Reuters photo
By
Ricardo Swire
The Alexandria trial of Kevin Patrick Mallory, an American sixty-one year old male and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, reveals one epic real-life international espionage story. The 2012 founder of GlobalEx Consulting was socially active in the Montgomery Chinese Branch of the Mormon Church. Between 1990 and 2012 as a reservist he was deployed with US military forces to Iraq, China and Taiwan. Evidence shows the twenty year intelligence veteran met Chinese spies and exchanged US national secrets for cash.
In February 2017 the Leesburg Virginia resident was contacted by the Chinese on LinkedIn. The spy from Beijing posed as a Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences recruiter. The targeted American ex-covert case officer subsequently copied three government intelligence documents at a FedEx store in Virginia before emailing them to his Chinese recruiter. In March 2017 the former CIA officer, who speaks fluent Mandarin, visited Shanghai to meet his Chinese handler’s top boss. Prior to travelling to China the American requested a mobile phone to smuggle additional intelligence data stored on a SD card.
The communications device was placed in a double-sealed envelope, initialled around the seals and left for collection at front desk of the hotel in Shanghai. Chinese contacts paid the former CIA officer US$10,000 cash at the end of his visit. However, the money was not declared to US customs on his return home. In April 2017 the former Defense Intelligence Agency operative from 2007 to 2010 was paid US$15,000 and again provided with a Samsung phone by the Chinese. A routine US Customs agent’s airport search found US$16,500 hidden in his luggage.
In May 2017 the ex-CIA officer dispatched two classified documents to China. He told Chinese agents his paper records were destroyed. Prosecutors suggested he also intended to destroy all electronic records. CARICOM national intelligence officials note this latest US intelligence community embarrassment was preceded by other internal treachery. The cases of CIA agent Aldrich Ames and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agent Robert Hanssen revealed how the duo spied for Russia. Between 2010 and 2012 the Chinese government killed or jailed twenty CIA domestic sources. Such National security activity crippled American spy operations in Beijing.
It is unclear whether the security breach was work of a Chinese spy within the CIA, or technological superiority that hacked the CIA’s secret communications system. In January 2018 a fifty-three year old former CIA officer was charged with conspiring to give Chinese spies highly classified information about the CIA’s covert operations in China. He was arrested as he entered the airport arrival hall in Hong Kong, carrying two handwritten notebooks with names and phone numbers of covert CIA employees and informants. The Chinese had prepared US$100,000 cash “gift” for the US intelligence agent’s delivery.
CARICOM intelligence officials regard China as America’s most technologically advanced counter-intelligence aggressor. Report of the Select Committee on US National Security & Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China recorded that China had acquired the design information for all US thermonuclear weapons in storage. Evidence showed the Chinese have also stolen US Space Shuttle and submarine technology. Patterns reflect that the world’s most populous country has targeted US control technology such as sensors, optics plus biological and chemical processes. Such categories have intrinsic military application.
Ricardo Swire
Ricardo Swire is the Principal Consultant at R-L-H Security Consultants & Business Support Services and writes on a number of important issues.
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