“Yeah,” Major Barrow guffawed, “and I’m going to be commandant of the whole damn Marine Corps!”

  In fact both men were right. Robert Barrow went on to become commandant of the Marine Corps. Dillon proved correct when the Nationalists mounted a really big raid and it flopped. By now Dwight Eisenhower had come to office and unleashed the Chinese Nationalists by ending the neutralization of the Taiwan Straits. The raid involved not only the guerrillas but every Nationalist armed service, coordinated by the “other” Nationalist spy service, the Continental Operations Department. Robert Barrow participated as Ed Hamilton supervised and Frank Holober watched for Western Enterprises chief Delaney. A paratroop drop and a guerrilla landing on Dongshan were supposed to drive the Chinese Communists into the arms of Nationalist regulars. Madame Jiang attended the dress briefing. In the actual operation the airdrop miscarried as a number of its planes were forced to abort due to mechanical failures. The amphibious landing by regular troops turned into a nightmare when the tide, supposed to be coming in, was not. Landing craft never got closer than a mile from the beach, leaving hapless invaders to wade or slog ashore through mud. The CIA guerrillas hit the beach in fairly good order but found the Communists responding much more rapidly than in the past and quickly marshaling forces to quash the landing. The Nationalists managed to withdraw and took some prisoners, but there was no victory. This landing was more akin to the Baltic or Albanian CIA failures than the heroic Normandy invasion.

  Psychological warfare also remained active. Balloons carried by prevailing winds gave way to leaflet drops from aircraft. The experience of Colonel Arnold and his air force B-29 are but one example. Some flights were made by Civil Air Transport, others by the Nationalist air force. According to one account, in 1953 leaflet flights averaged thirty a month, and 300 million pieces of Nationalist or CIA propaganda were loosed over mainland China.

  In accordance with the CIA reorganization plan, detachments on White Dog, Baiquan, and Xiamen progressively pulled back. Western Enterprises disappeared in 1953. Charles Johnston, the original “Pittsburgh Charlie” himself, came to close down the mission. Americans shifted to using cover with a new Naval Technical Training Center, a variant of the naval cover assignments that OSO officers had sported from the beginning of the program. Beijing, still concerned about bases on the offshore islands, launched a succession of international crises beginning in late 1954 at Mazu. A couple of months later U.S. warships and Nationalist craft evacuated more than six thousand troops and civilians from Mazu, among them the final CIA contingent. At Xiamen the People’s Liberation Army began an “Artillery War” that endured for years, the first of almost half a million cannon shells falling on the island, disrupting guerrilla bases at any hour. It became even more difficult to raid the China coast.

  Training for the agency’s special missions remained a perennial concern. Both Chinese and Korean recruits went to a secret CIA base for advanced instruction. Located in the mid–Pacific Ocean, on the island of Saipan, the facility provided a secluded and secure location. Actually, by using the island, the United States violated international law, since Saipan was technically a United Nations dependency, part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, merely administered by the United States. When supervision of the trust went from military to civilian hands in 1951–1952, the navy successfully fought a Department of the Interior plan to place trust headquarters on Saipan, preserving CIA’s security.

  The CIA used a military designation, Naval Technical Training Unit, for its cover. Cost of the base is estimated at $28 million. Recruits arrived by night, flown in on C-47 aircraft like those of Civil Air Transport. New arrivals were blindfolded on arrival, then driven to the base. But the CIA facility had been built on the highest mountain on the island, with surroundings plainly visible to the trainees. The standard of living and style of construction on the rest of the island bore little relation to the concrete barracks and tract houses of the CIA base, and there were periodic emergencies when the “Naval Technical Training Unit” had to be quickly sanitized and closed before visits of UN trusteeship commissioners. The estimate of Chinese recruits is imprecise—only some “hundreds” are cited. After training, the recruits returned to operating bases for their missions. These included commando raids, sabotage, and liaison with local anti-Communist resistance groups. John Downey’s choice of the team for his Manchuria mission is typical of the practice. Later in the decade the Saipan base would come in handy again in the CIA’s Tibetan covert operation. In 1960 the secret warriors considered using Saipan to train some of their Cuban exile fighters.

  The United States continued hiding the Saipan base from public view, very probably due to the international legal violations inherent in its use. As late as 1967 the White House responded vapidly when a University of Illinois professor asked about CIA training on Saipan.

  One of the largest CIA operations in China began in early February 1951. Known to Civil Air Transport as Project Paper, it was nothing less than an invasion by Nationalist guerrillas based in the Shan states of northern Burma. This paramilitary effort was carried out in the face of the Burmese government and created an unnecessary international controversy. It also led to organized Nationalist Chinese involvement in heroin traffic that continues to this day.

  Project Paper relied upon Li Mi, another of Jiang Jieshi’s many generals. He escaped when his army disintegrated in battle and made his way in disguise to Yunnan province, where Li took command of the Nationalist Eighth Army at Kunming. During 1950 Li slowly retreated toward the border as the PLA approached.

  About fifteen hundred of Li Mi’s troops withdrew into Indochina where the French disarmed the lot and interned them. But the French had an army there while Burma (now Myanmar) had few military forces, and those were fully occupied against revolting Keren tribesmen. Li Mi headed for Burma and easily crossed the border with more than two thousand men from the Nationalist 97th and 193rd Divisions. The general himself went to Hong Kong but soon rejoined his troops. In Burma the Chinese built a base camp, drafting Shan tribesmen for labor and to fill their ranks, and contacted local Chinese smugglers. Despite clashes with the Burmese army that forced a few hundred more Nationalists into French internment in Laos, before the close of 1950 Li almost doubled his strength. A World War II–vintage airstrip at Mong Hsat, refurbished by the Nationalists, became Li Mi’s new base, graced with a huge portrait of Jiang Jieshi, bamboo barracks, and a hilltop headquarters of imported wood and concrete. Within a year the Li Mi forces had almost doubled again.

  Project Paper intended to reequip Li Mi’s band for a return to Yunnan. Civil Air Transport, using three planes to begin with, parachuted instructors and weapons to the Chinese in northern Burma. Soon CAT had a regular supply flow. Aircraft flew from a CAT detachment at Bangkok, with personnel shuttled from Taiwan and weapons from a CIA depot on Okinawa. Soon planes were landing at Mong Hsat. The whole operation was coordinated by Alfred Cox, OPC’s chief of station at Hong Kong, and Sherman B. Joost in Bangkok. The Burmese government learned of this support when its own intelligence officers, watching the Chinese, witnessed five of the supply drops.

  The CIA ingeniously provided cover through a parallel project to train and equip paramilitary forces for Thailand. In Miami the CIA chartered a company just like WEI, the Overseas Southeast Asia Supply Company—Sea Supply as it was familiarly known—with a $38 million government contract to support the Thai. Its cable address, “Hachet,” gave commercial cover to CIA officers working with both the Thais and Chinese. Before the end of 1953 Sea Supply had two hundred employees, and about eighty more Americans in the embassy in Thailand worked overtly as advisers. By then almost five thousand Thai soldiers had been trained and equipped. Whatever happened to Li Mi, the Thai did very well from the bargain. Assistance to Li Mi and the existence of Sea Supply were open secrets in Bangkok. Sherman Joost, as a team leader with the OSS in Burma during the war, did not much mind the attention. It was a welcome change from the frustrations of Taiwan-based China operations, from which he had been reassigned to Paper.

  Meanwhile Li Mi began calling his forces the Yunnan Province Anti-Communist National Salvation Army. A first invasion of Yunnan occurred in May 1951, in two columns with two thousand men, accompanied by CIA officers and regular supply drops. The Nationalists advanced a few dozen miles into Yunnan but were out again within a month. Li Mi’s column, defeated, retreated precipitately, while the second force, hearing this news, fell back as well. In July Li Mi sent subordinate Liu Kuo-chuan on a second incursion, which was driven off by local Communist Chinese units. This time the Communists needed just a week.

  The failure should have occasioned a critical review of the Li Mi operation. Indeed Li returned to Taiwan for consultations with the Nationalist government, but the outcome was a decision to strengthen the effort. David M. Key, U.S. ambassador to Burma, reported from Rangoon that the Burmese knew of Americans in the area and of the use of U.S. equipment by the Nationalists. He concluded that “this adventure has cost us heavily in terms of Burmese goodwill and trust.” Nevertheless, at the CIA Richard Stilwell insisted that support to Li Mi had been insufficient. Ambassador Key resigned.

  The CIA brought in a new logistics director, James A. Garrison, to manage the now substantial arms flow to Taiwan, Thailand, and Burma. American engineers were sent in to improve Mong Hsat airstrip. Then CAT began an even larger airlift no longer confined to parachute drops. Some seven hundred Nationalist troops from Taiwan reinforced Li Mi, whose strength by 1952 had grown to twelve thousand.

  Open controversy erupted in late December 1951 when Beijing publicly charged the United States with ferrying Nationalist soldiers from Taiwan to Burma. The charges were repeated by Soviet diplomats in a United Nations political committee. The controversy bubbled despite several U.S. denials, including one by Secretary Dean Acheson, and a statement by an American UN delegate that the Nationalists had simply failed to honor their pledge to remove troops from Burma. The Burmese UN delegate agreed that Li Mi was receiving outside aid; Nationalist denials were countered by copies of actual orders from Jiang Jieshi to Li Mi that had been captured by the Burmese army. In the midst of the controversy, the New York Times reported on February 11, 1952, that witnesses had seen Li Mi’s soldiers brandishing brand-new American weapons. Two months later Burmese sources reported that Americans, including ex-military fliers, were the ones smuggling arms to Li Mi. The Burmese army broke up a seaborne shipment of more men and arms to the Nationalists but could never discover whether this had been a Jiang Jieshi or a CIA maneuver. In 1952 the government declared martial law for northern Burma and opened large-scale military operations against the Nationalists.

  Still, the United States persisted in its denials. To lessen the visibility of the issue, Jiang asked Li Mi to return to Taiwan. To explain the Nationalists’ arms, reports were leaked that Li Mi’s men had sold opium to finance their activities. It is not clear whether the United States at this stage encouraged the drug trafficking to preserve cover for the CIA operation, but Chinese sales of drugs from Burma have been an important source of cash ever since and a pernicious practice that cost America far more than it gained from any Nationalist military activities.

  No matter how threadbare the cover story, denials continued. The true facts were so closely held within CIA that the agency’s analysis branch was not told of them. Nor, by and large, was the State Department. The U.S. ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, received CIA assurances that there was no American aid to Li Mi. As Asian governments increasingly refused to accept these claims, Bowles was reduced to arguing that no American administration could afford to halt the arms flow during an election year for fear of being accused of coddling communism. Meanwhile when several white men with the Li Mi troops were killed in battle with the Burmese army, their bodies yielded diaries and notebooks with home addresses in Washington and New York City.

  Passing through Washington en route to his new assignment as ambassador in Rangoon, the diplomat William J. Sebald received similar assurances that Li Mi was receiving no U.S. aid. When Sebald attempted to repeat the disclaimer at a diplomatic reception, Burmese army chief of staff Ne Win replied, “Mr. Ambassador, I have it cold. If I were you, I’d just keep quiet.”

  In the summer of 1952 Li Mi returned to Burma to lead a second invasion of Yunnan. That August 2,100 Nationalists marched 60 miles into China before being driven out. This became the last of the remarkably inept invasions. Instead the Nationalists turned against the Burmese government. Li Mi guarded his Burma base with more troops than he used in his Yunnan incursions. Now he forged links with anti-government Keren tribesmen and even the Burmese Communist Party. In the fall of 1952 Li crossed the Salween River in a major offensive against the Burmese army. His drug trafficking soared.

  Not only would Li Mi be ineffective, his ventures led to the ruin of U.S. relations with Burma for most of the decade. Whereas in 1952 the Burmese refused to demand a UN investigation, believing that neither superpower would accept its conclusions, the next year Rangoon tabled a resolution branding the Chinese presence an act of aggression. When the United States opposed the motion, Prime Minister U Nu unilaterally terminated all American aid programs in his country. The Nationalists hardly disguised their connection to the Li Mi forces—in 1955 Jiang Jieshi sent his former commander of forces on Mazu Island to Burma as Li Mi’s deputy.

  The Li Mi operation had been dear to some CIA officers, a special favorite of Desmond FitzGerald, deputy chief of OPC’s Far East Division. When Stilwell returned to the army, FitzGerald soldiered on under his replacement, Lloyd George. With the OSO-OPC merger and creation of the Directorate for Operations, George Aurell succeeded to the top job at the Far East Division. He left the decisions mostly to “Des.” Subordinates felt that Aurell avoided going out on a limb while his deputy, like Frank Wisner, sparked an idea a minute. Educated at private schools and Harvard College—at Groton he had been a classmate of Tracy Barnes—the forty-two-year-old FitzGerald often served as a conduit for project proposals. He pursued Cold War confrontation with romantic fervor, preventing cancellation of Project Paper following Li Mi’s 1951 debacle. A year later, with nothing to show but failure, plus an international uproar over the intervention, FitzGerald had little alternative but to acquiesce in dismantling the activity, a headache for FE/4, the branch of Far East Division that handled both Burma and Thailand.

  This evaluation of the Li Mi operation was given to Chester Bowles by an Indonesian cabinet minister in April 1953:

  What could be more ridiculous than to allow American arms to be used to build up the power of a renegade group totally incapable of inflicting any damage on the Communist Chinese, but fully capable of thwarting the democratic Burman government’s effort to crush her own communist rebellion and bring order to a troubled nation?

  Six years later, in May 1959, intelligence officers would tell a U.S. president that the Chinese Nationalists in Burma caused “nothing but difficulty.” They embarrassed a government that Washington by then considered more favorably, and gave the Chinese Communists a pretext for intervention in Burma. “In short,” according to the synopsis furnished to President Eisenhower, “they make trouble for our friends but do not have sufficient capability to even tie down significant ChiCom forces.”

  William J. Donovan, wartime chief of OSS and Eisenhower’s appointment in 1953 as ambassador to Thailand, oversaw the attempt to clean up the Li Mi mess. This repatriation of Chinese Nationalists from northern Burma came at the express wish of the Burmese government. Li Mi returned to Taiwan in October 1952, but his soldiers stayed. A four-power conference in Bangkok among Burma, Thailand, Nationalist China, and the United States agreed to remove them. This led to Operation Repat, a Civil Air Transport airlift of Chinese who crossed from northern Burma to Thailand and were then flown to Taiwan.

  An initial group of 50 Nationalist soldiers entered Thailand on November 8, 1953, with no weapons but bearing a seven-foot portrait of Jiang Jieshi. Flights began the next day; CAT used C-46 aircraft with extra fuel tanks flying at maximum range. In an initial phase almost 2,000 troops and several hundred dependents reached Taiwan. In the second phase, February–March 1954, another 3,000 Nationalists with 500 dependents departed. People flown out later brought the total to about 5,600 soldiers and more than a thousand dependents. Each one cost the United States $128 paid to a CIA proprietary.

  Something of a farce, Repat included evacuees who were Shan and Lahu tribesmen, not Chinese, and dependents swelled the numbers without ameliorating Burma’s security problem. In addition, the many troops brought out many fewer weapons—a thousand rifles, sixty-nine machine guns, and twenty-two mortars—some of them antique pieces, not the modern arms the CIA had given Li Mi. Numerous evacuees contrived to return to Burma. The Nationalists maintained forces in Burma no longer under CIA control. These later grew to as many as twelve thousand and continued their drug trafficking right into the 1980s.

  Significant changes now occurred in the Taiwan Straits. The Seventh Fleet had had orders to bar the straits to forces of both sides. Eisenhower changed the order to block only Beijing, freeing Jiang to attack the mainland. In early 1953 the United States gave the Nationalists their first jet aircraft (F-84 fighters) and sanctioned an expansion of the Nationalist Marine Corps to three brigades, tripling Jiang’s amphibious force.