Chinese Operators have infiltrated several flanks of the United States government. From the fields of education to sitting Senators, the details have finally emerged after five years of an investigation into who infiltrated Senator Diane Feinstein.
For twenty years a Chinese spy worked alongside Senator Diane Feinstein, his primary task was her driver and served as a gofer in her Bay Area Office. The spy routinely reported back to Chinese authorities about local politics.
For Senator Feinstein, the driver was a liaison to the Asian-American community, and he even attended Chinese consulate functions on behalf of the senator.
Senator Feinstein from January 3rd, 2009 to January 3rd, 2015 was the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Chair of the Senate Narcotics Caucus. During her time as the Chair, she worked alongside the former Vice President Joe Biden.
While she was the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Federal Bureau of Investigations informed her that she had been infiltrated. However, investigators also noted that the Chinese spy had not issued anything of ‘substance.’ Although, it did take the FBI twenty years to identify the mole.
Speaking about the matter former FBI agent and KPIX 5 Security analyst Jeff Harp stated that he was not surprised about the breach.
“Think about Diane Feinstein and what she had access to,” said Harp. “One, she had access to the Chinese community here in San Francisco; great amount of political influence. Two, correct me if I’m wrong, Dianne Feinstein still has very close ties to the intelligence committees there in Washington, D.C.”
Harp was apart of the organization who conducted counter-espionage in the Bay Area. He said that the Bay Area houses a lot of interest for Chinese infiltrators not only because the area holds a significant amount of political influence, but it also gives spies access to things like R&D, technology, and trade secrets.
“They also have an interest in the economy here. How to get political influence here,” said Harp. “What’s being developed in Silicon Valley that has dual-use technology. All of that is tied to the Bay Area.”
Harp continued that the Bay Area is of great interest to foreign actors because where California goes with technology, the rest of the nation follows.
Incredibly, this is not the first significant release of information regarding an infiltration into American interests. In March of 2017, classified documents detailed that an extensive Chinese operation of infiltration into American Institutions was underway. The goal was to control American Higher Education.
According to The Washington Free Beacon; “The CIA cautions against efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to stipulate funding to universities and policy institutes in exchange for academic censorship.”
“The CCP provides ‘strings-attached’ funding to academic institutions and think tanks to deter research that casts it in a negative light,” the report says. “It has used this tactic to reward pro-China viewpoints and coerce Western academic publications and conferences to self-censor. The CCP often denies visas to academics who criticize the regime, encouraging many China scholars to preemptively self-censor so they can maintain access to the country on which their research depends.”
The report issued by the CIA joins a growing call by U.S. lawmakers and intelligence officials to investigate China’s involvement on American college campuses.
Furthermore, Senator Diane Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee until 2015, and she is currently the Vice Chair of the committee. Interestingly enough, in February of 2018, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the FBI is investigating dozens of Confucius Institutes, the Chinese-backed language and cultural centers hosted by more than one hundred universities across the country.
In addition, Senator Marco Rubio, who co-chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, called on the five Florida educational institutions that host Confucius Institutes to end those partnerships.
“Beijing is becoming increasingly aggressive in its aim to exploit America’s academic freedom to instill in the minds of future leaders a pro-China viewpoint,” Rubio said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. “Confucius Institutes across the country and my home state of Florida have given China’s communist regime an avenue to covertly influence public opinion and teach half-truths designed to present Chinese history, government or official policy in the most favorable light.”
The Confucius Institutes, which are housed in hundreds of universities across the country, are operated by a division of the Chinese Ministry of Education known as Hanban. The Chinese government spends roughly ten billion dollars annually on these particular institutions.
Chinese spies are active within the United States, and their efforts are aimed at controlling the interests of Americans.
