A Question of Security

With an embarrassed air, the State Department admitted last week that it had suspended two of its topflight officers. Reason: they are under investigation as security risks. The men are Oliver Edmund Clubb, the department's director of the Office of Chinese Affairs, and John Paton Davies Jr., a longtime China hand who has been serving on State's Policy Planning staff.

Caustic John Davies was one of State's bright young men who, back in 1944, urged that the U.S. make friends with China's Communists as a matter of self-interest. Born and educated in China, he joined the State Department in 1931, served in U.S. consulates all over China, at one time was a friend of pro-Communist Author Agnes Smedley. He is married to the daughter of Henry Grady, U.S. Ambassador to Iran (see below).

Force of Destiny. As chief political adviser to General Joseph Stilwell, when Vinegar Joe was chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in 1942, Davies followed the line that Chiang's regime was hopelessly corrupt and doomed, that the Chinese Communists had "mass support" and were "the force destined to control China." Soldier Stilwell took the Davies position. In a 1944 memorandum, Davies wrote: "We should not now abandon Chiang Kai-shek . . . But we must be realistic. We must not indefinitely underwrite a politically bankrupt regime. And if the Russians are going to enter the Pacific war, we must make a determined effort to capture politically the Chinese Communists, rather than allow them to go by default wholly to the Russians." When Patrick Hurley became ambassador, he accused Davies & friends of being "favorable to Communism and against the policy of the U.S. in China," demanded Davies' dismissal. Davies was shifted to Moscow, where "Beedle" Smith regarded him as "a very loyal and very capable officer of sound judgment." As a member of Dean Acheson's policy planning group, he is a top specialist in China affairs.

At New Mosses. Clubb is another old China hand with a reputation as a member of the opposite camp who stoutly supported Chiang. As a Class One foreign service officer, he outranks Davies (only career ministers rank higher). Born and educated in Minnesota, Diplomat Clubb speaks both Chinese and Russian, served two years as consul general in Vladivostok. He was consul general in Peking when the Communists took over in 1950, was ejected when they seized the consulate over official U.S. protests. The charges against him apparently come from old hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, in which ex-Communist Courier Whittaker Chambers testified that he had once seen Clubb calling at the Communist New Masses office. Clubb vaguely remembers being there in 1932 and taking a letter of introduction from Agnes Smedley to Robert Morss Lovett.

State said that Davies and Clubb are only two of "several" officials who have been suspended pending hearings in a general review of some 500 individual cases.

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