Trouble & Attitude 1/Trouble and Attitude - Issue 01.iso/pc/pctext/almn1.txt

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THE ALMANAC OF ESPIONAGE

INTRODUCTION
        The Cold War's end has seen no let up to
spying. If anything, the compound fracturing of
Russia's empire made the problem worse for Western
intelligence agencies. Now, in the former "evil
empire," there is a host of new countries; and all the
newly independent ex-Soviet states face challenges of
political and economic stability. They were little
known and unimportant in the days when Moscow was the
center of empire. The new states now have their own
espionage, counterintelligence security and military
intelligence services. They were formed immediately
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December
1991 and incorporated the local Committee for State
Security (KGB) and Interior Ministry personnel.
        In the old days, in Europe, Western
intelligence officers worked mainly under diplomatic
covers from their Moscow embassies - fine when only
the Kremlin counted and the now defunct USSR was the
prime target. In theory, there is much work to be done
- new languages to learn, new officials and contacts
to cultivate and new threats such as nuclear materials
theft, drug smuggling and organized crime to monitor.
In practice, intelligence agencies collect what their
political and military leaders think important.
        The White House is not particularly interested
in former Soviet states - except for their nuclear
weapons and materials that might be smuggled to a
"rogue" country or to terrorists. The former KGB women
and men now working for Ukraine or Kazakhstan are very
interested in Washington. Are they working for Kiev
and Tashkent or for Moscow?
        Though unpleasant, it's logical that the
former Soviet states would spy on the West. What could
be more important to a newly independent country than
inside knowledge of the intentions, perceptions and
plans of donor countries and investors? Besides, what
can not be used by their own gov- ernment may be
valuable in trade - to Moscow, Beijing, Teh- ran,
whatever. Economic policy and political intelligence
are more important than ever. Competition in cutting
edge technologies - bio-tech, composite materials,
cryogenics, super conductors, optics and lasers -
makes industrial espionage more intense than ever.
        However, the former Soviet states are not
alone in their quest for political, economic and
social information. There are emerging nuclear powers
such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea; there are emerging
imperial states such as India, desperate for more
lebensraum - living space; there are still other
states that seek to impose their version of Islamic
government across their borders. China, France,
Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom
have their own political and economic agendas; as even
peripheral news readers know each of these countries
spy not only on each other, but also on the United
States. Certainly, throughout the world the initials
CIA are as well known as USA - and sometimes used
synonymously. And, within the CIA there is a much
repeated - and respected - saying: "There may be such
a thing as friendly foreign government, but there is
no such thing as a friendly foreign intelligence
service."

THE OLDEST PROFESSIONS

        Based on Biblical accounts, spying has been
called the world's second oldest profession. Sex and
spying have been paired for some 4,000 years. Doubters
are referred to the story of Joshua's two young men
sent to spy out the defenses of Jericho. Where do the
two strangers go to lie low, so to speak? To Rahab, a
prostitute whose house abuts the town wall close to
the gate. When the guards come to arrest the spies,
Rahab hides them on her roof. Later in the night, she
gives them provisions, directions on how to avoid the
patrols scouring the countryside for them, and lowers
them by rope over the wall in return for a promise of
protection when Joshua captures the city.
        Some 1,500 years after Joshua, China's great
military strategist Sun Tzu had developed enormous
sophistication as a spymaster. He prefaced the chapter
of his handbook, The Art of War, on the use of secret
agents by emphasizing that no general or ruler could
be successful without spies. Foreknowledge of an
enemy's decisions cannot be obtained by divination,
"by analogy with past events, nor from calculations.
It must be obtained from men who know the enemy
situation."Sun Tzu wrote of one of the most ruthless
tactics - feeding an expendable agent false
information to divulge when he is captured. Sun Tzu
described the types of spies used: penetration agents
who move among the enemy notables who have access to
the inner circles of leadership to collect critical
information, the enemy's spies who have been
"doubled," ordinary people in the enemy's country who
know the lay of the land and can unobtrusively observe
and carry messages and agents recruited among enemy
officials.
 The 9th century A.D. Chinese commentator
Tu Mu described the character of these spies
unerringly: "Among the official class there are worthy
men who have been deprived of office; others who have
committed errors and have been punished. There are
sycophants and minions who are covetous of wealth.
There are those who wrongly remain long in lowly
office; those who have not obtained responsible
positions, and those whose sole desire is to take
advantage of times of trouble to extend the scope of
their own abilities. There are those who are
two-faced, changeable and deceitful, and who are
always sitting on the fence." "Tie them to you," said
Tu Mu. They will give you the facts of the situation
in their country and determine its plans against you;
and added, "They can as well create cleavages between
the sovereign and his ministers."
        This is a classic description of the agent of
influence. Marcus Tullius Cicero, patriot of the Roman
republic, recognized the danger of traitors. Of the
enemy within, Cicero said: "A nation can survive its
fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive
treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less
formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners
openly. But the traitor moves among those within the
gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the
alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the
accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their
face and their garments, and he appeals to the
baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He
rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and
unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a
city; he infects the body politic so that it can no
longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared."

THE WAY THINGS WERE

        The spy game contains a fundamental paradox.
It is the duty of every government to defend its
interests and thus to collect as much information,
open and secret, on as many other countries as it can
manage. At the same time, it must counteract the spies
from the countries spying on it. Obviously, there are
priorities since resources are limited. Every
government concentrates on the countries most likely
to engage in military aggression then on those with an
economic noose around their neck. Interest moves
outward from the borders, and those interests can
change rapidly as the collapse of the Soviet empire
showed. In the years between 1945 and 1990, the
intelligence services of Central and Eastern Europe
worked for Moscow. The internal security or secret
police kept their own people obedient; the foreign
intelligence service and military intelligence service
spied on Bonn, London, Rome, Paris and backed up the
Russians in the United States and Canada.
        For the past five years, these countries have
been in business for themselves. At the end of
December, the Ukrainians reported with some glee that
the KGB of neighboring Belarus has learned of at least
twenty attempts by Poland's "special services" [the
favored East European euphemism] to recruit agents in
Belarus. It is not amusing to Central Europeans whose
countryside has been fought over for more than a
thousand years. The devastation of World War II and
its aftermath have not faded from memory; and lurking
underneath is the recollection that just 200 years ago
the Polish Kingdom's eastern borders extended all the
way to the Dnieper River and included both Belarus and
the western half of Ukraine.
        Americans responsible for national parks,
forests, public land management, environmental
protection with the U.S. Department of the Interior
are often taken aback by the reception given them when
traveling abroad. In most countries, the Interior
Ministry means the secret police, not Smokey the Bear.
Internal spying in the developing countries means the
secret police, usually attached to the Ministry of the
Interior if they were French or Belgian colonies, or
to the Ministry of Home Affairs if Britain was the
colonial power. These ministries generally handle the
ordinary police, secret police, and customs. In Latin
America, the secret police may be part of the Ministry
of Government, Interior or Justice. In small countries
with tight budgets, external spying is often limited
to the Foreign Ministry's diplomats, plus military
attachees. Concerned with potential border wars, the
military of the Third World worries mainly about bean
counting - how many soldiers, tanks, artillery pieces,
helicopter gunships do the immediate neighbors and
traditional enemies have - monitoring military
exercises, and recruiting contacts among the officers
and civilian officials of other countries.

NO END TO SPIES

        The lowering of tensions between Washington
and Moscow has not meant any reduction in espionage.
Only seven months after the formal dissolution of the
Soviet Union, in an interview with the Russian Defense
Ministry's Krasnaya Zvezda [Red Star], KGB Lt. General
Vadim Alekseyevich Kirpichenko (who from 1974 to 1979
was head of Directorate S [illegals] of the KGB First
Chief Directorate and for the previous two years was
leader of the group of consultants to Russian
spymaster Yevgeny Primakov), stated: "I want to note
that President Yeltsin and the Russian Government
understand the need for us to function normally. We
have the necessary minimum." Kirpichenko said that the
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVRR) and GRU
[Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff]
had "worked out a rhythm of collaboration" and avowed
that while they were reducing intelligence activities
in countries of secondary interest, "where it is
necessary to our state, we shall continue our
activity."
 And so they do. In January 1995, Britain
expelled Aleksandr Malikov, 43, a journalist attached
to Russia's government-controlled Ostankino television
station. The stated reason, "national security." The
United States, to the contrary, has not been expelling
spies lately though the SVRR rezident in the Russian
Embassy was declared persona non grata after the
arrests of CIA traitor Aldrich Ames and his wife in
February 1994. FBI counterintelligence agents are
aware of SVRR and GRU officers, but they have not been
ordered to leave. The word is the White House National
Security Council and State Department officials do not
want to embarrass Boris Yeltsin at a time when his own
security and guard service appears to be taking
control of much of the government. It is like the
Victorian admonition to children: "Hold on tight, stay
close to Nurse, for fear of finding something worse."
With this, Maldon offers a survey of some of the
globe's intelligence and counterintelligence services:

DIRECTORY OF INTELLIGENCE ORGANIZATIONS

ALBANIA: OSSH - Organs of State Security - Albania's
Sigurimi, part of the former Ministrae Punæve tæ
Brendshme (MPB) [Ministry of Internal Affairs]. ShIK -
National Intelligence Service - Albania's
post-Communist restructured intelligence service,
formerly the Sigurimi or OSSh. Irakli Kocollari is
chairman of the ShIK. Sigurimi - [Security], Albania's
foreign and internal intelligence service, the OSSh;
reorganized as the ShIK in 1991. The Tirana
publication Zeri I Popullit, in an article headlined,
"Where are the Sigurimi Collaborators Today?" noted in
February 1994 that there have been no revelations of
the identities of collaborators, no opening of the
secret police files and that the danger of political
blackmail continues.

ARAB STATES: Mukharabat [listening post] - the most
common term of reference for the intelligence services
of most Arab countries including Libya and Syria. In
point of fact, the military intelligence services of
these countries are the principal foreign intelligence
organizations. In addition, the Foreign Ministries
maintain information collection groups. In Syria,
because President Hafiz al-Assad himself was an air
force officer, the Air Force Intelligence is favored.

ARGENTINA: CNI - National Intelligence Center -
Argentina's foreign intelligence organization. SIDE -
Secretariat for State Intelligence - Argentina. SIE -
Secretariat for State Intelligence - Argentina.

AUSTRALIA: ASIO - Australian Secret Intelligence
Organization. Australia's internal security
organization came into being during the early days of
the cold war as a counter-espionage agency. Its
origins were in Australian military intelligence and
General Douglas MacArthur's Allied Intelligence
Bureau, established in Melbourne during World War II.
The need for more professional intelligence was made
plain in the 1970s after the defection of Vladimir
Petrov, a KGB agent from the Soviet Embassy in
Canberra who told of extensive Soviet operations in
Australia. Over the years ASIO has had some successes
and some embarrassments. ASIS - Australian Secret
Intelligence Service - foreign intelligence is an
organization that can trace its origins to the Coast
Watchers, which during World War II was a network of
Australian spies on islands overrun by the Japanese.

BELARUS: KGB of Belarus - Mikhail Zhukovets, head of
the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the State
Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus, died in
Minsk on 13 July 1993. "Officials of the information
service of the Belarus KGB refrained from giving
details and only stated that the death was the result
of an accident," reported Moscow's Komsomolskaya
Pravda. Allegedly, "He fell from the 10th floor of a
block on the Nemiga, where he lived with his family.
But even severely intoxicated, it would not be so easy
to topple over the more than meter-high balcony
railings." Kiev MOLOD UKRAYINY on December 30, 1994,
said, "The press service of the Belarusian KGB has
reported that it has more than 20 statements by
citizens notifying about attempts on the part of the
Polish special services to recruit them for
collaboration."

BOLIVIA: DIE - State Intelligence Directorate -
Bolivia.

BRAZIL: DSI - Security and Intelligence Division -
Brazil. SNI - National Intelligence Service - Brazil's
intelligence agency; closely tied to the Brazilian
military institution, the SNI is rumored to have
played a key role in Brazil's effort to make its own
nuclear weapons and in pre-Gulf war dealings with
Iraq.

BULGARIA: DS - State Security, also called Drzaven
Sigurnost [Department of Security], Bulgarian security
service under Zhivkov regime that was overthrown in
December 1989.

CANADA: CSIS - Security Intelligence Service.
Intelligence agencies lack imagination in their choice
of names, and the Canadian agency responsible for
internal security and counterintelligence obviously
looked toward Australia for guidance when it was
formed in 1981. For external intelligence, the
Canadians rely heavily on their NATO relationships
with the British and the Americans. Prior to 1981,
Canada's internal security problems were the
responsibility of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
(RCMP), which investigated the terrorist Quebec
Liberation Front with all too much enthusiasm. As a
result a number of RCMP officers were accused of
illegal wire-taps, breaking and entering and acts of
provocation. In August 1994, charges were made against
the SIS that they too had been involved with illegal
acts in investigations of neo-Nazi groups and racism
in an army unit. Other charges were made that their
investigations extended into the activities of
journalists working for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation and the Canadian Jewish Congress. Critics
were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act
but were quickly released.

CHILE: CNI - National Information Center - Chile's
intelligence service. Under the junta of General
Augusto Pinochet, it was formerly called the DINA. The
name was changed after the scandal exposing the DINA
responsibility for political assassinations of Chilean
opponents in exile, among them the shooting of General
Rene Schneider in Rome and the car-bomb murder of
former Defense Minister Orlando Letelier, killed in
Washington, D.C. DINA - National Intelligence
Directorate - Chile's former intelligence service -
name changed to CNI. DINE - Chile's Army Intelligence
Directorate; not to be confused with the former DINA.

CHINA: Nicholas Eftimiades, author of the only modern
book- length study of Beijing's espionage and secret
police network [Chinese Intelligence Operations.
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994], criticizes
the shortsightedness of the U.S. intelligence agencies
who dismissed China's wholesale spying for years.
China has the world's largest army, but it never
developed the force-projection capabilities needed to
invade another Asian country or to take Taiwan from
the Nationalists. Thus, Beijing's spying goes largely
unmonitored by the CIA abroad and by the FBI's
counterintelligence division at home, says Eftimiades.
The FBI disagrees. Yet, the People's Liberation Army
(PLA) of 1995 is strikingly different from the one
that existed in 1979 when Deng Xiaoping's economic
liberalization began.
        In 1979, China's huge army was mocked for its
lumbering, incoherent invasion of Vietnam that bogged
down a few miles inside Vietnam's border. China naval
arm was a coastal patrol service; the air force flying
knockoffs of 1950s-vintage Russian MiGs. As for
China's nuclear forces, they were mounted on a
relatively small force of missiles of dubious
accuracy. Their role was believed to be mainly a
deterrent to the Russians. Over the past ten years,
China has made great strides in modernizing its army.
China has transformed the naval forces from a coast
guard into the beginnings of a bluewater navy capable
of exerting Beijing's claim to sovereignty over the
South China Sea, the Spratly Islands and their
presumed reserves of petroleum and natural gas. China
has a comprehensive missile development program and is
an exporter of short-, medium- and intermediate range
missiles to the volatile Mideast.
        Intelligence sources report that for many
years China and Israel have had a secret arrangement
under which Israel uses nuclear and missile test
facilities around the legendary Lop Nur [90 degrees E.
40 degrees N] in western China. Recent reports
indicate some U.S. technology found its way into
Chinese missiles via this route. Ironically, against
the interests of both Israel and the United States,
China is selling missiles with a range up to 1,200
miles to a variety of Mideast countries. To a
considerable degree, China's military-industrial
complex is supported by an espionage apparatus second
to none in size.
        China's espionage operations go beyond mere
information collection and industrial espionage to
penetration of U.S. intelligence. In 1988, Harry
Godfrey, III, then head of the counterintelligence
section of the FBI field office in Los Angeles,
stated, "If we are talking about violations of U.S.
law, the Chinese are surpassing the Russians. We know
they are running operations here. We have seen cases
where they have encouraged people to apply to the CIA,
the FBI, Naval Investigative Service, and other
Defense agencies. They have also attempted to recruit
people at our research facilities at Los Alamos and at
Lawrence Livermore." Last April, the Wall Street
Journal quoted U.S. spy catchers avowing that in terms
of sheer numbers, China's espionage efforts vastly
surpass those of Russia or any other nation operating
in the United States; and they pointed to the case of
convicted PRC spy Bin Wu as typical of operations
involving theft of restricted technologies. The PRC's
intelligence, counterintelligence and secret police
agencies include the following:
GAB - Ministry of State Security, usually known by the
English acronym (MSS). The MSS is a creation of Deng
Xiaoping's modernization of state structures, having
been formed in 1983 by the merger of the espionage,
counterintelligence and internal security functions of
the Investigations Department of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Ministry
of Public Security (MPS). The MSS cooperates with the
MPS in cases dealing with possible disloyalty among
returning Chinese students and dissidents. Since 1985,
the MSS has been headed by Jia Chunwang, a member of
the CPC Central Committee. Jia, a 1964 graduate from
the engineering physics department of Qinghua
University, earlier was responsible for loyalty and
counterintelligence as secretary of the Beijing Party
Committee for Discipline Inspection. Jia's deputy
ministers oversee the geographically based foreign
intelligence bureaus. Arrests and exposures of China's
intelligence operations in various countries over the
past three decades demonstrate extensive use of both
"legal covers" [accredited diplomats, military
attachees, governmental trade representatives] that
give spies some protection [they are expelled, not
jailed] and "illegals" - journalists, students,
scientists, businessmen without diplomatic status who
face imprisonment if caught. Among the covers given to
Chinese intelligence officers abroad are positions
with the CPC's International Liaison Department, the
New China News Agency (XINHUA), Chinese People's
Friendship Association, the trade offices and trade
missions. China's illegals, supplied with expertly
forged or sometimes genuine identity papers and
passports, may set up shop in the West in the guise of
being Singaporeans, Thais, Hong Kong or Overseas
Chinese of varied citizenships. This has been
especially true of illegals involved in running
commercial fronts used to obtain and ship banned
dual-use technology home to China.
        China's greatest publicized success was its
penetration agent, Larry Wu-tai Chin [his name also is
transliterated Jin Wudai]. U.S. officials say he held
the rank of deputy bureau chief of the GAB/MSS. Chin
was arrested in November 1985. According to Chin's
confession to three FBI agents shortly before he was
arrested - a confession he unsuccessfully attempted to
suppress - in 1942, after he had become a translator
on the staff of the U.S. Army Liaison Office in
Fuzhow, he was recruited to the Communist Party of
China. Later, the espionage department of the CPC was
amalgamated with the Ministry of Public Security into
the MSS. In the Korean War, Chin was an interpreter
during the interrogation of Chinese POWs and informed
his superiors of what sorts of information the
Americans were seeking and which prisoners cooperated.
In 1952, Larry Chin joined the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). He was awarded the CIA's career
intelligence medal when he retired. He became a
naturalized U.S. citizen in 1965. Chin was far more
than a mere translator of open source radio programs
and newspaper articles. He did as much damage to U.S.
interests in Asia as Aldrich Ames did to interests in
the Soviet Union. According to the 17-count indictment
against him, Chin "reviewed, translated and analyzed
classified documents from covert and overt human and
technical collection sources" and "was involved in and
aware of the West's intelligence requirements"
regarding the People's Republic of China and efforts
to obtain the information to meet those requirements.
For much of his career, Chin was a "document control
officer" who routed "finished intelligence products"
through the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency,
Departments of State and Defense and the White House.
Chin had access not just to materials on the PRC, but
to the entire body of analytical intelligence - the
"finished intelligence products" - on all of Asia,
including the National Intelligence Estimates that are
a cornerstone for policy development, national
intelligence requirements on the PRC and all other
Asian countries, and reports on the Asian countries
originating in other government agencies sent to the
CIA for review or filing. Since one of the principle
centers for Western intelligence operations regarding
China is the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, the
language of the indictment about "the West's
requirements" indicated Chin may have been able to
betray some British or U.S.-British cooperative
intelligence programs. During the period of the
Vietnam war, Chin would have been able to provide
details of U.S. policy, planning and operations in
Indochina. Virtually everything that passed through
his hands, Chin stole and copied for Beijing. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), most probably
citing a defector, stated that the volume of materials
obtained by Chin was so great that each delivery of
filmed U.S. intelligence documents took two months to
completely translate. In addition, he cultivated other
CIA employees of Chinese ancestry, especially those
with relatives still on the Mainland, to obtain
information to help Beijing recruit them. He followed
the parameters recommended by Sun Tzu precisely. A
federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, convicted Chin
of 17 charges including six counts of espionage. He
faced a maximum sentence of life imprisonment plus 83
years imprisonment and $3.3 million in fines.
Sentencing was scheduled for March 17. On February 21,
1986, Chin apparently used his shoelaces to tie a
plastic garbage bag around his head while lying on his
bed and suffocate himself although he was in a suicide
watch cell in which prisoners are to be checked every
30 minutes around the clock.
        In the United States, the GAB/MSS has a huge
manpower pool to draw on for services: 1,500 PRC
accredited diplomats and commercial representatives;
70 PRC offices, agencies and establishments; 10,000
members of various scientific, trade, commercial and
political delegations visiting for a period of up to
several weeks. Each year; 15,000 Chinese students
arrive in American universities and there is a large
ethnic Chinese-American community. Make no mistake,
the overwhelming number of Chinese-Americans have no
love for the Beijing regime, but Beijing is ruthlessly
manipulative of feelings of ethnic solidarity, general
pride in China's emergence on the world scene and
family loyalty; so it hunts for those that Beijing can
manipulate. The June 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy
uprising in Beijing and scores of other Chinese cities
brought defections of many PRC diplomats and GAB/MSS
officers, who detailed the efforts of the intelligence
ministry to intimidate and control the overseas
students and scientists. The first secretary at the
Washington Embassy, Wang Zurong, was especially active
against the PRC students at the University of Maryland
in College Park. Another MSS officer, Wang Weiji,
defected and described his activities against the
students; but his bona fides were questioned when his
wife returned to Beijing. The GAB/MSS often sends
agents abroad as a married couple, but with the woman
being the lead agent. MID - Military Intelligence
Department of the People's Liberation Army's General
Staff Department (GSD). The MID, also known as the
PLA's Er Bu [Second Department], is China's
second-largest intelligence agency. The primary
customers for the Er Bu's intelligence product are the
Central Military Commission (CMC), the core guarantor
of the security of the People's Republic, and the GSD.
        Other recipients of Er Bu products include the
Ministry of National Defense, the service
headquarters, the Commission of Science, Technology
and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND) and other
elements of the military-industrial complex and unit
commanders. One of the more intriguing parts of the Er
Bu is the Beijing Guo Zhanlue Yanjiusuo [Beijing
Institute for International Strategic Studies (BIISS),
which also is called the Beijing Guoji Zhanlue Xuehui
[Beijing International Strategic Studies Association].
The BIISS is staffed almost entirely with current and
retired military officers and many divide their time
between the Military Intelligence Department and the
institute. The Er Bu Analysis Bureau works especially
closely with the institute. A Chinese defector
described the BIISS to Eftimiades as "our window on
the world" that allows the PLA's military intelligence
to make contact with foreign specialists in foreign
policy and sound them out on various issues. Major
General Xiong Guangkai, a professional military
intelligence officer in his late fifties, heads the Er
Bu. Xiong reports to a deputy chief of the GSD.
Nicholas Eftimiades noted that China's military spies
are building a new breed of officers with ample
familiarity with the West, Xiong's personal aide,
Colonel Li Ning, for example, was a military attachee
in London in the late 1980s where he identified new
Mideastern markets for Chinese weapons and sought to
acquire "advanced technology with military
applications." In 1990, Li completed graduate work at
the prestigious School of Advanced International
Studies (SAIS), an affiliate of Johns Hopkins
University. Other sources report that during the
1980s, the Er Bu and GAB/MSS pressed scores of
graduate and post-graduate students into service,
especially those in research departments and
institutes involved with biotechnologies, optics,
communications technologies, advanced physics,
chemistry and mathematics, cryogenics, laser research
and medicine. Research fellows in these fields often
have access to research papers of other teams,
submitted for peer-review, and to papers on new
technologies at early development stages before they
are officially classified. "A vacuum-cleaner approach"
was how one U.S. official described it.
        The Er Bu may number China's First Family
among its members. Take the intriguing career of Deng
Xiaoping's highly influential youngest daughter, Deng
Rong. In the late 1970s, after graduation from the
Beijing Medical School, she joined the CPC and the
General Political Department of the People's
Liberation Army, which has intelligence as well as
ideological functions. She also joined the Communist
Party. In 1979, the year formal U.S.-PRC relations
began, her husband, He Ping, received a fast-track
position in military procurement and military
intelligence.Deng Rong then changed her name to Xiao
Rong and with her husband was dispatched to China's
Embassy in Washington. For the next four years, the
couple worked at the embassy for the PLA's General
Political Department (GPD) collecting information.
Rong expanded her contacts with Americans by taking a
course in government management at American
University. After their return to Beijing, Deng Rong
was appointed deputy director of the Policy Research
Institute of the National People's Congress.
(continued as next chapter)