Books
Wednesday, 24 June 2009 08:06
Written by JFK Miller

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This Saturday at Glamour Bar US journalist and author Lynne Joiner will preview her new book, Honorable Survivor. As Joiner says in our interview below, "it’s a compelling story of adventure, love, international intrigue – and the fate of nations."

The 'honorable survivor' in question is US Foreign Service Officer John 'Jack' Service. Nearly 30 years before Nixon shook Mao’s hand, Service arrived in Yan’an, the Communist stronghold during World War II, where he got to know Mao and other top leaders as America’s chief contact with the Communists.

Their meetings would begin a complicated and often difficult relationship between the US and Communist China. Born and raised in China by YMCA missionaries, Service was the first to predict that Mao’s guerrilla revolutionaries would win if China’s civil war erupted again – before anyone else even knew the Communists were a potent force.

But his outspokenness would cost him his career. Service became a target of revenge for 'losing China' to the Communists and the first victim of Senator Joe McCarthy’s infamous anti-Communist crusade in the 1950s. He was the first diplomat ever arrested on espionage charges and fired for “reasonable doubt” as to his loyalty. Even after the US Supreme Court reinstated him, Service’s fight to restore his reputation lasted decades longer – until the Nixon-Mao Handshake.

Drawing on Service’s private papers, as well as recently released secret government documents, Joiner chronicles Service's incredible life. She talks with Urbanatomy about her book below...

There are many cases of injustice from the McCarthy witch hunts of the ‘50s. Why does Service’s particular story deserve to be told? Is it because he was the first victim of the Cold War?
It’s a compelling story of adventure, love, international intrigue – and the fate of nations. And yes, because Service was McCarthy’s first victim and became the lightening rod for a convergence of forces: Cold War anti-Communists, ambitious politicians and Republicans seeking to return to the White House, Washington rivalries between the FBI and Justice Department, the machinations of government officials and ‘fixers,’ as well as revenge for Chiang Kai-shek’s forces and their supporters.

What are the book’s origins and how long did it take to research/write it?
I first decided to do a book on Service after he and his wife let me read their oral histories at UC Berkeley in 1978 when they were first completed (and under wraps to the public for 10 years). But his wife was nervous that a book might negatively impact their son’s career in the Foreign Service and was still scarred from McCarthy era so didn’t want me to do it. And I had a very active career going in broadcast news and documentary filmmaking at the time.
Only in 1998 after his wife had died and his son had made it to the top rung as ambassador did I begin to interview Service. Then in 1999, I moved to Washington, D.C. on a news consulting assignment and began in earnest to research his case at the FBI, National Archives and Library of Congress and make requests of the State Department for his files.

It took four years to gain access to his FBI security files under the Freedom of Information Act and three years to get his State Department record which the security office at the State Department had neglected to send to the National Archives as required by law after a Foreign Service officer retires. So I’ve worked part time on the book from 1999 to about 2004, then full time from 2004 to now.
 
A biographer who is personally acquainted with their subject, and who, moreover, admires their subject, surely faces a tougher challenge to remain objective than one who isn’t. Did you find it at all difficult to remain objective in the case of Jack Service?
I'm a trained, professional investigative journalist. I followed where the trail led me. I learned about the machinations of the FBI, Justice Department and KMT secret police from my research in Washington, D.C. - things that Service never knew.
I interviewed his former mistress [the Chinese actress Val Chao] and had had many conversations with his wife. It was quite a jigsaw puzzle to put together, both on the personal history and the grand US-China history and the domestic political battles of the US in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and into the ‘70s regarding ‘soft on Communism’ charges and Cold War frames of reference – a very challenging and exciting intellectual exercise to piece it all together in a compelling way.

What was he like as a man? In your many meetings with him, some of which took place towards the end of his life, what bitterness, if any, remained in him over being made a scapegoat?
Service was unflappable, very bright, and, like many men, not very in touch with his emotional side. I once remarked that I suspected one reason he survived (unlike others in the McCarthy era who became alcoholics or committed suicide or just disappeared into exile), he never allowed himself to ‘feel’ things like anger. Also, he was dogged and determined and never ever felt he had done anything really wrong. He knew he had taken risks, but what happened to him was a bloody outrage and did not fit his indiscretion of allowing the editor of Amerasia to see some of his descriptive reports from Yenan.
He loved serving his country in the Foreign Service and was very good at it. He earned numerous commendations and was on a fast track to higher office. Even when he was returned to the State Department by court order, he hoped he could get his career back on track but that proved impossible so he went to Berkeley and helped establish the Center for Chinese Studies as a premier research center. And he did not hold bitterness - he was pragmatic: “Why worry about things you can’t change?” He really had a code of honor and tried to remove the stain to his reputation. It’s a pity he had to spend much of his life defending his record instead of working on our US international policy issues.

Service’s treatment of his lover, the actress Val Chao, can hardly be described as honorable. Can a person be ‘honorable’ if they have honor in one aspect of their life but not in another? Is honor an absolute concept?
I am not here to judge his behavior, only to show my readers what happened. All I can say is his behavior with women does not seem abnormal for men. Need I name some of the more famous examples like JFK? FDR? Clinton? And he told his wife that he wanted a divorce. Then his promising career became the most important factor in his life.

How would history have played out had the US administration actually heeded Service’s advice to establish relations with the Communists during the civil war? Would the Communists have adopted free market and democratic reforms as Service hoped? Would the Korean and Vietnam wars have been averted? Would China have been spared the twin nightmares of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution if the US was able to have exerted a greater influence, as Service had argued for?
I refuse to gaze into the crystal ball. But [historian and author] Barbara Tuchman and John Service are both on record as saying things couldn’t have been any worse and might have resulted in a very different post war world had America been able to reassess its disjointed China policy and been truly flexible and truly a fair mediator between the Communists and the KMT. But Chiang Kai-shek was inflexible and Mao was ruthless when he was rebuffed and grew in isolation of the whole world.

What can I say except it seems it would have been best if FDR didn’t keep foreign policy only in his own head and if he had realized the importance of China and Asia and had never appointed Ambassador Hurley or allowed Tai Li to control US aid to his underground army of operatives. I write about all this and quote Service and Tuchman about the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Perhaps we could have helped keep the CCP more independent of the USSR if Mao’s effort to get US aid (as he outlined to Service in ‘44 and ‘45), but the fog of war, bitter Chinese experiences of imperialism and warlords and poverty/exploitation coupled with US short term (and short sighted) interests all created this tapestry of how people and policy and events on the ground shape the world we inherit. And we always pay dearly for not being able to see what’s just off our radar screens.

I want my readers to make their own judgments on whether there are parallels between earlier times and now. Not just in terms of the new Patriot Act and invasion of privacy rights for American citizens versus the McCarthy era, but also for our international policy and needs regarding emerging nations and ‘failed nations.’ Our country needs people on the ground in the world’s hot spots - Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Congo - who understand the culture and languages and are unafraid to provide their observations to Washington and for Washington to really listen to the various reports coming in from the field and reassess policy on a very immediate/timely basis. We all only see part of the elephant if we’re blindfolded and need to assess the local and global pictures from different frames.

Finally, given the long shadow cast by his famous father, was this ever an issue for his son, Robert, when he followed in his footsteps in joining the Foreign Service?
Robert Service was confirmed by the Senate as an ambassador in 1994 and served in Latin America. I asked him if any questions about his father had come up in his hearings. He chuckled, said his parents also asked but that no one on the committee ever raised the issue. It was part of the past, part of history that people had forgotten.

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