Anna Chennault Anna Chennault , born Chen Xiangmei ( ) , also known as Anna Chan Chennault or Anna Chen Chennault , is the widow of World War II aviation hero Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault , and an Asian - American politician of the Republican Party . History . Born in Beijing , China , on June 23 , 1925 , Chen Xiangmei received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chinese from Lingnan University in Hong Kong in 1944 . She was a war correspondent for the Central News Agency from 1944 to 1948 and wrote for the Hsin Ming Daily News in Shanghai , from 1944 to 1949 . She is the younger sister of Cynthia Chan , who was a U . S . Army nurse in the group under Claire Chennault in Kunming . While visiting Cynthia Chan in Kunming , she met Claire Chennault . Chen Xiangmei was married in 1947 to 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 ) . After the war he was a wealthy , well - known celebrity . In 1946 , Chennault was divorced from his first wife , the former Nell Thompson , whom he had wed in 1911 in Winnsboro , Louisiana , and the mother of his eight children , the youngest of whom , Rosemary Chennault Simrall , died in August 2013 . Rosemary survived all of her seven siblings . After her husband ' s death , Anna Chennault worked as a publicist for the Civil Air Transport in Taipei , Taiwan ( 1946 to 1957 ) and was vice - president of international affairs for the Flying Tiger Line that he founded , and was president of TAC International ( from 1976 ) . She was an occasional correspondent for the Central News Agency ( from 1965 ) and the U . S . correspondent for the " Hsin Shen Daily News " ( from 1958 ) . She was a broadcaster for the Voice of America from 1963 to 1966 . In the U . S . she received presidential appointments from U . S . President Richard Nixon to the President ' s Advisory Committee for the John F . Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U . S . National Committee for UNESCO ( from 1970 ) . She was president of Chinese Refugee Relief from 1962 to 1970 and has served as president of the General Claire Chennault Foundation after 1960 . Chennault served as a national committeewoman for the District of Columbia of the Republican Party ( since 1960 ) and led the National Republican Asian Assembly . She has assisted many Chinese Americans to become active in politics . 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 help the U . S . ally South Vietnam preserve its independence . 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 Republicans 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 . " 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 violation of the Logan Act . Cartha " Deke " DeLoach , then FBI Deputy Director , mentioned in his book " Hoover ' s FBI " that his agency was only able to connect a single November 2 , 1968 phone call from the then Vice President candidate Spiro Agnew to Anna Chennault , unrecorded details of which Johnson believed were subsequently transmitted to Nixon . Bibliography . Anna Chennault has written several books :