Chinese president makes nice while secret agents steal our tech

If the president of China gave any gifts to Mayor Daley during last week's visit to Chicago, then I have a suggestion.

The mayor should toss the gifts into a city hall Dumpster.

This advice is especially important if President Hu Jintao handed the mayor a camera, a computer or any other “Made in China” electronics.

I'm not suggesting that hizzoner be an ungrateful host, but intelligence experts say Chinese officials have a history of putting bugs into diplomatic gifts that allow remote access to recipients' computers.

You might call it the gift that keeps on giving ... to the giver.

Don't call this paranoia. Such a dastardly violation of goodwill would come as no surprise to intelligence agents, who say that the Chinese government and its leaders are currently waging the widest espionage effort ever faced by the United States and Great Britain.

According to the FBI and its UK counterpart known as MI5, Chinese spies have infiltrated the military and private corporations. The aim of the government's espionage campaign is to gain both economic and defense advantages against the West.

It is against that backdrop that both President Obama and Mayor Daley welcomed Hu Jintao, who is also the leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

Hu's visits to Washington and Chicago were equal parts love fest and public back patting displays.

Mayor Daley said that he was interested in “building a relationship that advances the common interests and shared concerns of China and Chicago – establishing Chicago as China's economic ‘Gateway to America.'”

Although he didn't say as much, the goal of President Hu's government is far less affable, according to agencies that monitor China's spy game.

A 14-page document titled “The Threat from Chinese Espionage,” prepared in 2008 by MI5's Center for the Protection of National Infrastructure, followed public warnings from senior MI5 officials that China posed “one of the most significant espionage threats” to Britain.

The investigation described how Chinese officials gave cameras, computer memory sticks and other gifts to British business executives that were found to contain hacking devices and electronic transmitters. “There have been cases where these ‘gifts' have contained Trojan devices and other types of malware,” the document said.

In the United States, dozens of Chinese spy cases have been prosecuted by federal authorities the past few years. One criminal case scheduled to go to trial on March 14 in Chicago was brought against Schaumburg resident Hanjuan Jin, a former computer specialist at Motorola.

In 2006, Jin, 37, was arrested at O'Hare Airport while boarding a plane to Beijing. During a routine security check of passengers, Jin was found to be carrying $30,000 in cash after declaring she had only $10,000.

A search of Jin's bags produced a laptop computer and more than 30 compact data storage devices containing $600 million in stolen Motorola files, according to authorities who have charged her with spying for a company linked to the Chinese military.

Jin has denied the charges. She and several former co-workers are also facing a civil suit filed by Schaumburg-based Motorola.

Ironically, last Friday as Mayor Daley was welcoming President Hu, a Michigan man was being sentenced to four years in prison for spying for Hu's government.

Glenn Shriver, 28, of Grand Rapids, had pleaded guilty to passing top secret American military information to Chinese intelligence agents. He was paid more than $70,000 in cash for his spying.

“Mr. Shriver sold out his country and repeatedly sought a position in our intelligence community so that he could provide classified information to the PRC (Peoples Republic of China,”) said U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride.

Not all of it is cloak and dagger.

This month, right before coming to the United States, even President Hu boasted about China's latest covert toy: the J-20 stealth fighter jet. Hu told Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the maiden test flight proved China now has a stealth fighter that rivals anything owned by the Pentagon.

Despite all of this, President Hu was wined and dined in Washington last week like a friend of ours; then he was treated like a rock star in Chicago and hailed at a corporate appearance in suburban Woodridge as if he was a business saint.

There were no questions about the spying. Not a raised eyebrow in sight about his government's espionage.

What did we do instead? Uncorked the best wine, put out a spread of the finest filet mignon and simply ignored the elephant in the room.

Of course, we spy on China (and other countries) as well. It is just as disingenuous of our leaders to go there and make nice as it was for Hu to come here.

Maybe the 17th century Spanish writer Baltasar Gracián y Morales had it right: “A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.”

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie