Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China Read Online Free Page B
Author: David Wise
Tags: General, Political Science, International Relations
most important part—which is they are developing a capability to do it again."
Moore offered a final thought about the difficulties of catching China's spies. "Normally the Chinese are able to commit espionage against the US without leaving evidence behind," he said. "If you do have enough evidence to make a case, normally somebody in China has made a mistake."
Chapter 2
PARLOR MAID
I N DECEMBER 1990, their work in China done, Bill Cleveland and I. C. Smith returned to the United States. Several weeks later, Cleveland called Smith from San Francisco. "I. C., they knew we were coming before we even left,"he said.
It was true. The proof was contained in an audiotape, made months earlier, that the government possessed but had not yet analyzed. Counterintelligence agents didn't realize what they had. The tape was an intercept by the National Security Agency of a conversation in Mandarin between a woman in Los Angeles, who used the code name Luo, and her MSS handler in Beijing, named, of all things, Mao.
The NSA, based in Fort Meade, Maryland, forwarded the tape to FBI headquarters in Washington. From there, it was sent on to the San Francisco field office, where most of the bureau's Chinese translators are based. Which is why, early in 1991, the tape eventually made its way to the desk of Bill Cleveland, chief of the Chinese counterintelligence squad in San Francisco.
Among other matters, the woman on the tape revealed to Mao that William Cleveland of the FBI was planning a trip to China—the trip from which he had just returned. The words on the tape were a bombshell.
Cleveland's heart sank, because he instantly recognized the woman's voice as that of Katrina Leung. Her friends knew her only as a high-profile leader of the Chinese American community in Los Angeles. But for almost two decades, she would serve as the FBI's premier secret source of intelligence on China, the Communist Party leadership in Beijing, and the MSS. For her services, the FBI would pay her more than $1.7 million.
Cleveland knew the voice on the audiotape right away because he was familiar, in fact intimately familiar, with the voice. He had become Katrina Leung's lover three years earlier.
Leung had been recruited in Los Angeles in 1982 by another FBI man, Special Agent James J. Smith, and given the code name PARLOR MAID . Since bureau informants are assigned a secret three-digit code name, Leung was also carried on the FBI rolls as "Bureau Source 410." She was thirty-one; J.J., as he was universally known, was eight years older.
Almost from the start, J.J. had begun a sexual relationship of his own with Ms. Leung,whose biochemist husband, Kam, would later insist that he was unaware as the years rolled by that he was sharing his wife with not one but two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It was J.J. who introduced Katrina Leung to Cleveland. Whether Cleveland or J.J., both of whom were married, knew of each other's simultaneous affairs with the same woman is uncertain, although apparently they did not. What is clear is that PARLOR MAID frequently strayed from the parlor into the bedroom.
Whether PARLOR MAID acted on her own in having sex with the two FBI agents who worked with her or whether she was encouraged to do so by the MSS is unknown. But the sexual relationships did give her leverage over the two FBI men, who wanted the affairs to remain secret.
Although J.J. would give her instructions, questions to ask Chinese officials, and tidbits of information she was authorized to disclose to Chinese intelligence, Cleveland's trip to China was not among these items. She knew about the trip because Cleveland had told her he was going. The voice on the tape also revealed details of FBI counterintelligence operations.
The tape was a chilling discovery for reasons that were immediately obvious to Cleveland. First, it indicated that PARLOR MAID had been doubled back against the FBI and was working for Beijing. Second, it might
Moore offered a final thought about the difficulties of catching China's spies. "Normally the Chinese are able to commit espionage against the US without leaving evidence behind," he said. "If you do have enough evidence to make a case, normally somebody in China has made a mistake."
Chapter 2
PARLOR MAID
I N DECEMBER 1990, their work in China done, Bill Cleveland and I. C. Smith returned to the United States. Several weeks later, Cleveland called Smith from San Francisco. "I. C., they knew we were coming before we even left,"he said.
It was true. The proof was contained in an audiotape, made months earlier, that the government possessed but had not yet analyzed. Counterintelligence agents didn't realize what they had. The tape was an intercept by the National Security Agency of a conversation in Mandarin between a woman in Los Angeles, who used the code name Luo, and her MSS handler in Beijing, named, of all things, Mao.
The NSA, based in Fort Meade, Maryland, forwarded the tape to FBI headquarters in Washington. From there, it was sent on to the San Francisco field office, where most of the bureau's Chinese translators are based. Which is why, early in 1991, the tape eventually made its way to the desk of Bill Cleveland, chief of the Chinese counterintelligence squad in San Francisco.
Among other matters, the woman on the tape revealed to Mao that William Cleveland of the FBI was planning a trip to China—the trip from which he had just returned. The words on the tape were a bombshell.
Cleveland's heart sank, because he instantly recognized the woman's voice as that of Katrina Leung. Her friends knew her only as a high-profile leader of the Chinese American community in Los Angeles. But for almost two decades, she would serve as the FBI's premier secret source of intelligence on China, the Communist Party leadership in Beijing, and the MSS. For her services, the FBI would pay her more than $1.7 million.
Cleveland knew the voice on the audiotape right away because he was familiar, in fact intimately familiar, with the voice. He had become Katrina Leung's lover three years earlier.
Leung had been recruited in Los Angeles in 1982 by another FBI man, Special Agent James J. Smith, and given the code name PARLOR MAID . Since bureau informants are assigned a secret three-digit code name, Leung was also carried on the FBI rolls as "Bureau Source 410." She was thirty-one; J.J., as he was universally known, was eight years older.
Almost from the start, J.J. had begun a sexual relationship of his own with Ms. Leung,whose biochemist husband, Kam, would later insist that he was unaware as the years rolled by that he was sharing his wife with not one but two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It was J.J. who introduced Katrina Leung to Cleveland. Whether Cleveland or J.J., both of whom were married, knew of each other's simultaneous affairs with the same woman is uncertain, although apparently they did not. What is clear is that PARLOR MAID frequently strayed from the parlor into the bedroom.
Whether PARLOR MAID acted on her own in having sex with the two FBI agents who worked with her or whether she was encouraged to do so by the MSS is unknown. But the sexual relationships did give her leverage over the two FBI men, who wanted the affairs to remain secret.
Although J.J. would give her instructions, questions to ask Chinese officials, and tidbits of information she was authorized to disclose to Chinese intelligence, Cleveland's trip to China was not among these items. She knew about the trip because Cleveland had told her he was going. The voice on the tape also revealed details of FBI counterintelligence operations.
The tape was a chilling discovery for reasons that were immediately obvious to Cleveland. First, it indicated that PARLOR MAID had been doubled back against the FBI and was working for Beijing. Second, it might
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