From the intrepid-if-often-sensational Bill Gertz comes a story that, if the details are correct, is a counterintelligence nightmare: "China taps into U.S. spy operations," by compromising an outsourced translation service in Hawaii.
When it comes to keeping an eye ear out for China, there are few places in the world more important than the hole under the pineapple field. If you are an NSA/Central Security Service China specialist you basically spend your entire career bouncing between Maryland and the Aloha State (though factors beyond the scope of this discussion make it very hard to get the best talent to Hawaii on an enduring basis). That's about as much as I'm going to say about that aspect of this case.
Chinese is one of the toughest languages to learn. Having lived and worked with Chinese linguists for years, I know that you can spend almost every waking hour trying to master the subtleties of tone and volume of vocab -- and still come up short when compared to a native speaker. Which is why those people tend to occupy the top tier linguist positions, correcting and/or refining the work of those with lesser expertise. A compromised native son or daughter – the default tactic of Beijing spymasters - could have a significant impact on our understanding of Chinese activities and intentions (based on signals intelligence) over time.
In fact, the idea that such work is now contracted out says a lot about the level of effort we are exerting against China. And it is not good.
10+ years ago this was a job for military and government civilian linguists. If we employed contractors it was for technical work (IT, infrastructure, etc.). I don't think I ever ran into a contract linguist until I began working document exploitation, years later. So one of two things or perhaps both is happening: the volume of work has gone up dramatically and/or the number of cleared military and government employees is not keeping pace with demand. Neither development should be surprising, but the fact that the effort to remedy the situation was apparently handled so carelessly is shocking.
I've talked about our counterintelligence problems before but this case, with its apparent broad and deep penetration of an entire facility, stands alone amongst recent Chinese espionage cases.
This isn't leading your FBI handler around by his junk or co-opting an influential academic in order to steer policy discussions, this is attempting to nullify an entire "-INT" and render this nation dumb to what many consider a near-peer adversary. China, you might recall, recently demonstrated it has real Star Wars-like capabilities.
No matter where you fall out on the China-as-enemy/-friend spectrum you have to agree: having no reliable idea about what any nation is saying is generally frowned upon.
At a more granular level, the fact that a contracting firm did not pass – or perhaps was not subjected to – a rigorous counterintelligence screening is another indicator of how inadequate our national security apparatus has become. Contractors working on foreign intercepts have to be cleared, which means either a long wait for completely un-cleared linguists, or they are tapping retiring or separating linguists from
Kunia's military ranks. The firm and its principals had to have been investigated so that they could perform classified work for the government. Apparently no one noticed the trail to China's Ministry of State Security until after the penetration had occurred.
I'm looking forward, in a twisted sense, to more details to emerge as time goes on. Assuming a high degree of accuracy in what has been revealed so far -- and, yeah, that's a serious assumption -- this is one collection and analysis capability that is close to being "combat ineffective" in the intelligence war. If Congress is going to hold hearings on intelligence matters, it would do well to back-burner the he-said, she-knew political theater that is the
CIA interrogation tape case -- and query all the intelligence poobahs about this fantastic intelligence fiasco.
-- Michael Tanji, cross-posted at Haft of the Spear
