Chapter 151 AGFRTS

In April of the following year, OSS and Air Force Fourteenth Squadron formed a very obscurely named organization: 5329th Air and Ground Forces Resources and Technical Staff (AGFRTS for short). , more commonly referred to as Agfrts.They include a large number of personnel selected by OSS to independently operate intelligence operations in China. What Sino-US cooperation failed to do, AGFRTS did, and the results were almost immediate.OSS operatives lurking behind enemy lines built an extensive covert network that provided Air Force Command and the Pacific Fleet with daily weather and weather data.Field radio intelligence of Yangtze River traffic and coastal and rail traffic enabled Chennault's aircraft to hit "hot" targets with the greatest accuracy, and "target study analysis" and estimates of bombing damage greatly aided Chennault's plan future offense.

OSS/Agfrts personnel mainly collected information on targets in occupied areas in China, and also interrogated enemy prisoners of war. In his report to President Roosevelt, Deng Nuowen tried to exalt the secret activities of his personnel on the ground, such as blowing up several planes at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, destroying several bridges when the Japanese attacked Guilin, and destroying the A coal mine, the collection of weather forecasts for several places along the coast, etc., but all of these cannot be compared with the activities of the OSS in Central and Western Europe. Of course, to be fair, there were a few times when they were extremely successful, even including top-secret operations that escaped Dai Li's surveillance (Operation Star and Operation "Clam", etc.).But most of the agency's activities are transparent to China's secret service authorities, which may have executed some Chinese working for the Americans.

Later, Deng Nuowen ensured that Dai Li was formally notified of the Intelligence Bureau's activities in AGFRTS.But that didn’t lessen the pain of its insults, especially since the Intelligence Service used some of Chennault’s best personnel, mostly missionary offspring, born in China, or at least fluent in Chinese enough to live there on their own.For example, Lieutenant Colonel Wolferd Smith first learned Chinese and then English, and received a Ph.D. from the Department of Oriental History at the University of Michigan before the war.Another example was Captain Charles Stelle, who was born and educated in Beijing, was a professor of Oriental Studies at Harvard University before being sent to Chongqing as an intelligence officer, and later became a Chinese communist liaison. an important part of.

Although Dai Li appreciated the intelligence bureau's training function, he objected to Deng Nuowen's men because they had ties to the Communist Party and sometimes waged anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare on their own without his permission. The senior officers on a mission alone ("dough" as Melles and his subordinates at SACO called them) grew increasingly suspicious.In the various provinces, a de facto "serial battle" broke out between the Intelligence Bureau and the Institute for Sino-US Cooperation, while in India across the mountain, a "secret war" was going on between the Intelligence Bureau and Dai Li's agents.By November 1944, General Dunovan reported to the President that for the intelligence agency "no intelligence or action of any importance had come from SACO. This may have been a result of limited tonnage over the Himalayas, but the main reason It is their actions that are constrained by those who are determined not to give them information."

In general, most scholars who study the history of SACO agree with this conclusion.Shen Yu wrote in her "Final Analysis": "Fundamentally, the operations of the allies benefited little from this cooperative project. At a time when SACO is preparing to shift its focus from training to operations, and the war is over." However, if it is true that the Allies' operations benefited little from these secret activities of SACO, Dai Li's own secret kingdom greatly benefited from them, allowing the Chinese secret agent chief to In World War II, the position was much stronger than when the Japanese first launched a war of aggression.As Major Carl Hoffmann reported to General Dunovan in July 1944:

All in all, by 1945 the "Spy King" had reached the pinnacle of his political power: an edifice built on top of the secretive economic structures of wartime China.