-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- February 27 2000 FAR EAST Writer reveals Japanese plot to kill Mountbatten Michael Sheridan, Hong Kong EARL Mountbatten of Burma narrowly escaped a Japanese plot to ambush and shoot down his aircraft over China during the second world war, according to a new book that discloses untold secrets about the intelligence war in the Far East. Japanese intelligence had learnt that Mountbatten, supreme Allied commander in southeast Asia and a cousin of George VI, was flying to meet the Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek at Chungking in southwest China. For Japan, it would have been revenge for the death of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, who was shot down and killed by American fighters in April 1943. But British intelligence had realised that the Japanese were intercepting communications to Chungking. Undaunted by a warning, Mountbatten changed the date of his departure in October 1943 and flew without a fighter escort by night, successfully completing the important mission. On the day he had originally planned to fly, the Japanese put up what Mountbatten later called "a terrific fighter sweep". Mountbatten, who was murdered by an IRA bomb in 1979, referred to his change of plan in his published diaries, but never disclosed the clandestine battle between Allied codebreakers and their Japanese foes. Chinese communications remained so insecure that, in 1944, Anthony Eden, then foreign secretary, ordered the closure of the Chinese embassy in London for fear that it might have given away the planning for D-Day. Eden had been shocked to read, in a decoded Japanese telegram, extracts from a conversation he had with the Chinese ambassador. The Mountbatten story is among a host of wartime secrets brought to light by Richard Aldrich, senior lecturer in politics at Nottingham University, in Intelligence and the War Against Japan, to be published by Cambridge University Press next month. It discloses embarrassing proof that British and American secret services often competed instead of fighting the Japanese. British spies sought to preserve control of India while the Americans were bent on destroying European colonial empires. Secret rivalry between the allies led to tragedy over Indochina on the night of January 22, 1945, when two Liberator bombers from the RAF's 358 Squadron were destroyed by P-61 Black Widow fighters of the US 14th Air Force. The Liberators were on a secret mission to fly supplies to agents behind enemy lines, but Britain and America were at odds over whose agents could operate in the future Vietnam and, as a result, the RAF had not informed the Americans of the flights. Aldrich has uncovered evidence that Britain knew the Americans had shot down the planes, but chose to cover up the reason. Competition and controversy stalked the Anglo-American relationship throughout the war. One damaging episode was Britain's loss of a precious American "Purple" decoding machine at the fall of Singapore in 1942, one of only two given to the British. It was used to decipher Japanese diplomatic traffic, including messages from Baron Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, reporting his meetings with Hitler. It vanished amid the chaos as the Japanese overran the colony, but luckily Oshima's eloquent telegrams kept flowing. One joint operation that did work was a clandestine programme to kidnap Thai, Malay and Indonesian civilians and sailors at sea. They were taken to a camp in Ceylon, where conditions were poor and many were drugged or beaten. After interrogation, many agreed to be infiltrated back as agents in Japanese-occupied territory. Aldrich documents a British secret establishment at war with itself as the empire receded and the Americans stole Britain's role in the east. SIS managed to keep an agent, Michael Lindsay, alongside Mao Tse-tung throughout much of the war as a "radio expert" - but his political intelligence paled alongside the buccaneering exploits of the Hong Kong gentleman bankers and traders recruited into SOE. John Keswick, a pivotal figure in SOE's China operations, was a director of the trading firm Jardine Matheson and drew similar men to his colours after Hong Kong fell to the Japanese at Christmas, 1941. Their chicanery included Operation Waldorf, a black market currency scheme that used financial expertise to run British operations in China at a profit to the Treasury. Documents outline SOE's intention to save Hong Kong for British rule by bribing nationalist generals to slow down their victorious advance from Canton for just long enough to allow the British fleet to retake the colony. In the end it was Arthur May, a daredevil prisoner of war, who escaped to raise a Union Jack on the Peak in Hong Kong and reclaim British sovereignty on the Japanese surrender. May stayed on in Hong Kong, where he died aged 91 on January 31. Last Monday the same flag covered his ashes at a memorial ceremony at St John's Anglican cathedral, just about the only place in Hong Kong where the deeds and daring of empire are still commemorated. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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