Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Korea and China, Volume VII, Part 2

S/P Files: Lot 64 D 563

Memorandum of Conversation, by Charles Burton Marshall of the Policy Planning Staff¹

top secret

[Manila,] May 4, 1951.^*

Present were: [name deleted], Sabin Chase,² and C. B. Marshall, hereafter referred to in the first person.

Chase described the overt mission. I laid out the covert mission.

In stating the antecedents I reviewed the conversations with Second Party. …

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As to disclosure of our covert mission, [name deleted] advised us to let the Minister and Chargé d’Affaires at Manila, J. F. Harrington, know of its existence but not its nature (our conversation with Minister Harrington took place at 4:00 p. m. that day. Nothing memorable was said on either side. I informed him of the existence of a covert purpose. He made no inquiry as to its nature).

[Name deleted] also advised complete disclosure to Walter McConaughy at Hong Kong and to anyone on his staff considered by him to be essential to our purposes.

[Name deleted] said he knew of no contact certain to get word into Peiping of our presence and the attendant opportunity for talks. I suggested, and he agreed, that we should not give evidence of a desire to talk but should merely let our presence and status be known. He said this was important lest our intentions become known to the KMT, which would surely do everything possible to blight our chances. He advised that we should advertise our presence discreetly by meeting a number of possible contacts and intimating that we were high in the line of policy in the U.S. Government, He said that someone would probably get the word through, since rumors and news eddy around Hong Kong and surge in and out of China. He said that if anyone in Peiping should be receptive to the idea of talking an approach would surely be forthcoming; and that if Peiping were not, we would find it out by being ignored. [Name deleted] counseled that it would take a period of several days to develop the prospects and that we must be prepared to tarry in patience a while.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1. This is the first of a series of memoranda, dated between May 3 and May 23, written by Marshall during a trip to Manila and Hong Kong; the memoranda are filed in the folder labeled “China 1951 (CBM Hong Kong Report)” in S/P Files: Lot 64 D 563. Acheson noted in his memoirs that Marshall went to Hong Kong and made himself available for contacts with the Chinese after the Department received “a suggestion with some credentials of reliability” that it might be possible to initiate negotiations for an armistice in Korea through an approach to Peking; see Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1969), p. 532.

   Mr. Marshall stated in an interview on May 13, 1974, that before he left for Hong Kong he had a brief meeting with Secretary Acheson and a meeting of 40 to 45 minutes with Deputy Under Secretary Matthews. He was instructed to try to make contact with the Chinese and, in case of a response, to communicate with the Department. The interview with Marshall is recorded in a memorandum of conversation, May 17, 1974 (611.93/1–651).

2. This conversation was held in Manila May 4. It lasted four hours, beginning at 10:00 a. m. … Notes on the references to Third Party were taken at the time. The rest of this memorandum was written from memory on May 11. [Footnote in the source text.]

2. Augustus Sabin Chase, Chief, Division of Research for Far East, in the Office of Intelligence Research.