[3] 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.

[4] 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.

[8] 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.

While visiting her sister Cynthia Chan, a U.S. Army nurse in Kunming, she met General Claire Chennault, head of the Flying Tiger group.

[9][10] 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.

[13] 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.

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!

"[15] 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.

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.

[23] 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.

"[24] 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.

"[24] 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.

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.

[28] 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,[29][30] which sought to sabotage the rapidly progressing peace treaty in what one long-term Washington insider called "activities ... far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat.

[37] 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.

[40] 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.

[40] 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.

[citation needed] Throughout October, Thiệu did not want to consider the NLF as a government, leading to pressure from the Johnson Administration to cease his intransigence.

"[46] 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.

"[49] Both the CIA and the FBI had tapped Chennault's phone and were recording her conversations with Diễm,[50] and the NSA was intercepting South Vietnamese diplomatic cables.

[50] 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.

[62] 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.

"[64] 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.

[42] 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.

[69] 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.

[74] 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.

[84] Despite the longstanding hostility between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang, in the 1980s Taiwanese companies began to invest in the mainland, bringing much-needed capital and skills.

[88] 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.

Some news stories gave her age at death as 92, based on June 23, 1925, as her generally reported date of birth,[95] but she was actually[95] born in 1923.