In early 2017, Kevin Mallory was in financial trouble, years after his government salary as a member of the military, as an officer in the CIA, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, fell behind on his mortgage payment of $ 230,000. Although, like many veteran intelligence officers, he ventured into the private sector, where pay could be much better, things were not going well, and his job as a consultant was futile.

He received a message on LinkedIn from a Chinese recruiter. According to the letter, the recruiter was working at a research center in China, where Mallory, who was fluent in Chinese, spent part of his career in China. The recruiter told him that the center was interested in Mallory's foreign policy experience. Indeed, the former US officer telephoned a man who called himself Michael Yang. According to the FBI, preliminary talks were held that would lead Mallory to the path of treason in professional courtesy. In February, Yang sent an email to Mallory asking for "another short phone call to address several points."

Soon after, the former US officer was on a plane to meet Yang in Shanghai, and later told the FBI that he suspected Yang was not an employee of a research center, but a Chinese intelligence officer. The criminal case shows that Mallory's trip to China began with a spying relationship that earned him $ 25,000 over two months in exchange for handing over government secrets.

In the end, the FBI discovered a digital storage chip containing eight highly classified documents that contained details of a still secret US spy operation. Mallory also had a special phone he received from Yang to send encrypted messages. Polite language has changed in their conversations. "Your goal is to get information," Yang told Yang in a phone call. Mallory - under the espionage law - was charged with selling US secrets to China and was convicted by a jury last spring.

Mallory's lawyers claimed he was trying to uncover Chinese spies, but the judge rejected the idea that he was acting as a double agent, a defense the other accused spies tried to spread. In May, Mallory was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison, and his lawyers plan to appeal.

A tragic example

If Mallory's case is unique, it would be a tragic example of a former intelligence officer who went astray, but last year, two former CIA officers admitted to espionage-related crimes in China's favor. It is an alarming sign for the US intelligence community, which sees China at the same level as Russia as the biggest threat of espionage.

Ron Hansen, 59, a former CIA officer who is fluent in Chinese and Russian, has already received thousands of dollars from Chinese intelligence agents over several years, until he was arrested by the FBI last year, court documents show. Hansen gave sensitive intelligence. The accused told the FBI that in early 2015, Chinese officers offered him $ 300,000 a year in return for "advisory services." He was arrested when he began asking a CIA officer to provide him with classified information and documents about national defense and "US military readiness in a particular area," according to the Justice Department.

The case of Jerry Xingli, 54, a former CIA officer, is perhaps the most mysterious. After leaving the CIA in 2007, Lee moved to Hong Kong and started a private business. In 2010, Chinese intelligence agents contacted him and offered money for information. According to the US Department of Justice, he conspired to pass on sensitive information and prepared a document containing "certain locations designated by the CIA as well as the location and time frame of the sensitive CIA operation."

Lee also has an address book containing “handwritten notes relating to his work as a CIA officer before 2004. These include intelligence provided by CIA officials, real agency names, operational meeting locations and telephone numbers, and information about Secret installations.

Basic tools

Spying and combating it have been essential tools of governance for centuries, and of course the intelligence agencies in the United States and China have been fighting for decades. But what these latest cases suggest is that the intelligence war is escalating, and that China has stepped up its efforts to steal secrets from the United States.

"The fact that we have signed three spies (Mallory, Hansen and Lee) at the same time shows how focused Beijing is on us," said John Demers, head of the Department of Homeland Security at the Department of Justice. "There may be people we haven't arrested, a small percentage of "Most likely from the people you called, you go beyond these three."

There are several cases of spying that are not published in the media, and some cases are rarely referred to the court, because there is "confidential information we are not willing to risk it," according to an intelligence official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter "Sometimes the charges are not brought. The suspects are dealt with by other means.

Escalating war

These latest cases provide only a small glimpse of the escalating intelligence war, which began in the shadow of the US-China struggle for global hegemony, aggressiveness and skill that characterizes China. As the latter advances economically and technologically, its spy agencies are accelerating, intelligence officers there are more sophisticated, and the tools at their disposal are stronger. China's efforts, targeting former US intelligence officers, are just part of a Chinese campaign that Washington officials say also includes cyber attacks on US government databases and agencies, theft of private trade secrets, the use of investments to acquire sensitive technology, and the targeting of universities and research institutions. .

• $ 25,000 received by Mallory in exchange for handing over government secrets to China.

Game rules

Beijing has sought to recruit American spies for decades, but the rules of the game have changed. About 10 years ago, Charity Wright was a US military trainer at the elite language center of the Defense Institute of Languages ​​in Monterey, California. Like many of her peers, Wright relied on taxis to go to the city center. Usually there were a few people waiting outside the base gate.

She felt fortunate to have been in a taxi from time to time, driven by a man who told her he had emigrated from China years ago. He was curious in an attractive way at first, which allowed her to practice her new language skills, and began to ask her about her background and family.After months of suspicion began to appear, the man seems to have an unusually good memory, and his questions become more specific: Where does your father work? What will you do once you graduate at the Army College?

During the training, Wright learned that foreign intelligence agents could gather information about trainees at the institute and create files for potential recruitment, given that many would move into intelligence jobs. The American trainee told an al-Qaeda officer about the matter, and soon after, I heard that he had been arrested and that there was a campaign in Monterrey targeting a suspected Chinese spy group.

Wright spent five years as a crypto-analyst at the National Security Agency, working on communications from China. She is now working on cybersecurity in the private sector. As a reserve soldier, Wright still holds US government permission to access classified information. It remains the target of what it suspects are Chinese spying efforts. These days, customers don't approach her personally, and communicate with her in the same way they reached Kevin Mallory: online. Wright gets messages via LinkedIn and other social networking sites offering multiple opportunities in China, including a contract with a consulting firm and speaking at conferences for a generous salary.

The Chinese spy tried to hunt his victim in front of the Army Language Institute. Archival

Highly sensitive

If veteran American spies are vulnerable to Chinese espionage, American companies may be worse off. In some cases, targeting the private sector can be confused with targeting US national security. A former US security official, who now works for a leading US airline linked to highly sensitive government projects, says the company has doubts about Chinese spying attempts. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation into the matter, said the suspect had "received economic training."

The former security officer was appointed by the company to monitor these threats, and initially found the lack of effective preventive measures and training required by the company. "When I got in and got a briefing, I thought it was a joke. Now we are taking some measures to protect against (internal threats), but in a sense, it's like a fox in a house," he said. Foreign Intelligence.

Dennis Wilder, who retired as deputy assistant director of the CIA for East Asia and the Pacific in 2016, says the Chinese way of espionage is determined by the fact that its leaders have long viewed America as an "existential threat," adding: Chinese. "They think we don't just want to steal secrets or protect ourselves, but the real American goal is to end Chinese communism, just as it was with the Soviet Union."

Espionage also targets private companies. Archival