One has to wonder how many Chinese Agents are operating on U.S. soil. With constant reports of Front Companies, and attacks on the Falun Gong in the U.S., you get a sense Chinese Black Operations abound, unabated and unfettered.
Something that interested me was an article in NZ which pointed to the idea that Chinese operatives are operating more freely because of the focus on Counter-terrorism. What an interesting concept: while America worries about terrorist sleeper cells, Chinese intelligence cells rape U.S. technology and Chinese operatives harass, wire-tap, and assault U.S. citizens. It's sometimes hard to believe we are living in America! Has anyone asked the Chinese to make sure the go to the FISA court and get warrent to tap our citizens?
Spies in our midst, says SIS
A focus on counter-terrorism has allowed foreign spies to continue to operate in New Zealand unabated, the Security Intelligence Service says.
Spies were collecting economic and political information and scientific and technological research and development to further their own national interests. "Their activities can be harmful to New Zealand's international and economic wellbeing," Mr Woods said.
Auckland University's Paul Buchanan, a former CIA adviser, said the threat of espionage, especially by the Chinese as they sought to boost their influence in the South Pacific, was much more real.
"If they are going to be the next superpower, they have no choice but to expand their intelligence gathering."
Showing posts with label front company. Show all posts
Showing posts with label front company. Show all posts
Friday, February 23, 2007
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Chinese Assassin's Mace
Another surprisingly quite fact about the Chinese Military and Chinese Intelligence: They are knee deep in the U.S. critical infrastructure and electronic backbone. The threat may no longer be from outside, but what they have left inside. Think of it as a front company within the U.S. electronic system. There is sits, working fine...seemingly a normal bit of software until the Mother-ship calls upon it to begin destroying U.S. networks. You can almost hear the clock ticking...tic..tic..tic.
Published on Feb. 13, 2007
NORFOLK, Va. -- At the Naval Network Warfare Command here, U.S. cyber defenders track and investigate hundreds of suspicious events each day. But the predominant threat comes from Chinese hackers, who are constantly waging all-out warfare against Defense Department networks, Netwarcom officials said.
Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication, said a senior Netwarcom official, who spoke to reporters on background Feb 12. The conflict has reached the level of a campaign-style, force-on-force engagement, he said.
The motives of Chinese hackers run the gamut, including technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD networks for future action, the official said.
Chinese hackers were responsible for an intrusion in November 2006 that disabled the Naval War College’s network, forcing the college to shut down its e-mail and computer systems for several weeks, the official said. Forensic analysis showed that the Chinese were seeking information on war games in development at NWC, the official said.
Published on Feb. 13, 2007
NORFOLK, Va. -- At the Naval Network Warfare Command here, U.S. cyber defenders track and investigate hundreds of suspicious events each day. But the predominant threat comes from Chinese hackers, who are constantly waging all-out warfare against Defense Department networks, Netwarcom officials said.
Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication, said a senior Netwarcom official, who spoke to reporters on background Feb 12. The conflict has reached the level of a campaign-style, force-on-force engagement, he said.
The motives of Chinese hackers run the gamut, including technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD networks for future action, the official said.
Chinese hackers were responsible for an intrusion in November 2006 that disabled the Naval War College’s network, forcing the college to shut down its e-mail and computer systems for several weeks, the official said. Forensic analysis showed that the Chinese were seeking information on war games in development at NWC, the official said.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Exposed: Chinese Black Operations On U.S. Soil
Sounds like the stuff movies are made out of. Spend a little time reading the headlines and it wont take you long to understand there is a greater chance that not that Chinese operatives are working their MOJO on U.S. soil.
For now, their hostile operations seem to be directed at dissidents such as the Uigurs and Falun Gong. Of course, read through my previous posts and you'll get a good history of their U.S. based operations respective of Front Companies, Economic Espionage, Political Influence, and Theft of Sensitive U.S. Technology.
In an interesting article, Forbes outlines a number of Chinese black operations. With black operations comes, sleeper cells, safe houses, and spys..... the stuff spy movies are made of. Sexy stuff huh?
FORBES
Overseas Falun Gong practitioners are, for example, leading an underground campaign to hack China's Internet firewalls to counter the Chinese Communist Party's news blackout and propaganda in the Middle Kingdom. But there are many skirmishes between Chinese communism and Chinese spiritualism taking place on U.S. soil.
Last year, however, Falun Gong practitioners worldwide were themselves barraged with harassing phone calls, including death threats. Some of these campaigns involved hours of continuous and simultaneous ringing of work and home phones and private cell phones.
A few days before the July 1999 crackdown in China, Falun Gong Web sites in Canada and the U.S. began to crash. According to Ethan Gutmann, author of Losing the New China, a Falun Gong practitioner in Washington traced the "denial of service" hacker attacks through an Asia-Pacific Internet registry, to No. 14 East Chang'an Street, Beijing, where China's Ministry of Public Security is located.
The Chinese government's persecution of Falun Gong followers is allegedly run by the notorious Office 6-10, a specially created unit that has overseen a terror campaign, which survivors say includes mass arrests, imprisonment in labor camps, brainwashing, torture and, in some cases, murder, for all those who failed to renounce their allegiance to Falun Gong.
For now, their hostile operations seem to be directed at dissidents such as the Uigurs and Falun Gong. Of course, read through my previous posts and you'll get a good history of their U.S. based operations respective of Front Companies, Economic Espionage, Political Influence, and Theft of Sensitive U.S. Technology.
In an interesting article, Forbes outlines a number of Chinese black operations. With black operations comes, sleeper cells, safe houses, and spys..... the stuff spy movies are made of. Sexy stuff huh?
FORBES
Overseas Falun Gong practitioners are, for example, leading an underground campaign to hack China's Internet firewalls to counter the Chinese Communist Party's news blackout and propaganda in the Middle Kingdom. But there are many skirmishes between Chinese communism and Chinese spiritualism taking place on U.S. soil.
Last year, however, Falun Gong practitioners worldwide were themselves barraged with harassing phone calls, including death threats. Some of these campaigns involved hours of continuous and simultaneous ringing of work and home phones and private cell phones.
A few days before the July 1999 crackdown in China, Falun Gong Web sites in Canada and the U.S. began to crash. According to Ethan Gutmann, author of Losing the New China, a Falun Gong practitioner in Washington traced the "denial of service" hacker attacks through an Asia-Pacific Internet registry, to No. 14 East Chang'an Street, Beijing, where China's Ministry of Public Security is located.
The Chinese government's persecution of Falun Gong followers is allegedly run by the notorious Office 6-10, a specially created unit that has overseen a terror campaign, which survivors say includes mass arrests, imprisonment in labor camps, brainwashing, torture and, in some cases, murder, for all those who failed to renounce their allegiance to Falun Gong.
Friday, February 2, 2007
China's Covert Space Force
While China pollutes the U.S. political system, blinds U.S. satellites with laser, stalks the U.S. fleet and uses the tools of unrestricted warfare (front companies, economic attack, etc.) they have also been busy building a cover "Space Force". No doubt this is driven by the PLA who's open policy is to attack the U.S.
Image Credit
AIRFORCE TIMES
China’s direct-ascent anti-satellite missile is the latest test to prove counter-space capabilities. Last year, senior U.S. officials said China had attempted to use lasers to blind American satellites.
“We have three books and several dozen articles from China that go back 10 years, all of which advocate all types of anti-satellite weapons and they have a consistent theme — they have to be deployed covertly so that in a crisis with America, China can shoot down some satellites as a deterrent message,” Pillsbury said.
“These documents advocate multiple approaches to preemptive strikes on satellites from plasma clouds, pellets, directed-energy weapons, orbiting spacecraft and attacking ground stations with special forces,” he said.
A Burger For China
One thing is for certain, China understands massive corruption and they were willing to import the grotesque practice to the highest levels of the U.S. government. From front companies, tobribery, China plays nothing short of high stakes hard-ball. Their presence as a military power has come at the loss of U.S. technology and the exploitation of U.S. sensitive enterprises.
Berger's China work makes archive heist look tame
Two weeks back, the Chinese military shocked America by shooting one of China's aging satellites out of the sky with a ground-based missile. Old as the satellite may have been, it was still up 500 miles in space. This was a scarily impressive bit of saber rattling.
As it happens, no American played a greater role in the success of that shoot-down than the much-discussed chairman and founder of Stonebridge International, Samuel "Sandy" Berger.
In February 1996, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was dispatched to New York to pick up checks from Schwartz in person. It was the president's way of signaling his obeisance. For all his failings, it disgusted Brown that Clinton had turned him into little more than a "bagman."
Schwartz did not make his donations in an informational vacuum. According to the New York Times, "February 1996" represented a moment of keen impasse between warring forces within the Clinton administration. With his generous support, Schwartz surely was hoping to breach the enemy's defenses.
The enemy in this case was his own Pentagon and intelligence community. Much to Schwartz's frustration, they were standing firm on the question of commercial satellites.
Given the vital technology contained therein, much of it secret, they had convinced Secretary of State Warren Christopher in October 1995 to keep the satellites on the so-called ''munitions list,'' an inventory of the nation's most sensitive military and intelligence-gathering equipment.
The president also faced strong resistance from the genuine liberals within the administration. In the margin of a December 1995 document, for example, senior adviser George Stephanopoulos scrawled a vulgar note strongly criticizing the president's China policy.
Soon after he returned from his New York rendezvous with Schwartz, Brown learned he would be meeting – by order of the White House – with a character by the name of Wang Jun. The sheer bravado of Wang Jun's petition and the brazenness of the Clintons in welcoming him leave one awestruck.
Wang Jun chaired Poly Technologies, a company controlled by the People's Liberation Army. According to a Rand Corporation report forced from the U.S. Department of Commerce by a federal lawsuit, one of Poly Technologies' profit centers was the "importation and distribution of semi-automatic rifles for the U.S. domestic market."
Between 1987 and 1993, the company and its affiliates sold more than $200 million worth of these guns in the United States. When Clinton piously signed into law the banning of certain semi-automatic weapons in 1994, Poly Technologies only profited. They exploited export loopholes to circumvent the ban and ultimately resorted to old-fashioned smuggling.
On the day of the Wang meeting, Feb. 6, 1996, Brown did not know about Wang Jun's arms trade. Brown only knew the meeting was to be about satellite export controls.
This makes sense as Wang also owned a huge stake in a Hong Kong satellite company. Brown's task was to assure the Chinese that America intended to be a most friendly trading partner, and if Wang ever had any problems dealing with the United States, he could call Brown directly at anytime.
Brown had little choice in the matter. Later that afternoon, the White House also insisted that he join Wang at an intimate "coffee" with President Clinton. It was an only-in-America kind of moment. Wang Jun, who had cut arms deals with Chinese allies in places like Libya, Iran, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan, now found himself at a cordial private coffee with – of all people – the president of the United States.
This friendly meeting occurred less than four years after Clinton had excoriated the first President Bush for "coddling tyrants" in Beijing and conducting "business as usual with those who murdered freedom at Tiananmen Square." No matter.
Clinton pal Charlie Trie had greased the Wang Jun meeting with a $50,000 payment. To the president's humble credit, as the Thompson Committee would later report, he did admit that the meeting with the PLA arms dealer, Wang, was "clearly inappropriate."
The president did not apologize, however, for signing waivers for four more satellite launches by Chinese rockets on that same February day. The president approved these waivers despite reports the month before that China continued to export nuclear technology to Pakistan and missiles to Iran, the latter deal Wang was suspected of brokering.
Just a week or so after Wang Jun's excellent Washington adventure, a Chinese Long March 3B rocket carrying the Loral-built Intelsat 708 satellite crashed just after liftoff and killed or injured at least 60 people in a nearby village. This was the third Long March failure in the last three years involving U.S.-built satellite payloads.
The Pentagon welcomed the news of the Chinese failure. With the collapse of the Soviets, the People's Republic had emerged as America's most serious potential enemy, and its leaders weren't afraid to say so.
Just a few months earlier, in fact, a Chinese Military officer had warned American Ambassador Chas Freeman, "If you hit us now, we can hit back. So you will not make those threats [about Taiwan]." The officer then proffered the following not so cryptic caveat: "In the end you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei."
American technical advice was making these Chinese boasts more than an empty threat. And yet in their relentless drive to raise money, the Clintons were fully prepared to broker that advice. In March 1996, Berger pressed on and managed to finesse a compromise that sent satellite control to Brown at Commerce and cost the Pentagon its veto power.
Feeling confident about his relationship with the president, Schwartz up and dispatched a Loral-led review team to China to assess the February 1996 failure of the Long March 3B rocket and suggest refinements.
The Cox Committee would later describe Schwartz's actions as "an unlicensed defense service for the PRC that resulted in the improvement of the reliability of the PRC's military rockets and ballistic missiles."
So serious was the offense that in 1998 the Criminal Division of the Justice Department launched an investigation. Incredibly, while the investigation was in process, Berger, now national security adviser, sent a memo to the president urging him to "waive the legislative restriction on the export to China of the communications satellites and related equipment for the Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) Chinasat 8 project."
This waiver would present a huge problem for the prosecution. Berger admitted as much: "Justice believes that a jury would not convict once it learned that the president had found SS/L's Chinasat 8 project to be in the national interest."
But Berger was not about to let that stop him: "We will take the firm position that this waiver does not exonerate or in any way prejudge SS/L with respect to its prior unauthorized transfers to China." Berger was blowing smoke, and he knew it. A waiver would make prosecution all but impossible.
The president could only issue a waiver, however, if it served America's "national interest." Berger made an almost comically specious case that it did, arguing satellite technology would give remote Chinese villagers access "to people and ideas in democratic societies." During these misbegotten years, one trembles at what the villagers might have learned about American democracy.
So much for the national interest. Ross then added the kicker, sure to win the president's heart. "Bernard Schwartz had intended to raise this issue with you at the Blair dinner, but missed you in the crowd." Schwartz knew he had a friend in the White House. The president approved the waiver, and the prosecution came to naught.
This story merits its own book, but what deserves immediate comment is the willingness of Berger and the Clintons to risk everything to keep the cash pipeline open. In his purloining of the National Archives, Berger risked everything once again. He and the Clintons have apparently come to take the major media's complicity for granted.
As for Schwartz, he kept the cash pipeline open and full. Before he was through, Schwartz and Loral would donate roughly $2 million to the Clinton cause. Whether Schwartz gave additional money or favors off the books is a question that deserves asking. Before his untimely death in April 1996, Brown was reporting that he had.
Wang Jun ran into problems of his own when on May 23, 1996, CNN breathlessly reported "the largest seizure of smuggled automatic weapons in U.S. history." The San Francisco Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had infiltrated a smuggling ring and confiscated 2,000 fully automatic AK-47 rifles imported from China.
The weapons were found on board a COSCO ship, the enterprise that had been trying to secure the Long Beach Naval Station. CNN traced the rifles to Wang's Poly Technologies.
Wang, however, had not wasted his investment. Someone in the know did the arms merchant a large favor by leaking the news of the BATF gun-smuggling investigation well before it was wrapped up. The Bay-area bust was premature. The BATF was not able to nail the operation's ringleaders. Like Sandy Berger himself, Wang Jun was freed up for further mischief.
We may never know what Berger stole from the National Archives or how much damage he did to the nation's battle against Islamic terrorists.
It is hard to imagine, though, that China would have developed the capacity to shoot satellites out of the sky – certainly not this quickly – without the help of its good friends in the White House. At the end of the day, this betrayal will make for an anxiety of much greater magnitude.
Berger's China work makes archive heist look tame
Two weeks back, the Chinese military shocked America by shooting one of China's aging satellites out of the sky with a ground-based missile. Old as the satellite may have been, it was still up 500 miles in space. This was a scarily impressive bit of saber rattling.
As it happens, no American played a greater role in the success of that shoot-down than the much-discussed chairman and founder of Stonebridge International, Samuel "Sandy" Berger.
In February 1996, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was dispatched to New York to pick up checks from Schwartz in person. It was the president's way of signaling his obeisance. For all his failings, it disgusted Brown that Clinton had turned him into little more than a "bagman."
Schwartz did not make his donations in an informational vacuum. According to the New York Times, "February 1996" represented a moment of keen impasse between warring forces within the Clinton administration. With his generous support, Schwartz surely was hoping to breach the enemy's defenses.
The enemy in this case was his own Pentagon and intelligence community. Much to Schwartz's frustration, they were standing firm on the question of commercial satellites.
Given the vital technology contained therein, much of it secret, they had convinced Secretary of State Warren Christopher in October 1995 to keep the satellites on the so-called ''munitions list,'' an inventory of the nation's most sensitive military and intelligence-gathering equipment.
The president also faced strong resistance from the genuine liberals within the administration. In the margin of a December 1995 document, for example, senior adviser George Stephanopoulos scrawled a vulgar note strongly criticizing the president's China policy.
Soon after he returned from his New York rendezvous with Schwartz, Brown learned he would be meeting – by order of the White House – with a character by the name of Wang Jun. The sheer bravado of Wang Jun's petition and the brazenness of the Clintons in welcoming him leave one awestruck.
Wang Jun chaired Poly Technologies, a company controlled by the People's Liberation Army. According to a Rand Corporation report forced from the U.S. Department of Commerce by a federal lawsuit, one of Poly Technologies' profit centers was the "importation and distribution of semi-automatic rifles for the U.S. domestic market."
Between 1987 and 1993, the company and its affiliates sold more than $200 million worth of these guns in the United States. When Clinton piously signed into law the banning of certain semi-automatic weapons in 1994, Poly Technologies only profited. They exploited export loopholes to circumvent the ban and ultimately resorted to old-fashioned smuggling.
On the day of the Wang meeting, Feb. 6, 1996, Brown did not know about Wang Jun's arms trade. Brown only knew the meeting was to be about satellite export controls.
This makes sense as Wang also owned a huge stake in a Hong Kong satellite company. Brown's task was to assure the Chinese that America intended to be a most friendly trading partner, and if Wang ever had any problems dealing with the United States, he could call Brown directly at anytime.
Brown had little choice in the matter. Later that afternoon, the White House also insisted that he join Wang at an intimate "coffee" with President Clinton. It was an only-in-America kind of moment. Wang Jun, who had cut arms deals with Chinese allies in places like Libya, Iran, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan, now found himself at a cordial private coffee with – of all people – the president of the United States.
This friendly meeting occurred less than four years after Clinton had excoriated the first President Bush for "coddling tyrants" in Beijing and conducting "business as usual with those who murdered freedom at Tiananmen Square." No matter.
Clinton pal Charlie Trie had greased the Wang Jun meeting with a $50,000 payment. To the president's humble credit, as the Thompson Committee would later report, he did admit that the meeting with the PLA arms dealer, Wang, was "clearly inappropriate."
The president did not apologize, however, for signing waivers for four more satellite launches by Chinese rockets on that same February day. The president approved these waivers despite reports the month before that China continued to export nuclear technology to Pakistan and missiles to Iran, the latter deal Wang was suspected of brokering.
Just a week or so after Wang Jun's excellent Washington adventure, a Chinese Long March 3B rocket carrying the Loral-built Intelsat 708 satellite crashed just after liftoff and killed or injured at least 60 people in a nearby village. This was the third Long March failure in the last three years involving U.S.-built satellite payloads.
The Pentagon welcomed the news of the Chinese failure. With the collapse of the Soviets, the People's Republic had emerged as America's most serious potential enemy, and its leaders weren't afraid to say so.
Just a few months earlier, in fact, a Chinese Military officer had warned American Ambassador Chas Freeman, "If you hit us now, we can hit back. So you will not make those threats [about Taiwan]." The officer then proffered the following not so cryptic caveat: "In the end you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei."
American technical advice was making these Chinese boasts more than an empty threat. And yet in their relentless drive to raise money, the Clintons were fully prepared to broker that advice. In March 1996, Berger pressed on and managed to finesse a compromise that sent satellite control to Brown at Commerce and cost the Pentagon its veto power.
Feeling confident about his relationship with the president, Schwartz up and dispatched a Loral-led review team to China to assess the February 1996 failure of the Long March 3B rocket and suggest refinements.
The Cox Committee would later describe Schwartz's actions as "an unlicensed defense service for the PRC that resulted in the improvement of the reliability of the PRC's military rockets and ballistic missiles."
So serious was the offense that in 1998 the Criminal Division of the Justice Department launched an investigation. Incredibly, while the investigation was in process, Berger, now national security adviser, sent a memo to the president urging him to "waive the legislative restriction on the export to China of the communications satellites and related equipment for the Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) Chinasat 8 project."
This waiver would present a huge problem for the prosecution. Berger admitted as much: "Justice believes that a jury would not convict once it learned that the president had found SS/L's Chinasat 8 project to be in the national interest."
But Berger was not about to let that stop him: "We will take the firm position that this waiver does not exonerate or in any way prejudge SS/L with respect to its prior unauthorized transfers to China." Berger was blowing smoke, and he knew it. A waiver would make prosecution all but impossible.
The president could only issue a waiver, however, if it served America's "national interest." Berger made an almost comically specious case that it did, arguing satellite technology would give remote Chinese villagers access "to people and ideas in democratic societies." During these misbegotten years, one trembles at what the villagers might have learned about American democracy.
So much for the national interest. Ross then added the kicker, sure to win the president's heart. "Bernard Schwartz had intended to raise this issue with you at the Blair dinner, but missed you in the crowd." Schwartz knew he had a friend in the White House. The president approved the waiver, and the prosecution came to naught.
This story merits its own book, but what deserves immediate comment is the willingness of Berger and the Clintons to risk everything to keep the cash pipeline open. In his purloining of the National Archives, Berger risked everything once again. He and the Clintons have apparently come to take the major media's complicity for granted.
As for Schwartz, he kept the cash pipeline open and full. Before he was through, Schwartz and Loral would donate roughly $2 million to the Clinton cause. Whether Schwartz gave additional money or favors off the books is a question that deserves asking. Before his untimely death in April 1996, Brown was reporting that he had.
Wang Jun ran into problems of his own when on May 23, 1996, CNN breathlessly reported "the largest seizure of smuggled automatic weapons in U.S. history." The San Francisco Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had infiltrated a smuggling ring and confiscated 2,000 fully automatic AK-47 rifles imported from China.
The weapons were found on board a COSCO ship, the enterprise that had been trying to secure the Long Beach Naval Station. CNN traced the rifles to Wang's Poly Technologies.
Wang, however, had not wasted his investment. Someone in the know did the arms merchant a large favor by leaking the news of the BATF gun-smuggling investigation well before it was wrapped up. The Bay-area bust was premature. The BATF was not able to nail the operation's ringleaders. Like Sandy Berger himself, Wang Jun was freed up for further mischief.
We may never know what Berger stole from the National Archives or how much damage he did to the nation's battle against Islamic terrorists.
It is hard to imagine, though, that China would have developed the capacity to shoot satellites out of the sky – certainly not this quickly – without the help of its good friends in the White House. At the end of the day, this betrayal will make for an anxiety of much greater magnitude.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Chinese Front Companies In The U.S.? A second try!
Seems my last post was damaged/hacked. Over half of the articles I posted disappeared after they were posted. We'll try this again, but so you that you now, the articles I post/refer to here are not my words, but simply excerpts from the original documents. I do appreciate when a reader identifies updates or changes to stories that I've posted. Similarly, if you have an issue as to the truthfulness of the article, please address it with the media outlet that published it. As a general rule, Cover For Action, assumes most popular media outlets are acceptable and accurate providers of news.
WASHINGTON TIMES:
U.S. government investigators say the number of cases involving China and its middlemen who have illegally obtained sensitive or classified U.S. weapons technology is growing. In the past few years, Chinese agents illegally purchased or were caught trying to steal night-vision technology, restricted electronic components, embargoed components for precision-guided missiles, radar and electronic warfare, and communications systems, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
China also sought to purchase encryption devices that are embargoed for export and computer software used in missile development, ICE officials said. In one recent case, China tried to purchase parts for F-4 and F-5 jets and Hawk missiles from U.S. suppliers that were intended for reshipment to Iran. Officials said one of the most damaging illegal technology exports to China took place in the late 1990s. In that case, China secretly obtained technology related to the Aegis battle management system, used in the most modern U.S. warships. A Chinese front company won a contract from the system manufacturer and then stole details about Aegis, according to FBI counterintelligence officials.
QUESTIA
In one case sketched out by Waultney's boss, John Hensley, before a Senate hearing in July 1997, a Chinese front company managed to purchase 37 guidance kits for F-117A stealth fighters from a Defense Department depot and ship them to China as "scrap."
In another case, brokers working for the Communist Chinese government snatched up an astonishing 26,000 fully operational encryption devices, including computer disk drives loaded up with top-secret technical documents all considered U.S.-government scrap.
A high concentration of Chinese-government front companies continues to operate out of El Monte, a modest working-class suburb located some 10 miles due east of downtown Los Angeles.
Primary among them is the China National Aero Technology Import Export Co., or CATIC. Back in China, CATIC owns factories that develop fighter aircraft and remotely piloted vehicles and contributes to cruise-missile development. In El Monte, CATIC buys paper pulp to be shipped to China for recycling and imports bicycles, electrical parts and hardware for sale in the United States. But it also purchases aerospace systems, which it ships back to China clandestinely for use in military projects.
CATIC is not the only mainland-Chinese company operating in the El Monte area. In one six-floor office building just around the corner at 9300 Flair Dr., no fewer than 150 Chinese trading companies have set up shop, although most of them appear to be little more than mailbox entities. Down in the lobby, which houses a bank and a California state health center, only a half-dozen companies are listed as having offices on the sixth floor of the handsome, black-glass office complex overlooking the freeway. But a quick trip up the elevator to the sixth floor reveals that more than 40 companies actually have hung name plates on the doors -- all of them Chinese.
According to David Su, an attorney who has incorporated dozens of these companies, "there are a few thousand Chinese companies in the Los Angeles area. Most of them were set up by individuals with management positions back in China and are controlled by Chinese state-owned companies." Su acknowledged that many of the companies listing his office suite as their address had no visible operations. Su said that in many cases he had not seen the owners since they filed the initial incorporation papers and returned to China. Although Su wouldn't comment on why they had established the companies in the first place, mailbox companies frequently are used as fronts for illicit business by money-launderers, high-tech bandits and arms dealers -- or more mundanely, by individuals keen on disguising the origins of their wealth.
Communist Chinese Procurement Activities in the United StatesTestimony by Kenneth R. Timmermanbefore the U.S. -China Commission
I have been investigating Chinese high-technology procurement efforts in the United States since I was a Congressional staffer for Rep. Tom Lantos (D, CA) in 1993. Shortly after leaving the Hill, in July 1994, I reported that U.S. Customs officials were investigating Chinese government companies that were attempting to purchase defense production equipment being sold at auction from U.S.
During one of my investigations in California, I personally visited around 150 Chinese front companies, many of them no more than placards on closet offices that came alive to support a particular clandestine deal. I have appended to my written testimony a print-out of just one such network, which includes freight forwarders, bankers, import-export agencies and insurance brokers used to support Chinese military procurement activities in this country.Because the Chinese mastered the whole process, using companies and agents they controlled and communicating almost exclusively in Mandarin, neither the FBI, Customs, or OEE had much success in penetrating these networks. One of these companies operated undetected for more than two years directly above a CIA liaison office in the Los Angeles area. Clearly, we need more Mandarin-speaking agents, and a much active Customs operation to infiltrate and disrupt these procurement networks.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"China is the biggest (espionage) threat to the U.S. today," says Mr. Szady, now 61 years old and the FBI's top counterintelligence official.
Counterespionage experts say the trouble often starts when they are contacted by Chinese government officials or one of the more than 3,000 Chinese "front companies" the FBI alleges have been set up in the U.S. specifically to acquire military or industrial technologies illegally.
The U.S. government is prosecuting about a dozen cases against individuals alleged to have sent technology to China illegally. FBI officials say at least three more will likely go ahead in the coming months. Over the past five years, the total number of such charges has grown by around 15 percent annually, according to some FBI agents.
NBC
intensified campaign by the People's Republic of China to steal military and civilian technology.
U.S. officials say there are now 400 active investigations here involving illegal exports to China — more than any other country.
Undercover video — obtained exclusively by NBC News — shows Bill Moo, an employee of a U.S. defense contractor, inspecting a military jet engine that he planned to secretly buy for China.
Unbeknownst to him, Moo had made the deal with undercover U.S. agents and was later arrested. He pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent for China.
"The Chinese are very good at using multiple redundant collection platforms," says former FBI Assistant Director Szady, "and by that I refer to students, delegations, visitors, researchers, development, partnerships, business deals and false front companies."
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
One day last June, FBI agents swooped into two affluent Silicon Valley homes and arrested two engineers. Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge stand accused of stealing proprietary chip designs and software
Lee and Ge allegedly set up a front company backed by a Beijing venture-capital firm with links to China's military, and planned to go into business with the Chinese government.
"Silicon Valley is a hotbed" of economic espionage, said Don Przybyla, who heads an FBI counterintelligence unit in San Jose. The valley is home to many of the estimated 3,000 Chinese front companies nationwide set up to steal secrets and acquire technology, according to the FBI.
March 17, 2006
Statement by
John J. Tkacik, Jr.
Senior Research Fellow in Asian Studies
The Heritage Foundation
Before the
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
Hearing on Chinese Military Modernization and Export Control Regimes
It was and is my impression that Chinese security officials inform all Chinese science and technology workers visiting the U.S. that they could be given specific collection tasks while in the U.S. The case of two Chinese academics at American University, Ms.Gao Zhan and her husband, Xue Donghua, is instructive. Apparently, Ms. Gao and Mr. Xue had received such a tasking and reportedly managed to export as much as $1 million in radiation-hardened microchips to a military laboratory in Nanjing before being arrested in 2001.
Gao and Xue were emblematic of vast Chinese government effort to collect industrial and technical secrets. A year ago, in March 2005, FBI Assistant Director Dan Szady, commented on the existence of an estimated 3,000 Chinese front companies operating in the United States in order to facilitate illegal technology transfers to the Chinese government.
In September, Michelle Van Cleave, the national counterintelligence executive, told the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, border security and claims that Chinese "state-directed espionage remains the central threat to our most sensitive national security technology secrets." She said Chinese intelligence agents are "very aggressive" in business and "are adept at exploiting front companies."
WASHINGTON TIMES:
U.S. government investigators say the number of cases involving China and its middlemen who have illegally obtained sensitive or classified U.S. weapons technology is growing. In the past few years, Chinese agents illegally purchased or were caught trying to steal night-vision technology, restricted electronic components, embargoed components for precision-guided missiles, radar and electronic warfare, and communications systems, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
China also sought to purchase encryption devices that are embargoed for export and computer software used in missile development, ICE officials said. In one recent case, China tried to purchase parts for F-4 and F-5 jets and Hawk missiles from U.S. suppliers that were intended for reshipment to Iran. Officials said one of the most damaging illegal technology exports to China took place in the late 1990s. In that case, China secretly obtained technology related to the Aegis battle management system, used in the most modern U.S. warships. A Chinese front company won a contract from the system manufacturer and then stole details about Aegis, according to FBI counterintelligence officials.
QUESTIA
In one case sketched out by Waultney's boss, John Hensley, before a Senate hearing in July 1997, a Chinese front company managed to purchase 37 guidance kits for F-117A stealth fighters from a Defense Department depot and ship them to China as "scrap."
In another case, brokers working for the Communist Chinese government snatched up an astonishing 26,000 fully operational encryption devices, including computer disk drives loaded up with top-secret technical documents all considered U.S.-government scrap.
A high concentration of Chinese-government front companies continues to operate out of El Monte, a modest working-class suburb located some 10 miles due east of downtown Los Angeles.
Primary among them is the China National Aero Technology Import Export Co., or CATIC. Back in China, CATIC owns factories that develop fighter aircraft and remotely piloted vehicles and contributes to cruise-missile development. In El Monte, CATIC buys paper pulp to be shipped to China for recycling and imports bicycles, electrical parts and hardware for sale in the United States. But it also purchases aerospace systems, which it ships back to China clandestinely for use in military projects.
CATIC is not the only mainland-Chinese company operating in the El Monte area. In one six-floor office building just around the corner at 9300 Flair Dr., no fewer than 150 Chinese trading companies have set up shop, although most of them appear to be little more than mailbox entities. Down in the lobby, which houses a bank and a California state health center, only a half-dozen companies are listed as having offices on the sixth floor of the handsome, black-glass office complex overlooking the freeway. But a quick trip up the elevator to the sixth floor reveals that more than 40 companies actually have hung name plates on the doors -- all of them Chinese.
According to David Su, an attorney who has incorporated dozens of these companies, "there are a few thousand Chinese companies in the Los Angeles area. Most of them were set up by individuals with management positions back in China and are controlled by Chinese state-owned companies." Su acknowledged that many of the companies listing his office suite as their address had no visible operations. Su said that in many cases he had not seen the owners since they filed the initial incorporation papers and returned to China. Although Su wouldn't comment on why they had established the companies in the first place, mailbox companies frequently are used as fronts for illicit business by money-launderers, high-tech bandits and arms dealers -- or more mundanely, by individuals keen on disguising the origins of their wealth.
Communist Chinese Procurement Activities in the United StatesTestimony by Kenneth R. Timmermanbefore the U.S. -China Commission
I have been investigating Chinese high-technology procurement efforts in the United States since I was a Congressional staffer for Rep. Tom Lantos (D, CA) in 1993. Shortly after leaving the Hill, in July 1994, I reported that U.S. Customs officials were investigating Chinese government companies that were attempting to purchase defense production equipment being sold at auction from U.S.
During one of my investigations in California, I personally visited around 150 Chinese front companies, many of them no more than placards on closet offices that came alive to support a particular clandestine deal. I have appended to my written testimony a print-out of just one such network, which includes freight forwarders, bankers, import-export agencies and insurance brokers used to support Chinese military procurement activities in this country.Because the Chinese mastered the whole process, using companies and agents they controlled and communicating almost exclusively in Mandarin, neither the FBI, Customs, or OEE had much success in penetrating these networks. One of these companies operated undetected for more than two years directly above a CIA liaison office in the Los Angeles area. Clearly, we need more Mandarin-speaking agents, and a much active Customs operation to infiltrate and disrupt these procurement networks.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
"China is the biggest (espionage) threat to the U.S. today," says Mr. Szady, now 61 years old and the FBI's top counterintelligence official.
Counterespionage experts say the trouble often starts when they are contacted by Chinese government officials or one of the more than 3,000 Chinese "front companies" the FBI alleges have been set up in the U.S. specifically to acquire military or industrial technologies illegally.
The U.S. government is prosecuting about a dozen cases against individuals alleged to have sent technology to China illegally. FBI officials say at least three more will likely go ahead in the coming months. Over the past five years, the total number of such charges has grown by around 15 percent annually, according to some FBI agents.
NBC
intensified campaign by the People's Republic of China to steal military and civilian technology.
U.S. officials say there are now 400 active investigations here involving illegal exports to China — more than any other country.
Undercover video — obtained exclusively by NBC News — shows Bill Moo, an employee of a U.S. defense contractor, inspecting a military jet engine that he planned to secretly buy for China.
Unbeknownst to him, Moo had made the deal with undercover U.S. agents and was later arrested. He pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent for China.
"The Chinese are very good at using multiple redundant collection platforms," says former FBI Assistant Director Szady, "and by that I refer to students, delegations, visitors, researchers, development, partnerships, business deals and false front companies."
OAKLAND TRIBUNE
One day last June, FBI agents swooped into two affluent Silicon Valley homes and arrested two engineers. Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge stand accused of stealing proprietary chip designs and software
Lee and Ge allegedly set up a front company backed by a Beijing venture-capital firm with links to China's military, and planned to go into business with the Chinese government.
"Silicon Valley is a hotbed" of economic espionage, said Don Przybyla, who heads an FBI counterintelligence unit in San Jose. The valley is home to many of the estimated 3,000 Chinese front companies nationwide set up to steal secrets and acquire technology, according to the FBI.
March 17, 2006
Statement by
John J. Tkacik, Jr.
Senior Research Fellow in Asian Studies
The Heritage Foundation
Before the
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
Hearing on Chinese Military Modernization and Export Control Regimes
It was and is my impression that Chinese security officials inform all Chinese science and technology workers visiting the U.S. that they could be given specific collection tasks while in the U.S. The case of two Chinese academics at American University, Ms.Gao Zhan and her husband, Xue Donghua, is instructive. Apparently, Ms. Gao and Mr. Xue had received such a tasking and reportedly managed to export as much as $1 million in radiation-hardened microchips to a military laboratory in Nanjing before being arrested in 2001.
Gao and Xue were emblematic of vast Chinese government effort to collect industrial and technical secrets. A year ago, in March 2005, FBI Assistant Director Dan Szady, commented on the existence of an estimated 3,000 Chinese front companies operating in the United States in order to facilitate illegal technology transfers to the Chinese government.
In September, Michelle Van Cleave, the national counterintelligence executive, told the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, border security and claims that Chinese "state-directed espionage remains the central threat to our most sensitive national security technology secrets." She said Chinese intelligence agents are "very aggressive" in business and "are adept at exploiting front companies."
Chinese Front Companies in the U.S.? You decide!
There seems to be some question, or concern about Chinese front companies operating within the U.S. There has been some doubt to the veracity of the report, which was first mentioned in the Cox document. But, what is the official and most legitimate position on the Front Companies? Seems to me that the U.S. intelligence community would have the best understanding of this, since they work on the issue daily.
Of course, some random journalist or reporter can post whatever they want, but their not really close to the issue. Below are just a few reports since Cox. You decide, are there front companies operating in the U.S.? Before you respond, and I know someone will jabber about the 3000 front companies. The info is coming from the Director of the FBI. If you have an issue with it's truthfulness, take it up with the him, I'm simply using it to support the other reports. Oh ya, and his statement was given under oath during testimony to the U.S. Congress. Use that as weight when you judge its veracity!
CNN
State Metal Industries, a Camden, New Jersey, company convicted in June of violating export laws over a shipment of AIM-7 Sparrow missile guidance parts it bought from Pentagon surplus in 2003 and sold to an entity partly owned by the Chinese government. The company pleaded guilty to an export violation,
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. government investigators say the number of cases involving China and its middlemen who have illegally obtained sensitive or classified U.S. weapons technology
Of course, some random journalist or reporter can post whatever they want, but their not really close to the issue. Below are just a few reports since Cox. You decide, are there front companies operating in the U.S.? Before you respond, and I know someone will jabber about the 3000 front companies. The info is coming from the Director of the FBI. If you have an issue with it's truthfulness, take it up with the him, I'm simply using it to support the other reports. Oh ya, and his statement was given under oath during testimony to the U.S. Congress. Use that as weight when you judge its veracity!
CNN
State Metal Industries, a Camden, New Jersey, company convicted in June of violating export laws over a shipment of AIM-7 Sparrow missile guidance parts it bought from Pentagon surplus in 2003 and sold to an entity partly owned by the Chinese government. The company pleaded guilty to an export violation,
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. government investigators say the number of cases involving China and its middlemen who have illegally obtained sensitive or classified U.S. weapons technology
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)