• Tian likely will offer no concessions given the “One China” position that Taiwan is not a sovereign equal of the PRC.
The arrests could disrupt MSS access to highly placed human sources from which PRC President Tian Kal draws insight into Liang’s foreign policy intentions. Tian often relies on MSS reports to settle Politburo debates over diplomatic, economic, and military responses to Liang’s frequent nationalist rhetoric.
This article was prepared by CIA with reporting from CIA and NSA.
Cooke’s driver pulled the armored car into the executive garage under the Old Headquarters Building a minute after passing through the George Washington Parkway gate. The garage had its own guard post manned by SPOs to keep out the masses. Cooke didn’t care for the elitism. Many employees had to walk a good quarter mile from the parking lot’s outer limits, but she bowed to the fact that, most days, parking spaces and time on her schedule were too limited.
The cold erased her guilt that this garage had a private elevator that ran to her office. The doors opened onto the Old Headquarters Building seventh floor, where Clark Barron, the director of the National Clandestine Service, stood waiting for her with a cup of hot coffee in hand. Cooke wondered how the man had ever blended into a crowd during his younger days as a case officer. The CIA director was not a short woman, a few inches shy of six feet, and she still strained to look up at the man’s face.
“God bless you, Clark,” Cooke said. She traded her coat for the mug and drained half the coffee in a single swig.
“I thought you were agnostic,” Barron said.
“Just shows how grateful I am,” Cooke said. “And this is good brew. How did you know how I like it?”
“I recruited your assistant,” Barron said. “She’s my most valuable asset now. I’ve been thinking about assigning her a code-name crypt.”
“Scoundrel.”
“It’s what case officers do,” Barron reminded her. “Even the old ones.”
“And you do it well. Whatever you want, it’s yours,” Cooke promised.
“No ulterior motives this time. I knew you were coming and chivalry is dead in this town, so I’m left to play the gentleman,” Barron said.
The CIA director’s “office” actually was a complex. The door to Cooke’s private workspace sat back along the rear wall of the larger area. Her office windows opened to a view of the George Washington National Forest. Her desk sat to the immediate left of the door and she was religious about keeping it clear, mostly out of fear that once the paperwork started to pile up she would never get ahead of it. The walls were home to curiosities under glass, the number evenly split between gifts from foreign peers and trophies smuggled out of countries by case officers. A US flag covered the western wall, shabby and torn, with burns and scorches over its surface. A CIA officer had recovered it from the smoking crater of the World Trade Center and no Agency director would ever remove it. The September 11 flag was the lone permanent artifact in an office that changed occupants and mementos more often than the Oval Office changed presidents.
Barron followed Cooke into the office and closed the door behind her. “The National Weather Service says we’ve got two days before the temperature climbs up into the teens and more snow inbound from a nor’easter. We should just catch the edge of it, but still,” he said. “A shame we can’t close the place down and send everyone home.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not snowing in Taipei,” Cooke observed.
“Or Beijing,” Barron said. “I renew my request for a CIA Southern Command in Miami.”
“Denied,” Cooke said. “Again.”
“I have allergies to snow, I swear.”
“I grew up in Maine. I have no sympathy for you,” Cooke said. “Didn’t you do a rotation in Moscow?”
“Two actually. Three years as a case officer, four as station chief,” Barron said. “And I grew up in Chicago. You can see why I’m looking to spend my remaining years in the sun.” The promotion path to Barron’s office historically ran through Moscow. Even during the War on Terror, getting that ticket punched without being declared persona non grata by the Russian government never hurt a case officer’s career.
“If you can get it past Congress, I’ll go for it.” Cooke finished the coffee in a single swallow and traded the empty mug for the black binder of intelligence traffic Barron carried under his arm. She opened the book. “Tell me the story.”
The first page was a map. “NSA caught most of it from the raid teams’ radios and some phone calls made after the fact by federal officers. Some of our people filled in the blanks afterward using our own data about officers the MSS has in country. The raids went down at two different locations in Taipei,” Barron said. “There were also raids in Taoyuan to the north and Kaohsiung in the south. Federal officers were present at all four scenes and reported to their superiors by cell phone, which gave us the intel identifying the targets at the first site. Eight Chinese nationals and four Taiwanese detained. One of the Taiwanese is an expatriate, now a naturalized US citizen employed by Lockheed Martin. James Hu. He entered Taiwan on his US passport the day before the raid.”
“The raid teams’ radios weren’t encrypted?” Cooke asked.
“They were, in fact,” Barron said.
“Kudos to NSA,” Cooke said. “Hu was working for the MSS?”
“Looks that way.”
“Have FBI contact Lockheed. Find out what he was working on,” Cooke directed.
“I assume the Bureau is already working on that,” Barron assured her.
“I try not to assume anything when it comes to the Bureau,” Cooke said. “What do we have on the Chinese taken down at that site?”
“Names and bios. They caught a big fish,” Barron said. The second page featured photographs of the arrested suspects. Several of the slots were blank, black silhouettes with white question marks inside. Barron pointed at one of the photos. “Li Juangong. We pegged him a year ago as the MSS station chief in Taipei. We think the other two are members of his senior staff.”
“He’s a piece of work,” Cooke noted, skimming the bio.
Barron grunted. “The mean ones always are.”
“You would know,” Cooke said, smiling.
“You try herding a few thousand case officers,” Barron said.
“I’ll call your bet and raise you two congressional oversight committees,” Cooke joked. “How long can the Chinese keep the story contained on their side?”
“Good odds, not very long,” Barron said. “The MSS has a very poor record of keeping state secrets. In Chinese society, family relations are valued so highly that officials don’t consider sharing classified information with close relatives a breach of security. State secrets can end up on the streets relatively quickly. And Tian Kai is already trying to get ahead of it.” He pointed Cooke toward page three. “Tian convened a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee within an hour of the arrests. We don’t know what was said.”
“They were talking damage control most likely,” Cooke said. She set her binder on the table. “If you told me that the MSS had rolled up twelve of our assets in China, I’d run you out of town on a rail.”
“If the MSS rolled up twelve of our assets, I’d deserve it,” Barron agreed. “My guess is that Liang pulled this stunt because of the presidential election next month. He’s too far down in the polls to come back without rigging the election or creating a crisis. Nixon had better approval numbers when he resigned in seventy-four. And Liang will face a corruption indictment if the opposition wins, so he’s motivated. He could be setting this up to turn the public’s attention to an external threat.”