Chinese Spy ‘Slept’ In U.S. For 2 Decades

April 3, 2008 · Filed Under Pentagon, World News

Prosecutors called Chi Mak the “perfect sleeper agent,” though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night.Eventually, Mak’s job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China — fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say he had been planning since the 1970s.

Mak was sentenced last week to 24 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge who described the lengthy term as a warning to China not to “send agents here to steal America’s military secrets.” But it may already be too late: According to U.S. intelligence and Justice Department officials, the Mak case represents only a small facet of an intelligence-gathering operation that has long been in place and is growing in size and sophistication.

The Chinese government, in an enterprise that one senior official likened to an “intellectual vacuum cleaner,” has deployed a diverse network of professional spies, students, scientists and others to systematically collect U.S. know-how, the officials said. Some are trained in modern electronic techniques for snooping on wireless computer transactions. Others, such as Mak, are technical experts who have been in place for years and have blended into their communities.

“Chi Mak acknowledged that he had been placed in the United States more than 20 years earlier, in order to burrow into the defense-industrial establishment to steal secrets,” Joel Brenner, the head of counterintelligence for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an interview. “It speaks of deep patience,” he said, and is part of a pattern.

Spies like Chi Mak should get the death penalty for living here all these years and pretending to be a honorable American, but betraying his country all along.

At the same time, U.S. agents could probably learn a lot from these guys. You have to admire the dedication and patience it takes to pull off an intelligence operation that lasts 20 years.

This guy was sent here more than twenty years ago to be educated, employed, and then send back information to China. Imagine how many opportunities there was for Chi Mak to stop reporting back and just live a normal life. I’m sure China sends these kind of operatives to many countries around the world to the exact same kind of thing.

I’m not sure an American agent could pull off something like that. I don’t think you could find a CIA agent willing to move to a foreign country for the rest of his life and work as an undercover operative.

The whole thing is pretty amazing, and it really shows what a cunning adversary China truly is.

-Chris Jones