Opinion by David Ignatius: In the CIA’s search for a mole, is it missing a larger problem?
The Cranes had been home nearly three years when the FBI asked Tom to come to the Washington field office on Fourth Street. Visiting the bureau as a suspect was agony;
“You handled Yu Qiangsheng,” the FBI man began. “That means you probably know more about how Chinese intelligence works than anyone in this country.”“He died last year. A stroke. He wasn’t taking care of himself. We didn’t publicize it. The Chinese would have claimed they killed him, to scare other defectors. Do you know what he told us before he died? He said that if he were running the MSS, he would try to recruit Tom Crane.”“That’s bullshit,” he responded. “Yu drank too many highballs.
The questions were meticulous; the investigators had every cable and operational report Tom had ever filed. Inevitably, there were questions he couldn’t answer, and anomalies that he knew would raise questions and suspicions. The simple fact was that he had known the identities of most of the Chinese agents the CIA had recruited over three decades. He was an obvious suspect.
Sonia kept it together through the interview. But when she got home to Great Falls, she fell into her husband’s arms and sobbed. The bodies piled up at Xiyuan. The party’s senior cadres showered praise on Ma Wei for her aggressive methods and meticulous attention to detail. China hadn’t known a great spymaster since the defection of Yu Qiangsheng. Now, the young case officers had a model. She was embarrassed when the ministry circulated a list of the “four goods” in recruiting agents: Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego.
The big men were battling for power in 2012. Chinese magazines began to print scandal stories as the party titans leaked damaging information about each other. The boss in Chongqing briefly seemed to be dominant, but then he was vaporized — expelled from the party. The same thing happened to the Politburo security chief Ma had disliked.Ma studied the newspaper photograph of Yu Qiangsheng’s younger brother, now on the Politburo, so sleekly groomed, the indispensable friend of the powerful.
Crane considered the matter: Could someone become so angry about what he viewed as anti-Chinese prejudice that he would betray his country? Tom didn’t know the answer, so he asked Sonia, who was half-Chinese.“Off-the-wall question,” Tom ventured as they were having an evening cocktail. “You told me the agency sometimes discriminates against Chinese people. So, how bad is it?”“Very bad. Sometimes all they see is skin color. They don’t need to polygraph you.
“Try Valerie,” said Sonia. Valerie Wen had joined Tom’s consulting firm six months before. She had been born in Hong Kong and spoke perfect Chinese. And most enticing of all, she had worked for six years as a CIA analyst. Valerie should let on that she used to work for you-know-who. Then she should wait for them to make a pitch. Money, consulting, access. Something of value. When they did, she should ask if they knew Arthur Li. She shouldn’t record the conversation, but she should take careful notes immediately after she left them to provide later to the FBI.Sign up for David Ignatius’s Follow email alerts to get the next installment as soon as it publishes.
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