To judge by the surveillance records, Service seems to have had instant rapport with Jaffe. During their April 19 meeting at the Statler, the two engaged in a rambling talk that covers some twenty-five pages of Bureau transcript. Among other things, Service told Jaffe he had praised an article in Amerasia to “the boys at OWI in San Francisco” and said Jaffe was remembered in Yenan from his trip there in 1937. Jaffe replied by saying the recall of Service and others from China “had ruined everything we have been trying to do for years” and complained that he (Jaffe) had “been red-baited.”
The conversation then turned to Service’s housemates, Chi and Adler. In this context, Jaffe discussed his own links to Chi and praised the sixty-eight-page Service-Adler memo denouncing Chiang Kai-shek prepared for Henry Wallace, calling it “the finest summary written” on the China situation. Jaffe further said the memo had been passed around to general admiration at a recent confab of the IPR. Service voiced neither surprise nor dismay at this, nor did he ask how his confidential memo got into the hands of this private group. He did ask, however, whether his name had been mentioned as an author of the paper, and Jaffe assured him it hadn’t.
The talk would then get down to hard specifics of the military scene in China, as Service discussed a commander with a high-sounding title but no troops to speak of, the allegiances of particular warlords, and leaders in the KMT army with varying loyalties to Chiang. All this between two people who, hours before, had presumably been perfect strangers.
The next day, Service upped the ante, bringing to lunch with Jaffe at the Statler a sheaf of papers the editor would take back to New York. This would be one of several such data exchanges, the total number of which would later be disputed. As the nature of the information would be contested also, an entry in the FBI record of this meeting is of interest, as follows: “Service, according to the microphone surveillance, apparently gave Jaffe a document which dealt with matters the [Nationalist] Chinese had furnished to the United States government in confidence. Service stated that the person with whom he was associated in China would ‘get his neck pretty badly wrung’ if the information got out.”
In subsequent conversation, Service would discuss another military issue—the possibility of American forces coming ashore in China, and if so where. This was at the time a topic of importance, as the site of such a landing could have determined whether U.S. troops would link up with the armies of Chiang Kai-shek or with the Communists farther north. Service’s comments on this, as recorded by the FBI, were as follows:
Well, what I said about the military plans is, of course, very secret…. Thatplan was made by Wedemeyer’s staff in his absence; they got orders to make some recommendations as to what we should do if we landed in Communist territory…they showed me the plans that had been drawn up…when we were in Chungking territory, we would have to go on cooperating with them. Those were the orders. But if we landed where the Communists were, without any question they’d be the dominant force.4*53
All told, Service and Jaffe had at least five such tête-à-têtes in Washington and then on the editor’s turf in New York City when Service went there a few weeks later. Also in New York, there would be a series of Service-Jaffe get-togethers with the Amerasia crowd—a party at the home of the magazine’s co-editor, Kate Mitchell, a Service sleepover at the Gayn apartment, and a group outing to the Long Island digs of T. A. Bisson. There would be also, as in D.C., a Service meeting with staffers of the IPR. All this obviously pleased Jaffe, who according to one FBI memo told an acquaintance on May 15, “Jack Service was in solid.”5 And so, to judge by this incessant round of contacts, he was.
That, however, was only half the story. While these convivial sessions were occurring, agents of the FBI were tracking a lot of other goings-on that riveted their attention. The indefatigable Jaffe, they found, was shuttling back and forth between his Service meetings and yet another set of contacts. These included Communist Party chief Earl Browder, a visiting Red Chinese bigwig from the Maoist stronghold at Yenan, and officials at the Soviet consulate in New York City. An FBI summary on all this informs us:
In the course of the investigation…Jaffe was observed to enter the Soviet consulate in New York on May 31, 1945. He met with Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party, on four occasions during the investigation. Jaffe also had meetings with Tung Pi-wu, the Chinese Communist representative to the United Nations conference. On April 22, 1945, Browder and his secretary Harold Smith entered Jaffe’s residence at 10 a.m. At 10:20 a.m., Tung Pi-wu accompanied by two unidentified Chinese arrived. At 1 p.m. Browder, Smith and Mrs. Jaffe left the premises, returning in half an hour. Shortly after 3 p.m., Browder, Smith, Tung Pi-wu and the two Chinese left Jaffe’s home.6
This nearly five-hour meeting of Jaffe, Browder, and a top Red Chinese official occurred just two days after Jaffe lunched with Service at the Statler, obtaining the documents he would take back to New York. As the Bureau would observe, this marathon session offered ample chance for Jaffe to share with Browder and Tung Pi-wu whatever information was acquired from Service. (A surmise supported by a later Jaffe comment concerning a particular memo: “That’s the one Tung Pi-wu didn’t want me to publish when he was here.”)7
Reflecting Jaffe’s willingness to provide such materials to members of the Communist global apparatus were still other of his amazing contacts. On May 2, FBI agents surveilled him conferring with Soviet espionage agent Joseph Bernstein, the former Amerasia staffer who appears in Venona receiving government data from T. A. Bisson. Bernstein knew of Jaffe’s ability to come up with official papers and wanted to tap his inside sources. As Jaffe told it, Bernstein made no bones about the fact that he was a spy for Moscow. According to one Bureau wrap-up:
…on May 7, 1945, Jaffe advised Roth that several days previous to their conversation, he had luncheon with an individual subsequently identified as Joseph Milton Bernstein. Jaffe advised Roth that Bernstein had told him he was presently working for a Russian agent and has previously been employed by other Russian espionage agents. Bernstein requested Jaffe to furnish him with Jaffe’s sources in the Far Eastern division of the State Department.*54 8
As to Jaffe’s periodical, the Bureau made other discoveries that swung things back in the direction of Max and Grace Granich. Amerasia, it developed, was a kind of joint descendant of the pro-Communist publications, Voice of China and China Today. The latter, also edited by Jaffe, was the journal of a subsequently cited Communist front called the American Friends of the Chinese People. Well-known pro-Reds involved in this endeavor—Jaffe, Bisson, Chi, Frederick Field—were likewise on the board of Amerasia. All of which suggested to Hoover’s agents that they were surveilling something more than an obscure policy-wonk publication with an eccentric taste for secret papers.
To close the circle, the FBI made four nocturnal visits to the Amerasia offices to check out the documents held there. Bureau agents photographed some of these and shared the photos with Justice attorneys to indicate the kind of evidence to be had if arrests were made and papers seized. On this basis, Justice higher-ups decided to proceed with arrests and prosecution. Accordingly, on June 6, FBI agents swooped down on the suspects and took six people into custody: Jaffe, Mark Gayn, and Kate Mitchell in New York; Service, Andy Roth, and Emmanuel Larsen in D.C.
In the course of the arrests, the FBI impounded roughly 1,000 documents from the Amerasia office, the apartments of Gayn and Larsen, and the State Department office of Service. On the analysis of the Bureau, about a quarter of these papers concerned military matters in whole or part, and many bore the warning that unauthorized possession was a violation of the Espionage Act. It was, in the view of FBI Director Hoover, “an airtight case,” primed and ready for prosecution. (See Chapter 27.)*55
And so at first it seemed. In a matter of days, however, the outlook for successful prosecution would be mysteriously altered. At the public level a hue and cry was raised, mostly in the radical press, to the effect that the defendants w
ere being railroaded by evil forces. Simultaneous with this protest, efforts were unfolding behind the scenes to delay the prosecution, and plans to present indictments slacked off and then were halted. As the term of this grand jury was to expire July 2, Justice decided the case should be held over for another. All this was troubling to Hoover, who wrote on June 30: “This is most unfortunate. Case should go to present grand jury, indictments obtained and case set for trial. I don’t like all the manipulation which is going on.”9
These misgivings were well-founded. When a second grand jury was em-paneled and Justice made its presentation, the “airtight case” had somehow been punctured, and now collapsed entirely. On August 10, Service, Mitchell, and Gayn were all no-billed—allowed to walk scot-free—while indictments of relatively minor nature were returned against Jaffe, Roth, and Larsen. And when push came to shove, these indictments themselves amounted to little.
For reasons that weren’t made clear, the main federal prosecutor chosen to handle these cases was one Robert Hitchcock, called in from upstate New York to be the government’s lead attorney. His conduct of the matter seemed, at best, eccentric. At the Jaffe trial, for instance, Jaffe’s lawyer said his client indeed had official papers in his possession but “the government does not contend that any of the material was used for disloyal purposes.” He added that if Jaffe had transgressed, “it seems he has done so from an excess of journalistic zeal.” Asked by Judge James Proctor if he agreed, Hitchcock responded: “In substance, yes, your honor. To us, it was largely for the purpose of lending credibility to the publication itself, and perhaps increase its circulation and prestige.”
In these brief and amicable proceedings, no word was spoken by Hitchcock about Jaffe’s pro-Communist background and connections, the pro-Red nature of his publication, or his meetings with Communist Party chief Earl Browder, Chinese Red leader Tung Pi-wu, officials at the Soviet consulate in New York and the Soviet agent Bernstein. Jaffe was simply depicted, by both defense and prosecution, as a “journalist” who had gone a bit too far with his reporting but hadn’t really meant any harm by his aggressive methods.
Thus advised, the judge told Jaffe he accepted “without any doubt the assurance both of your counsel and of the government attorneys that there was no thought or act on your part” injurious to security interests, said Jaffe should be more careful in the future, and fined him $2,500. A few weeks later, a similar drill would occur with Larsen. Thereafter, the charges against Roth were quietly dropped. As far as the federal courts were concerned, the Amerasia case was over.10
As a political issue, however, it was just beginning. In short order, the handling of the case would come in for pungent criticism from Rep. George Dondero (R-Mich.) and others in Congress, who wondered how such an important case could so quickly and completely crumble. After repeated urgings by Dondero, an investigation of sorts was mounted, chaired by Rep. Sam Hobbs (D-Ala.). This was the first of several inquiries about the case that played out over the next few years; it was also among the most peculiar.
The Hobbs hearings were conducted in executive session, with witnesses not sworn, and a transcript wouldn’t be published until four years later, in the midst of the McCarthy furor. The majority members of the panel did, however, file a report that said there was nothing wrong with the way the case was handled and that problems in the prosecution stemmed from errors in seizing evidence in the first place. As Justice official James McGranery told the committee, “None of this evidence was obtained in the manner in which we ordinarily get it. It was very clumsily handled.”11
In addition to dumping on the methods of securing evidence, which meant dumping on the FBI, Justice spokesmen Hitchcock and James McInerney had downplayed the importance of the purloined papers. In a phrase that would be much repeated, Hitchcock described them as nothing more than “teacup gossip.” He also reprised the stance he took at the trial of Jaffe, saying, “We had no evidence of any use to which they were put which was disloyal.”12
The Hobbs majority bought all this, but the FBI emphatically didn’t. When Hoover and his men learned about these statements, they went ballistic, and would set forth in some detail their version of what had happened, their methods of investigation, and the nature of the recovered papers. As the FBI had the documents in its custody, and had studied them with care, it knew they were something other than “teacup gossip.”
However, the FBI knew more than this, and its knowledge would fan the flames of outrage even higher. It knew the prosecution had been crudely fixed, and that the very Justice spokesmen who now talked down the case had been complicit in the fixing. The Bureau knew this because it had wiretapped the fixers and had the logs of phone calls in which officials at Justice and elsewhere conspired to throw the case and free John Service.
These wiretaps had been ordered by President Truman for reasons unrelated to Amerasia. The new President had certain suspicions concerning veteran New Deal wheelhorse Thomas “Tommy the Cork” Corcoran and had put the Bureau on his trail. In tapping Corcoran, the FBI found him waist-deep in the Amerasia quagmire, working with Service’s friend and mentor Lauchlin Currie in the White House and higher-ups at Justice to make sure the FSO was not indicted. The taps further showed, per Corcoran’s statements, that his long-time partner Benjamin Cohen, soon to be a top official at State, was involved as well, though remaining in the background.*56
In these talks, the common premise was that the case would unquestionably be fixed and that Service would walk free and clear from any legal sanctions. Not one of the people being tapped, according to the Bureau records, dissented from this felonious project. There was, however, disagreement among the fixers on how to do it. Corcoran wanted Service to skip the grand jury altogether on the grounds that any such appearance was risky. McInerney, Hitchcock, and Tom Clark, the newly named Attorney General replacing Francis Biddle, thought it better to have Service “cleared” by making an appearance. Corcoran at last consented when assured that there would be no slipup. The following excerpts from the wiretap logs suggest the flavor:13
Corcoran to Lauchlin Currie
CORCORAN: What I want to do is get the guy [Service] out. These other fellows want to make a Dreyfus case out of it.
CURRIE: Yeah, the important thing is to get him out.
CORCORAN:…I think our problem is to take care of this kid. Isn’t it?
CURRIE: That’s right.
CURRIE:…Is this right, Tom? The state undertakes to make its case, the government makes its case why there should be a hearing or a trial, but the defense doesn’t answer.
CORCORAN: That’s right. He doesn’t have to say a damn word.
Corcoran to John Service
CORCORAN:…I talked to the Attorney General [Clark] yesterday him self…. And again I told him about the understandings we had below about the cutting out of your name before, so there wouldn’t be any necessity for your going before the grand jury at all…. I did want you to know I’d gone right to the top on this damn thing, and I’m quite sure I’ll get it cut out.
Corcoran to James McGranery
CORCORAN: He [Service] was an awfully close friend of Ben’s [Cohen] and Ben hoped I’d communicate his concern about this thing to you and Tom Clark…. I did communicate this to Tom Clark…that Ben’s friends over in the State Department told me that McInerney called Service and said, “…we know we’ve got nothing on you, but…we think you would like to go yourself before a grand jury on Friday and make a statement yourself that will clear you.” And then McInerney said, “I should think the grand jury would clear the whole thing up for you.”
McGRANERY: Well, if what you said in the first instance is correct—that they don’t have anything—then why bother with it at all?
CORCORAN: I think they’re saying to him, it will be a nice thing for you to do this in order that the grand jury may clear you. I don’t think it’s smart.
McGRANERY: I’ll check it out for you, Tom.
CORCORAN: Jim, on that
thing Ben Cohen told me to watch that I told you about—did you learn anything?
McGRANERY: I didn’t get it yet, but I’ll watch it for you…. I’ll take care of it for you. Your man is Service. I got it.
CORCORAN: Yeah. So that we can cut him out. OK?
McGRANERY: All right, Tom.
Corcoran to Tom Clark
CORCORAN: Well, aren’t you always afraid of a grand jury and inexperienced people in front of them?
CLARK: Well, I’ll tell you, if these boys were antagonistic, I’d say yes…. But in this case, from what I understand this morning from these people they don’t have any such idea.
CORCORAN: Well, I’m awfully glad of that.
Corcoran to Service
SERVICE: Munter [Service’s attorney] talked to Hitchcock yesterday to say I hadn’t made up my mind yet and Hitchcock said, “Well, I hope you realize by this time that we want to have Service cleared by a legal body,” and Hitchcock is still anxious to have me appear.
CORCORAN: Well, let me put another call in. Only thing is, when I have a flat deal like that you are going to be cleared…. I don’t like anyone to have to talk before a grand jury.
SERVICE: Well, the statement by Hitchcock yesterday was the most encour aging…
CORCORAN: The signals have gone down that you are not to be in this thing. Up at the top the advice is they don’t want you to go in there.
SERVICE: I talked to him [Hitchcock] again and he says he wants to clear me, but it would be very hard for him to do it, and that if I appear before a grand jury and make as good an impression as…
SERVICE: Well, the way Hitchcock talks, there wasn’t much chance of clearing myself unless I made an appearance as Exhibit A.
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