Podcast Episode #121 - How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World with Alex Joske
A Chinese Ministry of State Security officer named Xie Shanxiao was photographed inside a Los Angeles bookstore in a group which included Katrina Leung, one of the most infamous Chinese spies to ever operate in the US.
At the time of their meeting, Xie was working as general manager of an MSS front company called the China International Culture Publishing Company, and Leung was a student activist with several pro-China organizations.
The FBI began investigating Leung due to her work at a Chinese firm suspected of economic espionage, but decided to recruit her, giving her the code name Parlor Maid. Leung showed great promise, somehow able to access high levels of the Chinese government and bring back valuable intel. The career of her FBI handler, JJ Smith, saw a major boost for his handling of a valuable source.
But all was not as it seemed. Smith had taken Leung as his mistress, and his career was now directly tied to her perceived success. And Leung was not a double agent for the US but had been under MSS control right from the beginning. Over the course of her 20 years as an FBI source, she was paid approximately $1,700,000 for her hundreds of intelligence reports, but continued to pass sensitive information to the MSS, including reporting that the Chinese consulate had been bugged by the FBI.
Warning signs were ignored as they endangered what was perceived to be the FBI’s best source on China. Even after the NSA intercepted a call in 1991 between Leung and a Chinese intelligence officer in which she revealed the status of several FBI investigations, she remained on the agency’s payroll. She was finally arrested in 2003, but charges were dismissed after the presiding judge determined there was prosecutorial misconduct in the case. She later married her FBI agent JJ Smith.
For episode 121 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Alex Joske, an author and open-source analyst who specializes in the history of Chinese covert operations. We discussed the many spies, front companies, and influence operations China has used over the years to hide their true intentions and fool Westerners into unwittingly doing their bidding.
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