488. Letter 30 from McConaughy to Johnson1
We expect to be forehanded with your guidance for the February 18 meeting. We had a meeting with the Secretary on your instructions at his home on Saturday the 11th on the eve of his departure for his vacation in the Bahamas. Early in the week we had a meeting with the Secretary on the guidance for your February 9 meeting. Judge Phleger expedited his return from a visit to Puerto Rico in order to participate in drafting the guidance for the February 9 meeting.
You have received some very fine bouquets all along the line for your superior handling of the meetings. Gratification has been expressed by all who are in on this subject at the way you have handled both your prepared presentations and the give and take of the impromptu exchanges. Your tactics have been superb and your approach precisely in line with the prevailing thinking here.
We believe that you have Wang on a pretty weak wicket now. He is close to being on the prongs of a dilemma if we hold steady. His choices are (1) to accept our formulation; (2) to continue the talks [Facsimile Page 2] indefinitely with all the inhibitions which that places on aggressive action by them; or (3) assume the responsibility for breaking off the talks, which would be a considerable onus and one which they presumably are reluctant to assume. The danger which the Secretary feels that we must avoid is the appearance of extreme inflexibility. If we appeared to adopt an absolutely rigid stance, the Communists after a break off might be able to transfer a good part of the onus to us arguing that our unyielding attitude on phraseology was deliberately designed to provoke a break. We want to avoid giving any plausibility to this sort of allegation. I would characterize the Secretary’s attitude toward the stance you should take as “firmness without rigidity”. He does not feel that it is necessary or desirable for you to propose any amendment or transposition in our proposal, but you do not close the door to serious consideration of any amendments proposed by Wang which do not do violence to the basic principles on which we stand.
You will be interested in a view which was expressed in the Saturday meeting and which did not encounter any challenge. This was to the effect that a renunciation of force declaration by the Chinese [Typeset Page 756] Communists which specifically included the general area of Taiwan would tend to compound the seriousness of the implication of any subsequent attack by them on Kinmon or Matsu.
You probably have been impressed with the paucity of information in our telegrams on the issue of Chinese prisoners in Federal and State [Facsimile Page 3] penitentiaries in this country. As you have probably gathered the sparse guidance reflects not a lack of awareness or concern, but a feeling that if we get into this subject we “open a can of worms”. We have explored the problem in a cautious way with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the I. & N.S. We know there are at least 30 Chinese aliens in Federal penitentiaries. There is no estimate of the number in State institutions, although Judge Phleger is sure there are a lot of Chinese in San Quentin for murder and other felonies. If we enter into correspondence on this subject with all the wardens and State Governors, there is no telling where we will come out. A few of the prisoners might want to go to the Mainland, or claim that they did. It is by no means certain that pardons or paroles for deportation could readily be obtained in all cases. It could be argued that any Chinese Communist agent in this country would in effect be given immunity if he could be sure of immediate deportation to his home base after the commission of a crime in this country. The Indian Embassy would probably get into the act in a big way once we started polling Chinese prisoners. We fear that the issues would become confused, our compliance with the Agreed Announcement might become clouded, the right of the GRC to represent Chinese in this country might appear compromised, and a propaganda field day might be afforded the Communists. So all in all it seems better to play our cards close to our chest on this, relying on the fact that probably all Chinese inmates of jails have heard about [Facsimile Page 4] the Agreed Announcement and could write to the Indian Embassy if they wanted to. We know that some prisoners on their own initiative stated they would prefer remaining in prison to being sent to Communist China. If the Indians receive a request from a prisoner, we will cross that bridge when we get to it. In the meantime we are not pressing any further inquiries into the subject. We hear there are 50 known Chinese aliens in mental institutions in this country. We are keeping our fingers crossed on that.
We will give you any interesting information we may receive in the course of our private checks with the I. & N.S. on the names handed you by Wang. So far the information is mostly negative. Of course in cases where there is no allegation of obstruction, we are not going beyond the information already on hand in Washington on these cases and the check is only for our own background illumination.
We are enclosing a number of documents which may be of interest to you as follows:
- 1.
- Full record of O’Neill’s conversation of Jan. 11 with Chang Han-fu.
- 2.
- Round up of reports from our Far Eastern Posts on the effects of the talks.
- 3.
- Exchange of correspondence with the Indian Embassy on the Taiwan entry question.
Doug Forman has sent Dave a copy of the study by Spielman of the Historical Division on the course of the talks to date. I wish you would tell Dave that we would like for him to check this over during his spare time, if any. We feel he is unusually well qualified to do it. This work of course is on a contingency basis and is not intended for any current declassification unless there should be a break off.
[Facsimile Page 5]We hear that DRF has funds to keep Stanley in Geneva until the end of March when he is slated to go to Taipei. This is no immediate problem but I wanted you to be alerted to the fact that the question will arise in about five weeks as to whether we should try to extend his detail with you, send another specialist or try to make do with the part time services of a Geneva Vice Consul. I hope you have no stenographic problem with the unfortunate departure of Helenka Osborn. Let us know if you are in a jam.
I was glad to get your letter No. 21. It was passed around as usual and was read with interest.
Congratulations on that successful Porgy and Bess party in Prague Saturday night. It was played up in the New York Times this morning as something pretty special and just about without precedent in Prague. You are juggling two pretty tricky balls with phenomenal success.
Regards and good wishes,
Sincerely,
- Source: Department of State, Geneva Talks Files, Lot 72D415. Secret; Official–Informal.↩