Gentlemen may not read each other’s mail, but countries aren’t gentlemen and we need to do better than this:
China’s intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The spy penetration was discovered several years ago as part of a major counterintelligence probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that revealed an extensive program by China’s spy service to steal codes and other electronic intelligence secrets, and to recruit military and civilian personnel with access to them.
According to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, China’s Ministry of State Security, the main civilian spy service, carried out the operations by setting up a Chinese translation service in Hawaii that represented itself as a U.S.-origin company.The ruse led to classified contracts with the Navy and NSA to translate some of the hundreds of thousands of intercepted communications gathered by NSA’s network of listening posts, aircraft and ships.
It’s not surprising that we listen in on China. It’s not surprising that they try to find out what we’re hearing. What is surprising is that we hire the Chinese security services to do our translations for us.
And on occasion we land a highly sensitive (though damaged) EP-3 at a Chinese military airbase for them to disect. I heard that aircraft was back flying a year or so after it was removed in pieces (in a Russian cargo plane) in 2001. Oh the irony.
The EP-3 had to be flying. The US Navy has done You know what to the dog on getting an up to date replacement now for over 10 years so its got know choice but to fly the things. After all that relying on the RC-135 thing, that guys like Carlos Johnson placed their faith in, did not work so well.
Who would have thunk it? The the USAF could not be relied on to do a Navy mission?
This is what happens when we don’t utilize our own assets in an appropriate way.
I’m not going to get too far into it, but the hundreds of THOUSANDS of dollars we spend on training Chinese Linguists, that are now deployed to every theater and -COM possible, except the one in which they are needed most… is mind boggling.
Yet, we hire poorly vetted contractors to translate for us.
Anyone else see anything wrong with this?
WHEN is the military (Army) going to realize that when you train Arab Linguists, they go to Arabic speaking countries. When you train Korean Linguists, they go to Korea. When you train Russian Linguists… they go where? Yep… you guessed it, Russia.
Now why can’t the gov’t figure that one out?
Things that make you go… “hmmmm…”
It is a time of war. A few firing squads would get the point across real well.
The sad thing is, there are loads of folks out there with college degrees and even exchange student time, well-versed in Chinese, Russian, Korean, you name it, and they can’t even get the first interview. It’s as if DoD prefers to let contractors handle these messy little details.
– Max
That place in Hawaii is interesting. I spent 4 years there.
I’m astonished that there was not more investigation done of this company before giving them a single thing… although this is the same facility that I’m told, when their super-shredder broke down, tried to truck a whole lot of classified down to Hickam AFB… and the rear doors on the van popped open on H2, spreading the joy all over the road….
Lex, I will bet you the price of a steak dinner that this company was an 8A set-aside outfit, just so it would receive less scrutiny.
Skippy, best I recall, Navy and USAF recon assets such as the EP-3 and RC-135 are tasked by NSA. How did the Navy mission along the Chinese coast differ from the USAF? Probably more concentration on Chicom naval activity I’m sure, but in my RC-135 days we sure took interest in naval activity. Please understand I make my comments as a big fan of the Navy.
BTW, Army Girl, yeah the logic is often lacking concerning posting of linguists. An Army ASA buddy in Monterey spent a year learning Russian only to get sent to Panama. Go figure.
A certain old Major Unger who used to allow me to hang out with him went to the language school in Monterey, to learn Vietnamese. What was more useful to him when he got there was his French, which he barely remembered from college. Of course, he was just an advisor, back in 1963. If I ever get a blog that works again I may recount the story of the episode for which he was simultaneously arrested and commended. (Well, he was in the field, and an officer, so was ordered to consider hisself confined to quarters, which was a coupla shelter halves at the time.)