David Ignatius: The Saga Of The Chinese Mole Reads Like A Thriller

David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist and author of The Quantum Spy and other fine spy thrillers, offers his take on former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee (seen in the above photo), who was also a Chinese spy, in his column:

WASHINGTON -- Behind last week's admission by a former CIA officer that he plotted to spy for China lies an astonishing tale of Beijing's espionage against America -- and the vindication of other CIA officers who were falsely suspected of being the Chinese mole.

This saga has a classic thriller plot, in which a suspect must find the real villain to clear his name. Unfortunately, most of the details of the true-life version remain secret, under seal at the U.S. Attorney's office in Alexandria or in the vaults of the CIA. But knowledgeable sources sketched parts of the story that aren't classified.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, who was a CIA case officer from 1994 to 2007, pleaded guilty May 1 to conspiring with Chinese intelligence agents to provide secret information. U.S. officials won't discuss the precise damage Lee did, but intelligence experts believe he was part of an aggressive Chinese spy operation that led to the exposure, arrest and execution of at least 20 CIA sources inside China. For an intelligence service like the CIA, that's as bad as it gets.

The resolution of the Lee case comes at a time when the Trump administration is threatening to escalate its trade war against Beijing to force China to stop stealing commercial secrets and allow fairer trade. The negotiations will hit a deadline Friday, when the administration has threatened to raise tariffs to 25% on $200 billion worth of Chinese products.

Trump's hard-nosed and sometimes erratic bargaining tactics have roiled financial markets this week. But as the Lee case shows, the Chinese are hardly innocent victims. They have been burrowing deep into the CIA to steal its most precious secrets, as well as pilfering corporate data wherever they can.

Lee pleaded guilty to only one count of conspiracy, and prosecutors said his plea agreement and an accompanying statement of evidence were "not intended to be a full enumeration of all of the facts surrounding the defendant's case." Asked if Lee had agreed to cooperate with the CIA in sharing additional details, his attorney, Edward B. MacMahon Jr., responded: "There is nothing in the plea agreement that deals with his cooperating."

The hunt for a Chinese mole began after the CIA started losing its key sources in China in 2010. Lee, who first met with Chinese intelligence officers in April 2010, according to prosecutors, soon came under suspicion. 

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-saga-of-the-chinese-mole-reads-like-a-spy-thriller/2019/05/08/3952392c-71da-11e9-9f06-5fc2ee80027a_story.html?utm_term=.613a84b8bed4 

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with David Ignatius via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2018/03/the-quantum-spy-my-q-with-spy-novelist.html 

The Spy And The Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story Of The Cold War

David Ignatius (seen in the below photo), Washington Post columnist and author of spy thrillers such as The Quantum Spy and Body of Lies, offers his take on Ben Macintyre’s nonfiction spy story The Spy and the Traitor in his Post column 

“The Spy and the Traitor” arrives at a moment when the machinations of Russian intelligence (election meddling, Internet manipulation, assassination by poison) are the subjects of almost daily news stories. Russia and its ex-KGB president seem brutally dominant in the intelligence sphere. Ben Macintyre offers a refreshing reversal of that theme: In this story, it’s the Russians who get turned inside out by a British mole. It’s the Kim Philby case, in reverse.

The subtitle of Macintyre’s latest real-life spy thriller calls it “The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War.” Like pretty much everything in this fine book, the description is accurate.

The book narrates the astonishing tale of how Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service recruited a KGB officer named Oleg Gordievsky in 1974 and ran him as its agent for 11 years, as he rose to become the “rezident,” or station chief, in London. Then in 1985, because of an appalling blunder by a jealous CIA, Gordievsky was exposed and recalled to Moscow to face almost certain death.

The book converges on a final plot twist so implausible that it could happen only in real life: Gordievsky was exfiltrated across the Finnish border in the trunk of a car by a plucky MI6 officer and his wife and brought back to London for a secret hero’s welcome from an adoring Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He survives today in a protected location in Britain, and one suspects that he’s quite careful about what doorknobs he touches.

Britain didn’t invent spying, but as Macintyre recounts in this and other books, it may have perfected it — producing some of the most sublime manipulators in intelligence history (along with several of the greatest traitors, such as Philby). This book recounts what modern SIS officers rightly regard as their finest hour.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-the-spy-and-the-traitor-a-tale-of-cold-war-espionage-thats-both-thrilling-and-true/2018/09/17/d5666f98-ba8a-11e8-a8aa-860695e7f3fc_story.html?ut 

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with David Ignatius via the below link:

 www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2018/03/the-quantum-spy-my-q-with-spy-novelist.html

My Washington Times Review Of 'The Quantum Spy'

The Washington Times ran my review of David Ignatius’ The Quantum Spy.

Although my knowledge of computers is somewhat limited, I was able to follow the computer science backdrop to “The Quantum Spy,” as author David Ignatius did a fine job of explaining the basic technology involved in quantum computing and why it is vital that the United States builds a quantum computer before China, America’s adversary, builds one.

Quantum computing, Mr. Ignatius‘ fictional CIA director explains, is a paradigm shift. It’s like Galileo and Newton. It will change everything. “A Quantum computer would simultaneously explore every answer to a problem, creating a tool of immense, almost infinite computational power,” Mr. Ignatius writes.

The novel opens with John Vandal, the CIA Deputy Director for Operations, paying a visit to Jason Schmidt, an electronics engineer who operated QED, a small, privately-owned computer company in Seattle, Washington. The CIA official was responding to a letter the engineer wrote to his cousin, a CIA officer, that stated he had made a breakthrough in building a quantum computer.

 “I’ve solved the puzzle,” the engineer wrote.

“You understand what a big deal this is, Mr. Schmidt? We’re spending billions on quantum research. This is a race. The White House pounds on me every week wanting to know where the Chinese are, and we say relax: It’ll be ten years before anyone builds a machine, probably twenty, and we’re way ahead,” John Vandal said. “And now you say bang, you’ve done it.”

The CIA official explained that the issue was no much that the breakthrough, but rather that someone wanted to steal it. He was referring to what he called a “bell-ringer” in the letter, which was the engineer informing his cousin that he received an offer by a company to buy control of QED. The company, John Vandal told the engineer, was Chinese.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/25/book-review-the-quantum-spy-by-david-ignatius/ 

You can also read my interview with David Ignatius (seen in the above photo) via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2018/03/the-quantum-spy-my-q-with-spy-novelist.html 

The Quantum Spy: My Q&A With Spy Novelist And Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius

Counterterrorism magazine published my Q&A with David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist and author of the thriller The Quantum Spy.

You can read the interview below:

  Note: My review of David Ignatius’s The Quantum Spy will soon appear in the Washington Times. 

Ignatius: Time for Putin Payback

It was no surprise that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was reelected for another six years, as there is no doubt that the election was truly rigged.

With the brazen attempted nerve agent murder of a former GRU colonel and defector in the United Kingdom and other outrageous acts around the world, the former KGB officer and Russian president is due for a bit of payback, says Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (seen in the below photo), author of The Quantum Spy and other fine spy thrillers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told NBC's Megyn Kelly this month that in using power, you "must be ready to go all the way to achieve the goals." Now, it seems, Putin has gone all the way too far.

Putin's aggressive use of covert action to settle scores hit an international tripwire after the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in the quiet British cathedral town of Salisbury. An outraged Britain was joined Thursday by France, Germany and America in condemning the murderous use of the banned Soviet-era toxin known as Novichok.

A joint statement denounced the attack as "the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the Second World War" and called it "a breach of international law" that comes "against the background of a pattern of earlier irresponsible Russian behavior." That strong language warrants action by NATO and the U.N..

The Trump administration, after a year of mealy-mouthed, temporizing statements, also announced sanctions Thursday against Russia's "malicious cyberattacks." The sanctions, targeting five Russian organizations and 19 people, will have little practical effect beyond those already in place. What matters is that President Trump finally seems to have ended his dubious defense of Putin. "It certainly looks like the Russians were behind it," he said of the poisoning. "We're taking it very seriously."

So how can the U.S. and its closest allies alter Putin's behavior, if they're truly serious about holding Russia to account? The answer, say several former senior CIA officials, is to use America's network of alliances to put Russia under strain. Putin has been playing a weak hand well, but the high cards remain in Western hands.

Russia's greatest vulnerability is its dependence on sales of oil and gas. Here, the U.S. is uniquely positioned for payback.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.arcamax.com/politics/mod/davidignatius/s-2059893 

Note: My Q&A with David Ignatius will appear in the upcoming issue of Counterterrorism magazine. 

David Ignatius' 'The Quantum Spy' Is About Quantum Computing, The Chinese/American Technology Race And Espionage

I interviewed Washington Post columnist and best-selling spy novelist David Ignatius (seen in the above photo) yesterday morning. 

We discussed his latest thriller, The Quantum Spy, and quantum computing, espionage and the technology race between China and America.

My Q&A with David Ignatius will appear in the upcoming Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, a quarterly magazine for government, law enforcement and military people worldwide. 

I’ll post the piece here when it comes out. (I’m also reviewing The Quantum Spy for the Washington Times).  

In addition to covering quantum computing, The Quantum Spy also takes the reader into the headquarters of Communist China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), an adversarial intelligence agency mush less known than the Russian SVR and the old Soviet KGB. 

His realistic, well-researched and well-written novel is informative, suspenseful and entertaining.      

Below is a description of the novel from www.davidignatius.com:  

From the best-selling author of The Director and Body of Lies comes a thrilling tale of global espionage, state-of-the-art technology, and unthinkable betrayal.

The Quantum Spy is a hyper-fast quantum computer is the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb; whoever possesses one will be able to shred any encryption and break any code in existence. The winner of the race to build the world’s first quantum machine will attain global dominance for generations to come. The question is, who will cross the finish line first: the U.S. or China?

In this gripping cyber thriller, the United States’ top-secret quantum research labs are compromised by a suspected Chinese informant, inciting a mole hunt of history-altering proportions. CIA officer Harris Chang leads the charge, pursuing his target from the towering cityscape of Singapore to the lush hills of the Pacific Northwest, the mountains of Mexico, and beyond. The investigation is obsessive, destructive, and—above all—uncertain. Do the leaks expose real secrets, or are they false trails meant to deceive the Chinese? The answer forces Chang to question everything he thought he knew about loyalty, morality, and the primacy of truth.

Grounded in the real-world technological arms race, The Quantum Spy presents a sophisticated game of cat and mouse cloaked in an exhilarating and visionary thriller.

You can also read David Ignatius’ review of John le Carre’s spy novel, A Legacy of Spies, in the Atlantic via the below link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/le-carre-goes-back-into-the-cold/534189/

And you can read my Washington Times review of A Legacy of Spies via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/31/book-review-a-legacy-of-spies/