Amerasia - Espionage Case

Espionage Case

Kenneth Wells, an analyst for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), noticed that an article printed in the January 26, 1945, issue of Amerasia was almost identical to a 1944 report he had written on Thailand. OSS agents investigated by breaking into the New York offices of Amerasia on March 11, 1945, where they found hundreds of classified documents from the Department of State, the Navy, and the OSS.

The OSS notified the State Department, which asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate. The FBI's investigation indicated that Jaffe and Mitchell had probably obtained the documents from Emanuel Larsen, a State Department employee, and Andrew Roth, a lieutenant with the Office of Naval Intelligence. Other suspects were free-lance reporter Mark Gayn, whose coverage of the war in Asia appeared regularly in Collier's and Time magazine and State Department "China Hand" John S. Service.

FBI surveillance established that Jaffe met with Service several times in Washington and New York and reported that at one meeting "Service, according to the microphone surveillance, apparently gave Jaffe a document which dealt with matters the Chinese had furnished to the United States government in confidence."

An FBI summary reported that Jaffe visited the Soviet consulate in New York and that two days after a meeting with Service Jaffe had a four-hour meeting in his home with Communist Party Secretary Earl Browder and Tung Pi-wu, the Chinese Communist representative to the United Nations Charter Conference.

In carrying out its investigation, the FBI broke into the offices of Amerasia and the homes of Gayn and Larsen and installed bugs and phone taps in those three locations.

On June 6, 1945, the FBI arrested Jaffe, Mitchell, Larsen, Roth, Gayn and Service. Simultaneously, the Amerasia offices were raided and 1,700 classified State Department, Navy, OSS, and Office of War Information documents were seized.

Because no evidence was found indicating that any documents had been forwarded to a foreign power, the Justice Department decided not to seek an indictment under the Espionage Act. Instead, it sought to indict the six for unauthorized possession and transmittal of government documents. Service, the only State Department officer arrested, had given Jaffe approximately eight documents, copies of his own reports on conditions in China, that represented non-sensitive intelligence that diplomats routinely shared with journalists. The grand jury voted unanimously against indicting him.

The grand jury indicted Jaffe, Larsen, and Roth. Before the trial began, Larsen's defense attorney learned of the FBI's illegal break-in at Larsen's home. The Justice Department, fearing a loss at trial if evidence were excluded because it was obtained illegally, arranged a deal. Jaffe agreed to plead guilty and pay a fine of $2,500, while Larsen pleaded no contest and was fined $500. The charges against Roth were dropped.