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According to a documentary film on the Korean War,
made by the Chinese Military Academy ("Conflict: Resist America and Help
Korea"), Mao's original plan was to defend grounds north of
Pyongyang. However, the UN troops broke thru the line before
the troops were in place.
As UN troops rushed to the Yalu with several
Chinese army groups in their rear areas, Mao saw a golden opportunity to trap
the UN forces and moved on it.
BTW, the film shows Mao's hand-written orders to Peng as
well as Kim Il Sung's hand-written plea to Mao, in Chinese, for
help.
ysk
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 5:41
AM
Subject: Re: MacArthur and
Intelligence
Marc,
Thanks for your helpful note. It's true that CIA's bad call in
November 1950
was a monumental failure of analysis. Was there a board of inquiry
into it,
as there was after Pearl Harbor? I would be interested in
understanding
why they went so wrong. At Tokyo, though, there seemed to
be
mixed signals. On one hand, MacArthur sent JCS a message in
mid-November
justifying the bombing of the Yalu bridges with an accurate assessment of
the Chinese
threat and intentions. Yet he let his forces continue to
extend and divide,
as if he were unaware.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From:
Marc James Small
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 3:34
AM
To: KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ku.edu
Subject: MacArthur and
Intelligence
At 03:02 PM 9/16/01 -1000, DONALD KILMER wrote:
>Nice
thought, but MacArthur seems to have been his
>own expert who did
not Maybe he had a little help from Willoughby on
this
> Can anyone offer a good source on the
MacArthur-Willoughby dialogue on
>the potential for a Chinese
intervention for the period July-November 1950?
Well, yes and
no. MacArthur WAS his own chief intelligence officer in
most
respects, which led to some absolute disasters -- the Japanese
attack on
the Philippines and the failure to anticipate CCA intervention
in Korea
being the most outstanding -- and some brilliant successes in
all three of
his major wars. But it is important to remember that
MacArthur was not
given the strategic intelligence mission in
Korea: that was reserved to
the CIA, who continued to advise the US
government, the UN, and FEC that
there was no threat of CCA intervention
and even claimed that the Chinese
captured in November, 1950, were simply
"observers" despite all claims to
the contrary.
MacArthur detested
having an agency operating within his command which was
not under his
direction; for that reason alone, he had banned the OSS in
the
Second World War from SOWESPAC (though he and the Director of the
OSS,
Donovan, were grand friends who had fought together in the First
World War
in the 42nd Division and had been drawn together politically in
the 1930's)
and had similarly declined to have the CIA in Japan during
the Occupation
-- they only got into Korea because Korea had been removed
from MacArthur's
area of interest in 1949. Had Korea remained in
the FEC's area, there
possibly would have been no CIA activity in Korea
but, then, there might
not have been a Korean War,
either.
Willoughby was incapable of handling the intelligence demands
of Korea and
MacArthur certainly knew this: Willoughby had a dismal
record in the
Second World War as an intelligence analyst and, for that
reason, MacArthur
ignored his work-up of opposing forces after 1943,
though he cited them
when political requirements called for this -- and
then privately ordered
his Operations people to ignore them when
developing plans for forthcoming
operations.
MacArthur was an
immensely complex man and it is difficult to reduce him to
a
one-liner. The best discussions of his reaction to intelligence in
Korea
can be found in the standard MacArthur biographies (III Clayton
James,
Manchester, Perret); Blair is helpful, as
well.
Marc
msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX:
+540/343-7315
Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs
fir!
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