Story 3M3 How the F.B.I. Cracked a Chinese Spy Ring

How the F.B.I. Cracked a Chinese Spy Ring

by
Anonymous Coward
in legal on (#3M3)
story imageRemember Greg Chung , the Chinese spy who had infiltrated NASA and was pocketing technology for his nation of birth? It started long before that. Rewind to 2004, when the FBI, reeling from its failure to make a conviction in a previous case, was trailing Chi Mak, a Chinese national now sporting an American passport who was working for Power Paragon, a US Navy defense contractor in California.
The agents assembled the contents of the bag like a jigsaw puzzle. Patched together, the pieces constituted two documents, one handwritten and the other machine-printed. Gunnar Newquist, an investigator assigned to the case by the N.C.I.S., spotted an English phrase at the bottom of the handwritten sheet. "DDX," he said, reading it aloud. "That's a Navy destroyer." The handwritten text turned out to be a list of naval technologies and programs: submarine propulsion networks; systems for defending against nuclear, chemical, and biological attacks; and others. On the printed sheet were instructions about going to conferences to collect information. Gaylord was certain that the two documents were tasking lists from Chinese intelligence.
A great read over at the New Yorker, and a reminder that sometimes a bit of paranoia is a good thing: you may be right.
Reply 2 comments

We get it (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-19 07:21 (#1QH)

With all the spy and antispy stories lately they have to tell us a success story again and make sure we know China and Russia are the bad guys... yawn

Re: We get it (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-19 12:22 (#1QM)

I dunno about good guys and bad guys, but it's certainly true Russia and China do a hell of a lot of spying. You don't hear about Ugandan spies much because regardless of how well the country is doing as a nation, they just don't have many/any spies. Russia and China meanwhile, are putting money and effort into their spying divisions (and in Russia's case, that spectacularly good looking redheaded spy), and it's probably bearing fruit. I don't think it's about reminding everyone China/Russia are the bad guys. It's about reminding everyone China/Russia have spies.