MCLC: China's spies catching up

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: China's spies catching up
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (12/10/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/opinion/sunday/chinas-spies-are-catching-
up.html

OPINION
China¹s Spies Are Catching Up
By DAVID WISE

IN 1995, a middle-aged Chinese man walked into a C.I.A. station in
Southeast Asia and offered up a trove of secret Chinese documents. Among
them was a file containing the top-secret design of the American W-88
nuclear warhead that sits atop the missiles carried by Trident submarines.

He told a story to the C.I.A. that was so bizarre it might just be true.
He said that he worked in China¹s nuclear program and had access to the
archive where classified documents were stored. He went there after hours
one night, scooped up hundreds of documents and stuffed them into a duffel
bag, which he then tossed out a second-story window to evade security
guards. Unfortunately, the bag broke and the papers scattered.

Outside, he collected the files and stuffed them back into the torn bag.
Although many of the documents were of interest for their intelligence
content, it was the one about the W-88 that roiled American
counterintelligence most because it contained highly classified details
about a cutting-edge warhead design.

The United States had been producing small nuclear warheads for decades,
and the Chinese were desperate to find out how to build miniaturized
warheads themselves. China¹s military was, and still is, playing catch-up
to the United States.

China¹s success in obtaining the secret design of the W-88 is the most
dramatic example of a fact that United States counterintelligence agencies
have been slow to recognize: just as China has become a global economic
power, it has developed a world-class espionage service ‹ one that rivals
the C.I.A.

During the cold war, dozens of counterintelligence agents in the F.B.I.
and the C.I.A. pursued Soviet and then Russian spies. The K.G.B. was seen
as the enemy; China took a back seat. Only a handful of F.B.I. agents
specialized in Chinese spy cases, and their work was not regarded as
career-enhancing. Washington¹s ongoing failure to make Chinese espionage a
priority has allowed China to score a number of successes in its espionage
efforts against the United States.

China¹s foreign intelligence service and its military intelligence agency
actively spy on the American defense industry, our nuclear weapons labs,
Silicon Valley, our intelligence agencies and other sensitive targets.
In January, when Robert M. Gates, then the defense secretary, was visiting
China, Beijing unveiled a stealth fighter jet
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/world/asia/12fighter.html>, the J-20.
The disclosure demonstrated that China had achieved a stealth capability,
allowing it to conceal its planes, ships and missiles from radar ‹ similar
to the American stealth technology that China has been seeking to acquire
by clandestine means for years.

Later that month, an engineer who worked on the B-2 stealth bomber for
Northrop Grumman was sentenced to 32 years in prison
<http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/January/11-nsd-104.html> for passing
defense secrets to China. In exchange for more than $100,000, he had
helped design a stealth exhaust system for China¹s cruise missiles to make
it difficult to detect and destroy them.

And in August, reports attributed to American intelligence officials
asserted <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/world/asia/15copter.html> that
Pakistan had allowed Chinese experts to inspect the remains of the stealth
helicopter that crashed during the May mission to kill Osama bin Laden.
Although Pakistan and China denied the reports, Beijing would have a great
interest in examining the tail of the Black Hawk helicopter, the part of
the aircraft that was not destroyed by the Navy Seals team, to learn more
secret details of American stealth technology.

Meanwhile, the mystery of the leaked W-88 warhead design remains unsolved.
At first, the American government suspected that Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos
nuclear scientist, had leaked the W-88, but it produced no evidence that
he had done so. He was held in solitary confinement for nine months,
eventually pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling classified
information and won an extraordinary apology from the federal judge
<http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/14/news/mn-20908> who presided over
the case.
Misled <http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/bellows_chap7.html> by the Energy
Department, the F.B.I. had chased the wrong person for three years.
Finally, in 1999, Robert Bryant, then the bureau¹s deputy director,
enlisted Stephen Dillard, a veteran counterintelligence agent, to head a
major investigation of how China had acquired the design of the W-88.

The inquiry was led by the F.B.I. and run by a task force of 300
investigators from 11 federal agencies, including the Defense Department,
the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence
Agency. On Sept. 11, 2001, some of the investigators were killed when
American Airlines Flight 77 was flown by terrorists into the Pentagon.

But the investigation went on. Mr. Dillard¹s task force, operating out of
public view, looked at the nuclear weapons laboratories, government
agencies and defense contractors in California and several other states
who had manufactured parts of the warhead. The F.B.I. interviewed the
walk-in, who was by now living in the United States, but he could shed no
light on the source of the document.

Finally, after four years, the investigation ended with American
intelligence agencies no closer to knowing how China obtained the secret
design of the nuclear warhead. The answer remains locked up in Beijing.

More than a decade later, China¹s spies continue to conduct espionage
against military targets. Last year, a Pentagon official was sentenced
<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2010862677_apusdefensesp
ying.html> to prison, the last of 10 people rounded up by the F.B.I., all
members of a loosely connected Chinese spy network on the West and East
Coasts that was run by Lin Hong, a spymaster in Beijing. The data that
made its way to China included information on the Navy¹s Quiet Electric
Drive, designed to make submarines harder to detect, the B-1 bomber and
projected American arms sales to Taiwan.

China has even penetrated the F.B.I. In 2003, Katrina Leung, an F.B.I.
informant for two decades, was found to be working
<http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Trap-Americas-Secret-China/dp/0547553102> as
a double agent for Beijing.

Astonishingly, the two top F.B.I. agents
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5634-2003Apr10?language=printer>
 in California responsible for Chinese counterintelligence were having
affairs with Ms. Leung at the same time, allowing her to help herself to
classified documents that were brought to her home by one of the agents.

China¹s success in stealing American secrets will provide a continuing
challenge to the spy catchers. And Washington¹s counterintelligence
agents, accustomed to the comfortable parameters of the cold war and more
recent battles against Al Qaeda, must rethink their priorities and shift
their focus, resources and energy eastward to counter China¹s spies.

If not, more secrets like the W-88 nuclear warhead will continue to find
their way to Beijing.

David Wise is a writer and historian
<http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Trap-Americas-Secret-China/dp/0547553102> of
intelligence and espionage. His most recent book is ³Tiger Trap: America¹s
Secret Spy War with China.²