The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam

  After two years at Wisconsin he went back to China, where he spent one year at Yenching University, studying alongside those who the Chinese hoped would be their modern leadership. That year was a particularly adventurous one; he was old enough now to explore the country on his own and at one point he set off for Inner Mongolia, an area at that time ravaged by typhus and famine. His real problem there, he would write, was not revolution or war but lice, so he filled a talcum can with sulphur and sprinkled it on his food, in the hope that the sulphur fumes would exude through his pores and drive off the lice. Instead he simply became violently ill for a couple of days.

  When the year was up he returned to the United States (the first leg of the trip was by the Trans-Siberian Railroad, a marvelous long journey for a young man). He graduated from Columbia and took the foreign service exam; by 1933 he was an officer in China, and for the next twelve years, with the exception of two years back in Washington, he was to watch and report from the country he knew best. But first, upon arrival, he was to become even more professional. He spent his first two years as a language attaché, honing his already unusual knowledge of the country and language to an even finer degree. For two years he was at Peking University, his own tutor working with him long hours on Chinese language, history and culture. It was, he would recall, a very serious thing, and yet an enormously stimulating time; John K. Fairbank was there doing his postgraduate work, and there were journalists like Edgar Snow and Harold Isaacs around as companions. It was the making of a genuine scholar-diplomat.

  He was full-blown, surprisingly sophisticated, gay and erudite, but there was always the quality of the outsider about him, as though he were, no matter what the situation, always a little removed from it, bemused, listening, not unsympathetic. The journalists there, like Sevareid and White, loved him and thought that with his mind and background, he would have been a magnificent journalist. They liked being around him for his ability and also for the pleasure of his company. Once Sevareid and Davies were flying over the Hump when they had to parachute. A small group made the jump, and it was Davies who led them back through difficult and dangerous terrain, negotiated with not necessarily friendly Naga tribesmen (later during the McCarthy period after Davies had been fired, Sevareid would broadcast for CBS a brief piece entitled “Defects of Character, But Whose?” in which, describing that incident, he said: “For I thought then, as I think now, that if ever again I were in deep trouble, the man I would want to be with would be this particular man. I have known a great number of men around the world under all manner of circumstances. I have known none who seemed more the whole man, none more finished a civilized product in all a man should be—in modesty and thoughtfulness, in resourcefulness and steady strength of character”). Davies could be quite witty as well (friends would remember a ditty he wrote about Gandhi: “Nonviolence is my creed/Noncooperation in word and deed/Red hot Mahatma Gandhi is my name/I wear my dhoti up around my crotch/Drink goat’s milk instead of Scotch/Red hot Mahatma Gandhi is my name . . .”).

  To his contemporaries he symbolized what the foreign service should be, expert, analytical and brave, and above all, perfectly prepared for what he was doing. He knew China, the people, the language, and he watched the revolution sweeping the country. It was, he would say then and later, an implosion, not an explosion, that is, the collapsing inward of a civilization, a nation shutting itself off from the world, determining within itself its destiny. He was with General Joe Stilwell in 1938 as the Japanese marched south, ravaging whatever was in their way. He was puzzled as to why a civilized people like the Japanese would commit such atrocities, and pondered it for some time. Part of the answer, he decided, was that the troops were simply motivated by duty to their emperor; the second reason, more interesting in the light of events thirty years later in Vietnam, was “the idealistic belief that the mission is also a crusade to liberate the Chinese people from the oppression of their own rulers.” When the Chinese peasants showed signs of resenting this liberation “it is a shocking rejection of his idealism,” and the Japanese soldier raged against “the people who he believes have denied him his chivalry.”

  He would eventually become the top American political officer in China, Stilwell’s most trusted adviser. It was an extraordinary time: history flashed before them like a constantly ongoing newsreel, and they were part of it. Very early in the game, in the thirties, Davies had sensed that Chiang would never make it. He was not China, he was only a part of it, and that part was diminishing all the time. The transition from feudal China to modern was a fragile one at best, but under the pressure of the Japanese invasion it became virtually impossible; the Japanese invasion simply magnified all the weaknesses and insecurities in Chiang and made him more vulnerable. He was not big enough to use the Japanese as a means of rallying his people; thus the more the pressure against him built up, the more isolated he became. It was Chiang who bore the brunt of the Japanese attack and he was not equal to it. Years later Davies’ friend Teddy White would remember Davies’ mind, the precision of it; if he disliked Chiang it was not emotional, it was because Chiang couldn’t cut it and was therefore useless.

  Davies was by this time very much in the Kennan, and what would later be the George Ball, school: the man who sees the forces of history, is dubious of using morality as a test and thinks that intelligent realpolitik is the best policy. He was as dubious of the morality of intense anti-Communism as he was of the morality of Communism. He had few illusions about the Communists and what they represented. Even in 1938 when they were nothing but guerrillas, he was capable of telling Agnes Smedley, a Mao sympathizer who wrote for the Manchester Guardian, not to commit herself as totally as she wanted to, to bear in mind that it was all very exciting and romantic now, with the revolution being on the upswing; it was idealistic, full of promise, high resolve and a warm comradeship because of mutual dangers shared against common and powerful adversaries. But if it succeeded, he warned her, the Communists would become powerful and corrupt and she would feel disillusioned and betrayed, used and cast aside. Why didn’t she just report, like the other correspondents? “I can’t,” she answered him, “there is no other way for me.” (Later, when he went through his ordeal of the McCarthy years, his attitude included no small amount of scorn for his oppressors, partly because they were accusing him of views he had always thought preposterous.)

  The war years did nothing to change his mind. Events happened step by step as he had predicted. Chiang became more rigid and isolated from reality, while the Communists picked up more and more momentum, touching something deep and powerful in the country. The future of China was theirs, he would cable his superiors, and we had better come to terms with it whether we liked it or not. But he never had any particular illusions about China, about how good and pro-American the Nationalists were or how evil the Communists were; he saw them both as being primarily Chinese, seeking China’s special destiny; more Chinese than foreigners knew, more Chinese, perhaps, than they knew themselves. The United States, he believed, should let events take their own course (if only because there was no alternative; in China you could not control events, and if you tried, you were sucked into something monumentally futile). If anything, America should try and encourage independence for Communist China from Moscow, and above all, not push Mao into Stalin’s hands.

  Davies was, it is an understatement to say it, ahead of his time. In October 1944 he went to the Yenan base of the Communists, along with a small group of Americans including Teddy White, to get a feel of their leaders. One day he and White were having lunch with Ch’en Chia-k’ang, who was something of a liaison officer with the Americans and in effect a foreign ministry desk chief for the United States. The lunch would soon become embarrassing for White, because of Davies’ treatment of Ch’en, which was nothing short of brutal. Davies kept picking away at his host on the subject of a solid Sino-Russian alliance, like a bullfighter going after a bull. Asking question after question, Davies forced his host to compare
the Russian proletariat with the peasantry. There was such skepticism in his voice as to be almost mocking: What did they really have in common? Wasn’t there an old historical enmity that lurked beneath the surface of the new friendship? Weren’t there differences in culture, differences in race, differences over borders? Wouldn’t the Chinese have to remain subservient to Moscow as long as they were in the Soviet orbit? How could that be squared with a desire to assert China’s real destiny as a great power?

  The more Davies ruthlessly pressured his poor host to admit that there were long-range differences, the calmer Ch’en Chia-k’ang remained. To him, he assured Davies, it was unthinkable that Russia and China would ever be enemies; since they were both Socialist states, there could be no problems or disagreement. Years later Teddy White would remember that luncheon with an eerie feeling; perhaps Davies had seen the future more clearly than the Chinese Communists themselves had.

  If Davies saw events ahead of the Chinese Communists, he saw them ahead of his own country as well. That he, so skeptical, so tough-minded, would be blamed for ideological weakness and soft-minded reporting was ridiculous, yet it would happen; a surprise even for a man schooled to expect very little from human nature. But Patrick Hurley, whose mission to China to unite Mao and Chiang during the war had ended in failure, the same Hurley who thought that the Chinese Communists were like Oklahoma Republicans except that they were armed, needed a scapegoat after Chiang’s debacle. Old and senile, he turned against Davies and the other Chinese officers, accusing them of having deliberately betrayed Chiang (and Hurley). It was a foolish charge of a foolish man, but the nation was ripe for a little demonology and scapegoating. That there would be right-wing attacks after China fell was not surprising; what was surprising was how little the people who knew better, the Establishment, fought back.

  Thus began the long ordeal of John Paton Davies and other China experts. Starting in 1948 and continuing through 1954, he underwent nine security investigations. Again and again he was cleared, but the experience itself was debilitating and destructive, poisonous, always leaving doubts. Besides newspaper charges, guilt by association, the failure of friends to stand by, even the very questioning seemed to imply his guilt. (Typically, U. S. News and World Report, December 1953: “The Strange Case of John Paton Davies. Investigated since 1945, He’s Still a Diplomat.”) His case was made more difficult by an additional tactic of the right wing. After China fell, Davies had suggested a complicated covert CIA program which would use China experts somewhat sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to the regime as an outlet to the new China, perhaps as a way of keeping the country open and as a means of getting American information in and Chinese information out. Instead, right-wing members of the CIA blew just enough of the program to make it look as if Davies were trying to have the CIA hire a bunch of Communist agents; it was a kind of mindlessness that was special to the period, and it was a particularly difficult charge to defend against because the program was classified, and an honorable explanation would have violated security. At first when the charges began he had not been particularly upset; it had seemed like the final rantings of a senile old man, Hurley, and though he knew things might be a little uneasy back in the States, he assumed that right would triumph. Besides, his immediate superior, Harriman, backed him 100 percent. But as it became clear that the Republican party was determined to use the China issue as a means of getting back in power, his spirits dropped and he had a feeling that it would end badly. By 1952, he remembered, it was like a rabbit being shot at in an open field.

  The temper of the times was very special, notable for a kind of national timidity and dishonor. Some friends stood behind him, others did not (Rusk did). Davies, ever proud, found it hard to ask others to testify in his behalf; when someone like Teddy White volunteered to, which was rare, he was touched. But those who offered to appear paid the price themselves; two weeks after White testified in Davies’ behalf, his own passport was lifted. Davies became a particular target of McCarthy’s, linked in McCarthy’s charges somehow to Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. In 1954, because of McCarthy’s pressures, he was investigated for the ninth and last time. This time he was accused not so much of disloyalty as of nonconformity. He was finally found guilty of “lack of judgment, discretion and reliability.” Dulles, who wanted as little conflict with Congress as possible, upheld the decision. He did not talk with Davies, but through subordinates passed the word that it would be a healthy thing if Davies resigned instead of forcing Dulles to fire him. This, it was said, would be good for Davies and save him embarrassment (it would also save Dulles embarrassment). Davies, ever unflinching, refused to resign, and sought a confrontation with the Secretary. Dulles summoned him to announce that the board had found against him. “Do you agree?” Davies asked. “Yes,” answered Dulles. “I am sorry,” Davies said. Davies’ manner at the meeting, thought one Dulles aide, was almost flippant, his jacket thrown over his shoulder like a cape; it was conduct unbecoming to a foreign service officer, though of course the aide had not been investigated nine times. Later Dulles, ever the moralist, quietly let Davies know that if ever he needed a letter of recommendation, why, Foster would be pleased to write one. It was an offer which was not taken up. By then Davies was on his way to his new life; the best of a generation of Asian experts had left his profession.

  It was the end of one life and the beginning of another; more important for his country, it was the end of one kind of reporting and expertise in Asia. The best had been destroyed and the new experts were different, lesser men who had learned their lessons, and who were first and foremost good anti-Communists. If there had been a prophetic quality to Davies’ China reporting, there was no less a measure in the letter he had submitted to the final review board:

  When a foreign service officer concludes that a policy is likely to betray national interests he can reason to himself that, as ultimate responsibility for policy rests with the top officials of the Department, he need feel no responsibility for the course upon which we are embarked; furthermore his opinions might be in error or misunderstood, or misrepresented—and so the safest thing for a bureaucrat to do in such a situation is to remain silent. Or, a foreign service officer can speak out about his misgivings and suggest alternative policies, knowing that he runs serious personal risks in so doing. I spoke out.

  His only crime, John Finney of the New York Times would write fifteen years later, was that he had been both too honest and too far-sighted in his reporting from his area; if that had been a crime, there would be few, reporting from Asia in the next fifteen years, who would repeat it. Instead, officials became good solid anti-Communists; they told their missions, as Ambassador Nolting did, not to look at the opposition, not to meet with it, not to think of alternatives, but rather to get the job done, that was what Washington wanted. The Americans who followed John Davies would be very different, they were determined to impose American versions and definitions of events upon Asian peoples. It became easier to be operational rather than reflective. Reflection brought too many problems.

  From Peru, Davies watched America struggle through or try to glide through the post-McCarthy period, and he observed the deepening involvement in Vietnam with a sense of foreboding. There was, he thought, a certain inevitability to it, and for him at least, there was a terrible logic to events. If with his family he seemed gentle and thoughtful, he was nonetheless not without his scars. What had seemed skeptical now sometimes seemed cynical; he seemed to bear the special pain of a man determined not to show pain. He finally decided to return to the United States, partly because he felt his children should live in their home country for a while, partly because he wanted to clear his name, not for his own sake but for that of his wife and children. Periodically old friends tried to introduce him to some of the new young men working in the Administration on Asia, some of what were known as good guys on China. The meetings went badly because Davies did not respond well to the swift young Kennedy and Johnson people, h
e was not linked to them and he was determined that he not show hurt. They, in turn, found it hard to choose the right words in the presence of a man who was legend and hero to them.

  In 1964 he began the long process of clearing himself. He found an excellent lawyer named Walter Surrey, who was willing to fight for him. But even then, Surrey and Davies would find the State Department an ungracious and ungenerous place, less than anxious to right an old wrong. It would in fact take five years of fighting the Department to get clearance. Surrey asked for a review of Davies’ case; the State Department reviewer, Wilson Flake, a former ambassador to Ghana, looked at the record and saw no reason to reopen it. Surrey, however, persisted year after year, with little co-operation from Secretary of State Rusk. In 1966 Bill Bundy, then Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, tried to put Davies on an advisory panel of Asian experts; Rusk rejected him. He would go as far as accepting John Fairbank, the controversial Harvard scholar, but Davies, he said, was politically unacceptable.