Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Volume III, China, Microfiche Supplement

804. Letter 69 from Clough to Johnson¹

Letter No. 69

Washington, May 10, 1957

Dear Alex:

Walter McConaughy has gone off on a short trip to Alabama and expects to be back early next week. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after twice postponing his appearance before them to discuss his appointment as Ambassador to Burma, has indicated that they will call him late next week. Naturally he is anxious to complete this procedure and receive his confirmation.

Since you have not had a letter from CA for some time I will try to include here mention of the principal developments relating to your talks during the last month. We intend to begin preparation of instructions for your next meeting today and will probably meet with Mr. Robertson on Monday to put them in final form. We do not anticipate any new departure.

1. Appearances of Department Officers on Hill on March 23: Bill Sebald and Walter McConaughy appeared before the Far East Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to answer questions about the ban on correspondents travel to Communist China. The members of the Subcommittee were quite sympathetic to our position, with only two or three members appearing to question it seriously. The majority appeared to take the position that the central question was whether or not a distinction between newsmen and ordinary citizens for the purpose of travel was justified. We have sent you separately the record of the proceedings. On April 2, Mr. Murphy went before the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. He made a very forceful presentation of the Department’s policy, which was put out as a press release by the Department, and a copy of which has been sent you. The Senators were somewhat less sympathetic and understanding than the Representatives had been with Bill Sebald and Walter. Their questions were sharp and the hearing was rather lengthy. Following the hearing, Senator Fulbright sent over an additional list of some 35 questions to be answered by the Department. The questions were for the most part along the same lines as the ones asked in the hearing itself, but some of them were very trickily worded. One of them, for example, was the question whether the fact of non-recognition itself made it more difficult for the Department to extend protection to Americans traveling in Communist China. As you can imagine, it is difficult to phrase an answer to this question without appearing either to offer an argument for recognition or, on the other hand, to discount the validity of the argument that we cannot offer protection as one of the reasons behind our policy. Another question which appeared to be somewhat loaded was the question of whether you at Geneva still felt that removing the travel ban would have an unfavorable effect on the prospects for release of the prisoners or whether you had come to believe, in the light of the propaganda advantage that Peiping had already gained from exploiting the issue, that the ban no longer had any value in your negotiations. Our answer to this one was in effect that your position at Geneva had always been along the lines of the Department’s press release of August 7, that you felt the travel of certain reporters in defiance of the ban had weakened your position vis-a-vis the ban, and that you had stressed that the Communists would probably not release the Americans in exchange for a removal of the ban. The Department agreed with this analysis, and in any case did not intend to bargain for the release of Americans. (I am enclosing a copy of the FE portion of our reply).

2. The Worthy Case: William Worthy was given a hearing on April 29 in order to inform him officially of the tentative denial of his request for a new passport. The Department, at this stage, kept the focus on the issues as defined in the passport regulations. The next step will presumably be a hearing before the Board of Passport Appeals.

3. Cases of Downey, Fecteau and Redmond: We have already sent to Geneva a memorandum of conversation with Mrs. Downey, the mother of John Downey, in which Mr. Robertson discussed with her various possibilities growing out of a contact she had with Dag Hammarskjold. You will see that there is a possibility she might come to Geneva at the time of your next meeting for an interview with Wang. The Department did not attempt to discourage her from making the trip, although we, of course, could not give her any assurance that the interview would be granted, or that it would have any effect on the release of her son. We are attempting to find out more about Dag Hammarskjold’s reported willingness to take up again the cases of Downey and Fecteau, on the grounds of their being civilians under the authority of the UNC in Korea, and therefore entitled to repatriation under the Armistice Agreement. You will recall that at the time of Hammarskjold’s visit to Peiping in January 1955, although he went there primarily on behalf of the 11 airmen, we left the door open to the inclusion of the two civilians in the category of personnel who should be released under the Armistice Agreement. Also, in Wang’s list of Americans in China which he gave you at the start of the talks, Downey and Fecteau are placed in a separate category from the other civilian prisoners. Of course, in anything that we might do or ask the Secretory General to do, we would have to be careful not to appear to relax our demands that the Chinese Communists release forthwith all the prisoners without regard to their status or any other distinction.

In the above connection, William Worthy has been stirring up a good deal of trouble among the American relatives of the prisoners. He tried to lead Mrs. Fecteau on into saying that the Department had for two years failed to permit her to send parcels to her son. Fortunately, Mrs. Fecteau issued a refutation of this allegation through her Congressman, Mr. Lane, to whom CA also supplied a statement summarizing our efforts to get parcels to Fecteau and all the other prisoners and making the point that, almost as soon as we learned of the fact that Downey and Fecteau were alive and in prison in Communist China, we commenced efforts to make it possible for their families to send them parcels. Worthy has also been in touch with Mrs. Redmond trying to convince her that the Department has not done everything in its power to get her son’s release, and advising her that she might speed up Redmond’s release if she made a trip to Peiping.

A Yonkers citizens committee for the release of Redmond has also been very active lately, demanding an interview with the Secretary, and protesting the relaxation of CHINCOM controls as a sign the Department is “aiding Red China while our boys are rotting in prison.” The committee claims to have been responsible for sending Mao Tse-tung over 300,000 “polite” letters on behalf of Redmond. It also appears to be under the misapprehension that the Department made some sort of “deal” with Red China whereby Father Rigney was put at the head of the list to be released. The committee apparently attributes the success of this “deal” to the efforts of Rigney’s Congressman, Mr. MacCormack, and it appears they may use this allegation in attacking Congressman Gwinn, in whose district Yonkers is. Naturally, this adds to the complications of the matter.

4. Case of Daniel Kelly: We have had some correspondence lately with an American who is interested in assisting Daniel Kelly, the son of an American father and a Chinese mother, all now living in Peiping, to come to the States to complete his pre-medical training. It would appear that the boy has a valid claim to American citizenship, but the Chinese Communists probably consider him also Chinese. We have recommended that Daniel Kelly be advised to apply for an exit permit, and if it is refused, to notify the Office of the UK Chargé. We did not want to make an issue of this case at Geneva, as we would naturally prefer to have it settled without having to cite the Agreed Announcement. It would be out of line for us to insist upon the application of the Agreed Announcement to a dual national, unless he were trying to leave in order to accompany his parents. This is apparently not the case in this instance.

5. Matador: The first elements of a USAF unit equipped with Matador guided missiles arrived in Taiwan about May 6. A press release giving the bare facts, emphasizing the defensive nature of the action and the US control of the unit was issued May 7 by Embassy Taipei and the GRC Foreign Ministry. Comment by US officials is to be limited to a minimum. The Chinese Communist reaction has already appeared in an article in the “Peoples Daily” on May 8. Copies of this article and our announcement are enclosed. Wang may bring up the matter in the next meeting.

6. Father Wagner’s Condition: A despatch from Hong Kong (No. 860), a copy of which was sent to Geneva, reports Father Gross as saying Wagner’s asthma is quite serious, and that there were at one time “hints” he might be released in advance of his sentence (June 1958). Despite some feeling that pressure on the Communists might prevent Wagner’s early release, we are considering having the British make up representations as well as the possibility of asking you to take it up at Geneva.

7. Donald Blackwood Enters Communist China: An American citizen, Donald Blackwood, with his Korean wife and son, went into Communist China from Macao April 27. He appears to have gone voluntarily but we are at a loss as to his motivation. Such information as we have on this mysterious development is contained in a summary attached. There is no reason at present to bring this matter up at Geneva but it is conceivable that it might become a subject of discussion there in the future.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph N. Clough

Enclosures:

1. Copy of Questions & Answers for Senate Subcommittee.

2. Copy of article in “Peoples Daily” on Matador.

3. Copy of announcement on Matador.

4. Copy of British Despatch on Fr. Gross.

5. Summary of Blackwood case.

1. Source: Department of State, Geneva Talks Files, Lot 72D415. Secret; Official–Informal.