University of Virginia Library

Hoover Hunts The Commies

By RICHARD FARRELL

By Boston Concerned Asian
Scholars/ LIBERATION News
Service

BOSTON (LNS)-The past few
weeks residents of Boston's
Chinatown have been reading a new
notice taped to the walls of
buildings near Oxford and Beech
Streets, an area where many
Chinese gather. The notice is on
eight-and-one-half by eleven inch
paper, in black Chinese characters,
with a phone number in red, and
contains the English letters: FBI.

FBI Notice

A translation reads:

"FBI NOTICE: Now that you
permanently reside in the United
States you not only enjoy the
democratic system guaranteed by
this country, but you are also called
upon to shoulder the responsibility
of protecting the heritage of
liberty.

"You have fully experienced the
bondage and suffering inflicted by a
Communist regime and therefore
you must be well aware of the value
and importance of liberty and the
terror of Communism.

"In the United States, the
Communist continually engage in
secretive activities, attempting to
disrupt our traditional liberty. The
FBI has always been on the alert
and you can cooperate in this task
of anti-communism by paying heed
to the following things:

"1) If you happen to know of
any Communist or Maoist agents
trying to spy, to disrupt, or to
infiltrate, please call the local FBI
branch as soon as possible. (The
phone number of the FBI local
branch is often listed on the first
two or three pages of your phone
directory.)

"2) You must report only facts,
not rumors and hearsay.

"3) You must report only what
you know and should not attempt
to investigate, for investigation
should be undertaken by experts.
Any investigation by ordinary
people is not only dangerous to the
individual concerned but also will
forewarn those people held suspect.

"For any information or
correspondence, please notify our
local branch. The phone number is
742-5533.

Hoover,
Director of FBI"

To check the authenticity of the
notice, I called the number printed
in red. "FBI," said the receptionist
and directed my question to a man
who identified himself as agent
Crawford.

"Has the FBI been posting
notices in Chinatown?" I asked.

"I'm not familiar with any
posters in Chinatown," agent
Crawford replied cautiously. "What
did they say?"

"They said to report any
information about Communist
agents to the FBI."

"Have you got any?" he asked
quickly.

"No, I just wanted to see if the
notice was really from the FBI."

He asked questions until I had
described the notice in detail, and
then he said he would check to see
if the FBI had written it. Thirty
minutes later he called me.

"I checked with the agent
responsible for the Chinese
affairs," he said. "We wrote it. Our
agent contacted some Chinese
organization and gave them a small
flyer on how to cooperate with the
FBI. They had it printed to a larger
size."

"What was the name of the
organization?" I asked.

"The benevolent something," he
replied. (The Chinese Consolidated
Benevolent Society is a conservative
group in Chinatown. Most of its
members are elderly, speak only
Chinese, and many have ties to the
Kuomintang party of Chiang
Kai-Shek.)

"Do you have anything to
report?" agent Crawford asked me
again, noticeably puzzled as to why I
had called.

"No," I said, and thanked him
for the information.

Boston's Chinatown is not the
only Chinese community where
notices apparently written by the
FBI have appeared. They were first
reported along the streets of
Chinatown in San Francisco.

Several weeks ago the Chinese
language China Tribune, of New
York City published an article
about the FBI undertaking
"extraordinary actions" by using
"Chinese and Americans of Chinese
descent to watch out for
Communist activities, disruption,
and infiltration of Maoist agents."

Even to the editors of the China
Tribune, who warned their readers
at the end of the article not to
"meddle with Communists,"
Hoover's intensified hunt for
Communists seemed extraordinary.