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The U.S. Navy and allies are drilling in the Pacific Ocean as part of the massive Rim of the Pacific naval exercise. After years continuing to sail alongside China in RIMPAC, even as the peer competitor militarized man-made islands in the South China Sea, the U.S. decided enough is enough and rescinded the invitation. (Andrew Jarocki/Staff)
Twenty-six nations, 47 surface ships, five submarines, 18 national land forces, and more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel will participate in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise scheduled June 27 to Aug. 2, in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California. As the world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC provides a unique training opportunity designed to foster and sustain cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world’s interconnected oceans. RIMPAC 2018 is the 26th exercise in the series that began in 1971. The theme of RIMPAC 2018 is “Capable, Adaptive, Partners.” Participating nations and forces will exercise a wide range of capabilities and demonstrate the inherent flexibility of maritime forces. These capabilities range from disaster relief and maritime security operations to sea control and complex warfighting. The relevant, realistic training program includes amphibious operations, gunnery, missile, anti-submarine and air defense exercises, as well as counter-piracy operations, mine clearance operations, explosive ordnance disposal, and diving and salvage operations. This year’s exercise includes forces from Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. This is the first time Brazil, Israel, Sri Lanka and Vietnam are participating in RIMPAC. Additional firsts include New Zealand serving as sea combat commander and Chile serving as combined force maritime component commander. This is the first time a non-founding RIMPAC nation (Chile) will hold a component commander leadership position. This year will also feature live firing of a Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) from a U.S. Air Force aircraft, surface to ship missiles by the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, and a Naval Strike Missile (NSM) from a launcher on the back of a Palletized Load System (PLS) by the U.S. Army. This marks the first time a land based unit will participate in the live fire event during RIMPAC. RIMPAC 18 will also include international band engagements and highlight fleet innovation during an Innovation Fair. Additionally, for the first time since RIMPAC 2002, U.S. 3rd Fleet’s Command Center will relocate from San Diego to Pearl Harbor to support command and control of all 3rd Fleet forces in 3rd Fleet’s area of responsibility to include forces operating forward in the Western Pacific. The Fleet Command Center will be established at a deployable joint command and control on Hospital Point for the first part of the exercise and then transition to USS Portland (LPD 27) for the remainder of the exercise. Hosted by Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, RIMPAC 2018 will be led by Commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet, Vice Adm. John D. Alexander, who will serve as combined task force (CTF) commander. Royal Canadian Navy Rear Adm. Bob Auchterlonie will serve as CTF deputy commander, and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Rear Adm. Hideyuki Oban as CTF vice commander. Fleet Marine Force will be led by U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Mark Hashimoto. Other key leaders of the multinational force will include Commodore Pablo Niemann of Armada de Chile, who will command the maritime component, and Air Commodore Craig Heap of the Royal Australian Air Force, who will command the air component. This robust constellation of allies and partners support sustained and favorable regional balances of power that safeguard security, prosperity and the free and open international order. RIMPAC 2018 contributes to the increased lethality, resiliency and agility needed by the joint and combined force to deter and defeat aggression by major powers across all domains and levels of conflict.
New Delhi: China has built a new garrison in its central Sichuan province for its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) which have the capacity to cover all of India, the Indian Ocean Region as well as large parts of continental America.
On 27 May, the 10th test of the Dongfeng-41 or DF-41 (East Wind-41) ICBM, with a reported range of 12,000-15,000 km, was conducted at the Taiyuan Space Launch Center in Shanxi province. China’s PLARF, or the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, formerly Second Artillery Corps (SAC), claimed it a success.
Vinayak Bhat/The Print
ThePrint has now identified a never-before revealed PLARF location, which may possibly be a DF-41 garrison, with the help of satellite imagery.
ThePrint had in April reported that PLARF had built a garrison in the southernmost Hainan province to store DF-31AG missile.
The location
This is the first time that the new Chinese garrison has been confirmed through satellite imagery (as of 7 May, 2018), although it has been covered by ground human intelligence before.
It is located 15 km east of Yibin town in Sichuan province, away from towns and cities but close to a highway to enable quick deployment. Construction is said to have begun three years ago.
The entire complex can possibly support a brigade-sized ballistic missile formation.
The ICBM is likely to be armed with 10 multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) warheads each with 150kT yield.
Vinayak Bhat/The Print
This new garrison is typically built around a sports track with a football field in it. It also has two basketball grounds and an obstacle course adjoining the sports track.
There are two large highbay garages in the centre of the complex along with two smaller highway garages to the north of the facility. The smaller highbay garages were probably built for warhead assembly.
There are two locations where dugouts are observed. These could possibly be underground DES igloos.
Vinayak Bhat/The Print
There are about 15 triple storied C-shaped barracks, possibly for troops’ living accommodations.
Three large multi-storey buildings connected with each other could be administrative offices. A meteorological station with possible satellite link is also seen to the west side of the complex.
All buildings except central administrative buildings and high-bay garages are provided with slanted box gable roofs.
Vinayak Bhat/The Print
The entire garrison with its support buildings has a very high-walled security with four entrances. The main entrance is heavily guarded with around 200m approach under visual observation with the help of a large convex mirror.
It has typical layout of eight garages with six of them being interconnected. There are 30 smaller buildings (15 on either side of highbay garages) with different dimensions which are difficult to assess.
In the latest satellite image, a large tractor trailer of 22m is seen plying on the highway 400 metre south of the complex, suggesting that DF-41 truck erector launcher (TEL) of similar size can easily manoeuvre in this area.
The vehicle
The DF-41 vehicle has most advanced technologies incorporated for the smooth ride of the missile. It is an eight-axle, 16-wheeled TEL with possibly a six-axle drive.
The steering mechanism of DF-41 TEL is very uniquely purposed to provide high-speed turning stability and smallest possible turning radius to the behemoth.
Power steering has been provided on the three-front steer axles and the rear three drive axles are probably mechanically coordinated with hydraulic power. Thus making the DF-41 TEL very easily manoeuvrable.
As for the 27 May ICBM test from the Taiyuan Space Launch Centre, it was first reported by Washington Free Beacon quoting Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Christopher Logan who said, “The US was aware of recent flight tests and we continue to monitor weapons development in China.”
The well-known defence magazine IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly claimed that after the latest launch, DF-41 had moved closer to commissioning and deployment. Chinese experts claim that DF-41 is the most advanced ICBM in the world.
Chinese National Arrested for Conspiring to Illegally Export U.S. Origin Goods Used in Anti-Submarine Warfare to China
Defendant allegedly illegally exported devices used to detect and monitor sound underwater
BOSTON – A Chinese national was arrested today and charged in connection with violating export laws by conspiring with employees of an entity affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to illegally export U.S. origin goods to China, as well as making false statements to obtain a visa to enter the United States and to become a lawful permanent resident under the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program.
Shuren Qin, 41, a Chinese national residing in Wellesley, Mass., was charged in a criminal complaint with one count of visa fraud and one count of conspiring to commit violations of U.S. export regulations. Qin was arrested today and will appear in federal court in Boston on June 22, 2018.
According to charging documents, Qin was born in the People’s Republic of China and became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2014. Qin operates several companies in China, which purport to import U.S. and European goods with applications in underwater or marine technologies into China. It is alleged that Qin was in communication with and/or receiving taskings from entities affiliated with the PLA, including the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU), a Chinese military research institute, to obtain items used for anti-submarine warfare. (..)
The submarine contractor breach, recently reported by the Washington Post, reflects this intense focus on bridging any technological advantage the US may have. It involved attacks in January and February that nabbed important data, albeit from an unclassified network. When taken together, though, the information would have amounted to a valuable snapshot of US cutting edge underwater weapons development, plus details on a number of related digital and mechanical systems.
The attack fits into a known pattern of Chinese hacking initiatives. “China will continue to use cyberespionage and bolster cyberattack capabilities to support [its] national security priorities,” US director of national intelligence Daniel Coats wrote in a February threat report. “The [Intelligence Community] and private-sector security experts continue to identify ongoing cyberactivity from China…Most detected Chinese cyberoperations against US private industry are focused on cleared defense contractors or IT and communications firms.”
This week, analysts from Symantec also published research on a series of attacks in the same category from November 2017 to April from a hacking group dubbed Thrip. Though Symantec does not go so far as to identify Thrip as Chinese state-sponsored hackers, it reports “with high confidence” that Thrip attacks trace back to computers inside the country. The group, which Symantec has tracked since 2013, has evolved to hide in plain site by mostly using prefab malware to infiltrate networks and then manipulating administrative controls and other legitimate system tools to bore deeper without setting off alarms. All of these off-the-shelf hacking tools and techniques have made Thrip harder to identify and track—which is likely the idea—but Symantec started to notice patterns in their anomaly detection scanners that ultimately gave these attacks away, and led the researchers to a unique backdoor that implicated Thrip.
The researchers found evidence of intrusions at some southeast Asian telecom firms, a US geospatial imagery company, a couple of private satellite companies including one from the US, and a US defense contractor. The breaches were all deliberate and targeted, and in the case of the satellite firms the hackers moved all the way through to reach the control systems of actual orbiting satellites, where they could have impacted a satellite’s trajectory or disrupted data flow. More here from Wired.
As if that is not enough to begin charging China, how about this?
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the attacks in the waterway, where the Chinese military has bolstered its operations, were first reported last September. The incidents were believed to have come from a range of sources, “both ashore and from fishing vessels,” spokeswoman Maj. Cassandra Gesecki said.
Indo-Pacific Command said it would not go into specifics about the incidents, but media reports quoting unidentified U.S. officials said some of the fishing boats were Chinese-flagged vessels. Officials wouldn’t definitively confirm that Chinese personnel were behind all of the incidents.
Beijing operates a “maritime militia” of Chinese fishing boats, which it trains and subsidizes with sophisticated gear such as GPS equipment. Such vessels have played an important role in China asserting its various territorial claims in the East and South China Seas.
Chinese personnel at the country’s first overseas military base in Djibouti had been using lasers to interfere with U.S. military aircraft at a nearby American base, activity that has resulted in injuries to U.S. pilots and prompted the U.S. to launch a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing.
However, unlike the Djibouti incidents, where military-grade lasers had been employed in some cases, the East China Sea incidents involved smaller, commercial-grade laser pointers popularly known as “cat grade” lasers because pet owners have known to use to play with their animals. Even so, these types of lasers have been known to temporarily blind pilots and, in some cases, cause eye damage.
“In light of these recent incidents, units operating in the area are conducting an assessment of their laser eye protection equipment,” Gesecki said.
While Chinese fishing vessels have long operated in the East China Sea, the country’s military has embarked on a military modernization program heavily promoted by President Xi Jinping, who has overseen a shift in focus toward creating a more potent fighting force. This has included projects such as building a second aircraft carrier, integrating stealth fighters into the air force and fielding an array of advanced missiles that can strike air and sea targets from long distances.
In a demonstration of its continued push to refine its power-projection capabilities and push further into the Western Pacific Ocean, the Chinese military in April conducted drills in the Pacific with its sole operating aircraft carrier.
The East China Sea is home to a long-running dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu. Japanese defense chief Itsunori Onodera said in April that Chinese activity — including naval and coast guard patrols in the waters — “has expanded and accelerated” in recent years as it seeks to assert its territorial claims.
But the activity goes beyond military.
Beijing has also used its maritime militia to hassle Japanese fishermen and the Japan Coast Guard in a bid to better enforce its claims in the East China Sea, experts say.
If the Chinese military is not directly involved in the laser incidents, it could be directing — at some level — the maritime militia to target U.S. pilots.
Although the U.S. has not taking a position on the sovereignty of the Senkakus, it has repeatedly said that they fall under its treaty obligations to defend Japan’s territory if it is attacked.
In closing, remember:
On May 23, the US State Department announced that one embassy worker in Guangzhou experienced “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure” before being diagnosed with symptoms similar to those found in the diplomatic personnel that were in Cuba, including mild traumatic brain injury.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that at least two more Americans in Guangzhou have experienced similar phenomena and also fallen ill. One of those embassy workers told the Times that he and his wife had heard mysterious sounds and experienced strange headaches and sleeplessness while in their apartment.
After the evacuation of the first diplomatic employee from Guangzhou was announced, the State Department issued a health alert via the US Consulate in Guangzhou telling people that “if you experience any unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises, do not attempt to locate their source. Instead, move to a location where the sounds are not present.”
One has to wonder why Obama, Hillary or John Kerry did not work for their release.
In 2015, the Obama administration issued a warning to China to call off security agents working in the United States as part of Operation Fox Hunt. The agents were pressuring expatriate Chinese, including some wanted on corruption charges.
According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, Operation Fox Hunt has nabbed 2,566 fugitives who fled overseas in 90 countries to avoid Chinese authorities.
A total of 1,283 were convinced to return or turned themselves in, including 410 Communist Party members or official staff.
A hunt for China’s 100 most-wanted fugitives has resulted in the return of 39 people under a program called Sky Net.
China asked Obama more than once to return key Chinese located in the United States to China. In most cases, Obama said no. Meanwhile, China is holding Americans and it seems their release continues to be the subject of discussions.
In its ongoing campaign to extend its reach beyond its borders, the Chinese government has found a new form of leverage: American citizens in China.
Last year, Beijing prevented several U.S. citizens from leaving China, including a pregnant woman, according to email correspondence obtained by The Daily Beast. The total number of so-called exit bans placed on U.S. citizens in China is unknown, but at least two dozen cases have occurred within the past two years, according to one analyst’s estimate.
Chinese authorities typically target U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage for exit bans, usually in connection with an investigation. Sometimes, Beijing uses American citizens to try to coerce family members residing in the United States to return to China or to cooperate with Chinese authorities in investigations.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has championed a sweeping anti-corruption campaign with an international element, known as “Operation Fox Hunt,” aimed at pursuing Chinese citizens who have fled abroad after allegedly committing economic crimes. The United States does not have an extradition treaty with China and in the past has rarely cooperated with Chinese demands to repatriate Chinese citizens whom Beijing considers to be fugitives. Beijing has previously deployed undercover agents to the United States to coerce targets into returning to China, violating U.S. visa laws and prompting U.S. government indignation.
Now the People’s Republic seems to have found another lever of pressure. If one of Beijing’s targets living in the United States has relatives in China, Chinese authorities aren’t shy about applying pressure to those relatives, even if they are U.S. citizens. Exit bans are a “pretty new tool in the Chinese toolbox” for exerting such pressure, said John Kamm, founder of the U.S. nonprofit Dui Hua Foundation, which works on sensitive human rights cases in China.
“That individual might be treated as a material witness,” said Kamm. “Or that individual might be in effect being held as a hostage in an effort to get the people back.”
The Trump administration has pushed back quietly but firmly against exit bans. For example, in the lead-up to the first U.S.-China Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Dialogue, held in Washington, D.C., in October 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed for China to allow the free travel of three U.S. citizens who had been prevented from leaving China, including a pregnant woman, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast.
“Both sides will continue to cooperate to prevent each country from becoming a safe haven for fugitives and will identify viable fugitive cases for cooperation,” reads the U.S.-China joint statement released on Oct. 6, after the dialogue concluded. “Both sides commit to take actions involving fugitives only on the basis of respect for each other’s sovereignty and laws.”
It’s a delicate balancing act for an administration that also wishes to deport Chinese citizens who are in the United States illegally. In the past, China has often refused to accept deportations, leaving the United States with a large number of Chinese asylum seekers with final deportation orders. In 2015, Beijing’s refusal to accept deportees began to coincide with its push to repatriate fugitives it claimed were guilty of corruption. The Obama administration signed a memorandum of understanding with China to help expedite the deportation process, but remained reluctant to agree to Chinese demands to extradite fugitives.
Human rights groups have warned that fugitives may face torture or death back in China, also expressing concerns that Beijing might use trumped-up corruption charges to get their hands on troublesome political dissidents abroad.
The Department of Justice did not respond to emailed questions. The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
The State Department declined to comment regarding the fate of those three U.S. citizens, citing privacy concerns, but a State Department spokesperson said that the U.S. government had not agreed to repatriate any Chinese citizen due to pressure from exit bans. More here.
The super PAC Women Vote got a $5.4 million contribution in the form of stock in Chinese tech company Baidu. (notice the date too, seems like foreign interference to me)
In 2016, Women Vote raised almost $38 million and spent just over that. In 2018, they are in the $5 million range, so they need some help right? The political action committee, Women Vote was launched by Emily’s List. Ellen Malcolm is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Emily’s List and her operation(s) are comprised of top leaders, entrepreneurs and activists committed to pro-choice democratic women according to the website. Another Board member is Lisa Jackson. You remember her right? She was head of the EPA during the Obama administration that too used an alias and non-government emails to conduct official government business. Another Board member is Laura Ricketts. She is the owner of the Chicago Cubs and is a member of the Democratic National Committee’s Executive Committee and was the co-chair of the DNC Finance Committee’s LGBT Leadership Council. Add in Maria Teresa Kumar. She is the founding President and CEO of VOTO Latino. She also serves on the Board of Planned Parenthood, the Latino Leaders Network.
Heck there are many progressive liberals on the Board of Emily’s List. Travel over to the site and check it out.
If you have had some weird messages as a Skype user from Baidu…here is the deal. It is a Chinese multinational technology company. Baidu is a top developer of Artificial Intelligence and highly aligned with China president Xi Jinping. What is interesting is Baidu is under a holding company based in the Cayman Islands. The company is also traded on NASDAQ.
According to Wikipedia, there is some shady history with Baidu.
Domain name redirection attack
On January 12, 2010, Baidu.com’s DNS records in the United States were altered such that browsers to baidu.com were redirected to a website purporting to be the Iranian Cyber Army, thought to be behind the attack on Twitter during the 2009 Iranian election protests, making the proper site unusable for four hours.[23] Internet users were met with a page saying “This site has been attacked by Iranian Cyber Army“.[24] Chinese hackers later responded by attacking Iranian websites and leaving messages.[25] Baidu later launched legal action against Register.com for gross negligence after it was revealed that Register.com’s technical support staff changed the email address for Baidu.com on the request of an unnamed individual, despite failing security verification procedures. Once the address had been changed, the individual was able to use the forgotten password feature to have Baidu’s domain passwords sent directly to them, allowing them to accomplish the domain hijacking.[26][27]
Baidu workers arrested
On August 6, 2012, the BBC reported that three employees of Baidu were arrested on suspicion that they accepted bribes. The bribes were allegedly paid for deleting posts from the forum service. Four people were fired in connection with these arrests.[28]
91 Wireless acquisition
On July 16, 2013, Baidu announced its intention to purchase 91 Wireless from NetDragon. 91 Wireless is best known for its app store, but it has been reported that the app store faces piracy and other legal issues.[29] On August 14, 2013, Baidu announced that its wholly owned subsidiary Baidu (Hong Kong) Limited has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire 91 Wireless Web-soft Limited from NetDragon Web-soft Inc.[30] for 1.85 billion dollars in what was reported to be the biggest deal ever in China’s IT sector.[31]
There is more like the death of a student from cancer while working at headquarters.
Pretty weird that a Chinese tech company is getting involved with women voting and a political action committee right?
Mallory, who had top secret security clearance, worked as a CIA officer, and was stationed in Iraq, China and Taiwan.
Mallory is a self-employed consultant with GlobalEx, LLC. and resides in Leesburg, Virginia. According to the criminal complaint, he graduated from Brigham Young University in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
Shortly thereafter, Mallory worked full-time in a military position for five years. Once he left that job, he continued his military service as an Army reservist and worked as a special agent for the State Department Diplomatic Security Service for three years (1987-1990).
A single reference buried deep within hundreds of pages of court filings in the case of convicted CIA turncoat Kevin Mallory reveals the name of a Shanghai-based “executive search firm” that bears the hallmarks of a classic espionage front, former intelligence operatives from the U.S. and Russia tell The Daily Beast.
The U.S. government’s evidence against Mallory, who was found guilty Friday of espionage-related charges, included a photograph of a business card belonging to alleged Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) agent Richard Yang, who presented himself as a corporate headhunter. Prosecutors said he was one of Mallory’s handlers. According to court documents, the picture was taken at Darren & Associates, a supposed corporate recruiter with no listed phone number or executives and an address that traces back to a rent-by-the-hour space on Shanghai’s Hubin Road.
Darren & Associates’ connection to the Mallory case has not been previously reported. The firm has been in business for either “around 40 years,” as its website claims, or since 2014, as stated on its LinkedIn page. The job networking site lists no actual former or current employees, and the company has a near-zero web presence, which is highly unusual for an organization that describes itself as a successful global enterprise.
“Clearly this is phony,” said former KGB sleeper agent Jack Barsky. “The first thing you do to figure out how real [a company is] is look at their website, and this is just not the footprint of a solid company.”
“Clearly this is phony… The first thing you do to figure out how real [a company is] by looking at their website, and this is just not the footprint of a solid company.”
— former KGB sleeper agent Jack Barsky
It’s a “flimsy mechanism for them to use,” agreed former CIA officer Christopher Burgess. “To me, this is what someone would put up so that their business contact isn’t naked. But what it doesn’t do is talk about who they are, where they are, doesn’t give you names, and their mission is so general that it can cover anything.”
Richard Yang subsequently introduced Mallory to an associate, Michael Yang, who claimed to be affiliated with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS). It has a close relationship with the Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB), a sub-component of the Ministry of State Security, according to the FBI. The Shanghai security bureau “uses SASS employees as spotters and assessors,” says one court filing, and “FBI has further assessed that SSSB intelligence officers have also used SASS affiliation as cover identities.”
Chinese think tanks like the Shanghai academy “can be used to invite someone over who is either a person of interest or a source,” Peter Mattis of the Jamestown Foundation’s China Program told Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian and Elias Groll of Foreign Policy last year. “That person comes over and gives a talk, and they’ll be met and have meetings with the local state security element or the People’s Liberation Army.”
via Facebook
Others are based in the U.S., they pointed out. The China Institute of Contemporary International Relations describes itself as a “comprehensive research institution” but is also “an official numbered bureau of the Ministry of State Security, functioning rather like the CIA’s Open Source Center.”
Darren & Associates, the erstwhile headhunting firm, seems rather less sophisticated. Either the MSS was “too lazy” to create a more realistic front company, or they thought “no one would give a shit about this Mallory guy and no one would be checking it,” said a former Russian FSB officer now living in the U.S. under the pseudonym “Jan Neumann.”
But U.S. authorities did care, and Mallory’s scheme unraveled in 2017 when he was selected for secondary screening at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport after a trip to China. Although he said he had nothing to declare, customs officers found $16,500 in cash on him.
““An individual like Mallory, with 20-plus years of high-end intelligence community engagement should have known better than [to use] this weak cover story that the Chinese gave him.”
— former CIA officer Christopher Burgess
“An individual like Mallory, with 20-plus years of high-end intelligence community engagement should have known better than [to use] this weak cover story that the MSS gave him,” said Burgess. “He should have picked up the phone and called the FBI and said, ‘Hey, these people say they’re legitimate businesspeople, and I don’t think they are.’ And he should have done that years ago.”
The details of exactly what Mallory gave up have yet to be publicly revealed, and probably won’t ever be, said Burgess. But according to prosecutors, Mallory gave away the most precious secrets of all—the names of U.S. agents in China.
A CIA information review officer said in court last year that the documents Mallory gave to the Chinese contained sensitive intelligence, analysis, and the names of assets that “could reasonably be expected to cause the loss of critical intelligence and possibly result in the lengthy incarceration or death of clandestine human sources.”
”It’s a betrayal in the truest sense of the term,” former CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz told The Daily Beast.
FBI analysts further determined that Mallory “had completed all of the steps necessary to securely transmit at least four documents…one of which contained unique identifiers for human sources who had helped the U.S. government.”
Some of these files were stored on a Toshiba SD card, which Mallory concealed in aluminum foil and hid in his bedroom closet.
“We overlooked it twice,” FBI Special Agent Melinda Capitano testified Thursday.
“What made you think to open it?” the prosecutor asked.
“Usually in my training, small bits of foil like this contain drugs,” Capitano replied.
via PACER
The foil-wrapped SD card found in Mallory’s home.
Mallory’s defense team claims that the documents were worthless and that he was actually operating as an independent, self-directed counterintelligence officer of sorts to reel in the Chinese agents so he could eventually turn them into U.S. authorities. Burgess calls that “hogwash.” Mallory wasn’t freelancing in counterintelligence, he “was all-in” as an asset, in Burgess’ opinion.
“He was responsive to tasking, he used covert communications to reduce face-to-face interactions with his PRC contact,” said Burgess. “If I was validating a source, those are all indications that I have a good one.”
“He’s throwing something at the wall to see if it sticks,” laughed former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Ray Semko. “Just as long as they get one fool [on the jury] to believe it.”
Mallory’s attorney, Geremy Kamens, declined a request for comment.
Mallory, his wife, and one of his three kids lived in a four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 7,100-square foot house in Leesburg, Virginia, complete with a home theater and two fireplaces. He paid $1.15 million in 2005, a lot of money for a guy prosecutors said earned only $25,000 in the three years—all of it from his Chinese handlers.
He also has three adult children from a previous marriage. A court filing said Mallory had $50,000 in credit card debt, and about $2,500 in cash and investments. His wife, Mariah Nan-Hua Mallory, drives a school bus and earns roughly $9,000 a year.
In a motion previously filed with the court arguing against Mallory’s release pending trial, prosecutors said he had “demonstrated a pattern of dishonesty.”
“The defendant says and does anything he wishes to suit his particular needs, which seem largely to be finding an easy path out of his financial hardship, by betraying his government,” the motion stated.
A disguise kit found by FBI agents during a search of Mallory’s home.
However, Patsy Harrington, a real estate broker and close friend of Mallory’s who sold him his home, insists that Mallory is being totally mischaracterized.
“He is a loyal serviceman that was hurt in the line of duty in the Middle East, he’s a wonderful family man and a devoted Mormon with a wonderful wife and three highly accomplished grown children,” Harrington told The Daily Beast. “He’s a good man. I was a single mom and he was wonderful to me. He’s much better than 97 percent of the human beings I know.”
A LinkedIn recommendation from Min Xu, an associate professor at Central China Normal University describes Mallory as “a very faithful, honest, loyal, serious but kind, helpful, contagious person, very nice to everyone around, I will always remember his timely help and the warmth he gave to us when we were in trouble. He is really an amazing man.”
In fact, the Chinese agents who targeted Mallory initially reached out to him on LinkedIn. It’s a virtual goldmine for those looking to identify members of the “cleared community,” said Christopher Burgess, who has been contacted by people he assumed were foreign intelligence operatives more times than he can count.
via PACER
Yet Chinese intelligence isn’t only interested in people with active security clearances. Anyone with access or influence can potentially be of value, and everyone from professors to scientists to journalists have received overtures from foreign spy services.
National security reporter Garrett Graff was targeted on LinkedIn by Evgeny Buryakov, a Russian SVR operative posing as a New York City investment banker. And a Chinese agent used LinkedIn to reach out to journalist Nate Thayer last year.
“On the day I received my first message from Chinese intelligence agents from the Ministry of State Security, they, of course, didn’t say they were Chinese spies,” Thayer wrote on his blog. “The note was from ‘Frank Hu,’ a ‘project assistant’ from Shanghai Pacific & International Strategy Consulting Co, saying he had found me on the Internet and was writing to ‘seek potential cooperation opportunities.’”
Predictably, there is no “Shanghai Pacific & International Strategy Consulting Co,” which doesn’t even maintain a rudimentary Darren & Associates-style website. “Hu” told Thayer the company was “a consulting firm, specializing in independent policy analysis and advisory services. We strive to help our clients properly assess political dynamics, risks and opportunities in countries and regions they operate in.”
“In terms of human source operations, the PRC ‘services’ are not all that sophisticated,” an intelligence community source told Thayer, “until they get you on their turf. So don’t go there–to Shanghai, that is–for any reason.”
Of course, there is no such thing as a foolproof system in espionage, and breaches like Mallory’s will surely happen again.
As Joseph Wippl, a 30-year veteran of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told The Daily Beast, “It’s part of the business.”
In 2016, Women Vote raised almost $38 million and spent just over that. In 2018, they are in the 
