Chapter 6 military command

In 1943, an American military attache described the Military Command (MSB): So it is difficult to separate Dai Li's personal influence as head of one of China's most powerful secret police from his close relationship with Chiang Kai-shek.In everyone's imagination, he at least represents the dark side of dictatorship; as Shen Zui said, he is a sharp sword of the commander-in-chief, but in the eyes of the people he is Chiang's executioner.In fact, the independence Dai Li may have enjoyed came from his own intimidation, but conversely, that deterrence came almost entirely from his proximity to Chiang—plus his notoriously ubiquitous eyes, ears, and minions. .

Like all police chiefs, Dai Li's intimidation comes from the belief that his men are everywhere.Some people in China and abroad believe: "As we all know, the Military Command is China's secret police, and compared with any spy network in the world, it has a larger number of agents and a wider geographical coverage." 1946 In 1999, U.S. military intelligence estimated that Dai Li had 180,000 plainclothes agents—40,000 of whom worked for him around the clock.These special uniforms and military uniforms include: 70,000 armed guerrillas, 20,000 rangers, and what the US Navy believes has 15,291 soldiers. pirate.These add up to a total of 325,000 actual or potential personnel working for the head of the secret police.

An article referring to Dai Li as "China's spy master" said that wherever there are Chinese, his intelligence agents are active, these places include: Indochina, Indonesia, Borneo, Formosa, Siam, Malay Peninsula, South Pacific Islands, Ceylon, Burma and India. By the end of the war, Dai Li's spies were ubiquitous not only geographically but also strategically.They sent weather forecasts in the walled area of ​​Manila until MacArthur landed.They formed police forces in Nanking, Hankow, and all Chinese cities occupied by the Japanese.The Japanese found that these policemen were willing to cooperate, so they let them manage as usual, but they didn't know that all the Chinese policemen were Dai Li's people.They had a separate puppet flying team in the Japanese Air Force, which received a secret order to hand over the Japanese bombers to Dai Li's organization in Xi'an on September 15.And throughout the war, there were Dai Li's spies in the Tokyo Imperial Palace in Japan.

American readers—overt and covert—were fascinated by the examples of Dai Li's all-pervasive network of agents.According to reports, an OSS captain returned to his residence on the west side of Fuzhou to find his interpreter talking to two strangers in dark long gowns who left as soon as he entered up.The interpreter, trembling with terror, told him that the two men had almost killed him, because when he returned to the captain's room they were rummaging through the captain's things.He begs the captain to protect him.When the captain blamed him for being inexplicable, he started trembling again and said, "No, it's not inexplicable. They belong to the boss." The officer recalled: "So I stayed up all night with the damned on my knees. Submachine guns, because those two visitors are 'boss' people."

Another American intelligence officer passed by a small village while performing a secret mission in the Japanese-occupied area and stayed at a local inn.He drank the local wine with the innkeeper and became friends.So the American took the liberty to suggest that they search the luggage of all customers.After all, isn't that what the innkeeper's "boss" wants him to do?Later, when they drunkenly searched the rest of the hotel rooms, the American said he had thought the village was too small for a resident secret police agent. "It doesn't matter how small you are," the shop owner is said to have replied, "there are agents of the boss everywhere in China."

Of course, planting agents in every village was not enough to win Dai Li the popular fear he liked.His image in the eyes of foreigners and Chinese is partly due to his reputation for brutality.American observers believe: "Many Chinese whispered that he punished traitors by grilling on locomotives, and that he manipulated the concentration camps where political prisoners and other prisoners were held." As a smart and reserved person" has a good impression, but at the same time is shocked by his "smile".Despite his occasional insouciance in his organization, he was said to be ruthless should his discipline be disobeyed.Dai Li's critics thus accused foreigners of Dai Li being responsible for the imprisonment of many liberal arts professors and other progressives, while describing him as a "Chinese fascist."