John Knaus

John Knaus ( spook)
Born	May 30, 1923  Cedar Rapids,  Iowa,  Usa
Died	April 18, 2016 (Age 92)
Nationality	US
Alma mater	Stanford University
Interests	Tibet
CIA officer who in the late 1950s and in the 1960s trained and directed Tibetan guerrillas against China  CIA/European Division/Canada Station/Chief In office 1978 - 1981  CIA/East Asia Division/Tokyo Station/Chief In office 1972 - 1974 Succeeded by Horace Feldman

John Kenneth Knaus was a CIA officer who in the late 1950s and in the 1960s trained and directed Tibetan guerrillas against China, only to see U.S. support for the policy later evaporate after the rapprochement in 1972.

Education

After Army service during World War II, he graduated from Stanford University, where he also received a master’s degree in political science.

Career

He joined the CIA in 1952. During a 43-year CIA career, Knaus was based at times in India, Japan and Canada, and a substantial focus of his work involved aiding Tibetan guerrillas against communist China. Working from India and Colorado, Knaus was a key operations officer for this program. It included training of 300 soldiers in guerrilla warfare at Camp Hale, Colorado, a site chosen for its physical similarities to Eastern Tibet, where the guerrillas would be airdropped.

He was Chief of Station of the CIA station in Tokyo 1972-74.

He was Chief of Station in Canada 1978-81.

His last post before retiring was as CIA officer in residence at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. In retirement he was a research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research (now the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies).

After retiring in 1995, Knaus wrote two books based on his Tibetan experience, Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival, (1999), and Beyond Shangri-La: America and Tibet's Move into the Twenty-First Century (2012).

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