Marshall Mission Files, Lot 54–D270: Telegram
Colonel J. Hart Caughey to Mr. Walter S. Robertson, at Peiping
1506. I have just read an intelligence report prepared by an Assistant Naval Attaché who had a conversation with Wang Ping Nan, Communist spokesman in Nanking. Mister Wang indicated his belief that, although the ambush was participated in and perhaps directed by Communists, it was undertaken at the initiative of the [Page 189] Anping area commander and was not directed by Yenan, and that it has been the source of great embarrassment to the Communists in the present negotiations. This represents a new line in that the Communists have not previously admitted Communist guilt in any way.
Incidentally Wang Ping Nan is a political commissar and most influential advisor to General Chou En-lai.