Typed Letter Signed as US Consul, Saigon, French Indochina. March 18, 1937, to Andrew Wylie, c/o Rev. Gordon Smith, Bannethou, Annam [Vietnam].
- SIGNED
Quarto, one page, plus original mailing envelope, and newspaper clipping mentioned in the letter, in very good, clean condition.
1937 US Marine officer, undercover as Harvard monkey collector – first American spy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Passing on a letter from the Resident Superior of Cambodia, giving him a rare permit to visit the military territory of Haut-Chlong – the present-day Mondul- Kiri province of Cambodia, which borders Vietnam
to the east and south - to collect monkeys for the Harvard Primate Expedition of the Peabody Museum.
Reports of the Expedition say merely that Wylie was an "Assistant" from Washington, D.C. He was, in fact, a big game hunter and explorer, secretly commissioned a Major in the US Marine Corps as an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Descended from an old Washington society family, he had served in Europe during World War I, and afterwards, with the Hoover Relief Commission in Eastern Europe. Three years after his Indochina mission, in 1940, he was called to active service to head the East Europe/ Russian division of Naval Intelligence throughout World War II. In 1945, Wylie was appointed the first US Naval Attache to postwar Poland - but, within months, he died, allegedly by "falling off a bridge". Military histories based on official archives confirm that when he travelled to Indochina for the Harvard scientists, he was a secret agent of Naval Intelligence.
1937 US Marine officer, undercover as Harvard monkey collector – first American spy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Passing on a letter from the Resident Superior of Cambodia, giving him a rare permit to visit the military territory of Haut-Chlong – the present-day Mondul- Kiri province of Cambodia, which borders Vietnam
to the east and south - to collect monkeys for the Harvard Primate Expedition of the Peabody Museum.
Reports of the Expedition say merely that Wylie was an "Assistant" from Washington, D.C. He was, in fact, a big game hunter and explorer, secretly commissioned a Major in the US Marine Corps as an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Descended from an old Washington society family, he had served in Europe during World War I, and afterwards, with the Hoover Relief Commission in Eastern Europe. Three years after his Indochina mission, in 1940, he was called to active service to head the East Europe/ Russian division of Naval Intelligence throughout World War II. In 1945, Wylie was appointed the first US Naval Attache to postwar Poland - but, within months, he died, allegedly by "falling off a bridge". Military histories based on official archives confirm that when he travelled to Indochina for the Harvard scientists, he was a secret agent of Naval Intelligence.