Victors’ history: Chinese retrospectives on the Hugh Redmond case

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1954, a Shanghai court sentenced US national Hugh Redmond to life imprisonment on espionage charges. Found guilty of directing an extensive agent network against Chinese political, economic and military intelligence targets, he remained in custody until his alleged suicide in 1970. Since then, Redmond’s life has been the subject of several Western publications, but detail has been scarce about his reporting requirements, collection methods and the security operation that culminated in his arrest. Drawing on Chinese accounts of the case, this paper addresses these gaps. A picture emerges of non-official cover arrangements flawed from the outset at a time when the US demand for Korean War-related intelligence was at its height. Alerted by doctrine and success against another local CIA operation, Shanghai’s security apparatus moved cautiously against Redmond’s network, obtaining evidence that made the guilty verdict of 1954 inevitable. To Chinese intelligence practitioners, the case provides an exemplary example of how counter-espionage work against the US should proceed in the 21st century. In July 2019, CIA would ‘neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence’ of records related to Redmond’s activities in China, and the 50th anniversary of his death in 2020 passed without public official acknowledgement.