Subject: CBS Incident Committee NR No. 4 (Part III & IV)

From: [email-masked] (Xiangdong "Sheldon" Shi)
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 1994 16:54:30 GMT

Thursday, June 9, 1994   (No. 4)

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 *** Part III. & IV. Activities and Suggestions ***
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1. An update of the current status of the CBS incident.....................22
2. Forum:
   (1) Good book, bad report--a netter's comments on the book
       "Chinese Intelligence Operations" by Eftimiades and the CBS report.146
   (2) An article from CCF (No. 9431): 
       Please Calm Down! -- Thoughts on CBS Issue..........................69
   (3) letters from netter.................................................49
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1. An update of the current status of the CBS incident.....................22
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a) Earlier this week, the vice president of CBS Hard News and Special Events
sent a letter to IFCSS vice president Mr. Shi Heping, in response to his
inquiry of the CBS report. In the letter, the CBS VP said CBS stands by its
report. He also said that Chinese Ministry of State Security had recruited
hundreds of ordinary Chinese citizens [Editor: can hundreds out of 100,000+
be characterized by planeloads?] to steal U.S. secrets based on U.S. 
intelligence and CBS reported concrete examples of this having occurred.
[Editor: Is Mr. Kao a concrete example of planeloads of Chinese arriving in
U.S. recently?] He also cited that between 1986 and 1993, one in eight of
illega export enforcement cases closed by U.S. Commerce Dept. involved P.R.
China. [Editor: are these all spies cases and do they all involve Chinese
nationals?]

The editor's comments only replect the editor's personal view. The full text
and fcbs-committee's comments will be released soon.

b) There have been several lawyers who showed interests in this case. But no
concrete progresses have been made at this point. However, in case of a law
suit, those who have the TAPE of the CBS report are strongly encouraged to
contact the CBS incident committee. We need every bit of help from you!
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2. Forum
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(1) Good book, bad report--a netter's comments on the book "Chinese
    Intelligence Operations" by Eftimiades and the CBS report...........146
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After reading the book  "Chinese Intelligence Operations" by Eftimiades
which the CBS report claimed to be based on, Mr. Xiao Dong wrote the following
impression of the book:

  "I liked the book.  It is professionally written, with
  balanced materials and facts.  It describes the Chinese intelligence
  operations in detail, and it is convincing.

    It is NOT the impression I had about the book after the
  CBS report.  The CBS report does NOT reflect objectively what the
  book presents.  The CBS report picked ONLY a small part of the book
  about Chinese intelligence recruitment,  misrepresented or maybe
  DISTORTED delibrately the facts quoted in the book, and added fabrications.

  1)The title of the book describes the subject well, it's 
  about the Chinese intelligence operations, in the world.  Many 
  examples are from Africa and Asia, where the Chinese communist
  party has/had "friendship aids".  

  2)It's about intelligence.  Spying is only part of intelligence 
  work.  Intelligence is information gathering.  As the author 
  indecated clearly: (page 114)  "gathering information on friends 
  and adversaries should not necessarily be viewed as an evil act.  
  Often, the lack of knownledge about another country's intentions 
  serves to destablize relations between states."

  He gave the example of Larry K.W. Tai, who deilivered 
  President Nixon's policy toward China to the Chinese intelligence
  agencies as early as 1970, which may very well serve as a door knock
  and prompted the Chinese government to define a policy that lead
  to the normalization of China and the US.

  3)It is about various intelligence operations. The book
  centered around the MSS (Ministry of State Security) activities,
  domestically and internationally.

  The "fish in the bottom of the ocean" statement in the CBS report is probably
  the most insulting statement to the Chinese public.  It is in the book (page
  61). However, the CBS did NOT present the story as the book did.

    It is in a chapter titled "Agent Recuitment Methods". In most of this
  chapter, the author described in detail how the MSS recruit FOREIGN (ie. 
  non-Chinese) nationals to work for them. The CBS conveniently IGNORED the
  non-Chinese agents (plenty of examples, most interesting one is what the
  movie Ms. Butterfly based on, the Frenchman felt in love with
  a Chinese opera singer, who turned out to be a bisexual, and
  the MSS get the Frenchman to work for them in return for 
  allowing their marriage, they went back to France and spied
  for China for years until they are caught by the French
  counter-intelligence).  No, the CBS ONLY tells the American 
  public that "ordinary CHINESE" can be "spies", but they
  did NOT (or dare NOT) say that the ordinary Americans are
  actively recruited, TOO.  And there are examples in the book!

  Also, CBS DISTORTED the recuitment procedure presented
  in the book.  Remember what the CBS report said: "It all starts here
  in Beijing. A Chinese student or scientist businessperson applies for a
  visa to go to the US.  Then the Ministry
  of State Security starts asking questions: ...".

  The sentence structured "A ..student OR ... OR ... applies",
  so it seems to be a STANDARD procedure of visa application that
  ANYONE will be asked "questions".

  In the book: (page 61)

  "The following narrative describes the recruitment and deployment of ONE
   such agant.
   
  A PRC national was recruited as a low-level agent by provincial MSS
  officials. The source had two academic degrees in the hard sciences.
  The recruitment process started approximately six months before the
  prospective agent was to travel to the United States ..."

  Clearly, the book was discussing a specific person, withholding
  his/her name.  But it was an INDIVIDUAL, not "a student" in general
  terms!  The rest of the procedure was simplified by the CBS, with
  sensational sentences that I'll single them out in next message.

  The CBS "special investigation" of course may not be based
  on this book alone.  But some of the CBS quotationa are just outright
  un-characteristic of Chinese officials.  Those quotations in the book 
  are, however, very convincing.

  "You belong to our organization".  Remember how sensational it is:

  Man:    Never forget, you belong to our organization.
  CHUNG: 'never forget,' they told him, 'you belong to our organization.'
  Man:    You were sent by our organization.
  CHUNG: 'You were sent by our organization, and this organization belongs
          to the Communist Party.'
  Man:   ...Communist Party.

  It sounded mafioso, doesn't it?!  These quotations are not in
  the book, and I dare to bet that they are made up!   The Chinese don't
  talk that way.  The Italian gansters do.  :-)

  What the book quoted is:
  "They also reminded him to 'remember your family, the Communist
  party, and our country", while overseas.

  Also, I didn't find the CBS alleged question "Will you be loyal
  to China?" in the book, which is supposedly from the book.  This 
  question is not way out of line as the "belong to our organization"
  sentence, but it also sounded like a stupid question.

  The book got favorable reviews from James R. Lilley, who wrote
  that "Mr. Efitimiades has written an important book on Chinese
  intelligence which is both well documented and well grounded in history.
  He describes clearly and factually the methods, objectives, organization,
  and history of Chinese intelligence backed up with case histories and
  documentation."

  I fully agree with Lilley's comments.  The CBS picked the bits
  in the book involves Chinese and distorted them to slander the Chinese. 

  The forward of the book was even writte by a Chinese scholar,
  Chong-Pin Lin of American Enterprise Institute.  It would be intersting
  to find his opinion about the CBS incident.

  There are plenty of examples of Chinese agents in the US and 
  elsewhere in the world.  Those instances in the US are all heard of
  by most Chinese here.  They are mostly embassy/consulate officials
  or NCNA jouralists.  There are suspecions of visiting scholars
  stealing secrets, the neutron bomb secrets from LBL is one example.
  There are no instances of ordinary Chinese coming to America by
  "planeloads" (this word is not in the book by the way) that are
  caught spying.  

  There are also Hongkong and Taiwan businessmen who are
  caught exporting restricted technology to China via a thrid country.
  These can be considered espionarg cases, however, the author also
  acknowleges that many of these businessmen don't even hide the
  final destination of the products.  They just frankly tell the
  American manufacturers that these purchases are going to China and
  the products are sold and delivered.  So these are not exactly
  spy cases, but normal however illegal business practices.

  Lastly, as mentioned in a previous mesasage, non-Chinese
  are also activelly pursued by the Chinese intelligence and plenty
  of examples of these agents are caught.  Only the Chinese are
  "future spies" is a distorsion of the oringal book!"
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(2) An article from CCF (No. 9431): Please Calm Down!--Thoughts on CBS Issue.69 
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Please calm down, man! Don't be so naive and stupid on the CBS Spy Issue!
Learn to use strategy. Don't just fight for something and turn out to lose
more. Simply fight for your idealism doesn't necessarily get you there
faster/better. We need to know what we are doing and what we want to gain.

What do you want to gain from the "fight"?

An apology from CBS stating that only a handful of Chinese "ordinary"
students and scholars are spies? Acknowledging that Chinese Minister of
Security only inquires very few students before they go abroad? Make some
loud noise on NBC and ABC that Chinese students and scholars think there are
only very few spies among them? Of course, nobody can make an absolute
statement saying that no Chinese spy has really "endangered" American
interests. What can you gain from such a fight? It just makes it even worse.

Don't you hate Chinese spies? Maybe you only hate those political spies who
monitor the overseas Chinese community for political activities. You might
not care about those spies working on economic/technological/militarial
information. But Americans care more about the latter.

The CBS report won't damage our job seeking in general, but it may affect
some cases with some employers' mindsets. However, an apology from CBS will
not improve anything on this aspect. Basically, the CBS report was blaming
CCP for using ordinary citizens to spy on the US, possiblly resulting in
some negative effects for ordinary Chinese citizens in US in terms of job
opportunities.

Let the media know that they cannot ignore the Chinese community and throw
dirty words on them? Let Americans know that Chinese in America have become
an organized/united group? Maybe this will be the only outcome of the fight.
Would this really be beneficial to us Chinese, or would it only scare
Americans more???

What? Lawsuit against CBS? Will that make everybody's job chance better?

Fighting for democracy won't make us immune to the spy-hunt. Self-
declaration of not being a spy is also meaningless. Some facts we can never
deny: we came from a communist country with tight government control and
had communist-educated childhood. Something always affects our thinking.
Even when we organize the "fight," the "6.4" movement, we can't get rid of
the communist "style" in many situations. Being angry at the CBS report,
somebody attacked CBS/Connie Chung personally. Just can't see a healthy
response, an effective way to handle it. In fact, letters to CBS showing
concern about possible negative effects on the innocent Chinese students
and urging them to carefully review such kinds of reports would be a
correct approach. Don't flood their FAX machines. Don't make an impression
that the Chinese groups are impolite, no manner, or out of control. Once
you throw dirty words (being angry) on them, you yourself look very dirty
too. Our image will be worse in Americans' eyes.

This issue needs a low-profile approach rather than a mass movement. The
latter won't work for you, no matter how eagerly you want to get there.

One more question: do you want to protect CCP spies, or do you want to get
them exposed?  Think about this:  what would this "fight" do for those real
spies?

Most western countries still treat PRC citizens as Communist country people,
therefore being very restrictive on granting them entries. The restrictions
in the US are among the loosest for PRC citizens in terms of entry visa.
Don't be spoiled, just think U.S. should view us as non-communist-root
people.

Being in America, we need to understand American interests as well as our
own. If in conflict, we must use skill, rather than just emotionally fight,
fight, and fight.

Don't make things worse, fighters!

<From: [email-masked]>
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(3) Letters from netters.................................................49
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