Talk:John S. Service

Disloyalty Charges
This section is the longest one in the entire article. An article about Service should be balanced, yet this section gets a tremendous amount of weight. Someone who wants to read the details of the Amerasia case could read about them someplace else. Why so much information about this? Here is the first paragraph:

"Service's problems began prior to his return to the United States when he was referenced as a possible source for information concerning developments in China in a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning a married couple, Max and Grace Granich, with links to the Comintern and American Communist Party. According to the report, the Graniches had been advised to seek out Service upon his return to Washington.[8] Despite the fact that Service was virtually incommunicado with the wider world, while in Yenan, his name was quickly added to the list of possible suspects. It was this same absence in China that helped absolve him of the Amerasia Affair that had been "hatched and discovered" while he was away.[9]"

Regarding the first sentence, who cares? Second sentence, who cares? The third sentence makes little sense: "...his name was added to THE list of possible suspects". WHAT list? The fourth sentence is a vague non sequitor. It seems sort of pasted on without proper context.

The salient points for the Amerasia case begin with the second paragraph that discuss what happened in Jaffe's office. That's the meat of the matter.

137.187.166.166 (talk) 18:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The issue of balance is a valid one, and although "who cares?" isn't the most compelling way to make the argument, I agree with you that the content of these sentences is vague and uninformative, and doesn't seem to be presenting anything substantive in the way of evidence either for or against Service. Thanks for discussing your edit here; I'll rv myself and put your edit back. RedSpruce (talk) 19:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

There's no evidence that any of the people contributing to this article have committed bank robbery, but you'd hardly mention the fact unless you wanted to imply otherwise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.166.138.244 (talk) 01:07, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Missing word
There's a quote in the article that says, "He associated with everybody and anybody in Chungking that could him information ...", and I presume there should be a "give" after "could", but didn't want to add it in a direct quote. Does anyone have the reference? --69.134.125.223 (talk) 00:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You're correct, I'll fix it, plus another typo, and incidentally, the page number is wrong, too. I think I'm the one who put up the quote, so doubly embarrassing for letting such a goof go so long.  Thanks for pointing it out. ~ (The Rebel At) ~  01:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Balance
I knew Jack at Cal in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I believe this article is now quite fair. Koen, Ross Y., The China Lobby in American Politics, Harper & Row (New York: 1974), pp 176ff, strongly supports the conclusion that Mr Service was a victim of the pro-KMT China lobby. DOR (HK) (talk) 02:26, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear! Many a time I've regretted missing the chance to speak with him. ~ (The Rebel At) ~  02:07, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Jonathan Mirsky's review of Lynne Joiner's book in today's Asian Wall Street Journal says Mirsky interviewed Service by telephone shortly before he died, and Service admitted giving at least one Top Secret document to Phillip Jaffe. DOR (HK) (talk) 05:17, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Is Mirsky's assertion, based on a supposed near-death telephonic interview in 1999, credible? Is there any other source that has evidence that Service gave out classified documents?  Or that he ever admitted doing so? Is Mirsky taking a cheap shot at someone who can't answer from beyond the grave?  I don't know, but I'm skeptical. Pechmerle (talk) 10:57, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I deleted the section on whether Service gave documents to Jaffe or not. As I am doing my graduate dissertation on this subject, I believe there is evidence to suggest that Service did give documents to Jaffe. Were they classified? Who knows? The FBI/OSS investigators claimed they were. However, there doesn't seem to be a clear reference either way.

Furthermore, I believe this article leaves out the fact that the OSS were the initial agency that broke into the Amerasia cases and later tainted the evidence for the FBI. Since the OSS had no authority inside the United States, evidence they collected could not be used in court. I believe this has to be mentioned when understanding why the Grand Jury did not bring charges against many individuals in this case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.143.124.44 (talk) 01:59, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Concerning Disloyalty Section
After a series of what I would call corrective edits to a rather NPOV view of Service, an opened REF tag wiped out everything. At that point, I ultimately went back and applied an older version of the section from a few months ago to get everything back in line. For future reference, if you have a cited source you would like to include, it'd be better to place it into the section along with the other cited source. At the least, the merit of the citations can be debated here, versus simply wiping one away completely. This darn section always has been the black sheep of the article. ~ (The Rebel At) ~ 17:58, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

New Photo
Not sure the blow-up of the Service photo is an improvement. Looks mighty grainy to me. What do you all think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.21.6.187 (talk) 01:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It does appear grainy. Perhaps smoothing the image could improve it, or just go back to the original. ~ (The Rebel At) ~  22:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * A better question might be, why in the world is there a formal portrait of Chiang on this page? -- Michael K Smith Talk 17:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
 * If I added it five years ago, I've completely forgotten why. ~ (The Rebel At) ~ 21:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

The picture of Service is still bad. It was a blowup of a smaller picture. There must be something better out there. More objectionable than the Chiang picture is the McCarthy picture--ugly, jarring, and disturbing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.93.61.129 (talk) 06:05, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Why has the picture of John Service been removed? The only pictures of people in this article are two of the people who hated him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.178.29.34 (talk) 23:55, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Under no circumstances should Cash My Check's photo be on there and not Services. That's asinine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.175.88.230 (talk) 20:05, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I just requested permission from Penguin Random House to use this image found on archive.org. If the photo was taken by either a Chinese communist (who would therefore eschew private property rights) or a US Foreign Service employee in the course of official duty, it should already be in the public domain, no? NB: Jakobovic, Allison (she/her)  Dec 4, 2023, 5:07 PM (22 hours ago) to me Thank you for your patience as I researched the rights to LOST CHANCE IN CHINA by John S. Service, per your request # 85363. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any information at all pertaining to the photographs in the work. My best piece of advice, other than consulting whatever photograph credits there may be in the book, would be to contact the author’s estate directly. Regrettably, I do not have any contact information to provide.

Best of luck with your endeavor; I will mark your request # 85363 as complete. Allison Jakobovic (she/her) Permissions Administrator Penguin Random House --- So that leaves someone getting the book and looking at the credit for it.

Korea
Before we rend our clothes any further over Service and his gang remember this: we would not fight Mao's army in Manchuria or China proper so we got to do it in Korea one year later. Kim Il Sung, much less Kim Jong Un, was a rotten leader for a misbegotten state; we're still paying for the "wisdom" of John Service, Owen Lattimore and their accomplices. My father in law is a Party Member in Shenyang and even he will admit that the state he fought to establish was a failure. China is now going thru the authoritarian struggle with corruption that KMT China would have been forced to acknowledge in the 1950's. Service and his Gang of Four (or more) sowed  the whirlwind and China harvested its bitter contents because the KMT was "corrupt". Eighty million people lost their lives because Mao was allowed to take over China. AND - wonder of wonders - KMT Taiwan became a real democracy on its own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Genaril1 (talk • contribs) 02:45, 13 April 2013 (UTC)


 * This is not the place for right-wing commie-hunting and witch-burning. IAC, Taiwan was never anything but a military dictatorship under Chiang, who preferred to fight the Communists rather than the Japanese. That goes back to Chiang ordering the round-up, torture, and murder of Communists in 1927 -- the very people who had cooperated in helping the Nationalist army unify China. The CCP won the civil war in China in the '40s because the general population found them vastly preferable to the corrupt Nationalist government. Have you forgotten that ordinary civilians even in Nationalist-controlled areas had become so resentful of Chiang and the Nationalists, they were attacking Chiang's army at every opportunity? Mao wasn't "allowed" to win, he won because of overwhelming public support, like it or not. -- Michael K Smith Talk 17:18, 17 May 2013 (UTC)


 * First, moved this to the bottom of the page for structural purposes, as newer discussions usually propagate downward. Second, in agreement with Mr. Smith, neither here nor in the article is the proper place for argument concerning Maoist China.   ~ (The Rebel At) ~  21:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Picture of Service needed.
There is no picture of Service available that can be used in this article? I find this hard to believe. The only people shown are Chiang Kai-shek and McCarthy. This is peculiar.

See my discussion above in "new photo." I don't see why this can't be used. https://i.imgur.com/jXIcTu0.jpg

External links modified
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 * Added tag to http://ultra-secret.info/PDFs/Hoover%20to%20Ford%20-%2005.4.50.pdf
 * Added tag to http://ultra-secret.info/PDFs/Recording%20Summary%20-%20Jaffe%20-%2006.10.45-04.19.46.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070524141051/http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/06/interviews/service/ to http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/06/interviews/service/

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External links modified
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Photo of Service
After all this time, there is no way to post a photo of Service? We still have Chiang, but no Service. This is simply silly.