Look Who it Was Random video

Mao's China, McCarthy's America and the Persecution of John S. Service

2,378 views · Published 13 January 2014 · 1:15:08 · Indexed 24 October 2026

Channel: GBH Forum Network · 2014 · Education

Watch on YouTube

Emmy award-winning journalist Lynne Joiner tells the tale of Service, an idealistic U.S. Foreign Service officer in wartime China who had the misfortune of often being right although U.S. policy makers refused to heed his prescient reporting. He predicted Mao Tse-tung's successful revolution long before anyone else even knew the Chinese Communists were a potent force, and, subsequently, he became Sen. Joseph McCarthy's first victim. 

The author describes how Service was fired for doubtful loyalty--but won his job back in the U.S. Supreme Court, only to have his career neutralized by the FBI, anti-Communist politicians, the China lobby, and Chiang Kai-shek's secret police. Born and raised in China by YMCA missionaries, Service became America's key liaison with the Communist Chinese when Gen. Joseph Stilwell wanted their help against the Japanese. Later, he became a target of revenge for Nationalist Chinese, a convenient scapegoat for American politicians eager to advance their careers, and a person of interest to J. Edgar Hoover for more than a quarter century. 

Joiner was given special access to Service's private papers and photographs with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, among others, and gained access to FBI, CIA, and State Department security records as well as confidential transcripts of congressional hearings and federal loyalty review boards. Although newly released Soviet and U.S. documents demonstrate that some of his wartime associates were in fact identified as Communist spies or fellow travelers, Joiner shows that Service was an honorable survivor who was innocent of McCarthy's charges.

More from this channel