Anna Chennault, (Chinese name Chen Xiangmei (???), also known as Anna Chan Chennault/Anna Chen Chennault) is the widow of World War II aviation hero Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault.
Born in Beijing, China on June 23, 1925, Chen Xiangmei "received a B.A. degree in Chinese from Lingnan University in Hong Kong in 1944, and an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from Chungang in Seoul, Korea in 1967". She "began her career as a journalist, serving as a war correspondent for the Central News Agency from 1944 to 1948. She was a feature writer for the Hsin Ming Daily News in Shanghai, China from 1944 to 1949."Chen Xiangmei was married in 1947 to Claire Lee Chennault, who was more than 32 years her senior and died in 1958. She has two children, Claire Anna (born in 1949) and Cynthia Louise (born in 1950).Her husband's death has not seemed to have slowed her career: "She served as a special correspondent for the Central News Agency from 1965 to the present [1999] and as a U.S. correspondent for the Hsin Shen Daily News from 1958 to the present [1999]. In addition, she was a broadcaster for the Voice of America from 1963 to 1966." In addition, Chen Xiangmei served as an editor and public relations officer for the Civil Air Transport in Taipei, Taiwan, from 1946 until 1957. After her husband's death, Chennault was vice-president of international affairs for the Flying Tiger Line. "She has served as president of TAC International from 1976 to the present [1999]."
"Chennault has been a member of the President's Advisory Committee for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since 1970...served as a member of the United States National Committee for UNESCO from 1970 to the present [1999]...as president of Chinese Refugee Relief from 1962 to 1970 and has served as president of the General Claire Chennault Foundation from 1960 to the present [1999]."
Chennault "has served as a committeewoman of the Washington, D.C. Republican Party since 1960...was the founder and chairperson of the National Republican Asian Assembly" and has advocated greater participation in political affairs by Chinese- and other Asian-Americans, and also has discussed relations between the U.S. and China.
She has also promoted her husband's legacy. In 1976, she came to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a ceremony honoring Chennault hosted by the city Mayor-President W.W. Dumas and then Governor Edwin Washington Edwards. Chennault grew up near Waterproof and Ferriday, Louisiana.
Role in the Nixon campaign sabotage of Paris Peace Accords
Recorded in Nixon, A Life, by Jonathan Aitken, notes of Patrick Hillings, the former congressman accompanying the candidate's 1967 trip to Taipei, Nixon interjected just after an unexpected encounter with Mrs. Chennault "Get her away from me, Hillings, she's a chatterbox." Yet according to records of President Lyndon B. Johnson's secret monitoring of South Vietnamese officials and his political foes, Anna Chennault played a crucial role on behalf of the Nixon campaign which attempted to sabotage of the 1968 Paris peace talks which could have ended the Vietnam War. She arranged the contact with South Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem whom Richard Nixon met in secret in July 1968 in New York. It was through Chennault's intercession that the Nixon campaign advised Saigon to refuse participation in the talks, promising a better deal once elected. Records of FBI wiretaps show that Chennault phoned Bui Diem on November 2 with the message "hold on, we are gonna win." "The tactic ‘worked’, in that the South Vietnamese junta withdrew from the talks on the eve of the election, thereby destroying the peace initiative on which the Democrats had based their campaign. " Before the elections President Johnson “suspected () Richard Nixon, of political sabotage that he called treason”. In part because Nixon won the presidency, no one was ever prosecuted for this alleged crime.
