[iwar] Interesting story...
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Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 13:08:10 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: [iwar] Interesting story...
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http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001113231037.htm
November 13, 2000
Beijing's spies gain access to secrets
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Missteps and appeasement by the U.S. government helped China develop
into a dangerous global power, according to "The China Threat: How the
People's Republic Targets America" (Regnery), a new book by Bill Gertz,
national security reporter for The Washington Times. In the first of
three excerpts, the details the hunt for Chinese spies burrowed deep
inside the U.S. government.
In the early 1990s, the FBI came across evidence that amounted to a
counterspy's worst nightmare: Classified reports showed communist
China was running several "assets" spies, in the vernacular
who operated clandestinely inside the U.S. government.
One spy, however, was different from the others. He didn't work for
just any agency. He had burrowed deep inside the U.S. intelligence
community, meaning that the People's Republic of China had access to
vital secrets.
The information was revealed to FBI counterintelligence agents in highly
sensitive communications intercepts between the Chinese Embassy in
Washington and Chinese intelligence officers in Beijing. The intercepts
suggested the agent was supplying the Chinese with classified defense
information.
The spy's code name was "Ma" - Chinese for "horse."
A Chinese government official who defected to the United States after
the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 also told U.S. intelligence that
China had successfully developed five to 10 clandestine sources of
information here.
The defector said these agents were known as "Dear Friends" of
China. And one had access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence
data, known as Top Secret-Sensitive Compartmented Information, or SCI.
FBI counterintelligence agents' search for this Chinese
"mole" led to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the
Pentagon's intelligence arm. A key suspect emerged: Ronald
Montaperto.
At the time, Mr. Montaperto was a senior DIA analyst specializing in
"estimates," or analyses, of matters related to China and East
Asia.
His job required making official contacts with Chinese government and
military officials. In Washington, that meant defense attaches posted
to the Chinese Embassy.
Chinese defense attaches are officers who work for the military
intelligence department of the People's Liberation Army's
General Staff. One was PLA Maj. Gen. Yu Zhenghe, the air attache, who
had developed a close relationship with Mr. Montaperto close enough
to be invited to his wedding in 1990.
Warnings by defectors
This hunt for a Chinese mole was rare for the FBI. Most of the other
moles uncovered inside the U.S. government during the 1980s, in what
became known as the "Decade of the Spy," were spies for the
Soviet Union.
There was one exception: A Chinese intelligence officer who defected to
the United States in 1985 identified a Chinese language specialist for
the U.S. government as a spy.
The defector was Yu Qiangsheng, a senior intelligence officer in the
Ministry of State Security. Mr. Yu had extensive access to information
about Chinese intelligence operations and agents. It was Mr. Yu who
first put a CIA counterspy on to Larry Wu-Tai Chin, the Chinese language
specialist, who worked for the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information
Service. The service publishes translations of foreign news
publications and broadcasts.
Mr. Yu, who was resettled in the United States, remains under federal
protection. He fears for his life because of Beijing agents.
Mr. Chin eventually was unmasked. He had burrowed within the CIA for
about 30 years, passing valuable political intelligence to Beijing. He
was a rare catch, but before he could be interrogated thoroughly for
"damage assessment," he committed suicide in his jail cell.
After the bloody military crackdown on protesters in Beijing's
Tiananmen Square, several other Chinese intelligence officers defected,
determined to help the United States defeat the Communist government.
Two had worked inside the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
The defectors' information helped to confirm and update what Mr. Yu
had provided years earlier. They explained the care with which Chinese
intelligence contacted and serviced its clandestine agents. For
instance, intelligence officers never met their agents inside the United
States because the FBI was considered too good at catching spies. It
was safer to meet abroad, preferably in China.
These defectors had access to intelligence reports sent from the
embassy to Ministry of State Security headquarters in China that
revealed that Chinese intelligence had recruited several agents who were
referred to as "Dear Friends." The Dear Friends were rewarded
for valuable intelligence with paid trips to China, business
opportunities there and prestige-building access to senior Chinese
officials.
>From their knowledge of the Chinese Embassy's intelligence cables,
the defectors were able to tell U.S. intelligence debriefers about
details China obtained from the Dear Friends. The U.S. counterspies
were troubled that large amounts of extremely sensitive military
intelligence was being provided to China.
Interrogating a suspect:
Based on the defectors' testimony, the FBI began a major espionage
probe. The bureau came up with a list of 12 suspects that fit the
profile of the Dear Friend with access to U.S. military secrets.
During systematic "interviews" of each suspect, FBI agents met
with Mr. Montaperto in late 1991 or early 1992. At the time, he was
chief of DIA's estimates branch for China, a job he held from
September 1989 until his departure in February 1992. He had joined DIA
as an analyst in October 1981 and worked his way up.
Intelligence intercepts of Chinese government communications gathered by
the National Security Agency and supplied to the FBI later revealed that
one of the most important agents being run by Chinese intelligence was
code-named Ma.
FBI agents eventually confronted Mr. Montaperto during what the bureau
called "hostile interrogations" over the course of three
meetings. They asked bluntly whether he had passed classified
intelligence information to China's intelligence service.
No, Mr. Montaperto replied. He said any contacts with Chinese
intelligence were authorized. He did conceded to the DIA that he knew
Gen. Yu, the Chinese intelligence officer.
The FBI cleared Mr. Montaperto, though some counterintelligence
officials still suspected he was Ma but couldn't prove it. The
matter was put to rest conclusively, Mr. Montaperto said.
"I can honestly say they looked me in the eye and said, 'We
don't think you're a spy,' " he said of the meetings
with FBI agents.
But soon after the investigation, Mr. Montaperto left the DIA. In an
interview with this reporter, he said the FBI probe had nothing to do
with his departure. As for his friendship with Gen. Yu, he said:
"One does not have friends with Chinese officials" meaning his
contacts were strictly professional.
"Did General Yu attend your wedding?" this reporter asked.
"Yes," Mr. Montaperto said.
It was a relatively small wedding, he said, because it was his second
marriage. He said he invited Gen. Yu and other Chinese officials
because he thought it would be a good experience for them.
Hanging on the wall inside Mr. Montaperto's office was a large
scroll of Chinese calligraphy. It contained the characters "horse
dragon virtue," which when spoken in Mandarin sound like
"Montaperto." A second set of characters on the scroll are
Chinese for "war horse."
The scroll is signed by a Chinese intelligence officer, who, like Yu
Zhenghe, was an attache at the Chinese Embassy in Washington when Mr.
Montaperto received the scroll as a gift. Mr. Montaperto says a
student in Shanghai gave it to him.
A panda hugger?
The FBI never found the clandestine spy known as Ma. The bureau did
uncover several Dear Friends, but did not seek prosecution. The FBI was
hamstrung by the limited details provided by the former Chinese
intelligence officers, who had seen the cables but did not have hard
copies.
One Chinese agent was a Chinese-American employee at a U.S. defense
contractor in Northern Virginia. Although he was not prosecuted, his
access to classified information was cut off.
Mr. Montaperto next went to work at the Pentagon's National Defense
University at Fort McNair, a scenic base overlooking the Potomac River
in Southwest Washington. He became a "social science analyst"
with the university's Institute for National Strategic Studies, a
think tank for security issues.
Mr. Montaperto's biography as posted on the university's
Internet site contains only four sentences and makes no mention of his
DIA experience. It states only that he is a China affairs specialist:
"Currently he is defining strategies and policies for managing
future U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region."
Because the FBI could not prove its suspicions, Mr. Montaperto was
allowed to retain his top-secret security clearance. But he does not
have the same access to intelligence information as he had at DIA.
Gen. Yu, meanwhile, remains one of China's most important
intelligence officers. He works for Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the PLA's
deputy chief of staff for intelligence.
According to one U.S. national security official, Gen. Xiong returned
to the United States in 1996 during the Taiwan Strait crisis and tried
to meet Mr. Montaperto. The crisis was prompted by test firings of
Chinese missiles near Taiwan; the United States dispatched two aircraft
carrier battle groups to the region.
Mr. Montaperto's primary job at the government's National
Defense University is to oversee the China portion of an annual
"Strategic Assessment," to speak on China policy around the
world and to organize an occasional conference on China. His pronounced
pro-China view plays down that nation's military capabilities,
specifically its development of strategic and conventional forces.
But Mr. Montaperto says he is no "panda hugger," using the
derogatory term China specialists at the Pentagon employ for
soft-liners.
"For some people, I will always be considered a panda hugger,"
he added.
'Hide brightness':
When Congress ordered creation of a National Defense University
clearinghouse for intelligence on the People's Liberation Army, Mr.
Montaperto presented the plan to the Pentagon. It called for hiring 33
specialists, opening a large office in Southwest and spending $4.5
million a year.
At first the Pentagon rejected the plan because it appeared to promote
military-to-military contacts with the PLA rather than provide useful
information about the strategy and direction of the Chinese military.
The Clinton administration already had dramatically increased meetings
and exchanges with Chinese military leaders, which the Chinese exploited
to develop intelligence. Many in the Pentagon had had enough of that,
and senior officials objected to Mr. Montaperto's appointment as
director of the new center. But the university named him director
anyway.
The importance of the center was highlighted when Mr. Clinton opposed
the requirement to set it up.
By mandating the center and reports on China's military buildup,
Congress assumes "an outcome that is far from foreordained that
China is bent on becoming a military threat to the United States,"
the president said in signing a $289 billion defense bill in October
1999. "I believe we should not make it more likely that China will
choose this path by acting as if the decision has already been
made."
Yet the president's policies and those of the soft-liners who
refused to recognize the nature of the People's Republic of China
had done more to increase the danger from China than any of the skeptics
in Congress who believed more should be done to learn about the
Communist regime's military intentions.
Mr. Montaperto's minimizing of the threat is at one with Chinese
military policy, which involves deception preventing the U.S.
"hegemon" from recognizing China's emerging power until it
is greater, at least regionally, than that of the United States.
The late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said China must avoid provoking a
conflict with the United States until China has the military, economic
and political power to win.
In the words of Mr. Deng: "Hide brightness; nourish obscurity."
Or as the official translation in Beijing put it, "Bide our time and
build up our capabilities."
Friendly 'specialists':
Chinese military writings predict a "dangerous decade" when
that nation faces a strategic checkmate between 2020 and 2030.
By 2020, the United States will not be able to ignore China's
growing might. But China's military and strategic planners fear
their country will not be powerful enough to take on the United States
until 2030.
What China wanted was three more decades of Clinton-style
"engagement," a policy that downplays Chinese military
capabilities, encourages decreasing U.S. defense spending and gives
China major technical and financial boosts.
Chinese officials view certain specialists in the United States as
important outlets for Beijing's views. Many of these China
specialists are current or former government officials.
Unlike the thousands of political scientists who specialize in European
and Russian affairs, the China experts who specialize in international
security and foreign affairs could fit in a large conference room. And
most of them communicate via Internet discussion groups, a major target
of influence exerted by the Chinese government.
Take "Chinasec." Every morning, a group of about 100 high-level
U.S. policy-makers and intelligence officials receives e-mail postings
as part of this Internet discussion group, whose innocuous-sounding name
stands for "China security."
The informal electronic gathering includes some of the most important
China policy-makers in the U.S. government, including the
Pentagon's desk officer for China matters, Col. John Corbett. The
group is decidedly pro-China and often criticizes news articles in
particular this reporter's work for The Washington Times that
explore Chinese weapons sales to rogue states or espionage against the
United States.
For instance, when The Times reported on the critical views of China
held by Condoleeza Rice, a key foreign policy adviser to Republican
presidential nominee George W. Bush, Chinasec swung into action. The
e-mail network adopted the standard posture of the Clinton
administration: spin. It dismissed the article as exaggerated and the
work of a "nonexpert."
Chinasec's on-line discussion group is secret, but not in the sense
of that term denoted by the U.S. government classification. Most of
Chinasec's participants hold high-level security clearances. At
least 10 CIA officials are members.
Chinasec is part of an informal but powerful network of current and
former officials, academics and other China experts who exert a major
influence on U.S. policies toward China.
The litmus test:
The ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote that "supreme
excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without
fighting."
The view of China presented by these pro-Beijing specialists is not
manufactured by the Chinese Communist Politburo, but it serves the
Politburo's strategy. The key theme of the propaganda directed
abroad is simple: China is not a threat.
The theme is central to the Chinese Communist Party's overt and
covert influence efforts. It is the litmus test for those experts that
Beijing labels "Friends of China." And it was a constant refrain
of the Clinton administration.
Despite the soft-line approach, a public opinion poll last year showed
that Mr. Clinton's policy of engagement had not convinced the
majority of the American people that China is a benign power.
The results of the Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, published in
September 1999, indicate that 60 percent to 80 percent consider China to
be an "adversary," not a strategic partner.
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