现代中国  (1925年6月23日～2018年3月30日)

姓：	陈
名：	香梅
籍贯：	广东南海市
出生地：	北京
 作家评传 Author critical biography： 《春秋岁月》 阅读陈香梅 Chen Xiangmei在小说之家的作品!!!

陈香梅（英语：Anna Chan Chennault，1923年6月23日－2018年3月30日），祖籍广东南海市，生于中华民国京兆地方，美国华裔共和党籍政治人物、飞虎队陈纳德将军遗孀。曾任国际学士院（International Academy Of Education）美国国际合作委员会主席、世界和平大会荣誉主席及终生荣誉院士。
 
1925年6月23日生于北京（当时叫北平）。父亲陈应荣年少出国，在英、美受教育，得过英国牛津大学法学博士和美国哥伦比亚大学哲学博士学位，回国后当过教授、编辑、外交家；母亲廖香词也在英、法、意读过书，读的是音乐和绘画。陈香梅的外祖父廖凤舒与廖仲凯是亲兄弟，当过古巴公使和日本大使。
陈香梅从小喜爱文学，英文基础很好。陈家共有六个女孩，她排行老二。她的青少年时代是在战乱中度过的。1937年"七七事变"后，她随全家流亡香港；四年后香港被日军占领，她在母亲去世、父亲远在美国任职的情况下，和姐姐一起带着小妹妹们跟随流亡队伍跋涉几千里，经澳门、广州、桂林、重庆，展转来到昆明。在美国的父亲闻之后，要她们姐妹六个去美国学习，只有陈香梅拒绝了。用她的说法，"我不能在祖国受难时离开她。我要工作，要尽我对祖国的责任。
陈香梅 - 工作经历

陈香梅
1944年， 陈香梅加入中央通讯社昆明分社，成为中央社的第一位女记者，她曾在1945年、1946年分别出版第一本散文与诗《遥远的梦》和第一本小说集《寸草心》 。凭着她熟练的英语和良好的素质，她被派往采访飞虎将军陈纳德。陈纳德将军是美国人，第二次世界大战期间，他曾在美国召集100多名年轻飞行员和机械人员、文职人员300余人组成有名的"飞虎队"（原名美国空军志愿队），来中国协助训练中国空军。中日正式宣战后，空军志愿队改为十四航空队，与中国空军并肩作战，帮助中国人民打击日本侵略者，建立了举世皆知的功勋。她对陈纳德将军的采访，为他们后来的传奇故事埋下了伏笔。
抗战结束后，陈香梅调往上海中央通讯社工作。而陈纳德将军回到美国后又重返中国，在上海成立了中美合作的民航空运公司。他们重逢了，从相知、相爱到相依，终于在1947年举行婚礼。是年，陈纳德54岁，陈香梅23岁。他们的婚姻成了历史上一段佳话。1949年，陈香梅随陈纳德的民航公司撤离大陆，迁居台湾。她专事写作，并协助陈纳德将军撰写回忆录《一个斗士的自述》 。此间十年，她在短、长篇小说和散文创作上颇丰。陈香梅是一位坚强的女性，她虽然以自己是陈纳德将军的夫人为傲，却不愿只是依仗于陈纳德的名声，而要开创自己的天空。1958年陈纳德将军不幸病逝，陈香梅带着两个年幼的孩子，于1960年移居美国华盛顿。在这里，她从头开始，孤身奋斗，站住了脚跟。她曾入乔治亚城大学工作，并师从特别教授学习演讲；她以个人经历和中国问题为题，在全美巡回演讲；她的英文版的《一千个春天》在纽约出版后成了畅销书，一年之内销了二十版。陈香梅以惊人的勇气和毅力进军政界、商界，终于大获成功，取得令人瞩目的成就。三十多年来，从肯尼迪到克林顿，先后八位总统都对她委以重任。

陈香梅
1963年，她受肯尼迪总统委任到白宫工作，成为第一位进入白宫的华裔。
1964年，她在华府参加支持高华德参议员竞选总统委员会发起人委员会，开始进入华人参政的主流社会。
1967年，她被尼克松委任为全美妇女支持尼克松竞选总统委员会主席，并兼任亚洲事务顾问；尼克松获胜后，她于1968年被任为共和党行政委员和财务副主席。
1970年，她担任飞虎航空公司副总裁，为美国航空公司第一位女副总裁；并加入美国大银行，为第一位亚裔董事。
1972年，她被选为全美七十位最有影响的人物之一。
1978年，她为里根竞选总统铺路。
1980年，她出任白宫出口委员会副主席，并两度被选为美国共和党少数民族全国主席，是共和党亚裔委员会主席。
1989年，布什总统上台后，她继任总统府白宫学者委员会委员。
1991年，她出任美国国际合作委员会主席、美国内政部环保委员会委员、美中航运总裁。
陈香梅 - 说情感

陈香梅
陈香梅这一生，最大的财富就是有很多的朋友，别看她80岁了，可是她就喜欢干年轻人干的事情。喜欢唱歌、跳舞，是跳Disco。只要条件允许，每天晚上上床睡觉之前，都要跳绳200下。陈香梅对上海，特别是静安区有特殊的情感。我是在上海成的家。
提起陈香梅，所有人的脑海中马上会跳出她的丈夫———陈纳德的名字。陈纳德曾是美国十四航空队，也就是常被人们称为“飞虎队”的司令。当时，刚刚从香港岭南大学毕业的陈香梅进入中央通讯社昆明分社工作，那一年她19岁。因为英文说得好，陈香梅被分派到一项重要的工作：采访陈纳德将军。初次见面，陈香梅就被这位少将的风采深深吸引。可当时，陈纳德将军还没有和他分居多年，感情一直都不好的妻子离婚。陈将军后来回忆：“如果当时我是单身，我一定会向她发起猛烈的‘进攻’”。两人的相爱开始在两年后的上海。陈香梅调入中央通讯社上海分社，此时的陈纳德将军也正好来上海组织一个航空公司。当时陈香梅心里很矛盾，她才20多岁，而陈纳德已50多岁，比她的父亲还大1岁，又不是同一国家的人。但陈纳德将军很有耐心，他晓得，如果不能过外祖父、外祖母这一关，就没有希望，所以常常到陈香梅家打桥牌。陈纳德是桥牌高手，陈香梅的外祖父也喜欢打桥牌，陈纳德故意输给老人，后来终于得到了陈香梅外祖父母、父母的赞赏。他们结婚时，陈纳德将军54岁，陈香梅23岁。他们共度了10年的幸福生活。“和一个比自己年龄大很多的男人结婚，你就不得不放弃很多年轻人喜欢的活动”，陈香梅说，“和陈纳德相爱的10年，是我们都深爱对方的10年。我再也不会结婚，可是我有自己的感情生活，因为生活有很多乐趣。”尽管和陈纳德将军高调的爱情为人所熟知，陈香梅依然毫不避讳“我的男朋友”之类的字眼，她会骄傲地向别人介绍自己的男朋友：“他是工程师，参与设计过很多机场。”　
陈香梅 - 谈奋斗

陈香梅
陈香梅和陈纳德将军结婚10年之后，他去世了。那时，30岁的陈香梅开始在美国打拼我自己的事业。上个世纪60年代初，陈纳德将军去世后，陈香梅来到美国争取自己的天空。除了陈纳德夫人的头衔，作为黄种女人，她不被美国人接受———60年代的美国，对少数民族的歧视还非常严重。但陈香梅坚信，一个人只要自强、自信，一定会成功。“在乔治亚城大学找了份工作，做一个小部门的主管。副手是一个白人，男性，当时只有一个停车位。学校没有给我，而给了我的副手。当时美国正值总统大选，民主党、共和党都在争取少数民族的支持。两个党派都来邀我入党。陈香梅说，谁能够把车位给我拿回来，我就加入哪个党。最后，共和党首先帮我抢到了车位，所以我就加入了共和党。”从车位之争开始，陈香梅走入美国政界和商界。30多年来，从肯尼迪到克林顿，先后8位总统都对她委以重任。
陈香梅 - 论中国

陈香梅
陈香梅是美国人，但陈香梅更是一个中国人。每当陈香梅在天安门前看到国旗升起的时候，都激动地流下眼泪。陈香梅为自己是中国人而感到骄傲。有人问过陈香梅，做梦的时候是说中国话还是说美国话。她说，梦见中国时讲中国话，梦见美国时就讲美国话喽。1980年，陈香梅带着美国总统里根的亲笔信访问北京。到北京时已近除夕，下了点小雪。她是在这块土地上出生的，却已久违30多年，目睹祖国的变化，内心非常激动。她下榻北京钓鱼台国宾馆，除夕夜，邓小平先生和陈香梅的舅舅廖承志陪她吃年夜饭，一边吃一边讲笑话。陈香梅如同天真的少女般地模仿邓小平讲四川话，“你可晓得，你的舅舅是‘妻管严’来子……”模仿得唯妙唯肖。而在台湾与大陆的关系上，陈香梅也发挥了举足轻重的作用。是她向当时台湾当局的蒋经国提议让台湾退役老兵回大陆探亲，仅仅几个月之后，就得到了蒋经国的同意。海峡两岸的民间往来自此开始。当被问到如何看待两岸关系的将来时，她总会用非常肯定的语气说：“我始终坚定不移地相信，台湾一定会回归。”在祖国改革开放之后，她又开始充当介绍台商到大陆投资的“媒人”角色。而如今，推动中国的教育发展，成为她80岁生日时最大的愿望。
陈香梅 - 中美民间大使
陈香梅享有“中美民间大使”之美誉。她曾在1972年尼克松总统访华和1979年中美两国正式建交等一系列重大事件中作出过积极贡献。1980年，她作为里根的亲善大使到中国大陆和台湾访问，在两岸之间积极沟通，促进了两岸交流。她说：“只要中国人能扬眉吐气，我于愿已足”她对养育过她的中国一脉情深，为中国的发展不遗余力。她是中国海外交流协会顾问，中华全国妇联名誉顾问，中国国家旅游局特别顾问，陈香梅教育基金会董事长。还是北京师范大学等院校的客座教授。
陈香梅 - 全世界只有一个陈香梅

陈香梅
陈香梅曾经深得美国８位总统的信任而被委以重任，参与和见证了众多重大历史时刻。1981年元旦前后，作为美国总统里根的特使访问北京，这成了她政坛生涯中最难忘的一次经历。陈香梅回忆到，当时在北京人民大会堂举行的欢迎宴会上，邓小平让陈香梅坐在第一贵宾的位置上，让参议员史蒂文斯坐在次席。她清楚地记得，当时邓小平说：“陈香梅坐第一，参议员史蒂文斯先生坐第二，因为参议员在美国有１００来个，而陈香梅嘛，不要说美国，就是全世界也只有一个。”邓小平的这句话让陈香梅非常感动，让她倍感在发展中美关系上责任重大，这句话也一直激励着她。当记者问陈香梅女士，在从政生涯中自己遭遇到的最大的挫折时，她回答道：“我最不满尼克松没有履行对我的承诺。”原来，她作为尼克松竞选班底成员，为尼克松成功连任总统立下了汗马功劳，竞选时尼克松向陈香梅允诺，只要竞选成功，就会立即结束越战。让陈香梅耿耿于怀的是，尼克松并没有履行自己的承诺。
陈香梅 - 著作

陈香梅
陈香梅著有：
《往事知多少》
《留云借月》
《一千个春天》
《陈香梅的散文与诗》 、《迷》 、 《春秋岁月》 、《春水东流》等中英文著作四十余部。

Anna Chennault, born Chan Sheng Mai later spelled Chen Xiangmei (陳香梅, actual birth year 1923 but reported as June 23, 1925 – March 30, 2018), also known as Anna Chan Chennault or Anna Chen Chennault, was a war correspondent and prominent Republican member of the U.S. China Lobby. She was married to American World War II aviator General Claire Chennault.

Controversy surrounds Anna Chennault for the crucial role she may have played on behalf of Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign in seeking to delay the Vietnam War peace negotiations in order to boost Nixon's chances for victory.
 

Early life

On June 23, 1923, Chen was born in Beijing, China. In 1935, her father, a diplomat, was sent to be the Chinese consul in Mexicali, Mexico, but he could not afford to bring his large family there. Fearing war between Japan and China was brewing, he sent his wife and children to the British crown colony of Hong Kong to live with his mother. In 1938, Chen's mother died, and as an older sister, Chen became a mother figure to her younger sisters. As a girl, Chen was told by two of her teachers that her birthday falling on "fifth day of the fifth moon" on the Chinese calendar meant that she was destined to be a writer. On the morning of December 8, 1941, Chen was attending class at St. Paul's High School when she was forced to take cover, as the Japanese had bombed the school. Chen witnessed the battle of Hong Kong as the invading Japanese fought British, Indian and Canadian troops, ending with the surrender of Hong Kong on Christmas Day. In the interim, Chen spent much time hiding to avoid the bombs and shells as Hong Kong went up in flames.

After taking Hong Kong, the Japanese declared all Chinese women to be prostitutes who were to provide free sexual relations to the Japanese soldiers for three days to thank them for liberating them from the rule of the British. Chen and her five sisters fled Hong Kong to Guilin in "free China" to escape the Japanese. She attended Lingnan University, which was normally based in Hong Kong, but had relocated to "free China". As refugees, Chen and her sisters lived in poverty during the war years, often having to eat weevil-ridden rice to survive. Chen remembered that her burning desire to be successful as a writer was to escape both her low status as a Chinese woman and the poverty of wartime China.

Chen received a bachelor's degree in Chinese from Lingnan University in 1944. She was a war correspondent for the Central News Agency from 1944 to 1948 and wrote for the Hsin Ming Daily News in Shanghai from 1945 to 1949. While visiting her sister Cynthia Chan, a U.S. Army nurse in Kunming, she met General Claire Chennault, head of the Flying Tiger group. While working as a journalist in 1944, the 21-year-old Chen interviewed General Chennault, a man who was widely viewed in China as a war hero who had protected the Chinese people from Japanese bombing since 1937. After the interview, Chen had tea with Chennault, whose gentlemanly behavior and Southern charm left her feeling "awed", as she later remembered.

Marriage

Chen Xiangmei and Chennault, who was 30 years her senior, married in December 1947. In 1946, Chennault had divorced his first wife, the former Nell Thompson, whom he had wed in 1911 in Winnsboro, Louisiana, and the mother of his eight children, the youngest of whom, Rosemary Chennault Simrall, died in August 2013. Anna Chennault had two children, Claire Anna (born in February 1948) and Cynthia Louise (born in 1950). After the war her husband was somewhat of a celebrity. A heavy smoker, he died in 1958 of lung cancer. The Chennaults divided their time between Taipei and Monroe, Louisiana, where Anna Chennault became the first non-white person to settle into a previously all-white neighborhood; General Chennault's status as a war hero silenced objections to his Chinese wife. At the time, there was a law forbidding non-whites from settling in the Monroe neighborhood in which General Chennault had bought his house, but no one was willing to prosecute him for bringing Anna with him into the neighborhood.

General Chennault was a Sinophile and a strong admirer of Chiang Kai-shek, and in the 1940s, he joined the China Lobby, an informal and diverse group of journalists, businessmen, politicians, intellectuals and Protestant churchmen who believed that it was in the best interest of the United States to support the Kuomintang regime. Chiang had converted to Methodism to marry his third wife Soong Mei-ling in 1927, and for much of his life, Chiang was seen by American evangelical Protestant groups as China's great Christian hope, the man who would modernize and westernize China. After the Kuomintang lost the Chinese Civil War, there was much fury by American right-wing politicians about the "loss of China", and though the China Lobby was not officially partisan, the China Lobby tended to tilt rightward after 1949. The narrative promoted by the China Lobby pictured a idealized version of the Kuomintang government that was heartlessly betrayed by the Truman Administration, which was depicted as incompetent for allowing the loss of China or for even having permitted alleged Soviet agents to carry out the China policy of the U.S. A 1952 dinner hosted by the Nationalist Chinese ambassador in Washington, D.C., attended by senators Patrick McCarran, William Knowland and Joseph McCarthy, all partisans of the China Lobby, began with the toast "Back to the mainland!"

Anna Chennault ultimately followed her husband into the China Lobby, and by 1955, she was regularly delivering speeches calling for American support of Chiang and Taiwan as well as the eventual return of the Kuomintang to the Chinese mainland. Fluent in English, a good speaker, and as a Chinese-American woman who was presumably in a position to know what was best for China, Chennault became a popular figure for the China Lobby through her speeches. After she spoke in Dallas in May 1955, a Dallas Morning News editorial called Chennault someone whose "opinions were worth listening to" and "a personage in her own right, by inheritance and achievement, as well as by marriage."

Life as a widow

In 1894, the state of Louisiana had passed a law forbidding marriage between whites and non-whites, and General Chennault was advised by his lawyer that his marriage to Anna was "null and void" in Louisiana and that the state would therefore not respect his will leaving his assets to his wife and daughters. Because his first wife and his children by his first marriage might challenge the will in court on the grounds that his second marriage was illegal and his daughters by Anna were thus bastards, he had his will probated in Washington, D.C., where his second marriage was recognized as legal. In his will, Claire Chennault left more money for his Anna and her children, but left all of his shares in the Civil Air Transport company and the Flying Tiger Line to his first wife and her daughters.

After her husband's death, Anna Chennault worked as a publicist for Civil Air Transport in Taipei, Taiwan (1946–1957), as vice president of international affairs for the Flying Tiger Line and as president of TAC International (from 1976). In 1960, Chennault gained her first political experience when she campaigned for Richard Nixon, being used as the Republicans' principal campaigner among Chinese-Americans. She was an occasional correspondent for the Central News Agency (from 1965) and the U.S. correspondent for the Hsin Shen Daily News (from 1958). She was a broadcaster for the Voice of America from 1963 to 1966. Chennault began a career as a society hostess in Washington, a role that biographer Catherine Forslund wrote had "an edge no men could match", allowing her to create "a powerful base of influence and connections." Chennault often noted that her "certain exotic Asian aura" helped to forge connections in the otherwise all-white society scene of Washington. Her belief that the U.S. had abandoned the Kuomintang in the Chinese Civil War colored her perceptions of the Vietnam War, making her an ardent hawk who argued that the U.S. had a moral obligation to stand by South Vietnam and that any effort to withdraw from Vietnam would be equivalent to the "betrayal" of Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940s.

In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward in China, which led to a famine estimated to have killed between 30-55 million people. As a result, thousands of Chinese fled to Hong Kong as refugees. Chennault was very active as the president of a group named Chinese Refugee Relief (CRR), which sought to care for the destitute refugees in Hong Kong. In 1962, Chennault testified before the Senate in an appeal for the U.S. government to fund the CRR. Recalling her own life as a refugee in wartime China, Chennault said: "I know the misery of physical deprivation of the homeless and the emotional privation of the forgotten." She called her late husband "the symbol of deliverance to the Chinese people from the cruelty of the Japanese" and stated she "was now engaged in the unfinished business of delivering the Chinese people from the cruelty of the Communists." Chennault called the leaders of the People's Republic of China "masters of Chinese slavery" who callously used food as "an instrument of life and death to kill freedom." Chennault wanted famine relief to benefit only the Chinese people and not the Chinese state, saying "We would be making the same mistake we did when under the pressure of scrap dealers we shipped scrap iron to Japan before Pearl Harbor. Such impossible appeasement would be shot back in our faces in Southeast Asia as it was shot back at Pearl Harbor and Korea. Do you put troops in Thailand and Vietnam to face Chinese Communists made strong with our own food?" Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chennault worked hard to publicize the famine in China caused by the Great Leap Forward and to appeal to the American people to donate money for the CRR and to adopt refugee orphans living in Hong Kong.

Chennault's strong anticommunism led her to favor the Republicans, and in the 1964 presidential election, she worked hard as a volunteer and fundraiser for Senator Barry Goldwater, who was generally considered to be the most aggressive and hawkish of all Republican politicians at the time. Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which led to accusations of racism and engagement in a "Southern Strategy" of courting conservative Southern whites who had traditionally voted Democrat by opposing civil rights for blacks. To counter such allegations, Chennault played a prominent role as a speaker for Goldwater in the 1964 election, appearing on stage with him several times starting in April 1964. Chennault was useful to the Goldwater campaign not only for her work in attempting to persuade Chinese-Americans to vote Republican, but importantly to attract the support of nonwhite voters who opposed Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act.

Vietnam and the "Chennault Affair"

Recorded in Nixon, A Life by Jonathan Aitken, and from the notes of Patrick Hillings, the former congressman accompanying the candidate's 1967 trip to Taipei, Nixon interjected just after an unexpected encounter with Mrs. Chennault, "Get her away from me, Hillings; she's a chatterbox."

On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he was withdrawing from the 1968 presidential election, announced a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam and stated his willingness to open peace talks with North Vietnam on ending the war. After much haggling about where to hold the peace negotiations, talks finally began in Paris in May 1968 with W. Averell Harriman heading the American delegation and Xuân Thủy the North Vietnamese delegation.

In the 1968 election, Chennault served as the chairwoman of the Republican Women for Nixon Committee. According to records of President Lyndon B. Johnson's secret monitoring of South Vietnamese officials and his political foes, Chennault played a crucial role on behalf of the Nixon campaign, which sought to block a peace treaty in what one long-term Washington insider called "activities... beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat."

On July 12, 1968 at the Hotel Pierre in New York, Chennault introduced South Vietnamese ambassador Bùi Diễm to Nixon. Unknown to Diễm, he was followed secretly by the CIA, who kept him under surveillance while the National Security Agency (NSA), which had broken the South Vietnamese diplomatic codes, read all of the messages going back and forth from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.

In June 1967, Henry Kissinger, the Harvard professor of political science who had started his career as an unofficial diplomat involved in the peace efforts to end the Vietnam War, met Herbert Marcovich, a French biologist, who told him that his friend Raymond Aubrac was a friend of Ho Chi Minh. Kissinger contacted Ambassador Harriman with a mandate to end the war. Marcovich and Aubrac agreed to fly to Hanoi to meet Ho and to convey his messages to Kissinger, who was to pass them on to Harriman. Through nothing came of the scheme, called "Operation Pennsylvania", as Ho demanded that the United States must "unconditionally" stop bombing North Vietnam as a precondition for peace talks, a demand that Johnson rejected, it established Kissinger as someone who was interested in making peace in Vietnam. Kissinger had served as the principal foreign policy adviser for New York governor Nelson Rockefeller during his three failed bids to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964 and 1968. In the 1968 Republican primaries, Kissinger had expressed considerable contempt for Nixon, of whom he wrote in July 1968 was "the most dangerous, of all the men running, to have as president." After Rockefeller lost to Nixon, Kissinger switched camps, telling Nixon's campaign manager John N. Mitchell that he had changed his mind about Nixon. As Kissinger was a close associate of Rockefeller with a history of denigrating Nixon, Mitchell was very cool to Kissinger. In an attempt to ingratiate himself with Nixon, Kissinger offered to serve as a spy, saying that Harriman trusted him and he could keep Nixon informed about the state of the Paris peace talks.

On September 17, 1968, Kissinger contacted Harriman but falsely portrayed himself as having broken with the Republicans, writing a letter that began with: "My dear Averell, I am through with Republican politics. The party is hopeless and unfit to govern." Kissinger visited Harriman in Paris to offer his expertise and advice, and, through talking with Harriman's staff, learned that the peace talks were going well. Upon returning to the United States from France, Kissinger contacted Richard V. Allen, another Nixon adviser, to tell him that Harriman was making progress in Paris. Kissinger contacted Allen via payphone in an attempt to avoid FBI wiretapping.

Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic presidential candidate, was trailing in the polls following the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August. However, on September 30, 1968, he broke with Johnson by stating his willingness to stop all bombing of North Vietnam if he were to be elected. As a result, Humphrey began to rise in the polls, and by late October 1968, polls showed Humphrey with a 44%-43% lead over Nixon. In October, Harriman's delegation in Paris reported to Washington that peace talks with Ho were proceeding well and that the ambassador believed that a peace agreement could be possible before the election. On October 12, 1968, Kissinger reported to Allen that Harriman had "broken open the champagne" because he believed that he was very close to a peace deal. In a conversation that was secretly recorded by the FBI, Allen and Mitchell agreed that Kissinger would have to be rewarded with a senior post, such as national security adviser, if Nixon were to win the election.

Though a peace deal might have turned the election in favor of Humphrey, South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu did not want the Paris peace talks to be successful, as he feared an American withdrawal would be the end of his regime. Throughout October, Thiệu continually demanded conditions that he knew the North Vietnamese would reject in an attempt to sabotage the peace talks, leading to intense pressure from the Johnson Administration to cease his intransigence.

On October 23, Diễm cabled Thiệu to say that he was in close contact with Chennault and that: "Many Republican friends have contacted me and encouraged us to stand firm. They were alarmed by press reports to the effect that you have already softened your position." In another message, Diễm reported to Thiệu that Chennault wanted him to object to the American offer to cease bombing North Vietnam altogether, saying this would be a deal-breaker at the Paris peace talks. Chennault's messages to Thiệu also intimated that Nixon, if elected, would bargain for a better peace deal than would Humphrey, which encouraged Thiệu's sabotage of the peace negotiations. According to the notes of Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman, his orders were: "Keep Anna Chennault working on SVN [South Vietnam]." Both the CIA and the FBI had tapped Chennault's phone and were recording her conversations with Diễm, and the NSA was intercepting South Vietnamese diplomatic cables. The CIA had also bugged Thiệu's office, and as a result knew that Cheannult's messages were indeed encouraging Thiệu to make unreasonable demands at the Paris peace talks. Johnson phoned Nixon to tell him that he knew what he was doing and to stay away from Chennault. Johnson's call convinced Nixon that the FBI had bugged Nixon's phone, as Johnson seemed very well informed on the details. In fact, Chennault was under FBI surveillance. One FBI report stated: "Anna Chenault contacted Vietnam Ambassador Bùi Diễm and advised him that she received a message from her boss...which her boss wanted her to give personally to the ambassador. She said the message was that, 'Hold on. We are gonna win...Please tell your boss to hold on."

It was through Chennault's intercession that Republicans advised Saigon to refuse participation in the talks, promising a better deal once elected. Records of FBI wiretaps show that Chennault phoned Diễm on November 2 with the message "hold on, we are gonna win." Before the election, President Johnson "suspected (…) Richard Nixon, of political sabotage that he called treason."

On January 2, 2017, the New York Times reported that historian and Nixon biographer John A. Farrell had found a memo written by Haldeman that confirmed that Nixon had authorized "throwing a monkey wrench" into Johnson's peace negotiations. Thiệu's objections from sabotaged the peace talks in Paris, and on October 30, 1968, Thiệu announced that South Vietnam was withdrawing from the peace negotiations.. Thiệu publicly blamed the seating arrangements, claiming that it was unacceptable that the Viet Cong delegation should be seated apart from that of North Vietnam and stating that the entirety of the communist delegation should be seated together. The South Vietnamese peace delegation did not return to Paris until January 24, 1969.

William Bundy, Johnson's assistant secretary of state for Asian affairs, summoned Diễm to a meeting at which he accused him of "improper" and "unethical" contacts with Chennault. Johnson knew from FBI, CIA and NSA briefs of Chennault's efforts to sabotage the Paris peace talks, saying that the "bitch" was guilty of treason. He told his friend Everett Dirksen, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, "We could stop the killing out there. But they've got this...new formula put in there-namely wait on Nixon. And they're killing four or five hundred a day waiting on Nixon." On November 2, 1968, Johnson called Dirksen to say "I'm reading their hand. This is treason." Dirksen respoded, "I know." As much of the information had been gathered illegally, such as through warrantless FBI phone tapping, Johnson felt that he could not have the Justice Department charge Chennault to the degree that he wished. To charge Chennault might also mean having to admit in court that the NSA was reading South Vietnam's diplomatic codes, which in turn could trouble relations with other American allies who may suspect that their cables were also being intercepted. Johnson's national security adviser Walt Whitman Rostow urged him to "blow the whistle" and "destroy" Nixon, but the president demurred, saying that it would cause too great a scandal if it emerged that the United States had spied on its close ally South Vietnam.

The presidential election was extremely close, with Nixon winning 43.4% of the popular vote and 301 electoral votes and Humphrey 42.7% of the popular vote and 191 electoral votes. Third-party candidate George Wallace received 13.5% of the popular vote. Given the extremely tight election, it was widely believed that Chennault's intervention may have been decisive, as a peace agreement might have tipped the election in favor of Humphrey.

In part because Nixon won the presidency, no one was prosecuted for this possible violation of the Logan Act. Former FBI deputy director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach mentioned in his book Hoover's FBI that his agency was only able to connect a single November 2, 1968 phone call from Nixon's running mate Spiro Agnew to Chennault, unrecorded details of which Johnson had believed were subsequently transmitted to Nixon. Later phone calls to Nixon aide John N. Mitchell were made using direct personal numbers that changed every several days, as was Mitchell's custom.

A week after the election and a joint Nixon-Johnson statement regarding Vietnam policy, Mitchell asked Chennault to intercede again, this time to persuade Saigon to join the talks, but she refused. By Chennault's account, when Nixon personally thanked her in 1969, she complained that she "had suffered dearly" for her efforts on his behalf, and he replied, "Yes, I appreciate that. I know you are a good soldier." American historian and Chennault biographer Catherine Forslund has argued that Chennault would have been in a good position to demand that Nixon appoint her ambassador to an important American ally or that she be given some other prestigious job as a reward, but Chennault declined, fearing that she might have to answer difficult questions during Senate confirmation hearings.

Chennault involvement with the Paris peace talks on behalf of Nixon is sometimes called the "Chennault Affair." William Bundy wrote that "probably no great chance was lost" for peace. John A. Farrell has argued that, given the incompatible agendas of Hanoi and Saigon, the chances for peace in the fall of 1968 were overrated. He also offers that there was at least a moment of hope for peace in Vietnam in 1968, and that Nixon's encouragement, via Chennault, of Thiệu's obstinance had ended that hope for purely partisan reasons, making it the "most reprehensible" of all of Nixon's actions. Assessments vary about the importance of Chennault's intervention in the 1968 election. American historian Jules Witcover wrote that because Nixon won the election by 0.7%, a peace agreement just before the election in October 1968 could have been decisive, as even a small boost in the polls for Humphrey might have made the difference. By contrast, Catherine Forslund, told the Wall Street Journal that Thiệu would have acted to sabotage the peace talks in October 1968 without any prompting from Chennault.

Later life

In 1970, Chennault received an appointments from President Nixon to his advisory committee for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to the U.S. National Committee for UNESCO. She was president of Chinese Refugee Relief from 1962 to 1970 and served as president of the General Claire Chennault Foundation after 1960. She served as a Republican national committeewoman representing the District of Columbia and led the National Republican Asian Assembly. She encouraged many Chinese Americans to become active in politics, and in 1973, she helped found the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA).

In October 1971, Chennault helped lead an unsuccessful effort to stop the United Nations General Assembly from expelling the Republic of China (Taiwan) and seating the People's Republic of China. In a speech, Chennault said "Let's hope the United Nations doesn't end up like the League of Nations...Its effectiveness is in grave doubt...Fortunately, the big events cannot be settled in the UN anyway." Chennault also said, "I consider this an anti-American vote and I question if the American people will continue to give...financial support to this world organization." Leading up to the 1972 presidential election, Chennault raised $90, 000 (about $375, 000 in today's money) for the Nixon reelection campaign.

After President Nixon visited China in 1972, there was a real possibility that the United States might finally recognize the People's Republic of China as the legitimate Chinese government, and in 1974 the U.S. opened an office in Beijing that acted as a de facto embassy. On April 21 1975, as South Vietnam crumbled, President Thiệu resigned and fled to Taiwan. Shortly after Thiệu arrived there, Chennault visited him to tell him that President Gerald Ford was willing to grant asylum to his family, but not to him, as he was too controversial to be allowed to live in the U.S. Thiệu told her: "It is so easy to be an enemy of the United States, but so difficult to be a friend."

Throughout the 1970s, Chennault lobbied against American recognition of the People's Republic of China, and in 1977 she joined 80 prominent Chinese-Americans in signing a public letter to President Jimmy Carter drawing attention to China's poor human-rights record and asking that the U.S. not establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. However, Carter officially recognized the People's Republic of China in 1979. Believing that the U.S. had betrayed South Vietnam by withdrawing in 1973 and allowing North Vietnam to conquer the South in 1975, Chennault lobbied Congress to admit Vietnamese refugees fleeing the communist regime.

In the 1980 presidential election, Chennault raised $675,000 dollars (about $1.41 million in today's money) for the Republicans.

In January 1981, Chennault visited Beijing to meet Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, ostensibly as a private citizen, but in fact as an unofficial diplomat representing incoming Republican president Ronald Reagan, who was due to be sworn in as president on January 20. Reagan had been strongly critical of China, but as president, he wanted to focus on the struggle against the Soviet Union, which he had dubbed the "evil empire", and wanted China as a de facto American ally against Moscow. Chennault conveyed this message to Deng and told him that Reagan's denunciations of the evils of communism applied only to Soviet communism, not to Chinese communism.

As Chennault was a long-time Republican and a doyenne of the China Lobby, her meeting with Deng attracted much media attention in the United States. Chennault stated that Deng had complained to her that none of the American "China Hands" were huaren (overseas Chinese), asking "Why do all the so-called China experts have blue eyes and blond hair?" During her visit to China, Chennault also met her relative, the communist politician Liao Chengzhi. Chennault told the Washington Post that she and Liao had "talked about the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four and how they had lost an entire generation. They told of their need for administrators and technicians to run the country and how they are having to reeducate the people in the new technology because when the Russians left China they took everything with them. Now the Chinese realize it was wrong to copy the Russians." After her visit to Beijing, Chennault visited Taipei to meet President Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, to brief him on what she had seen in the People's Republic of China. Chiang was displeased, fearing that Reagan might not break relations with the People's Republic and once again recognize the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China, but he told her that he was pleased that it was she who had made that trip, as he knew that she was a friend of the Kuomintang. Chiang cautiously distanced himself from the policies of his father, saying that it was time for new thinking about relations across the Taiwan straits and that the People's Republic of China under Deng was moving away from the policies that it had pursued under Mao.

In 1984, Chennault led a trade mission to China that was intended to facilitate U.S.-China trade following Deng's reforms in the 1980s that opened up China's economy. As someone closely linked to the Kuomintang, Chennault served not only as a consultant on American-Chinese trade but also on trade between Taiwan and China. Despite the longstanding hostility between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang, in the 1980s Taiwanese companies began to invest in the mainland, bringing much-needed capital and skills. It was the hope of both Deng and Chennault that economic integration between Taiwan and China might lead to reunification, but political reforms in Taiwan during the 1980s led to its evolution into a democracy. Though the majority of the Taiwanese are ethnic Chinese, a sense of Taiwanese nationalism had emerged by the 1980s, and many Taiwanese had no desire to be reunited with China under any conditions, which meant that economic integration did not lead to political integration as was hoped. Chennault was attacked in the Taiwanese media in 1989 for her statement that she was in favor of "separating economics from politics", which led the China Times to condemn her in an editorial for letting "personal financial considerations" influence her political views.

After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when the People's Liberation Army shot down protesting university students demanding democracy, the U.S. publicly pulled away from China. At the request of the American government, Chennault passed a message to Deng saying that Washington still wanted a good relationship with Beijing, that the sanctions imposed on China were only to appease American public opinion and that the sanctions would be ended in the near future. To further press the point, on June 30, 1989, the national security adviser Brent Scowcroft secretly visited Beijing to tell Deng that "President Bush recognizes the value of the PRC-US relationship to the vital interests of both countries" and that the U.S. viewed the Tiananmen Square massacre as an "internal affair." Despite the controversy, in December 1989 and again in March 1990, Chennault led delegations of Taiwanese businessmen to China to "study the investment climate on the mainland." She stated that people must be "humble enough to learn, courageous enough to change their positions."

Chennault died on March 30, 2018 in Washington, D.C. at the age of 94. Some news stories gave her age at death as 92, based on June 23, 1925 as her generally reported date of birth, but she was actually born in 1923. She is buried next to her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.

Bibliography

• John Farrell (2017). Nixon The Life (2017 ed.). New York, NY: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-53735-3.
• Catherine Forslund (2002). Anna Chennault: Informal Diplomacy and Asian Relations (2002 ed.). New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8420-2833-1.
• A.J. Lannguth (2002-03-12). Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975 (2000 ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0743212312.
• Charlotte Power (2001). Spencher Tucker (ed.). "Chennault, Anna". The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (2000 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513525-3.
• Hyung-chan Kim, chief editor. Distinguished Asian Americans, A Biographical Dictionary, Greenwood Press (1999)
• Anna Chennault. Chennault and the Flying Tigers: Way of a Fighter (January 1, 1963 ed.). New York, NY Paul S. Eriksson, Inc. B001YUDCZA.
• Anna Chennault (1962). A Thousand Springs: The Biography of a Marriage (January 1, 1962 ed.). New York, NY Paul S. Eriksson, Inc. B000JD0KCQ.
• Anna Chennault (1980). The Education of Anna (1980 ed.). Times Books; Second Printing edition. pp. 242. ISBN 0-8129-0844-9.
• Anna Chennault. Song of Yesterday (1961) in Chinese
• Anna Chennault. M.E.E. (1963) in Chinese
• Anna Chennault. My Two Worlds (1965) in Chinese
• Anna Chennault. The Other Half (1966) in Chinese
• Anna Chennault. Letters from the U.S.A. (1967)
• Anna Chennault. Journey among Friends and Strangers (1978, Chinese edition)

Memberships

• 14th Air Force Association
• Theta Sigma Phi
• National Military Family Association, founder and chairperson
• Committee of 100

References

External links

• Anna Chennault interviewed by the American Veterans Center, published March 2017. (44 minutes)
• Papers, 1939–2004 (inclusive), 1955–1989 (bulk). Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
• Appearances on C-SPAN