Chapter 19 Chapter Four Group of Ten

According to Wen Qiang's account of Dai Li's life, Dai Li's promotion in intelligence work in the National Revolutionary Army reflected his ability as a regular military intelligence officer.When Dai Li served under Hu Zongnan (the second column of the First Army), he became the head of a special communications and intelligence unit, which was established on January 4, 1928 under Chiang Kai-shek's instructions, and was called the "Liaison Group". In the official biography of Dai Li edited by the Taipei Intelligence Bureau, it is described as the "germ" of all rising party and state military intelligence organizations.The liaison team was set up directly by Chiang's general headquarters, and the commander-in-chief personally appointed Dai Li as the liaison staff officer, putting him under the leadership of ten officials who later became the core staff when the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics was established under the Military Commission.

Dai Li's most important task during his tenure as a liaison officer was to execute Chiang Kai-shek's order to assassinate Tang Shengzhi in early 1930.Tang, a soldier born in Hunan, had driven Feng Yuxiang out of Henan on behalf of the Kuomintang government in November 1929, but he went to Wang Jingwei the following month to accept the appointment of the commander-in-chief of the Fourth Route Army of the National Salvation Army and vowed to oppose Chiang and the The military dictatorship of its entourage.In the end Chiang sent his best spies to gather military intelligence about Tang Shengzhi and plot Tang's assassination.It is said that Dai Li entered Henan via Dongling, and after staying in Luoyang, he went along the Jinghan Railway to Zhengzhou, where General Tang was stationed, to collect intelligence along the way.

Knowing that Dai was in this area, Tang Shengzhi offered a huge reward for his arrest.As soon as Dai Li arrived at Zhengzhou Railway Station, he was discovered by Tang's military police and surrounded him.However, Zhou Weilong, director of the military and police inspection department, graduated from the fourth phase of Whampoa. He may have known Dai Li when he was in Whampoa, and he admired the spy's calmness and courage.Dai Li begged Zhou Weilong to "support the principal and assist the world".Zhou and Dai Li became brothers and hid him in the military and police camp for a few days. When the news passed, Dai put on Tang Shengzhi's military and police uniform and headed south along the Beijing-Hanzhou Railway.

Between 1928 and 1931, Chiang Kai-shek's only official secret police agency was authorized by the secret investigation team of the reorganized Central Headquarters of the Kuomintang.Chiang had a lot of unofficial agents because various secret organizations developed with his own support after 1927, and Chiang controlled them by making these organizations compete with each other for funds and power and restrict each other.Under such circumstances, a semi-official team was established, its task was to deal with the Communists, and a secret "special fund" was allocated from the Central Party Headquarters to provide it with the use of it to control the anti-Chiang elements within the Kuomintang.The secret investigation team is also known as the "joint organization", headed by Chen Lifu, who once led the Secret Service of the State Military Commission and served as the general secretary of the State Reorganization Committee.According to Boman, the investigation team responsible for eliminating Communist Party members and persons suspected of being pro-communist was divided into three sections, and Dai Li was in charge of the second section, which was ordered to monitor military personnel.

Just as the purges of 1927 were underway, Dai Li's formal responsibilities in the commander-in-chief's private spy system did not exactly correspond to his personal tasks.By 1930, he appears to have begun to form his personal "agency" in the Second Section, through the Ten-Men Corps, which continued to be the core of his secret agents.These Whampoa graduates were like the "Muyou" among officials in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and they all received their salaries from Dai Li at the beginning.In fact, they did not formally join the secret service as government officials until 1932, when Chiang re-established his secret service organization.During those four years, his personnel changed slightly. In 1930, its members included Wang Tianmu, Tang Zong, Zhang Yanyuan, Xu Liang, Hu Tianqiu, Zhou Weilong (Tang Shengzhi's military and police chief), Huang Yong, Ma Ce and Zheng Xilin.Later, the last two people asked to withdraw, so Tang Zong asked Liu Huixian and Pei Xidu to replace them.

The official name of the Ten was the Investigative Correspondence Team, and there were various accounts of its Spartan style of work.It can be seen from this that it has little time for the corrupt activities that are characteristic of the military system in its full development and late stage.In the hot summer, Dai Li, who works in Nanjing, the hottest city in China, would often work at the headquarters of the Ten-member Group at No. 53 Ji'e Lane for three consecutive days without sleep or food. Kind of snacks only. Although the secret investigation team was nominally under the unified leadership of Chen Lifu, its various departments competed fiercely.While Dai Li and his ten-member group were operating in the secret investigation team's office in Ji'e Lane, another rival group, which was believed to represent the interests of Chen Lifu's "CC" faction, was also in Zhanyuan Road. The office of the Kuomintang conducted anti-communist investigation activities among the non-military personnel of the Kuomintang.This team, known as Section 1 of the Secret Investigation Team, was led by Xu Enzeng and was also paid for by secret funds from the Party Central Headquarters.

At the same time, another secret police agency was established in the three provinces under the jurisdiction of the "bandit suppression" headquarters in Nanchang, Jiangxi.In 1931, Chiang Kai-shek also began to be ordered to form an intelligence department.The following year, Deng Wenyi, one of Chiang's secretaries in the Military Affairs Committee, submitted a plan to the commander-in-chief, requesting the establishment of an investigation section in the security camps of the three provinces in the "communist suppression" area, with its headquarters under the leadership of the Nanchang security camp.