Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa

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Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa

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Overview

Into Tibet is the incredible story of a 1949-1950 American undercover expedition led by America's first atomic agent, Douglas S. Mackiernan — a covert attempt to arm the Tibetans and to recognize Tibet's independence months before China invaded. Thomas Laird reveals how the clash between the State Department and the CIA, as well as unguided actions by field agents, hastened the Chinese invasion of Tibet. A gripping narrative of survival, courage, and intrigue among the nomads, princes, and warring armies of inner Asia, Into Tibet rewrites the accepted history behind the Chinese invasion of Tibet. 8 pages of black-and-white photographs are featured.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802139993
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	02/27/2003
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

	Author's Note	xi
	Preface	xiii
Part 1	Why They Went	1
	Shegar-Hunglung, Tibet, April 29, 1950	3
	An Atomic Monopoly, An Atomic Peace, 1945 to 1949	8
	Strategic Services Unit, HQ, Peking, March 5, 1946	10
	U.S. Embassy, Nanking, March 1946	18
	Alphabet Soup, 1946-1947	22
	The American Consulate, Tihwa, March 25, 1946	23
	Murray Hill, 1943-1950	24
	Koktogai, ETR, May 15, 1946	25
	At the Chingil River Ford, April 10, 1947	27
	The White House and the Potala, March 1947	29
	Osman Bator, Douglas Mackiernan, and Uranium, May and June 1947	30
	Pegge Lyons and Douglas Mackiernan, Tihwa, Sinkiang, July and August 1947	35
	CIA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., July 1947	41
	The AEC and AFSWP, July 1947	43
	Pegge and Doug, Shanghai and Tihwa, September 1947	44
	The U.S. Army Advisory Group HQ, Nanking, China, September 25, 1947	46
	Shanghai to Peking, September 25-29, 1947	47
	USS President Polk, off the China Coast, October 4, 1947	49
	Bessac's Cover, Peking, China, October 15, 1947	51
	The Crag Hotel, Penang, Malaysia, October 21, 1947	53
	Frank Bessac and Prince De, Peking, China, October 1947	55
	The Green Lantern, January to August 1948	57
	Douglas Mackiernan and Atomic Explosions, 1948 to March 10, 1949	69
	Department of State, Washington D.C., April 19, 1949	74
	The Raid on the U-2 Mine, Sinkiang and the ETR, April or May 1949	76
	Hawaii, June 1, 1996	78
	The Russian Atomic Test Site, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, August 29, 1949	81
Part 2	The Journey to Tibet	91
	Tibet, Summer of 1949	93
	Dingyuanying, Inner Mongolia, August 1949	97
	Hami to Tihwa, Sinkiang, September 9, 1949	103
	Tihwa-Urumchi, the People's Republic of China, September 26, 1949	107
	Leaving Tihwa, September 27, 1949	112
	Lake Barkol, with the Kazak Horde of Osman Bator, October 29, 1949	115
	The White House, October 31, 1949	120
	Fairfax, California, November 1949	121
	Around the Taklamakan Desert, October 30-November 29, 1949	124
	Washington, D.C., November and December 1949	127
	The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Dharamsala, India, December 1, 1994	131
	Dean Acheson, January 12, 1950	132
	Shanghai, the People's Republic of China, January 30, 1950	134
	Fairfax, California, January 30 and 31, 1950	135
	Peking and Washington, D.C., January 20, 1950	140
	Senator McCarthy's Speech, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950	142
	Acheson Meets Lowell Thomas, February 17, 1950	144
	Winter at Timurlik, November 29, 1949, to March 20, 1950	145
	A Letter to Tibet, State-CIA Relations, March 30, 1950	153
	McCarthy and Lattimore, Washington, D.C., April 1950	156
	Across the Changthang, March and April 1950	158
	Morning, April 29, 1950	169
	Shegar-Hunglung, Tibet, April 29, 1950	171
	When They Heard Mackiernan Was Dead	177
Part 3	Through Tibet and Home Again	181
	Nomads and Grenades, April 30 and May 1, 1950	183
	The Arrow Letter, Tibet, May 1, 1950	185
	The U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, India, May 2, 1950	187
	Shentsa Dzong, Tibet, May 6, 1950	188
	Shentsa Dzong, Tibet, May 11, 1950	191
	Trip to Lhasa, May and June 1950	193
	Tibet, Taiwan, and China, Spring 1950	197
	Lhasa, Tibet, June 11, 1950	199
	Mr. Latrash's Lhasa "Assets," Calcutta and Lhasa, Winter and Spring 1949-1950	206
	The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, "A U.S. Agent Passing Through Lhasa," December 1, 1994	209
	Fairfax, California, June 11, 1950	211
	Meeting the Dalai Lama, Lhasa, Tibet, June 1950	212
	Dinner at Tride Lingka, Lhasa, Tibet, June 15, 1950	215
	The Tibetan Foreign Bureau, Lhasa, Tibet, June 16, 1950	219
	Carving Crosses, Lhasa, Tibet, July 30, 1950	227
	The Flogging, Lhasa, Tibet, July 1950	229
	The Potala, Lhasa, Tibet, July 1950	230
	Last Days in Lhasa, Late July 1950	233
	Mackiernan's Death Announced, July 29, 1950	238
	Minister Shakabpa Visits the U.S. Consulate, Calcutta, India, August 4, 1950	241
	The Earthquake, August 15, 1950	242
	Latrash and Bessac, Calcutta, India, August 29, 1950	244
	The U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, India, August 30-September 22, 1950	246
	Calcutta, India, September 15, 1950	247
	Mrs. Douglas Mackiernan Goes to Washington, October 4, 1950	248
	Bessac in Washington, D.C., October 1950	249
	The State Department, Washington, D.C., October 18, 1950	252
	Bethesda, Maryland, and Drukha Monastery, October 19, 1950	255
	Washington, D.C., October 27 and 28, 1950	260
	Pegge and John, First Meeting, Washington, D.C., November 8, 1950	261
	Life Magazine, November 13, 1950	262
	Pegge and John, Washington, D.C., November 24, 1950	263
	Tibet, Winter 1950-1951	264
	Winter of the Cold War, Washington, D.C., 1950-1951	270
	Tihwa, Xinjiang, the People's Republic of China, April 29, 1951	273
	Epilogue: Zvansov, Bessac, Mackiernan, and Tibet	274
	Notes	289
	Bibliography	335
	Acknowledgments	345
	Index	351

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Editorial Reviews

An initially promising but poorly executed expose of Cold War spookery in the high Himalayas. Asiaweek correspondent Laird turns up an intriguing tale of a secret CIA-sponsored expedition (details of which are still largely classified) into Tibet just before the Chinese invasion of 1950. Neither altruism nor defense of democracy prompted the American mission, which put five spies on the ground at considerable risk to themselves; instead, Laird suggests, the CIA was rushing to locate Asia's uranium reserves and convince their owners to side with America, then enjoying a brief postwar monopoly on the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The CIA's involvement in Tibet was ironic, Laird shows, since the State Department had hitherto evinced little interest in the remote nations of Central Asia and had effectively encouraged one-time ally China to expand beyond its borders and acquire whatever territory it wished. The American spies of 1949-50, Laird writes, had only mixed success, and some of them were killed. The Tibetan guerrillas funded by the CIA after the Chinese invasion fared still worse. Abandoned when the US and China established diplomatic relations in the early 1970s, hundreds of guerrillas died as a result, Laird charges: "collateral damage of American actions, which America now denies ever happened." This story isn't exactly new (Life magazine reported some of it in 1950), but it has long been forgotten. Unfortunately, Laird's narrative is ill-developed, less a cohesive narrative than a movie treatment that jumps from subject to subject in very short chapters. The author relies on hearsay and speculation as much as hard fact ("naturally the agents in the field never viewed their workthis cynically, but those who sent them there may have"), and his prose is awash in ellipses and non sequiturs ("because of a childhood spent in Mexico and Brazil he spoke German and Spanish fluently"). Of some interest to Cold War buffs, though general readers will do better to wait for the History Channel special.

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