Foreign Surveillance: in Navy, in FBI
DC 8.24pm (Aug 3rd) / Beijing 8.24am (Aug 4th)
Two U.S. Navy sailors were charged Thursday with providing sensitive military information to China — including details on wartime exercises, naval operations and critical technical material.
The two sailors, both based in California, were charged with similar moves to provide sensitive intelligence to the Chinese. But they were separate cases, and it wasn’t clear if the two were courted or paid by the same Chinese intelligence officer as part of a larger scheme. Federal officials at a news conference in San Diego declined to specify whether the sailors were aware of each other’s actions.
Both men pleaded not guilty in federal courts in San Diego and Los Angeles. They were ordered to be held until their detention hearings, which will take place Aug. 8 in those same cities.
U.S. officials have for years expressed concern about the espionage threat they say the Chinese government poses, bringing criminal cases in recent years against Beijing intelligence operatives who have stolen sensitive government and commercial information, including through illegal hacking.
The pair of cases also comes on the heels of another insider-threat prosecution tied to the U.S. military, with the Justice Department in April arresting a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman on charges of leaking classified military documents about Russia’s war in Ukraine and other sensitive national security topics on Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games.
U.S. officials said the cases exemplify China’s brazenness in trying to obtain insight into U.S. military operations.
“Through the alleged crimes committed by these defendants, sensitive military information ended up in the hands of the People’s Republic of China,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman for the Southern District of California. He added that the charges demonstrate the Chinese government’s “determination to obtain information that is critical to our national defense by any means, so it could be used to their advantage.”
Jinchao Wei, a 22-year-old sailor assigned to the San Diego-based USS Essex, was arrested Wednesday while boarding the ship. He is accused of passing detailed information on the weapons systems and aircraft aboard the Essex and other amphibious assault ships that act as small aircraft carriers.
Prosecutors said Wei, who was born in China, was approached by a Chinese intelligence officer in February 2022 while he was applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, and admitted to the officer that he knew the arrangement could affect his application. Even so, at the officer’s request, Wei provided photographs and videos of Navy ships, including the USS Essex, which can carry an array of helicopters, including the MV-22 Ospreys, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.
The indictment alleges Wei included as many as 50 manuals containing technical and mechanical data about Navy ships as well as details about the number and training of Marines during an upcoming exercise.
Wei continued to send sensitive U.S. military information multiple times over the course of a year and even was congratulated by the Chinese officer once Wei became a U.S. citizen, Grossman said. He added that Wei “chose to turn his back on his newly adopted country” for greed.
The Justice Department charged Wei under a rarely-used Espionage Act statute that makes it a crime to gather or deliver information to aid a foreign government.
After pleading not guilty in San Diego, Wei was assigned a new public defender who declined to comment following the hearing. Wei did not visibly react when read the charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Sheppard told the judge that Wei had passed information to Chinese intelligence as recently as two days ago. He said Wei, who also went by the name Patrick Wei, told a fellow sailor in February 2022 that he was “being recruited for what quite obviously is (expletive) espionage.”
Sheppard said Wei has made $10,000 to $15,000 in the past year from the arrangement with the unnamed Chinese inelligence officer. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison.
The officer instructed Wei not to discuss their relationship, to share sensitive information and to destroy evidence to help them cover their tracks, officials said.
The Justice Department also charged sailor Wenheng Zhao, 26, based at Naval Base Ventura County, north of San Diego, with conspiring to collect nearly $15,000 in bribes from a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for U.S. naval exercise plans, operational orders and photos and videos of electrical systems at Navy facilities between August 2021 through at least this May.
The information included operational plans for a large-scale U.S. military exercise in the Indo-Pacific region, which detailed the location and timing of naval force movements.
The Associated Press was unable to reach the federal public defender assigned to Zhao, who pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles.
The indictment further alleges that Zhao photographed electrical diagrams and blueprints for a radar system stationed on a U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan.
Prosecutors say Zhao, who also went by the name Thomas Zhao, also surreptitiously recorded information that he handed over. If convicted, Zhao could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
It was unclear if federal officials were looking at other U.S. sailors and if the investigation was ongoing.
At the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that, “I think we have clear policies and procedures in place when it comes to safeguarding and protecting sensitive information. And so if those rules are violated, appropriate action will be taken.” He declined to discuss any specifics of the cases.
U.S. Attorney Grossman said the charges reflect that China “stands apart in terms of the threat that its government poses to the United States. China is unrivaled in its audacity and the range of its maligned efforts to subvert our laws.”
He added that the U.S. will use “every tool in our arsenal to counter the threat and to deter China and those who have violated the rule of law and threaten our national security.”
5 Days ago, FBI employees wrongly searched foreign surveillance data for the last names of a U.S. senator and a state senator, according to a court opinion released Friday. The disclosure could further complicate Biden administration efforts to renew a major spy program that already faces bipartisan opposition in Congress.
Another FBI employee improperly queried the Social Security number of a state judge who alleged civil rights violations by a municipal chief of police, according to the opinion by the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
News of the latest violations comes as the Biden administration faces a difficult battle in persuading Congress to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows spy agencies to collect swaths of emails and other communications.
Already this year, U.S. spy officials have disclosed that the FBI improperly searched Section 702 databases for information related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and the 2020 protests following the police killing of George Floyd.
U.S. officials say Section 702 enables their highest priority work on China, Russia and threats like terrorism and cybersecurity. But many Democratic and Republican lawmakers say they won’t vote to renew Section 702 when it expires at this year’s end without major changes targeting how the FBI uses foreign surveillance data to investigate Americans.
Democrats who have long demanded new limits on the FBI’s access to surveillance have increasingly been joined by Republicans angry about the bureau’s investigations of former President Donald Trump as well as errors and omissions made during the probe of Russian ties to his 2016 campaign.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement that reforms at the bureau had led to “significant improvement” and fewer incidents of not following intelligence rules. He later sent a letter to congressional leaders arguing for the importance of the Section 702 program.
“We take seriously our role in protecting national security and we take just as seriously our responsibility to be good stewards of our Section 702 authorities,” Wray said in his statement. “We will continue to focus on using our Section 702 authorities to protect American lives and keeping our Homeland safe, while safeguarding civil rights and liberties.”
Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement that the latest errors show it is “long past time for Congress to step in.”
“As Congress debates reauthorizing Section 702, these opinions show why that can’t happen without fundamental reforms,” he said.
The surveillance court opinion released Friday didn’t disclose the names, states or party affiliations of the people whose names were searched. It said the searches of the state senator and U.S. senator occurred in June 2022. According to the court opinion, the analyst who did the searches had information that a foreign spy service was targeting the lawmakers. But the Justice Department’s national security division reviewed the searches and found that they didn’t meet FBI standards to limit how much information was retrieved, the opinion stated.
The state judge’s Social Security number was searched that October. It was later determined that the analyst did not have sufficient evidence to conduct the search and did not clear the search with higher-ups as required of politically sensitive searches, according to a senior FBI official who briefed reporters Friday on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the agency.
The unnamed U.S. senator has been notified of the search, but the state senator and state judge have not, the FBI official said.
The FBI gets a section of foreign surveillance data collected primarily by the National Security Agency, U.S. officials have said. Unlike the NSA and CIA, which go after intelligence targets abroad, the FBI is responsible for investigating threats affecting the U.S. such as cyberattacks or attempts to influence or interfere in American elections.
There are strict rules governing when analysts can search for U.S. citizens or businesses in surveillance data. Facing pressure from the surveillance court and Congress, the FBI in recent years has changed its search tools, ramped up training for analysts working with foreign data, and required new approvals from higher-ups for larger searches or sensitive searches like the names of public officials.
The FBI last month also announced new disciplinary measures. Any employees accused of negligence would immediately lose access to surveillance data until they undergo training and meet with a bureau attorney. The actions revealed Friday predate the new disciplinary policy.
Judge Rudolph Contreras’ opinion, which was completed in April 2023 and released Friday with redactions, says “there is reason to believe that the FBI has been doing a better job in applying the querying standard.” Of nearly 80,000 searches audited over a 16-month period ending in December 2022, 1.8% were found to have not met internal standards, the court said.
The total number of searches for Americans appears to have dropped as well. Over a year-long period ending in March, the FBI ran about 180,000 searches of U.S. citizens and other American entities, the court said.
That’s well below the roughly 2 million searches reported just between December 2020 and February 2021, something Contreras wrote “should indicate less intrusion into the private communications of U.S. persons.”
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-prada- Adi Mulia Pradana is a Helper. Former adviser (President Indonesia) Jokowi for mapping 2-times election. I used to get paid to catch all these blunders—now I do it for free. Trying to work out what's going on, what happens next. Arch enemies of the tobacco industry, (still) survive after getting doxed. Now figure out, or, prevent catastrophic situations in the Indonesian administration from outside the government. After his mom was nearly killed by a syndicate, now I do it (catch all these blunders, especially blunders by an asshole syndicates) for free. Writer actually facing 12 years attack-simultaneously (physically terror, cyberattack terror) by his (ex) friend in IR UGM / HI UGM (all of them actually indebted to me, at least get a very cheap book). 2 times, my mom nearly got assassinated by my friend with “komplotan” / weird syndicate. Once assassin, forever is assassin, that I was facing in years. I push myself to be (keep) dovish, pacifist, and you can read my pacifist tone in every note I write. A framing that myself propagated for years.
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