Spying for China

On Saturday June 2^nd, the  FBI took 55 year old Ron Rockwell Hansen into custody as he prepared to board a flight to Seattle. Hansen is a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official who is being charged with attempting to transmit national defense information to China.

Additional charges include acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China, cash smuggling and smuggling goods from the U.S.. Hansen retired after a more than 20-year career with the Army where he specialized in Signals and Human Intelligence. During his training for the DIA Hansen was trained on asset handling, surveillance detection and avoidance, and handling classified information. Hansen speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.

For years Hansen traveled between the United States and China, during this time he was attending various intelligence conferences in the United States. Hansen took the information obtained from these conferences and gave it to his Chinese handlers who are associated with the People’s Republic of China’s Intelligence Service (PRCIS). During his time at the DIA Hansen signed multiple non-disclosure agreements stating that if he disclosed classified information that he would be subject to federal prosecution.

After he retired from the federal government Hansen tried multiple times to regain access to information that was deemed classified.

Hansen built up tremendous amounts of debt since 2012, totaling over $200,000 and failing to file taxes with his personal business twice, his business saw a loss of over $1 million dollars in 2014. In 2012 Hansen offered to become an agent for China, at this time the FBI had already started to investigate Hansen for his activities.

This is yet another recent example of U.S. intelligence official arrested for espionage on behalf of China.

In January of 2018 former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested by FBI agents after being accused of possessing classified information. Mr. Less was first approached about offering his services to China in April of 2010.

Using intelligence provided by Lee Chinese intelligence determined the identities of multiple U.S. recruited agents, imprisoning and killing many of them. The Lin case may represent one of the most substantial counterintelligence failure in recent years.

In June of 2017 Kevin Mallory, a former special agent with State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was arrested for sharing top-secret documents with a Chinese agent, following a review of Mallory’s communication records.  Mallory is believed to have transmitted one top-secret document and two secret documents to his Chinese handler.

Authorities became suspicious of Mallory after an April 2017 search at Chicago’s O’Hare International airport after returning from overseas trip to Shanghai when Mallory failed to declare that he was traveling with more than $16,000 dollars in cash.

Another intelligence official that was arrested for providing the Chinese with material was U.S. Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Edward Lin who faces espionage charges for sending classified information to either China or Taiwan.

Lin is accused of sending secret information twice and attempting to send it at least three times to different representatives of foreign governments. While Lin did not have access to high level classified information, Chinese intelligence frequently utilizes lower level individuals to help develop a larger overall picture of activities.

The CIA has worked to increase counter-intelligence operations is the wake of reports about the overall scope of the penetration of the Chinese into the United States intelligence community. Prior to confirmation as Secretary of State, Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo reorganized counterintelligence to have it report directly to the Director.

China is currently beating the United States in the counterintelligence game. In 2010, the Chinese government began to dismantle CIA operations that were taking place within the country. The Chinese killed or imprisoned more than two dozen individuals who were working as agents for the United States.

American officials describe the intelligence breach as one of the worst since Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.

The United States is facing growing threat from Chinese intelligence and must bolster its own the Counterintelligence capabilities and assets in order to protect U.S. secrets. Raising Counterintelligence profile to have it report directly to the DNI is a good start, but more remains to be done.