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Thursday, June 17, 2021

Is Chinese Defector Shaking Up USIC--And US Politics?

Earlier this evening commenter AmericanCardigan passed along claimed information from Hot Air that the Chinese defector who's been providing information regarding the Wuhan origins of Covid-19 is the former head of CI for the PRC's Ministry of State Security (MSS). I commented at the time--just a few hours ago: 

[The claim is] tantalizing, but towards the middle mention is made of something that jumped to my mind immediately:
"would a spy-catcher be in position to know what went on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with SARS-CoV-2?"
Never say never, reality can surprise. But there's also the matter of need to know--and a counterintelligence guy would have zero need to know about anything going on at Wuhan. Except concerns about foreign spies. Not the kind of detailed science we're hearing about.

Nevertheless, Red State--which seems to be the conduit for information about this defector--is confirming what hours ago were still rumors--Chinese Defector's Identity Confirmed, Was Top Counterintelligence Official:


RedState’s sources confirmed that the defector is, in fact, Dong [Jingwei (董经纬)], that he was in charge of counterintelligence efforts in China, and that he flew to the United States in mid-February, allegedly to visit his daughter [Dong Yang] at a university in California. When Dong landed in California he contacted DIA officials and told them about his plans to defect and the information he’d brought with him. Dong then “hid in plain sight” for about two weeks before disappearing into DIA custody.

According to Spy Talk, Dong’s name came up during the Sino-American Summit held in Alaska in March 2021:

In a tweet on Wednesday, Han [Dr. Han Lianchao, a Chinese defector], citing an unnamed source, alleged that China’s foreign minister Wang Yi and Communist Party foreign affairs boss Yang Jiechi demanded that the Americans return Dong and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken refused.

RedState’s sources say that Chinese officials did demand that the United States return Dong, but Blinken didn’t exactly refuse; at that time Blinken wasn’t aware that Dong was with the US government, the sources say, and told China that the US didn’t have Dong.

It’s only in the last three to four weeks that anyone outside DIA knew about the defector, according to RedState’s sources. Prior to that time, DIA was vetting the information provided and confronting Langley officials with what they’d learned without divulging the source. 


I have to believe that Blinken was aware that Dong had defected and simply denied it for diplomatic or national security reasons. Permission to grant asylum to a defector is normally run past all top level national security people to avoid unpleasant complications. That would also explain the two week holding pattern before Dong "disappear[ed] into DIA custody." That being the case, it's also difficult to accept that DIA was playing that sort of game with the CIA. We may never know exactly how this went down.

Red State offers a list of what Dong is said to have passed on. I'll repeat my  caveat that the items pertaining to the Wuhan labs should not have been within Dong's need to know--not as head of CI. It's not impossible--little is--but it definitely requires explanation. No doubt DIA has been trying to sort that issue out. 

Here's that list--I've bolded what might reasonably fall within a head of CI's need to know:


In addition, Dong has provided DIA with the following information:

  • Early pathogenic studies of the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2
  • Models of predicted COVID-19 spread and damage to the US and the world
  • Financial records detailing which exact organizations and governments funded the research on SARS-CoV-2 and other biological warfare research
  • Names of US citizens who provide intel to China
  • Names of Chinese spies working in the US or attending US universities
  • Financial records showing US businessmen and public officials who’ve received money from the Chinese government
  • Details of meetings US government officials had (perhaps unwittingly) with Chinese spies and members of Russia’s SVR
  • How the Chinese government gained access to a CIA communications system, leading to the death of dozens of Chinese people who were working with the CIA

Dong also has provided DIA with copies of the contents of the hard drive on Hunter Biden’s laptop, showing the information the Chinese government has about Hunter’s pornography problem and about his (and Joe’s) business dealings with Chinese entities. Some of the files on Dong has provided shine a light on just how it was that the sale of Henniges Automotive (and their stealth technology) to Chinese military manufacturer AVIC Auto was approved.


Red State concludes with a tantalizing paragraph:


As we initially reported, DIA has high confidence in the veracity of Dong’s claims. The fact that since our original report, which was pooh-poohed by Langley apologists, the New York Times published a rare interview with Dr. Shi Zhengli (the WIV “Bat Woman”), ABC News has started an “investigation” into COVID-19 origins, and now the actual name of the defector has been published in an anti-Trump, CIA-friendly blog, demonstrates what sources told RedState today: “This defector has the rest of the intelligence community and the LEO community scared sh**less.”

We shall see.


25 comments:

  1. Three things:

    1. Why the leak on the eve of a three-day federal holiday weekend? Seems nefarious to me. Head start?

    2. Interesting to see who unexpectedly doesn’t show up to work Monday morning in the USIC.

    3. Another electronic device associated with Hunter Biden that won’t go anywhere UNLESS depicting kiddie porn. Tragically, it doesn’t seem in our present world there is any guarantee even that would cause a trip up.

    Just a note:

    https://www.spytalk.co/p/high-level-chinese-defection-rumored
    (embedded link in the Redstate article concerning the rumored defector, Dong, who is reportedly a MSS Vice Minister):

    “Meanwhile, the Chinese State Council’s official web page listing the top personnel in the Ministry of State Security no longer lists any vice ministers working under MSS minister Chen Wenqing. Under “personnel developments” it notes the corruption investigation against another former vice minister, Ma Jian, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2018. The vice minister section is blank.”

    Pat

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  2. I agree it may be that the counter intelligence official is not likely to need to know technical details about covid. But he may have had some broad understanding of the program, and perhaps as someone within Chinese Intelligence had his own sources for some of this information or at least knew where to go to get that information. He seemed to come to the US with a whole bucket of goodies for the US to dig into, including how the Chinese rolled up a lot of US spies in recent years.

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  3. “ Dong also has provided DIA with copies of the contents of the hard drive on Hunter Biden’s laptop, showing the information the Chinese government has about Hunter’s pornography problem and about his (and Joe’s) business dealings with Chinese entities.”

    So it would seem the Chicoms have the Chow Bai Den admin by the cahones; if indeed he is this badly compromised is there no end to the manipulation/blackmail potential?

    If I were Taiwan I’d be working up Defense Operations Plan D, E, & F.

    Boarwild

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  4. George Smiley's admonition comes to mind:

    >> "Topicality is always suspect." <<

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly. Who knows what his real motivation is. If he wants a good deal from the US he needs to tell us what (he thinks) we want to know. Doesn't mean he's not telling true facts, but could be a mix. Difficult to assess.

      Delete
    2. Another pertinent example. Smiley asks Toby Esterhazy, Did you ever buy a fake picture? The point is, of course, that the purchaser--and here the US is purchasing valuable information, we hope--wants to believe in the value of what he's purchased. He doesn't want to be exposed later as a dupe. So DIA has a vested interest in persuading the rest of the USIC of the great value of what they've purchased. That's part of the great problem of dealing with defectors.

      Toby's reply, of course, is a classic: 'Sold some once [nervous laugh].'

      Delete
    3. The video of that scene:

      >> https://youtu.be/Oer2LoXYusY <<

      Delete
    4. Ooops, wrong clip ...

      Delete
  5. O/T, yet an interesting read from a Chinese/American perspective re. The Chinese Cultural Revolution and what's happening here and now.

    https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-peoples-republic-of-campus/

    0311

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  6. The list of items the defector has supposedly provided info on seems mostly of a sort that should be substantially falsifiable. Not a bunch of rumors and hearsay, but actual names and numbers and times and places. If you're just telling porky pies, telling people what they want to hear, you tend to shy away from falsifiable specifics. The defector's apparent willingness to provide specifics, while not guaranteeing anything good on its own, does at least seem like a pretty good start.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I can answer the last point.

    Hillary's unsecured server.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Here's a WAG on this that is not impossible.

    You can read quite a bit on Telegram and other not so mainstream outlets positing that the DIA (and possibly NSA) is in the hands of "the good guys" for lack of better term. The DIA allegedly has all of the proof of the massive election fraud and the Plandemic fraud. Could it be that the defector is real but the DIA is using him as a conduit to get their trove of information out to the public?

    I find it far more interesting and hopeful that the DIA has elected to tangle w the CIA and the IC by withholding this guy and then leaking info that the Oligarchs very much want hidden. If we do not see DIA heads rolling soon, what does that tell us about the relative power of the DIA?

    Bic

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  9. Being highly ignorant of intelligence games, the thought I had was that he would be in better position to know things about COVID if it was a political act rather than a medical accident...

    -Bee

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  10. It's also hilarious, if true, that the Chinese brought this person up in their Alaska meeting. Yeah, sure, they want their guy back to assess the damage he has done.

    When the media turned on a dime and 100% shifted their narrative, it really looked like a coordinated move. If the DIA has additional kompromat on Biden and other political folks that are not already known, it gives them leverage over Biden to do the right thing via-a-vis US policy on China. This defector somehow knew to go to the DIA and not any other intelligence agency. That also speaks volumes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Which coming from their top C/I guy, just confirms how f*cked our intelligence capability is. Yet he came to our side. He must be truly convinced China is an evil empire, and that the USA is not.

      Delete
    2. Is it at all possible that the election of Biden in January made a Chinese fellow who’s done a gig or two of work for us in the past realize he’s totally compromised and better get out now? If the Chinese just took over America in the Biden presidency…

      Delete
    3. Best not to make any assumptions about his motives. He has to know he's not joining the winning team.

      Could be as simple as they disappeared his dad.

      Delete
  11. Side comment.
    I wound this pretty moving if you watch the whole thing. Canada is finally getting some truth.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUrp5PlnBwQ

    ReplyDelete
  12. Too good to be true trifecta of information on too broad of a span.

    The Hunter data is like the kitchen sink of crack cocaine for right leaning pol outlets.

    The leak it's self of a detailed list does not help the cause of it being real and the DIA good guys is the tell tale fingerprints of the Q "white hats" clan.

    If I wanted to start a ruckus of bating right-wing news outlets this is the type of CI leak I would go for selling then on.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Hunter Biden’s porn addiction is a little bit irrelevant to Biden being in the pocket of China through the normal course of excepting lobby money for 40 years as a senator. It’s a little bit like the Obama birth certificate red herring. I don’t give a damn where Obama was born, I know he went to Harvard Law school, which is sufficient for my purposes. I don’t need Hunter to be a creep in order to be convinced that Biden is a crook.

      Delete
  13. Question for MW:

    Does this quote from the article pass the smell test?

    >> "When Dong landed in California he contacted DIA officials and told them about his plans to defect and the information he’d brought with him. Dong then “hid in plain sight” for about two weeks before disappearing into DIA custody." <<

    The biggest fish to defect from China shows up in the US on his own, with his treasure chest of thumb drives(?) and manages to contact DIA officials and tells them: "Hi; I'm the head of CI for the Chinese government, and I'd like to defect along with all this treasure I brought with me."

    And DIA let him "hide in plain sight" for two weeks before eventually ushering off to a safe house?

    Seriously?

    It just seems very hard to believe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's pretty standard for "narratives" to be invented to protect "sources and methods" in matters of defections. Obviously he can't "plan to defect" unless the USG allows him to and approves it. Otherwise his presence past his visa expiration would be illegal.

      Next, would the PRC really allow a guy who occupied such a sensitive position to freely visit a daughter in the US all on his own? That also seems a stretch.

      One might suspect that he was provided somehow with a contact number in the US to avoid any possibility of a slip-up and may also have been provided with false ID to exit China.

      Hiding in plain sight probably means finalizing the terms, since such negotiations would be impossible in China.

      Delete
    2. All of which suggests the possibility that the Big Fish was recruited by DIA years ago (since he was a military officer, I assume that makes him fair game for DIA to target,) and the time had come for him to flee before they caught him and shot him.

      For someone at his level, I assume DIA would have worked out an exfil plan well ahead of time.

      This would also explain why DIA is handling him here now; If they were his handlers while he was spying for us in China, they would naturally debrief him here when he "came in from the Cold."

      Just an hypothesis ...

      Delete
    3. Must have been difficult for DIA to keep him away from CIA and FBI...

      I assume CIA has their fingers in every pie around the world?

      Frank

      Delete