Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former case officer with the CIA, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide intelligence information to the Chinese government. He did not admit to actually providing information. You can read about the case in this story from the New York Times by Julien E. Barnes. According to Barnes, Lee’s case “highlighted the growing aggressiveness of Beijing’s spy services,” a statement for which, unfortunately, the intrepid reporter offers precisely zero evidence.
“Mr. Lee’s contact with Chinese intelligence came in 2010, at the same time the C.I.A.’s informant network in China collapsed,” Barnes writes. “Intelligence officials have been divided over how the network crumbled. While some believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources, others believed that Mr. Lee had given the Chinese at least some of the names.”
A few paragraphs later, Barnes provides more “information”: “The case has received a high level of attention because of an increase in Chinese espionage in recent years. Kevin Mallory, a former official with the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, was found guilty in June. Ron Hansen, another D.I.A. official, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in March.”
Yes, we have three convictions in one year. But why does that prove “growing aggressiveness”? Maybe we’re just better at catching them, or, even, just trying harder. Of the three, only Mallory actually passed classified information (three documents of unspecified significance). To my suspicious nostrils, Mr. Barnes’ dramatic words bear the odor of what journalists—the hip ones, at least—call “source greasing”—writing what your sources want to hear to they’ll like and trust you and feed you helpful information down the road. Three convictions, one of them based on events that took place in 2010, are not exactly evidence of a “spy wave”.
I’m quite willing to believe that all three men committed criminal acts, though I can wonder at the severity of the sentences, because I’m also quite willing to believe that courts are often too eager to accept the government’s word in espionage cases—the old “if you knew what I knew” routine. Clearly, the Chinese sought classified information, but, from these three spies, at least, they didn't seem to get much.
And what about the fact that this espionage is, in significant part, a response to our espionage? After all, we used to have a “network” of informants—that is to say, spies—in China as well, and, presumably, have worked hard to revive it. And then there was that “amusing” incident back in 2002 when a special Boeing jet built for the president of China was discovered to be rampant with bugs. A Washington Post story that ran back in the day cited a “Chinese source” as claiming that “27 listening devices had been found, including devices in the presidential bathroom and in the headboard of the presidential bed.” Very clever, these Americans!
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration’s efforts to convince the rest of the world not to use electronic equipment manufactured by China’s Huawei Technologies Co. have been going nowhere. Bloomberg’s Todd Shields and Bill Allison tell the tale:
Attempts to persuade other governments to exclude Huawei equipment from the next generation of super-fast mobile networks have hit a wall—even among close allies. So far, only a handful of countries, including Australia and Japan, have joined the U.S.’s call to boycott the Chinese company.
Not a single European nation has done so, not even the U.K., triggering a scolding from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in London on Wednesday. "Now is the exact opposite time to go wobbly," he said, invoking the famous locution that Margaret Thatcher, the U.K. prime minister from 1979 to 1990, used to spur the U.S. into sending troops to Kuwait after Iraq invaded it in 1990. “Would she allow China to control the internet of the future?"
Huawei, meanwhile, is piling up record sales, forging into new markets, passing Apple Inc. as a phone maker and cementing its position as a leading global supplier of telecom gear.
Today, of course, stocks are falling through the basement in response to Trump’s threatened butt-kicking of China over trade. Maybe all this “aggressiveness” stuff isn’t the way to go.
Afterwords
Mallory was given a life sentence for conversing with, and passing three classified documents to, Chinese intelligence officials.1 He also received $25,000 from the Chinese, according to the prosecution. Hansen pled guilty to a single charge, “attempt to gather or deliver defense information”, took $800,000 from the Chinese government and was carrying classified information with the intent to pass it to the Chinese when arrested, according to the government.
UPDATE
WashPost columnist/CIA mouthpiece David Ignatius cranks up the volume to 12, or even 13, in the Lee case in this pulse-pounding, albeit inuenndo-riden and fact-free tale of, well, something, titled "The saga of the Chinese mole reads like a spy thriller”, even though there was no evidence presented at court to show that Lee ever passed any information to China, either before or after leaving the CIA. But that doesn't stop Ignatius from unleashing a tale of Agency derring-do that almost covers up the possibility that, according to this report for NBC News by Tom Winter, Ken Dilanian and Jonathan Dienst, the CIA let the Chinese capture and execute 20 U.S. spies out of sheer incompetence. According to the NBC article, "One theory is that Lee may have helped the Chinese do that [identify U.S. spies]. But two former officials said the CIA's system for exchanging messages with its agents was shockingly primitive and subject to easy penetration by the Chinese.”2
Dave links to the NBC piece but leaves out the stuff about "shockingly primitive”. Instead, Dave ends with a florid, cloak and dagger finish:
Here’s a last Chinese riddle. Experts say that in the Thailand meeting [which provided information pointing to Lee], the Chinese operative asked the former CIA officer about cases that Lee shouldn’t have known about. Which leads to an eerie question: Was there another Chinese mole, buried even deeper?
Spy fact can be much scarier than spy fiction.
I guess it can, Dave. But here's a Washington riddle for you: which one are you pitching?
1. Mallory did not plead guilty. It’s a little hard to understand why this would be enough to merit a life sentence. Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps the court just gave the government the ruling it asked for because spies are bad.
2. The NBC article, written before Lee's guilty plea, contains all sorts of sweeping allegations that are missing from the Times article, written after the trial, that I cited at the top of this piece.
