Diplomat's claim supported by 2nd Chinese defector

[dArKeR]

A second Chinese defector has backed claims by a diplomat who left his job at China's consulate in Sydney that Beijing is running a large spy network in Australia and other Western countries.
The diplomat, Chen Yonglin, walked away from his post as the first secretary at the Chinese Consulate-General last month to seek political asylum in Australia. Chen, 37, claimed China had 1,000 spies in Australia involved in illegal activities including abducting Chinese nationals and smuggling them back to China.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has dismissed Chen's claims as slander.
But a second Chinese official seeking asylum in Australia, Hao Fengjun, 32, supported Chen's claim of a Chinese spy network in Australia in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp television late Tuesday.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2005/06/09/2003258524

[bemildred]

1. Darn, this could interfere with the coverup.

:thumbsup:

[Tempest]

2. All countries do this

Israel runs a large spy network in the U.S. and the U.S. runs spy networks all over the world.

[Bucky]

3. Sadly, no, the US has proven quite inept at spy networking.

Our strengths are in ELINT and SIGINT, that's electronic intelligence monitoring (as with spy planes, spy sats, bugging phones, radar, and radiation detection) and signal intelligence interception (reading mail, code breaking, interpretation of troop deployment).

We're notoriously inept when it comes to HUMINT, human intelligence gathering. We regularly get taken to the cleaners by European and Asian adversaries. Even Castro punkd us out by extensively infiltrating our anti-Castro exile groups we sponsor while rarely allowing a mole to burrow too far into his operations. Israelis are among the world's best spies. Americans among the worst.

[Tempest]

4. I didn't comment on the effectiveness

Just the fact that the U.S. does indeed engage in it.