Amerasia

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Amerasia was a left-wing American magazine.

history

The magazine was founded in 1937 by the Institute of Pacific Relations ( IPR ) with financial support from millionaire Frederick Vanderbilt Field (born April 13, 1905 - † February 1, 2000). Field was from the Vanderbilt clan. His mother, Lila Vanderbilt (Sloane) Field, was a great-granddaughter of the "railroad king" Cornelius Vanderbilt . Since 1928 he was involved in the IPR and became right hand man of the Secretary General Edward Clark Carter. The IPR was a private, international institution founded in 1925 with around 1,100 members in the USA, which had set itself the goal of meeting the only marginal knowledge of the American population about the Far East - especially about the Republic of China - through meetings To expand research projects and publications on social and economic issues in the East Asian region. Amerasia, which is published every 14 days, did not become very popular ("Time" estimated its circulation at around 2000 copies) and was mostly read by experts from the Far East. It was not until June 1945 that the magazine came to the fore and headlines through the so-called Amerasia Affair. The editors at this time were Phillip Jaffe and Kate Louise Mitchell.

Amerasia affair

What generally later with the term Amerasia Affair ( affair Amerasia ) was circumscribed began when Kenneth Wells, a Southeast Asia expert at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) (a forerunner of the CIA noticed) that an article of the 26th January 1945, published in Amerasia, agreed in numerous passages almost verbatim with a report he had written in 1944 on British colonial policy. The report had been classified as secret and a leak was suspected in the OSS . The OSS then set up Frank Brooks Bielaski as a special investigator on the case. Bielaski, originally Wall Street - brokers , then secret agent, had already worked during World War II for the OSS. On March 11, 1945, Bielaski and four assistants illegally broke into the Amerasia's New York editorial offices. There they found around 300 documents (originals + copies) from the State Department, the War Department, the Navy, the United States Office of War Information (OWI) and the OSS, some with the words “Confidential” , “Secret” or “Top secret” ” ( “ Confidential ” , “ Secret ” , “ Top Secret ” ).

The OSS then turned the FBI on . The FBI then monitored Amerasia employees, in particular Philip Jaffe and Kate Louise Mitchell, the two publishers of Amerasia, as well as those in contact with them. Since Philip J. Jaffe had close contacts with the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), for example with the former leader of the CPUSA, Earl Browder , but also with other party officials (the CPUSA), the FBI assumed that they were found in the editorial offices of Amerasia Documents were ultimately intended for the Soviet Union. The FBI investigation revealed that Jaffe most likely received the documents from Emmanuel Sigurd Larsen and John Andrew Roth. Larsen worked as a Far East expert in the Foreign Ministry's middle service , Roth had worked for Jaffe in the IPR before the Second World War and was - at the time of his arrest - reserve lieutenant in the Office of Naval Intelligence . Illegal actions ensued because, in the course of its investigation, the FBI broke into and ransacked Amerasia's offices and Emmanuel Larsen's home, without any authorization. Wiretapping bugs were installed, the telephones were tapped.

Six suspects were arrested on June 6, 1945 : Philip J. Jaffe and Kate Louise Mitchell, and Mark Julius Gayn, a freelancer for Amerasia. Gayn was a well-known journalist who u. a. worked for the Washington Post , Newsweek, and Time . The other three arrested worked for the American government: John Stewart Service , Foreign Service Officer + Far East expert at the State Department, and the two aforementioned Emanuel (Sigurd) Larsen and John Andrew Roth. At the same time, Amerasia's offices were searched - now officially and legally - and around 1,700 documents from the State Department, the Navy, the OSS, the Office of War Information and other ministries and agencies were seized.

Accuse

All six detainees argued that they had no other intention than to keep the public discussion on American policy on Asia alive. The case was a grand jury of the District of Columbia submitted. Since there were no indications that documents had actually been handed over to agents of the Soviet Union or another state, the grand jury decided in the run-up to the hearing, on August 10, 1945, the charges against John Stewart Service, Kate Louise Mitchell and Dropping Mark Julius Gayn and not bringing charges in the first place. The charges against Philip J. Jaffe, John Andrew Roth and Emmanuel Sigurd Larsen were upheld, although they were no longer - as originally targeted - of espionage, but only of unauthorized possession or unauthorized disclosure of government documents. The prosecutor said that after an initial review of the seized material, charges of espionage could not be upheld. Before the court hearing was opened, Emmanuel Larsen's attorney learned of the FBI's illegal break-in into his home and demanded that his client be closed. Since one could now firmly expect that further illegal practices of the FBI would be brought to light in the course of a court hearing and consequently the entire court hearing would break, Philip J. Jaffe also threatened to make the illegal actions of the FBI public, a deal was arranged.

On September 29, 1945, Philip J. Jaffe pleaded guilty to having illegally obtained secret government documents, but was only fined $ 2,500, which he paid on the spot. Emmanuel Larsen was fined $ 500. The charges against Andrew Roth were dropped entirely. This deal and the more symbolic penalties saved the prosecution from prosecuting the matter.

Further investigation by congressional committees

The so-called Amerasia affair was not yet over with the decision of the court. Right-wing conservative politicians in particular were unable to accept the court's decision. For example, the congressman called George Anthony Dondero , a Republican from Michigan , the process output as a "whitewash" ( "whitewashing" ) of the accused and made the comment: "Had this same thing happened in Certain other Governments, thesis people would undoubtedly, have been shot without a trial. " ( " If the same thing had happened under other governments, these people would undoubtedly have been shot without any trial. " )

In the increasing anti-Soviet and anti-communist hysteria of the Cold War and the gradually building up McCarthy era , the case was instrumentalized, distorted, exaggerated and overrated by politicians of the Republican Party for their own purposes. As early as 1946, a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives under the chairmanship of Democrat Sam Hobbs from Alabama re- examined the Amerasia affair, heard about FBI agents and employees of the Justice Department. In 1950, the Amerasia affair was again one of the topics of the so-called Tydings Committee (full title: Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees - subcommittee [of the US Senate] to review the loyalty of State Department officials ). In 1955 the case was taken up again - this time by the US Senate. The "McCarran Committee" ( "McCarran Committee") - named after its chairman, Pat McCarran (full title: Judiciary Committee's Internal Security Subcommittee - Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Judiciary Committee ) who asked the Ministry of Justice the entire Amerasia material handed over to him for reconsideration. In 1956 and 1957, the Justice Department delivered a total of 1,260 documents to the McCarran Committee.

The "McCarran Committee" published its research results under the title: "The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China" . ( "The Amerasia Papers: A Guide to Disaster in China" ). The subsumption of the political development in China after the Second World War under the term "catastrophe" made it clear in the title of the publication which political camp the initiators of this new investigation came from. The term "catastrophe" was linked to the "Loss of China" ( "Loss of China" / "Loss of the Chinese mainland" ) talk that immediately after the communists Mao Zedong came to power in China in right-wing conservative circles in the United States had raised. In particular, the so-called China Lobby (to which the chairman of the McCarran Committee, Pat McCarran, belonged) blamed the so-called China Hands in the Foreign Ministry for the “loss of China” , to whom they assumed sympathy, mostly even support, for the communist cause.

See also

literature

  • Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (1970) The Amerasia papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China. United States Government Printing Office .
  • Service, John S. (1971) The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of US-China Relations. Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Congress Catalog Card Number 72-635322
  • Cox, John Stuart and Theoharis, Athan G. (1988) The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-532-X .
  • Fried, Richard M. (1990) Nightmare in Red. The McCarthy Era in Perspective.
  • Klehr, Harvey (1996) The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2245-0 .
  • Ybarra, Michael, J. (2004) Washington gone crazy. Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ / s. Time, June 12, 1950: "The Strange Case of Amerasia"
  2. ↑ ( quoted from Michael J. Ybarra, Washington gone crazy, p. 375 )