Chinese spy agencies taking toll on U.S. tech, counterintelligence
East-Asia-Intel.com, February 8, 2008
China's aggressive intelligence collection activities include operations by at least seven different spy services.Larry Wortzel, a former military intelligence officer now chairman of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime last week that China intelligence activities pose the No. 1 threat to U.S. technology and government secrets.
"After a year of hearings, research and classified briefings from agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, the commission concluded that China's espionage activities are the single greatest threat to U.S. technology and strain the U.S. counterintelligence establishment," Wortzel said."This illicit activity significantly contributes to China's military modernization and acquisition of new capabilities."
Part of China's espionage effectiveness stems from a PRC national high technology research and development program started in March 1986 with the goal of benefiting China's long-term high technology development. The program is called the "863 Program" or Torch Program.
U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies and American corporate security professionals must contend with seven or more Chinese state-controlled intelligence and security services that can gather information for Beijing's industrial sector inside China or overseas, Wortzel said.
The services include the Ministry of State Security and its local or regional state security bureaus; the Public Security Bureau; the intelligence department of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), or Second Department; the PLA's Third, or Electronic Warfare Department; a PLA Fourth Department that focuses on information warfare; trained technical collectors from the General Armaments Department and the General Logistics Department of the PLA; the technical intelligence collectors of the military industrial sector and the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense; and the Communist Party Liaison Department or PLA General Political Department.
It was the first time a U.S. government official had outlined Beijing's extensive networks for spying, acquiring technology and for suppressing what Beijing considers regime opponents or dissidents.
They started this program to advance their military via stealing our secrets instead of paying for their own research in 1986, but the first time the program is outlined is 21 years later? Was someone afraid we might not like the chinese enough?
Wortzel discussed several serious spy cases related to China, including that of Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Ronald Montaperto, who was convicted of document mishandling. He had been indicted for leaking classified information to China's military intelligence service and hoarding classified U.S. documents in his home.
Montaperto was a close personal confident of several current senior U.S. intelligence officials, including National Intelligence Officer of East Asia Lonnie Henley, the U.S. intelligence community's most senior analyst on China.