Free JFK by Oliver Stone, L. Fletcher Prouty Page A

“apparently” convivial Churchill and Madame Chiang smiling together on the other.
    As a result of this conference, the public learned that Chiang had promised to increase Chinese support of British and American plans to sweep through Burma to open a new, and more practical, road via Burma to China and that the United States would base units of its new giant B-29 bombers at the front in the China-Burma-India theater for direct attacks upon the Japanese, via bases on the mainland of China.
    With the close of the Cairo Conference, the Churchill and Roosevelt delegations flew to Tehran for their own first meeting with Marshal Stalin. This much was released to the public. A fact that was not released, and that even to this day has rarely been made known, is that Chiang and the Chinese delegation were also present at the Tehran Conference of November 28—December 1, 1943.
    As noted, the Big Four alliance was “jerry-rigged” at best. There were many strategic matters that had to be resolved. With the agreement by the West to invade France a matter of priority, these other matters involved plans for the defeat of Japan. First of all, Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan once Germany surrendered. In return, he agreed to help Chiang by speaking to his friend Mao Tse-tung about relaxing military pressures against Chiang’s Nationalist Army from that front in China. In fact, only one week after the Allies had invaded Normandy, Mao Tse-tung made a rare public pronouncement that he would aid Chiang in his fight against Japan. In other words, Roosevelt and Churchill had lived up to their promises made in Tehran, and Joe Stalin had lived up to his.
    These agreements have become public, but others that have had an enormous impact upon Far East developments since WWII have not. First of all, most historians doubt that Chiang and his wife actually attended the conference in Tehran. I can confirm that they did, because I was the pilot of the plane that flew Chiang’s delegation to Tehran. (Chiang and his wife traveled either with Roosevelt or in another U.S. military aircraft.)
    During these important meetings, plans for the future of Southeast Asia were discussed, and many of the developments that we have witnessed from 1945 to 1965 undoubtedly had their origins in Cairo and Tehran. They were not simply social gatherings because Madame Chiang was there; more likely, because she was there, much more important business was discussed than might have occurred otherwise. Again we witness the ways of the power elite—and not necessarily those of the nominal leaders, who so often are no more than their puppets.
    Of interest to our story about Vietnam, it will be noted:
    At the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina, but Churchill was vehemently against the idea. Roosevelt said he told Churchill that Chiang Kai-shek did not want either to assume control over Indochina or to be given responsibility for administering a trusteeship in Indochina.
    Churchill replied, “Nonsense,” to which Roosevelt retorted, “Winston, this is something which you are just not able to understand. You have four hundred years of acquisitive instinct in your blood and you just do not understand how a country might not want to acquire land somewhere if they can get it. A new period has opened in the world’s history, and you will have to adjust to it.” 6
     
    Sometime during the next year, 1944, Roosevelt added, on this subject: “The British would take land anywhere in the world even if it were only a rock or sandbar.” 7
    The reader should note the special significance of this exchange in Tehran as it pertains to the “real property” propaganda scheme mentioned above. As Roosevelt confirmed, this has been a paramount driving force of British foreign policy since the days of Queen Elizabeth and the founding of the East India Company during the century following