OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War Review

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OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War ReviewI have had a deep interest for some time in how the US government got sucked into the quagmire of intervention in SE Asia in the fifties. If you read the French sources, they blame the triumph of Ho Chi Minh on the materiel support given him by the OSS missions at the end of the war. If you read the massive work by Archimedes Patti, the support did not make any difference. But that aside, when one starts pulling on the strings of why the OSS mercy missions of 1945 to Vietnam were sent, it descends from the various US intelligence and special operations agencies working in the area, and a very tangled web leads back to China--with its US Army-Navy rivalries, US- British rivalries, plus the US State Dept vs. many of the others. Then throw in the Free French and the Vichy governments. And some of these folks lost sight of the fact they were guests and not in a conquered country.Until the release of the OSS records to the National Archives a few years ago, much of this was hidden except glimpsed in a few memoirs. But the OSS side and the State Department side and the other US departments ' sides are unavoidably biased views for and against each other and the Chinese sides-the Reds and the Nationalists. Without seeing from the Chinese side one cannot balance the view point. The author has done this. He has been able to use the memoirs and histories now available from mainland China to develop this history as well as can be expected this close on. Sometimes it takes a hundred years for everyone to finally agree and sometimes there never is a consensus. We have not sorted out our Civil War yet. How can we expect the Chinese to have done so when even the territorial and economic consequences are still being worked out. This book is an essential tool for beginning that task. It makes clear what all the turf quarrels were between the War Department, the Navy Department, the OSS, the 14th Air Force (Claire Chennault, a profit without honor in his own country, who had to go to China to prove his theories of air combat.), the British and French governments, and the Chinese Nationalists, whose guests they all were. If you like organizational histories of the sort of who said what when then this is for you. If you want daring tales of dauntless deeds then look elsewhere. This is an extremely well written and thoroughly researched book but it is not a shoot 'em up operational history. There are many good histories and memoirs of those. Stratton's SACO history is still quite useful but hard to find. (By the way, I'm still looking for that Vietnam history.) Carter RilaOSS in China: Prelude to Cold War Overview

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Journey to Peking: A Secret Agent in Wartime China Review

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Journey to Peking: A Secret Agent in Wartime China ReviewIn WWII Dan Pinck journied to China to spy on the Japanese for Wild Bill Donovon's fedgling intelligence agency, then known as the OSS (now better known as the CIA). Mr. Pinck's account of his tour of duty spent in a Christian mission with an eccentric priest, a lovesick radioman and his savvy translator, is both humurous and literary. Through descriptive language and detailed sketches Pinck renders the harsh living conditions and genial, wine loving spirit of the Chinese people. While Pinck may read like Turgenev, one cannot ignore his own distinct style with which he captures the desolation and all too human trepidation of a young spy completely out on his own in a foreign land dealing with Japanese troops, unreliable agents, drunk Chinese generals, coy Chinese girls and by the book superior offiecers. Pinck has given us a true experience which displays the WWII generation's triumphant brand of American spirit, which at once possessed pragmatism, courage, humility and humor. A truly enjoyable read!Journey to Peking: A Secret Agent in Wartime China Overview

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Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake Review

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Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake ReviewThe development of the successful Sidewinder (AIM-9) heat-seeking missile deserves a book. This one is almost it. The author discusses not only technical problems and their solutions but also the managerial side of weapons development. Unfortunately, there is too much chronological back-and-forth to allow one to get an idea of how the technical solutions worked off preceding developments; a graphic timeline would have allowed the reader to know what happened when. Westrum doesn't discuss the what the China Lake center was doing, and how it was doing it before the scientists and engineers responsible for Sidewinder showed up. While there is some discussion of the social activities of the Sidewinder personnel, this review er never got a feel for the whole China Lake setting. Westrum relies too heavily on "telling" and not "showing" ; in some places he says that certain defense contractors had problems managing their programs, but provides little evidence of what he would base that on.(Not to say that private industry contractors haven't had problems; this reviewers knowledge of McDonnell Douglas problems makes him sympathetic to any story of How The Navy Could Do It Better.) The author wants to use China Lake and the Sidewinder project as a possible model of how to correctly manage a weapons project, but his story comes off more as a paean to certain personnel. If the secret of success is the right manager or designer or technician, this book might give us some guidance on selecting those people (flexible, open-minded, creative, informal, dedicated, technically competent) but there must also be some managerial methods and organizational that get lost in an emphasis on personality. Still, recommended for anyone interested in modern air combat, aerospace technology, or defense management.Sidewinder: Creative Missile Development at China Lake Overview

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Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China Review

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Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China ReviewDavid Wise writes with direct, swiftly moving prose and adds new information to the record; however, the analysis of Chinese intelligence activities is flawed and readers will not be able to place Chinese intelligence activity into context after studying this book.
Wise contributes new information in a couple of areas. He adds more detail about Gwo-Bao Min (Tiger Trap) than was previously available and weaves together the disparate threads connecting Chinese espionage allegations on West Coast. Wise fills in some of the gaps left in previous treatments. Wise also pulls together a good deal of information on the recent espionage cases in the last five years, which would only be available to a lay reader after several hours of research.
Unfortunately, Wise chooses not to take a step and look at the information he so assiduously collected. Instead, he relies on retired FBI agents, who repeat old platitudes about Chinese intelligence methods----platitudes that may never have been true to begin with. This might be tolerable if Wise himself had not collected a lot of data contradicting his opening chapter. Most Western observers believe Chinese intelligence methods are wildly different than Western or Russian models. They think, among other points, China relies on amateur collectors rather than professional intelligence officers, does not pay for secret information, and does not develop formal intelligence relationships.
Yet Wise charts the tale of the Chinese intelligence officer at the heart of recent espionage cases, involving Chi Mak, Kuo Tai-shen, James Fondren, and Gregg Bergersen. Chinese intelligence recruited these sources and paid them in exchange for US defense secrets. Why did they spy? Greed. Venality. One might be tempted to forgive Wise's reliance on out-dated analysis if these were new developments. However, Wise also provides a short summary of the Larry Wu-Tai Chin case, who spied from the 1940s to 1985. The Chin case looks and feels like one of the many cases run across the NATO-Warsaw Pact divide.
No coverage of Chinese intelligence today would be complete without a section on cyber (hacking), but there is little in Wise's treatment to commend. The cyber chapter is a summary of news clippings and official commentary. For better analyses of Chinese cyber activity, academic and policy journals, like Survival (IISS) and International Affairs, offer accessible (jargon-free) and thoughtful treatments that put Chinese cyber in perspective.
Ultimately, Tiger Trap is a good read with some new information about Chinese espionage cases; however, it is unsatisfying for anyone looking for anything that goes beyond the headlines. If there were more choices for reading about Chinese intelligence, this book would probably only rate 2/5 stars. There are, unfortunately, few alternatives to Wise's book and he should be recognized for mostly sticking to facts in the espionage cases. This redeeming feature makes Tiger Trap a useful reference guide and the clean writing makes it an easy read.Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China Overview

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