TIME Reports China Exporting Spies by the Thousands!
While Republicans Pretend to Give a Damn.
By Brad Friedman on 2/13/2005, 2:24pm PT  

The short article in this coming week's TIME Magazine begins this way:

"Ning Wen and his wife were arrested last fall at their home office in Manitowoc, Wis., for allegedly sending their native China $500,000 worth of computer parts that could enhance missile systems."

Sound familiar? It will to regular BRAD BLOG readers.

The article, titled "China's Big Export: When it comes to spying, Beijing likes to flood the zone", continues...

As these naturalized citizens await trial, similar episodes in Mount Pleasant, N.J., and Palo Alto, Calif., point only to the tip of the iceberg, according to FBI officials keeping tabs on more than 3,000 companies in the U.S. suspected of collecting information for China...Says a senior FBI official: "China is trying to develop a military that can compete with the U.S., and they are willing to steal to get [it]."

But instead of assigning one well-trained agent to pursue a target, "the Chinese are very good at putting a lot of people on just a little piece and getting a massive amount of stuff home," says a U.S. intelligence official.

So if this is a real problem in the United States, why has at least one --- Hai Lin Nee (a/k/a Henry Nee), the one who was reported to authorities years ago by Clint Curtis as spying on the United States while working at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) --- been arrested on three counts, allowed to plead guilty to just one, and then let go with hardly a slap on the wrist?

(Nee, believed by Curtis and YEI CEO's Executive Secretary, Mike Cohen, to be an illegal alien has been allowed to stay in the U.S. and received just three-years probation and a $100 fine after having admitted "that business has been slow in the last year and that he had only sent parts out of the country ten to twenty times" according to the plea agreement. See our earlier exclusive report for more details and a look at the court papers.)

Perhaps the answer to that question might be found in TIME's closer:

To help sort the few who go to America to spy from the thousands who go there for a better life, the FBI relies heavily on Chinese informants. Says a high-ranking Silicon Valley agent: "We have almost more assets than we can deal with."

Hmmm...Has Henry Nee turned "asset"?

Is he now spying on/informing on his old friends at YEI?

Is that why late just last year the Feds allowed him to plead guilty to just one charge and then walk despite his arrest after a four-year sting operation?

Is that why he is still allowed to work for YEI, a company which requires "Top Secret clearance" for sensitive contracts with NASA and others which Jeb Bush's former running-mate Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) had helped them attain? A company which, despite their denials, a "Special Agent assigned to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in Orlando, Florida" claimed via email on Nov. 22 of 2004 was "under investigation by another Division of the FBI"? (Would the company even know if they were being investigated by the FBI? Does the FBI send out telegrams as a courtesy to inform such companies in order to give them time to shred the evidence?) A company, mind you, which still claims that Nee had never been an "employee" or a "consultant" despite public records published late last year by The BRAD BLOG which demonstrate they are lying?

Has Henry made a secret deal with the FBI to turn state's evidence against the Yang's in exchange for his extraordinarily light sentence?

And finally, on a somewhat personal sidenote, shouldn't all the rightwingers who've unsuccessfully attempted to discredit Curtis as a liar be ashamed of themselves for doing so simply to protect Feeney and his good friends, the Bush's, while Curtis has been, apparently, both patriotic and extremely courageous in trying to help keep secrets of United States weapons technology from being stolen by the People's Republic of China?

Do such rightwingers have any allegiance to their country and the safety of its citizens? Or is the retension of political power for their party of choice, even at the expense of National Security, one of those "moral values" they pretend to have and that we've heard so much about?

We have a feeling this story will continue...

(Thanks to BRAD BLOG friend, reader, occassional guest-blogger and "asset", Fin of What We Know, for the tip on the TIME article!)

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Article Categories: Tom Feeney, Clint Curtis