Amerasia

"Amerasia" was a journal of Far Eastern affairs, founded by "millionaire Communist" [Craig Thomson, “America's Millionaire Communist,” "The Saturday Evening Post", September 9, 1950] Frederick Vanderbilt Field (who was also Editorial Board Chairman) [FBI Report: Institute of Pacific Relations, Internal Security – C, November 4, 1944 ( [http://Ultra-Secret.info/PDFs/IPR01.pdf FBI file: Institute of Pacific Relations, Section 1] , PDF p. 45)] and Phillip J. Jaffe, and edited by Jaffe and Kate L. Mitchell. It is most noted for a case in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents.

The "Amerasia" Affair

What came to be called the Amerasia Affair began when Kenneth Wells, an analyst for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), noticed that an article printed in the 26 January 1945 issue of "Amerasia" was almost identical to a 1944 report he had written on Thailand. OSS agents investigated by breaking into the New York offices of "Amerasia" on March 11, 1945, where they found hundreds of classified documents from the Department of State, the Navy, and the OSS.

The OSS notified the State Department, which asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate. The FBI's investigation indicated that Jaffe had probably obtained the documents from State Department employee Emanuel Larsen and Andrew Roth, a lieutenant with the Office of Naval Intelligence. Free-lance reporter Mark Gayn was also a suspect, as was State Department "China Hand" John Stewart Service.

FBI surveillance recorded that during this investigation Jaffe met with Service several times in Washington and New York, reporting that at one meeting, "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 United States Senate Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, 1950, appendix, p. 2051]

An FBI summary reported that Jaffe visited the Soviet consulate in New York, and two days after a meeting with Service had a four-hour meeting in his home with Communist Party Secretary Earl Browder and Tung Pi-wu, the Chinese Communist representative to the United Nations Charter Conference. [FBI Amerasia file, Section 52]

In carrying out its investigation, the FBI illegally broke into the offices of "Amerasia" and the homes of Gayn and Larsen, and installed bugs and phone taps in the "Amerasia" offices and in Larsen and Jaffe's homes. Six people were arrested on June 6, 1945: Jaffe, Mitchell, Larsen, Roth, Gayn, and Service. Simultaneously, the "Amerasia" offices were raided and 1,700 classified State Department, Navy, OSS, and Office of War Information documents were seized.

Because no evidence was found indicating that any documents had been forwarded to a foreign power, the Justice Department decided not to seek an indictment under the Espionage Act. Instead, an indictment was sought against the six for unauthorized possession of government documents. A grand jury ultimately indicted three of the six: Jaffe, Larsen, and Roth. Before the trial began, Larsen's defense attorney learned of the FBI's illegal break-in to Larsen's home. Faced with the possibility that more of the illegal investigative techniques used by the FBI would become known and that the cases would be lost at trial as a result, the Justice Department arranged a deal whereby Jaffe agreed to plead guilty and pay a fine of $2,500, while Larsen pleaded no contest and was fined $500. The charges against Roth were dropped altogether.

Congressional investigations

Despite the anticlimactic outcome, the "Amerasia" Affair continued to attract attention. In the growing atmosphere of McCarthyism, many saw the case as an indication of the danger of both Communist espionage and Communist influence on the government, particularly the State Department. Senator Joseph McCarthy would often speak of the case in these terms, maintaining it was a security breach and cover-up of immense proportions.

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 Senate Internal Security Subcommittee published a two-volume book entitled "The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China " in 1970. The "catastrophe of China" in the title refers to the "loss of China" to Communism, an event that many conservatives blamed on the alleged Communist sympathies of the so-called "China Hands" in the Foreign Service.

Communist connections

"Amerasia"'s chief financial benefactor was Frederick V. Field. Phillip Jaffe was a friend of Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States. Its staffers and writers included a number Communists or former Communists, including at one time Joseph Milton Bernstein, a GRU contact between Soviet agents operating in the Office of Strategic Services and the Board of Economic Warfare.

Notes

ee also

*Institute of Pacific Relations

References and further reading

*cite book
last = Klehr
first = Harvey
authorlink =Harvey Klehr
title =The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism
publisher =University of North Carolina Press
date =1996
id = ISBN 0807822450
*cite book
last = Service
first =John S.
authorlink =John S. Service
title =The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of US-China Relations
publisher =Center for Chinese Studies
date =1971
id =
*cite book
author = Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G.
year = 1988
title = The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition
publisher = Temple University Press
id = ISBN 0-87722-532-X
*cite book
author = Senate Internal Security Subcommittee
year = 1970
title = The Amerasia papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China
publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office
id =
* [http://www.archives.gov/legislative/guide/senate/chapter-13-judiciary-1947-1968.html National Archives, Records of the Committee on the Judiciary and Related Committees]