%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Editorial Board of CBS Incident Committee %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Thursday, June 9, 1994 (No. 4) ============================================================================= *** Part III. & IV. Activities and Suggestions *** ============================================================================= Contents # of Lines ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ============================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. An update of the current status of the CBS incident.....................22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Forum ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================== (1) Good book, bad report--a netter's comments on the book "Chinese Intelligence Operations" by Eftimiades and the CBS report...........146 =========================================================================== 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!" ============================================================================== (2) An article from CCF (No. 9431): Please Calm Down!--Thoughts on CBS Issue.69 ============================================================================== 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! =========================================================================== (3) Letters from netters.................................................49 =========================================================================== _From HXYUE@WSUHUB.UC.TWSU.EDU Tue Jun 7 23:30:37 1994 Just some thoughts: 1. Because it is CBS who made the harmful news, so we should make CBS as a direct target, not anyone else. If CBS thinks they were misleaded by other information sources, they could sue those sources. 2. It is the first case that caught so many CCS' attention and made the strongest reactions in recent years. So it might be the last chance we could win. Why? Our strong reactions have sent a warning to the public. Next time, if somebody wants to spit on us, they will make it more "elegant" and hard to be punched. So we should try our best this time. _From RSW@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu Wed Jun 8 01:51:15 1994 1. Try the best on the pending class action lawsuit. This may be the ultimate avenue for redress. 2. Mass letter campaigns are good for raising awareness and draw wide CSS participation. Count my signature on every letter. :-) 3. Good writers, please try to get on some major newspapers. Good communicators, please try to get interviews on TV/radios. We need a task force on media ralations (publicity). 4. Is IFCSS providing financial support? We may need to consider buying some ads on newspapers (if we cannot get free reports, editorials, or readers comments). 5. Set up an fund to prepare for the worst. Let's do it while the issue is still hot. If not used for this incident, we can save it for latter use. Anti-discrimination/defamation is a long term task and this CBS incident is just a spark for start. _From an unknown netter: > Hi, guys, according to the Wang Gongli, who read this book, that the > "potential spy" are not limited to CSS, but all teh ethnical Chinese. > The unfortunately Kao, is not a CSS, as I pointed out. So, the insultation > is much broader than the CBS report. > > Now, one important thing is, do not restrict this fight among ourselves. > Go out and find all sorts of Chinese Organizations. Get their attention and > try to unite all of them. To them, to be called a "potential spy of CCP" > is like us to be called with a "pig tail". You know what I mean. If many > organizations, and individuals are united to sue CBS, even if we can not > win, it will cause CBS a lots of trouble. And many Chinese Americans > have been established much better than us. Our only edge is the leading > computer network, certainly is not enough to win the battle alone. ***************************************************************************** $The CBS incident committee have disignated Y. Huang to collect signatures $ $for protest letters. E-mail huangy@sluvca.slu.edu using the form "name, $ $university/company, telephone/e-mail" if you would like to co-sign any $ $ protest letters. $ ***************************************************************************** %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % Editor of CBS Incident Committee: Xiangdong Shi % % Sign on/off at listserv@ifcss.org, with mailbody as: % % sub fcbs-l Firstname Lastname, or signoff fcbs-l % % Post at fcbs-l@ifcss.org % % Anonymous ftp at ifcss.org:/ifcss/cbs % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%