Sleeper Agents

Something worth pondering, not on the basis of what we learned, but on the basis of what we don’t know. Over the course of the past few months, a half dozen people have been sentenced on espionage charges over selling military and other secrets to the Chinese government. In the most damaging case, the Chinese government sent Chi Mak to the U.S. in the 1970s to embed himself in the defense industry, win promotions and higher security clearances and then send highly classified military secrets to Beijing.

The good news is he was caught and sentenced to 24 years in prison in what the sentencing judge described as a tough message to send to the Chinese government so they will keep their spies home. The bad news is that the Chinese government doesn’t care about Mak, other than the loss of one of its many pipelines of security theft, and that Mak is hardly alone in his efforts to steal military secrets and conduct industrial espionage on behalf of China.

Our own Justice Department believes that the recent arrests and convictions represent only a small faction of the Chinese government’s network in the U.S. The department believes we have been infiltrated by students, consultants, and employees at sensitive U.S. government sites and they seem to be overwhelmed determining who is a spy and who is a legitimate worker. The very fact that Mak had been sent here 30 years ago as a “sleeper agent” should demonstrate the patience of the Chinese government and the lengths it will go in getting the goods on us. If only they had sent people here to learn how not to make toys that poison our kids.

Of course there is a simple solution, although not a pretty one. Until China comes clean and removes its agents, we should not allow any student or work visas to Chinese nationals and should either revoke the security clearance of any workers born in China or give them all polygraph exams, something they agree to accept on a random basis when given the clearance. This effort, while extreme, may stem the tide a little and keep what few secrets we have left in the U.S.

Two other issues of note in this story: Some of those convicted were Americans willing to sell their country out for cash payments, which doesn’t say much about American workers. Also, assuming the Chinese government has been this successful in infiltrating our security network, what about the presence of other sleeper agents from parts of the world that are stealing our secrets with greater malicious intent? We are a free and open society that allows far too easy access to our borders and our national security institutions. We should be far more careful.