Tag Archives: espionage

Will Common Sense Arrive?

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Yesterday The Epoch Times reported the following:

Lawmakers are asking Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives to remove Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from a powerful committee after his alleged ties to a Chinese spy were reported this week.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday night wondered whether Democratic congressional leaders were aware of Swalwell’s reported links to Fang Fang, a Chinese spy.

“Remember what Swalwell said. He accused the president of everything that he did, by lying to the American public and sitting on the Intel Committee,” McCarthy said on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

“Not only should he be removed from the Intel, he should be removed from Congress as well.”

Swalwell, a onetime Democratic presidential candidate, sits on the House Intelligence Committee, raising concerns about whether he’s compromised because of the alleged links to the spy.

Requests for comment sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) weren’t immediately returned. Swalwell staffers didn’t return an email or pick up the phone.

The article notes:

A Pelosi spokesperson said in a statement to news outlets, “The Speaker has full confidence in Congressman Swalwell’s service in the Congress and on the Intelligence Committee.”

The article concludes:

“As a Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep Swalwell has access to highly classified national security material. Swalwell has been compromised by at least one China Communist Party operative. He must be removed from HPSCI immediately,” Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) added.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the Senate Judiciary chairman, said the report “Shows extremely bad judgement and rank hypocrisy on the part of Congressman Swalwell who led the charge in the Russia Hoax and impeachment.”

It also showed a “double standard” in defensive briefings from the FBI, which allegedly gave one to Swalwell about Fang but neglected to give one about President Donald Trump regarding Russia, Graham asserted.

“Democrats get defensive briefings when there are concerns about foreign influence, but when it came to President @realDonaldTrump they used a counter-intelligence investigation to spy on his campaign,” he wrote in a tweet.

At best we can say the Swalwell exercised very bad judgement in his personal conduct. This is the man who repeatedly accused President Trump of being a Russian agent. Doesn’t that sound like something China might encourage an American political leader to say in order to take the focus off of their own espionage activities? Knowingly or unknowingly, Swalwell has been spouting Chinese propaganda in recent years. Shouldn’t he be held accountable?

Not Really A Surprise

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The Epoch Times reported yesterday that Alexander Yuk Chung Ma, a 67-year-old Hawaii resident has been arrested and charged with selling top-secret information to China over the span of a decade, the justice department said.

The article reports:

Ma began working for the CIA in 1982 and later became an FBI linguist.

Prosecutors said Ma worked with a relative who was also a former CIA officer, an 85-year-old Los Angeles man, but he was not charged because he suffers from a “debilitating cognitive disease.”

The charges are the latest in a string of prosecutions targeting Chinese espionage activities in the United States.

Ma, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Hong Kong, was stationed overseas, where he had a “Top Secret” clearance, prosecutors said. He left the agency in 1989, and then lived and worked in Shanghai before moving to Hawaii in 2000.

Prosecutors said Ma turned allegiances by 2001, when he met several times with at least five officers of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), the country’s top intelligence agency, in a Hong Kong hotel room. During these meetings, Ma “disclosed a substantial amount of highly classified national defense information,” including the identities of CIA officers and assets, methods of covert communication, information about the CIA’s internal structure, and details about the agency’s spycraft.

The FBI procured video footage of one of the meetings in March 2001, which showed MSS agents paying Ma $50,000, which he counted while relaying the classified information, the court document said. It is unclear how the FBI obtained the footage.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

The article concludes:

The justice department has in recent years brought cases against several current and former U.S. officials accused of supplying secrets to the Chinese regime. Last year, former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee was sentenced to 19 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to deliver classified information to Chinese intelligence after leaving the agency in 2010.

“The trail of Chinese espionage is long and, sadly, strewn with former American intelligence officers who betrayed their colleagues, their country and its liberal democratic values to support an authoritarian communist regime,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a statement.

China is not our friend and has not been a fair trading partner or a responsible member of the world community. It is time to hold them accountable for their spying and for their human rights violations within their country.