Posted on 02/04/2016 10:57:46 AM PST by Zhang Fei
A defector from China has revealed some of the innermost secrets of the Chinese government and military, including details of its nuclear command and control system, according to American intelligence officials.
Businessman Ling Wancheng disappeared from public view in California last year shortly after his brother, Ling Jihua, a former high-ranking official in the Communist Party, was arrested in China on corruption charges.
Ling Wancheng, the defector, has been undergoing a debrief by FBI, CIA, and other intelligence officials since last fall at a secret location in the United States, said officials familiar with details of the defection who spoke on condition of anonymity. The defector is said to be a target of covert Chinese agents seeking to capture or kill him.
Among the information disclosed by Ling are details about the procedures used by Chinese leaders on the use of nuclear weapons, such as the steps taken in preparing nuclear forces for attack and release codes for nuclear arms.
Other secrets revealed included details about the Chinese leadership and its facilities, including the compound in Beijing known as Zhongnanhai. That information is said to be valuable for U.S. electronic spies, specifically for cyber intelligence operations targeting the secretive Chinese leadership.
(snip)
Michael Pillsbury, a China specialist with the Hudson Institute, said Chinese defectors with access to secrets are rare and usually need careful protection.
Pillsbury's 2015 book The 100-Year Marathon draws on data provided by five Chinese defectors.
"Over the last three decades, Chinese defectors have been a vital source of insights about the secrets Beijing wants to keep from Washington," said Pillsbury.
"Very few defectors wrote about it or gave interviews," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
It was never a realistic possibility that Ling, a naturalized US citizen, would be extradited, unless he was shown to have taken part in Holocaust atrocities.:-) According to a Chinese acquaintance, the Ling siblings have unusual names, possibly minted at the peak of revolutionary fervor by their parents. Ling Jihua is literally Ling Plan (as in 5 year plan?). Ling Wancheng is Ling Complete (as in complete mission?). Linghu Luxian is Ling Route (as in Route Army?) Ling Zhengce is Ling Policy. This is in stark contrast to the translations of Chinese names I've read in pulpy English language fiction on China by Lin Yutang, and orientalist Robert van Gulik, which tend towards the flowery, and in some cases (Deng Xiaoping aka Deng Little Peace) express the aspirations of the parents re that particular kid.
Chinese walk-in defector ping
It’s nice to get some good news on this subject for a change.
Chinese spooks,,,
I hope the intelligence agencies do a better job vetting Ling Wancheng’s bona fides than they did with Yuri Nosenko’s.
Way to go. I hope the press will be satisfied when he is found tortued and murdered by Chinese agents. And they WILL KILL HIM if they can.
Isn’t this type of thing supposed to be kept quiet?
If you read the entire article, I expect your doubts will be banished.
One suspects that it is; and if it is, then Congress should immediately look into who is putting this "out there".
I read the entire article, including this paragraph:
“Intelligence officials said Ling, if confirmed as a legitimate defector in debriefings over the next several months, would have the most privileged information of any defector from China to the United States in more than 30 years.”
... IF [Ling is] confirmed as a legitimate defector ...
No. You want every major media outlet and, indeed, the entire world to know that Uncle Sam will arrange for you to get a new identity and provide protection from your enemies. This encourages other walk-ins.
The failed Wang Lijun (another senior official perhaps 3 or 4 levels removed from the very top ranks) defection at the US consulate was a real downer in that respect because Wang left the consulate to be arrested. I have two theories on why he left. One is that the Chinese government threatened to enter the consulate, in which event Wang would have been captured, even if the consulate had its full contingent of Marine guards. Two is that the Chinese never threatened to enter, but Wang would have had to spend the rest of his days at the consulate, since the Chinese would never allow him to leave. At any rate, Wang took his chances with the Party's prosecutors, and is now serving a 15-year term, that will probably be reduced for good behavior.
The context - a high profile prosecution of his siblings that casts doubt on the honesty of senior party officials, with implications for the legitimacy of Party rule, suggests that the defection is indeed legit.
Excellent post.
No. You want every major media outlet and, indeed, the entire world to know that Uncle Sam will arrange for you to get a new identity and provide protection from your enemies. This encourages other walk-ins, as well as makes foreign officials more susceptible to recruitment as agents-in-place. They are putting their lives in your hands. They want to know that there's a pot of gold (i.e. sanctuary) at the end of the rainbow.
The failed Wang Lijun (another senior official perhaps 3 or 4 levels removed from the very top ranks) defection at the US consulate was a real downer in that respect because Wang left the consulate to be arrested. I have two theories on why he left. One is that the Chinese government threatened to enter the consulate, in which event Wang would have been captured, even if the consulate had its full contingent of Marine guards. Two is that the Chinese never threatened to enter, but Wang would have had to spend the rest of his days at the consulate, since the Chinese would never allow him to leave. At any rate, Wang took his chances with the Party's prosecutors, and is now serving a 15-year term, that will probably be reduced for good behavior.
In case you missed this...
Let’s hope so.
5.56mm
Not too helpful publicizing this. Bad move.
You don't think the Chinese, after being threatened by the purged sibling with the disclosure of these secrets to the US, know that Ling Wancheng has handed them to the US? I recommend that you read the whole article for a complete take on the circumstances behind the intelligence bonanza that may have had Chinese assassins looking for him.
The real question is whether this is just a cover story and Ling Jihua was an agent-in-place (i.e. a mole) whose brother, Ling Wancheng, set up stateside to funnel information to Uncle Sam for him. If so, that would be actually be an intel failure for the CIA, since a truly successful operation brings the mole in from the cold and sets him up in comfortable retirement, safe from vengeful agents of the foreign state, as a living example for other foreign officials who might be thinking of working for Uncle Sam.
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