Chapter 138 Sino-US talks

Although the naval advance team of Melles and his party arrived in Chongqing in September 1942, the official meeting between Dai Li and Melles began in winter when the two men met in Dai Li's villa in Ciqikou.This aspect of military command required communications equipment, American weapons and vehicles, and personnel training.Melles agreed (he was formally appointed US Intelligence Far East Coordinator on September 22, 1942).Both parties had the United States bring weather personnel and equipment to Chongqing, along with weapons (Smith and Wesson revolvers, Kurt 45 caliber automatic weapons, Thomson submachine guns, etc.)Dai Li was very satisfied with the speed and generosity of the Americans. He felt that the Americans were the complete opposite of the stingy British.But he also repeatedly told Melles to take care of the training of the military's "armed special forces", which also needed communication and medical equipment.

On New Year’s Eve in 1942, Chinese Foreign Minister Song Ziwen began to implement the Melles-Dai Li Agreement, which stipulated that the director of the Sino-American Cooperation Institute should be the Chinese side, and the deputy director should be the American side, and both parties have the right to veto the unit’s action plan .A few days later, in early January 1943, after Luthor brought the draft agreement back to Washington, it was sidelined until Mellas himself returned there and demanded the implementation of the agreement in person, sending a naval advance force directly at It operates under the command of Admiral Kim.Army and Naval Intelligence questioned this agreement, resulting in General Marshall sending a letter to Chongqing recommending that Mellors and other Americans should go directly to Stilwell's command, while Dai Li and his Chinese troops should go to Chiang Kai-shek, the nominal commander of the Chinese theater lead.

General Stilwell objected to the idea of ​​a dual chain of command (known at the time as the "Friendship Project"), arguing that it would not work "so that we would not have Dai Li's cooperation. General Dai was an extremely secretive and extremely suspicious man , he will not allow anyone to exist between him and Mellas." As a result, Stilwell suggested that Mellas was responsible to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and under Dai Li.As a result, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff issued another directive, stipulating that the Sino-US Cooperation Institute and the Intelligence Bureau are not under the command of the theater commander.The preliminary agreement is that Dai Li will serve as the director of the Institute for Sino-US Cooperation, and Melles will be the deputy director, and each will have veto power over the overall plan.

In order to implement this agreement step by step in the United States, Mellas must be appointed as the person in charge of the intelligence agency's activities in China.General Dunovan was initially resistant to this outcome, but since Douglas MacArthur did not include the Intelligence Agency in the Pacific theater, Dunovan had to maintain a base in China for operations in Asia, which meant that "An Unhappy Alliance With Melles and Dai Li".In this way, he agreed to implement the agreement in January 1943, although "soon, even the nominal independence of the intelligence bureau was rejected. Dai Li was suspicious of the intelligence bureau's involvement in any Chinese internal affairs, He passed the information collected by his Gestapo directly to Mellas, who did not pass it on to the Intelligence Service until he was absolutely sure that it had first been sent to the Naval Command."

By March 1943, the Chinese felt strongly that it was necessary to formally sign a "contract" between the two parties.This move itself shows that the Chinese believe that the "agreement" called by the Americans is an arrangement based on equal cooperation.For a whole month Dai Li's men worked day and night to prepare the Chinese version of the contract, which Song Ziwen personally reviewed before submitting it to Chiang Kai-shek.Chiang Kai-shek cared so much about the word "contract" that he had his brother-in-law prepare for the final exchange signing ceremony in the United States.