How The Chinese Are Getting US Secrets
The Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the intelligence agency of the People’s Republic of China. China’s MSS (like the CIA in the US or MI6 in the UK), is probably the country’s largest and most active foreign intelligence agency.
Former MSS agents say that the agency is engaged in counterintelligence and repressing internal dissent within China. The internal repression includes efforts against religious groups and Tibetan and Taiwanese independence movements as well as censoring the Internet to prevent China’s population from knowing what is going on outside the country.
The actual mission of the MSS is to ensure “the security of the state through effective measures against enemy agents, spies, and counter-revolutionary activities designed to sabotage or overthrow China’s socialist system.” One of the primary missions of the MSS is undoubtedly to gather foreign intelligence from targets in various countries overseas. Many MSS agents are said to have operated in the Greater China region (Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) and to have integrated themselves into the world’s numerous overseas Chinese communities. At one point, nearly 120 agents who had been operating under non-official cover in the U.S., Canada, Western and Northern Europe, and Japan as businessmen, bankers, scholars, and journalists were recalled to China, a fact that demonstrates the broad geographical scope of MSS agent coverage.
60 Minutes has obtained an FBI videotape showing a Defense Department employee selling secrets to a Chinese spy that offers a rare glimpse into the secretive world of espionage.
See also: Chinese spy who defected tells all (Washington Times)
See Also: Four Chinese Espionage Investigations (PBS)
Tags: China, espionage, MSS, nuclear weapons, spying
