Chinese Spies and the Widening Gyre

Spy scandals don’t seem to ring the same bells that they used to. During the Cold War, they were glamorous morality plays come to life. It was the Free World versus the dark forces of Communism. But who today can use the term “Free World” without irony? With only one erstwhile superpower making the world safe for corporate freedom, it is more necessary than ever to hold the knees tight against jerking and suspend judgment in light of facts, facts that may well never be made available for public scrutiny.

On Monday the 11^th the FBI charged four men with “spying for Beijing on the space shuttle and other defence(sic) projects”. If the Independent and Belfast Telegraph hadn’t told me, I would never have known the space shuttle was a military craft. Here’s hoping it makes the Martians think twice before invading. Once a security-clearance level engineer at Boeing, but now retired, naturalized American Dongfan Chung was accused by the FBI of acting as an agent of “the Beijing administration”, and handing over details about the shuttle and civilian aircraft. Not to condone espionage, but one might wonder why the technology is secret at all. Wouldn’t Chinese space shuttles bolster our planet’s preparedness against alien attack? It would seem all the juicy secrets, like how to enrich uranium and deliver it in missile warheads, have been not only been revealed, but translated into Urdu and Iraqi to benefit allies and set up enemies.

The other spy case involves one Gregg Bergersen, a U.S. Defense Department analyst, accused of passing on not only shuttle secrets, but plans for U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan. He purportedly snitched to Tai Kuo, a naturalized New Orleans businessman, who gave the info to Chinese national Yu Xin Kang.

Thus the confusion of one who lays no claim to Sino expertise. China and Taiwan share a people, a culture, and rely on each other for trade to the tune of billions. But they’re enemies. Fair enough – who am I, a humble guest worker, to point out the hypocrisy and pointlessness in such a stance? America owes China to the tune of 1.3 trillion ever-devaluing dollars, yet China continues to buy the worthless things. They are fraternal Siamese twins joined at the wallet. But they’re enemies? Oh, even I know about the ideological posturing of all three countries involved, and how quickly things could go code red if one blowhard decided to call the other’s bluff. But I understand being into someone for a lot of money much better.

A hypothetical, if you will. Suppose you had borrowed so much money from your neighbor that there was no reasonable prospect of paying it back, yet your neighbor was obliged to keep on lending, since your insolvency would hurt him and the neighborhood. With some of your borrowed money, you decide to install a hi-tech security system in your home. Your neighbor wants to know how it works. Do you tell him, or treat it as a family secret?

This neighbor has a son who lives down the street. The son wants nothing to do with him except business. Despite your staggering debt to Dad, you make no secret of being on the son’s side, and even sell him guns in case Dad decides to reintroduce him to the family by force. Are you outraged when Dad wants to see your gun shopping list?

Indeed things are far more complicated than that. International lunacy is always a complex affair. This intrigue makes for good spy stories. But just imagine a spy story in which the benevolent government brass trying to stop the spying are busy spying on their own people. In the movie, James Bond would do well to begin by shooting M!

In reality, we have US Director of Intelligence [Chief Spy] Mike McConnell, who claims China and Russia are spying on the US on a scale not seen since the end of the Cold War. Maybe he doesn’t like the competition. Before selflessly volunteering to defend American freedom, he was director of intelligence at Booz Allen, one of the nation’s biggest defense and intelligence contractors. During his tenure, Booz Allen was deeply involved in the Bush Administration’s most controversial counterterrorism programs, such as the infamous Total Information Awareness, which gathers and integrates data on all those terrorists disguised as anti-war protesters and people who keep terroristically ranting about the U.S. Constitution. He’s gone so far as to blame 9/11 on the fact that there are laws preventing the government from wire-tapping willy nilly.

Again, for the record, this is not to condone either espionage or terrorism (duh). It’s simply to question how the sane man ought to react when people spying on him blow the whistle on other spies, and nations exist in states of friendly enmity. No wonder nobody goes to see Bond films anymore.

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