Yu Shen was sweating, partly in excitement and partly in exertion. He was excited and elated about his thesis - it had been a long and exhausting trip to China. It has also been a difficult one, meeting in dark corners of already dim-lit bars. Sleeping on bare floors and having to endure pain and discomfort living the life of a covert intelligence gatherer. But it was worth it, his thesis would be the entry into the comfy world of tenured academia (Yu Shen was only 21 and somewhat naive to the ways of academia.) He was sweating in extertion because he was climbing some really steep steps, but you know at least he got the flat for cheap. Turning his somewhat rusty key in he entered his studio room which he shared with his girlfriend Hanne.
After getting a drink of water and checking up on his favourite site the METAHISTORY Discussion Boards he settled down and began to re-work the drafts he had done.
SACO Re-Examined:
Sino-American Intelligence Cooperation
During The Second Great War
The Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO), headed by Cdr. Milton Miles of the US Navy and Bureau Chief Dai Li, the head of the "Census Bureau" which was in essence the primary Chinese Secret Police and intelligence gathering-operation. This article examines the history of SACO as a wartime institution during the war and some aspects of its politicized legacy throughout the Post-War Era.
"It is very difficult to describe historically what SACO really was after more than half a century of deliberate distortion and cover-up. SACO still exists to many, especially in the unfree and half-free worlds as an urban myth, a historical artifice constructed to cause a split in Sino-German relations. Despite this, the tales and actions of the brave men and women who worked in this obscure unit have been popularized through the pulp presses and in the movie theatres of the free world. The heroic adventures of the SACO unit have been distilled particularly well in the hit movie series featuring half-British, half-American heroine
Joane Bond... Perhaps the popularity and integration of the SACO unit into Western pop culture has in fact been counter-productive in the acceptance of SACO as a real organization in many scholars of the Third Reich and the Third Republic..."
"...Faced with the suppression of so much crucial information and the gagging of many of it's key operatives, accomplishing this article was quite a difficult task. Nonetheless, I have been able to compile credible information from key people within SACO on the condition of total anonymity and to gleam out crucial information about it's existence, it's goals and what SACO actually did - divorced from the fictionalized version of this unit..."
"...SACO's official directive was to pursue a policy of limited intelligence integration between America and China and to help procure armaments and other crucial war materiel so that China could fight Japan more effectively. Toward that end, America would covertly act as the middleman for Chinese and German trade - creating dummy American corporations to carry out trade. American ships would carry Chinese tungsten and other rare metals to Hamburg and they would come back laden with German high-grade steel and Luftwaffe planes. Officially, all America wanted was a cut of the profits - a surcharge on each transaction - all in all, in true American fashion all America wanted to do was to secure a tidy sum in return for guaranteeing the life-blood of trade..."
"...However, SACO's story was more complicated than what this conventional, but still clandestine arrangement suggests. Unofficially, what the Americans wanted was a blind eye - and even occasional assistance of their endavours. The Americans ensured that SACO would become a conduit for one of the world's largest spy ring in both scale and in the audacity of it's operations. It would penetrate the German intelligence network and German High Command so thoroughly and so efficiently that FDR could get access to the confidential
Fuhrer Reports just a day after Hitler had read them."
"Who were the brave men - and women who led the SACO unit? The titular head of the Chinese end of SACO - Bureau Chief Dai Li needs no further mention with the reams of biographies, articles and other biographies of this fascinating character. His role and the role of his Chinese compatriots was to cover up the existence of this unit, he did this rather easily by enforcing a ruthless policy of killing any Chinese person who found out about the unit without due authorization. He was seemingly brutally effective at this with not even his boss, Chiang Kai-shek knowing of the full extend of SACO's clandestine activities. On the American end, Cdr. Niles was in charge of managing a far-reaching intelligence network..."
"One of the most famous spy rings is also the one that still to a large extend eludes attempts to find out basic facts and information. The Hogan-Klink spy ring was one of the most deeply embedded in Germany - it was through this spy ring which the most confidential top level information available to only Hitler and his inner circles were passed through. This author has had access to several anonymous sources who have described "Hogan" as being a German-American who bears more than a passing resemblance to Colonel Robert Hogan, the American Army Air Force Liaison officer based in Berlin. Hogan's contact in the Fuhrer's inner circles was one "Colonel Klink" - this author has been unable to ascertain who the real identity of this individual was, perhaps a wise thing given the authoritarian conditions that still prevail in the Reich today. But there are rumours swirling around that this individual was a top aide in the Luftwaffe and possibly an aide to
Reichsmarshall Goering - some sources argue that he was a German Jew who was disgruntled with the forced exile of many Jews to China..."
"...It was previously thought that this was the full extent of the activities of the SACO unit. However, this author has been able to uncover new leads that reveal previously secret information about the activities of the Chinese end of the SACO unit..."
Yu heard the door opening but ignored it, so engrossed in the work.
"The activities of the Chinese SACO unit (henceforth refered to as CSACO for convenience) included such mundane things such as funding the Chinese-American friendship society to slightly dodgy things such as laundering money through some Chinese-Americans to make donations to several campaigns in 1940, most notably that of the Roosevelt Re-election campaign... Perhaps most controversial is the evidence of nuclear espionage in the American Atom Bomb project..."
Yu didn't notice the shadow besides him until it was far too late.
The shadow engulfed him in it's soft and warm embrace:
"Honey! You're back!" cried Hanne Ling as she kissed Yu.
Yu broke into a huge smile after Hanne released him.
"Hmm... Yes. I've missed you so much... You know what we need to catch up on..."
"Oh, what's that?" Hanne said mock-beatifically fluttering her eyes for effect.
Yu lunged for a kiss. But Hanne broke it.
"Brush your teeth first lover boy."
Yu had never been so excited to brush his teeth. Hanne had always loved it when they kissed with his breath fresh from mint or toothpaste, Yu suspected that she had some sort of strange fetish, but it wasn't really that weird so he didn't really care all that much.
When he came out of the bathroom he found Hanne sitting at the laptop with a sad look on her face.
"Is everything OK?"
"Yeah I'm fine... Have you shown anyone else your draft?"
"Nah, you're the first to see it!" Yu said breaking into a grin of pride and happiness.
"That's fortunate then."
Darkness took Yu.