Socialist espionage network inside the United States did more than steal secret documents. It was also active in shaping America’s policies. Individuals working the State Department who were associated with the IPR wrote briefings for decision-makers in the U.S. government.

The Soviets, who sought the ultimate destruction of the United States, were shaping the decisions by which America was to defend itself against the Soviets. The USSR had managed to subvert the American system against itself.

The OSS gained physical evidence which revealed how widespread the Soviet infiltration was, as Time magazine reports:

The raiders picked up a dozen documents to show the kind of material they had found, and left. A few hours later Bielaski laid his report and the documents before officials in Washington.

Amerasia was co-edited and co-founded by Philip Jaffe. Jaffe was connected to a number of known Soviet spies, including Earl Browder, Owen Lattimore, and John Stewart Service. Each of these was connected to still others. In the end, a dizzyingly large network of Soviet operatives were related directly or indirectly to the Amerasia case.

Ultimately, some of these were tried in court and jailed. Others were rendered useless to the Soviets because their identities had been revealed. But some of them also managed to slip away and continue their espionage activity.

The case expanded from the OSS to the FBI, and then culminated in legal actions, as Time magazine explains:

The case was assigned to the FBI. For almost three months FBI agents kept Jaffe and his office under surveillance. Other agents tailed Jaffe on frequent trips to Washington where he met assorted small-bore Government officials. By late May, James Mclnerney, first assistant to Tom Clark, who was in charge of criminal prosecution for the Justice Department, was ready to collar the crowd, start prosecutions for espionage.

All of this would be mere historical trivia, except for the fact that Mao’s terrorists ultimately destroyed both China’s government and much of Chinese society. Mao’s victory is due, in part or in whole, to less-than-energetic American support for Chiang Kai-shek. Had Chiang been able to defend China against Mao, and had Mao’s communist dictatorship not been able to oppress China for several decades, then millions of Chinese would not have been murdered by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Not only would millions of Chinese lives have been saved, but also lives in Korea and Vietnam, including American lives.

Why did America fail to stoutly oppose Mao’s genocidal takeover of China? In part because the network of individuals who were associated with Amerasia had persuaded U.S. policy makers that Mao was benign and that Chiang Kai-shek was useless. Acting on disinformation — a step worse than misinformation — U.S. policy makers were lulled into letting Mao have China. Philip Jaffe’s network of Soviet spies is directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings.

When a Magazine Is More Than Simply a Magazine: Amerasia As a Front for Maoist-Stalinist Espionage

In June, 1950, Time magazine reported that Congress was examining a collection of classified government documents. These documents had been found, not securely stored under lock and key in a federal office, but rather in the offices of a magazine title Amerasia. The questions presented themselves: What information did these secret papers contain? How did they come to be in the offices of a quirky little periodical?

More questions were prompted by the fact that the FBI had discovered the trove of confidential documents in 1945, and yet the Congressional investigations into the matter were underway in 1950. Why the five-year delay into an incident which revealed a stunning breach of national security? Wouldn’t such a discovery demand quicker action?

The Time article reports:

In a Justice Department office last week, staffmen of a Senate subcommittee combed through three large boxes containing hundreds of documents seized five years ago in the Amerasia case. Around the boxes swirled a storm of argument. Republican Senators, none of whom had actually seen the contents, cried that the Administration had put the fix on the Amerasia case, and that a real probe of the case would prove it. From Iowa, where he was campaigning in a primary election, Bourke Hickenlooper charged that at least some of the documents were important U.S. wartime secrets. Didn’t one of them show the disposition in 1944 of U.S. submarines in the Pacific? Wasn’t one of them a highly confidential (“for eyes only”) message from Roosevelt to Chiang Kaishek? Said Hickenlooper: “I think that all Americans will be appalled when the whole truth becomes known.”

It seemed that the administration — in this case, the Truman administration — was dragging its feet. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had confirmed Amerasia’s illegal possession of the papers in March 1945. Why would the government slow-walk a matter of national security?

Was Truman himself involved in deciding the pace at which the Amerasia case would be handled? Or were underlings making these choices without the president’s knowledge?

The Time article records the administration’s reaction to the congressional concerns:

Such talk, Administration sources replied, was hogwash; the documents were nothing much. Said Assistant Attorney General James M. Mclnerney: Hickenlooper is “100% wrong.”

While obfuscation about the processing of the case muddied the waters, the facts of the case were simple and clear. Someone had stolen classified documents from the OSS. Those documents were found in the offices of Amerasia. This was a crime. In the words of historian Stan Evans, it was “felonious.”

The case began in a straightforward way, as Time reports:

As thick as the argument was the smoke screen of confusion around the whole affair, which the Administration seemed determined to preserve at all costs. In 1945, Amerasia was a magazine (circ. about 2,000) devoted more or less openly to the Communist line and the Far East, and published sporadically in New York by one Philip Jaffe. The case began that February when the eyes of a Government official fell upon a surprising Amerasia article. It quoted at length and almost verbatim from a secret report which was supposed to be tucked safely away in the Office of Strategic Services’ file. The OSS immediately put a special investigator, Frank Brooks Bielaski, on Amerasia's pink and wispy trail.

As the initial investigation continued, it became clear that the case would involve much more than Philip Jaffe and his magazine.

Jaffe was part of a network of Soviet operatives and communist sympathizers. This network had connections to Moscow and to Mao’s rebels in China. Jaffe’s associates included a number of current and former highly-placed officials in various government offices. Was the administration anticipating embarrassment when it was revealed that the Soviet Socialists had developed a spy network inside significant branches of the U.S. government?

Jaffe’s associates constituted a list of known Soviet operatives, as historians Herbert Romerstsein and Stan Evans write:

The contents of a secret OSS memo had appeared, in some respects verbatim, in the pages of Amerasia — the obvious implication being that someone had been leaking official data to the journal. This led agents from OSS, and then the FBI, to conduct an in-depth probe of the magazine and its personnel, including dragnet coverage of the suspects and their contacts, plus entry into Amerasia’s New York offices to photograph papers being held there. In the course of this inquiry, the Bureau noted Jaffe’s multifarious dealings with Service, Roth, State Department official Emmanuel Larsen, and journalist Mark Gayn. Interspersed with these, Jaffe was also surveilled meeting with U.S. Communist Party chief Earl Browder, visiting Chinese Communist bigwig Tung Pi-wu, officials at the Soviet consulate in New York, and self-described Soviet espionage courier Joseph Bernstein.

John Stewart Service worked in the State Department’s foreign service organization. In addition to stealing classified documents and passing them to Jaffe and Gayn, Service had gerrymandered his internal reports about the China situation: these reports circulated within the State Department and influenced American policy-making. Under the influence of Service, American support for Chiang Kai-shek became less enthusiastic, and Mao’s communists benefitted.

Andrew Roth was a lieutenant in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). He introduced Service to a group who were “avid supporters of the Communists at Yenan,” as Evans and Romerstein write.

Philip Jaffe was not only networked in this way with a constellation of Soviet operatives, but Amerasia was linked to other organizations which, like Amerasia, were fronts for Soviet intelligence agencies.

One such front organization was the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR). Allegedly a think-tank for discussing regional problems and writing policy recommendations, IPR staff and board members greatly overlapped with Amerasia’s staff and board members. Both the IPR and Amerasia were located in the same office building, as was another organization, the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. This “committee” was also a facade behind which the Soviet Socialists could run a pro-Mao operation.

The IPR published its own magazine, Pacific Affairs. The list of authors who wrote for this magazine, and for other IPR publications, was nearly identical to the list of authors who wrote for Amerasia.

The network went still further: “Lauchlin Currie,” writes Stan Evans, was “an executive assistant to President Roosevelt in the early 1940s whose portfolio included policy toward China. Currie left the government in 1945.” When investigations of Amerasia and the IPR continued, Currie “would flee the country,” because he had a central organizational role in the IPR. “In trying to retrace the steps by which the U.S. government had been penetrated by Communists and Soviet agents,” congressional investigators “got on the trail of Currie and his multitude of contacts.”

Currie was, for instance, closely linked with Owen Lattimore, and with diplomat John Stewart Service, arrested in the Amerasia case after sending back a stream of dispatches from China denouncing the anti-Communist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Currie was also extremely thick with John Carter Vincent, the State Department official who played a critical role in shaping U.S. Asia policy in the years before the Red conquest of China.

Owen Lattimore was yet one more link in the chain connecting Moscow, Mao, and the network which included Philip Jaffe and John Stewart Service. Lattimore had been an IPR employee and then a foreign policy advisor in the Roosevelt administration. Lauchlin Currie had recommended to Roosevelt that Lattimore be dispatched to China to advise Chiang Kai-shek.

It is worth noting that Lattimore and Currie were Soviet agents who had direct access to the President of the United States. They were not the only ones. Roosevelt relied on these men for advice, assuming that they were seeking what was best for the common Allied cause in WW2. Instead, these two, along with Alger Hiss and other known Soviet agents who met face-to-face with FDR, were advocating policies which would undermine the Allied cause and which would set up a postwar world framework favorable to the Soviets.

In the end, Amerasia was not simply a magazine discussing foreign policy and thereby exercising its first amendment rights. It was a front for Soviet and Maoist intelligence agencies. It was part of a network which influence American policy in China, which led ultimately to Mao’s seizure of power in 1949, and which is therefore at least partly responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings.