In the history of bad ideas, what could be worse than having the CIA’s Chinese agents communicate with their agency handlers on China’s Internet?
Originating in operations in the Middle East, the Internet-based system had been brought to China on the assumption, Business Insider tells us, that “it could not be breached and made the CIA ‘invincible.’ ” And so, starting in 2010, for two years “Chinese officials began accurately identifying spies working for the US.”
To risk your life for an organization this gullible is tragic. “About 30 spies were reportedly executed, though some intelligence officials told Foreign Policy that 30 was a low estimate.”
Working hard
In 2017, The New York Times exposed the scandal. It’s back in the news now because of a recent statement by current CIA director William Burns.
Mr. Burns, speaking at a security conference in Colorado [in July], was asked about the loss of the recruited Chinese and other agents that U.S. officials say began in 2010….
“We’ve made progress and we’re working very hard to make sure we have a very strong human intelligence capability to complement what we can acquire through other methods,” Mr. Burns said.
Even as China was rolling up America’s Chinese spies, it also began tracking U.S. agents worldwide. In 2020, Foreign Policy reported that China had used stolen data “to Expose CIA Operatives in Africa and Europe.”
Around 2013, U.S. intelligence began noticing an alarming pattern: Undercover CIA personnel, flying into countries in Africa and Europe for sensitive work, were being rapidly and successfully identified by Chinese intelligence, according to three former U.S. officials. The surveillance by Chinese operatives began in some cases as soon as the CIA officers had cleared passport control.
Game, set, and match to Beijing.
A better, more basic question to ask Director Burns, then, might not be so much about recruiting more agents in China. But more about: “What have you done to raise the level of basic competency in your organization?”
Burns’s simple and nebulous statement in July 2023 about how the CIA has been “working very hard” provoked a flurry of Chinese responses, as manifested in headlines like these:
- “China vows countermeasures after CIA chief William Burns says agency is working to rebuild spy network”
- “China Intensifies Espionage Crackdown Targeting Alleged Spies for the CIA”
- “China wants to mobilize entire nation in counter-espionage”
- “China arrests military industry worker on accusations of spying for the CIA”
Hardly working
The U.S. Justice Department had already sort of started its own counterespionage program. In February 2022, The Washington Post reported that the China Initiative, “unveiled to great fanfare in 2018,” had been “intended to counter a rising tide of Chinese economic espionage, cybertheft and influence operations.”
Unfortunately, it ran into “problems” when it began arresting people.
Some lawmakers and civil liberties groups have criticized the prosecution of academics—often of Chinese descent—who allegedly did not disclose ties to Chinese institutions while applying for federal grants. Their complaints, including that the department was engaging in racial profiling, took on added urgency as some cases failed and as anti-Asian hate incidents mounted within the United States.
Last month we learned from Politico that The Biden administration was shutting down the China Initiative “following stumbles in a series of criminal cases and accusations that it amounted to racial profiling.”
Stumbles. There’s that competency question again. But the political considerations also weigh heavily.
Assistant attorney General Matthew Olsen says that he has come to conclude that the China Initiative “is not the right approach to meet the threat in the coming years. Instead, the current threats demand a broader approach.”
Does this mean that for every Chinese agent we arrest, we also need to arrest a matching agent from some other country?
The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that in spying performed for Beijing since the year 2000, “49% of incidents directly involved Chinese military or government employees; 41% were private Chinese citizens; 10% were non-Chinese actors (usually U.S. persons recruited by Chinese officials).”
Given these figures, it has no doubt been hard for our Justice Department to “equitably” apportion blame among Chinese and non-Chinese agents in these espionage cases.
The FBI’s new report on China spying begins with an apology: “To be clear, the adversary is not the Chinese people or people of Chinese descent or heritage. The threat comes from the programs and policies pursued by an authoritarian government.”
Perhaps we could meet in the middle? People of Chinese descent or heritage working for an authoritarian government might be “the adversary”?
A final question
Our sentencing of agents convicted of spying on the United States for China may offer clues as to how seriously the American government takes China’s spying.
In January, U.S. sailor Wenheng Zhao “pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of receiving a bribe,” for which he was sentenced to 27 months in prison and fined $5,500. Zhao had “collected nearly $15,000 in bribes in 14 different payments from a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for information, photos and videos of involving Navy exercises, operations and facilities between August 2021 through at least May 2023, prosecutors said.”
Twenty-seven months in prison, a $5,500 fine. On the other hand, in China, CIA spies were executed.
Which party is serious? □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?”
“Is the United States up to the job? [Bill Gertz discusses a MITRE report] on how America’s intelligence agencies are failing to meet the wide-ranging and omnipresent challenge presented by the PRC….”
