Who was paying for the use of the ships?
Who was onboard and with what affiliations?
Excellent questions.
Who was aboard?
They would be way too deep. In Army, I had 4 sets of IDs.
My real ID,
Two issued, one American, the other Icelandic (both phony)
My own created fake one, Rhodesian.
Anyone aboard ship would be way too deep for anything other than a BI to uncover, and how do you do a BI in Heilongjiang Province?