Have you seen this? I tend to believe that the first story, that he defected, is true. What do you think? I don’t believe anyone coming from China or the Biden administration, but then I repeat myself.
Feds Shoot Down Rumor China’s Missing Spymaster Defected to U.S.
SpyTalk had sought comment from the State Department last week when preparing a story on mounting rumors that Dong Jingwei, vice minister of the Ministry of State Security, China’s principle espionage and internal security agency, had defected in February via Hong Kong along with his daughter Dong Yang. The department did not respond.
But on Tuesday a U.S. official reached out to say reports of Dong’s defection were not true. Speaking strictly on terms of anonymity, the official declined to elaborate further, including on Dong’s present whereabouts, only hinting that the counterspy remains in China.
“We can’t confirm or deny where he is exactly,” the official said. Asked why the Biden administration was reaching out to knock down rumors of a high level defection—normally an ultra-sensitive issue—the official said, “that’s more of a policy question”and referred SpyTalk to the White House. A spokesperson for the National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Former Pentagon, State Department and CIA China expert Nicholas Eftimiades, author of Chinese Espionage: Operations and Tactics, told SpyTalk the official’s initiative was likely coordinated at the highest levels of the Biden administration. “I’m stunned that they did that,” considering the sensitivity of the subject, he said. He called the response definitive, a closed issue: “game, set, match.”
China’s officially sanctioned media reported last Friday that Dong had appeared at a MSS seminar on the mainland where he “urged the country’s intelligence officers” to crack down on enemy spies, according to an account in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. But the reports did not say where the seminar took place, nor did they include photos or video of Dong’s supposed appearance, further raising suspicions about his status. Dong’s identity is not secret: In 2018, Beijing released a photo of him and other members of a Chinese delegation attending Sino-German security talks.
Some longtime observers of U.S.-China relations think that the Biden administration’s willingness to address such a normally highly secretive issue was motivated by two issues: One, “to excise an unnecessary additional irritant in the still downward-spiraling bilateral relationship” between the U.S. and China, as Robert A. Manning, a former top Asia specialist in both Republican and and Democratic administrations for more than 30 years, put it. A second, and possibly equal motive: to beat back a Republican campaign to deflect blame for the coronavirus pandemic in America from Donald Trump to China’s Wuhan Virology Lab and, by extension, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been critical of the former president’s response to the disease.
The motivation “may be domestic,” said a leading China watcher—to head off Republican accusations that the Biden administration is “hiding a defector who has info on the lab leak or [other] embarrassing stuff.”
Reports of Dong’s defection originated in conservative circles here and abroad that have been critical of the scientific consensus that the covid-19 pandemic was transmitted from animals in Wuhan’s “wet market.”
On June 4, former Fox News reporter Adam Housley tweeted that “US intelligence has a Chinese defector with Wuhan info. AND China is trying to produce variants that suggest it came from bats to cover up that coronavirus originally came from a lab.”
Housley’s report was amplified by the right-wing Red State news and opinion site, which alleged that “a person believed to be among the highest-ranking defectors ever to the United States from the People’s Republic of China has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for months.” Citing anonymous sources “inside the intelligence community,” it alleged “the defector has direct knowledge of special weapons programs in China, including bioweapons programs,” and that the alleged information had created “a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci.”
The rumors were given more gravity on June 16 when Dr. Han Lianchao, a former Chinese foreign ministry official who defected after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, alleged in a tweet that during high level Sino-American talks in Alaska in March, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi and Communist Party foreign affairs boss Yang Jiechi demanded that the Americans return Dong and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken refused.
Asked for comment on Tuesday, Han was unbowed.
“That’s all good,” he said of the U.S. denial of the defection, “but it’ll be more assuring if Dong’s latest photos or videos can be shown.”
Ah yes, The Daily Beast, that bastion of truth and honor, NOT!
A left wing shill that I find hard to believe.
I tend to believe the 1st story too.
And certain people have a whole lot to be worried about if this Chinese spy has the goods.
Hadn’t seen it, but I can’t say I’m surprised a story was put out saying it wasn’t true. You’d think China would keep up with their top people better. I know Chinese have defected before, but I can only recall it happening with a cover story of traveling to the US, then defecting once they’re here. Seems I recall some Chinese athletes coming to the US and defecting? Or maybe that was Russian...
I’m not sure what to make of it. If he’s still in China, it should be an easy thing to parade him out as proof (unless he’s assumed room temperature). If he’s in the US, I could see where they WOULDN’T want to parade him out, to keep him safe. My understanding is DNI is above the FBI/CIA/etc. so not sure that any entity other than DNI can vouch for the validity of the story.
I’m kinda leaning towards truth. But I’m not putting both feet on the truth side just yet!
Supposedly he has names of spies in gov't, names of lawmakers compromised by CCP & information on the Wuhan virus that probably proves Trump correct, so I'm sure the gov't doesn't want us to know the truth. Of course they are trying to deny his existence.
We will probably never know the truth that this guy has. I wouldn't doubt if he has an "accident" in the near future.
Moscow's defence ministry said a patrol ship fired warning shots and a jet dropped bombs in the path of HMS Defender as it sailed some 12 miles (19km) off Crimea's coast.
The UK government rejected Russia's account of the incident and denied that any warning shots had been fired.
A BBC correspondent on the warship said it was harassed by Russia's military.
Aircraft could be heard overhead as BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale filed a report from the deck of HMS Defender in the Black Sea as it sailed to Georgia. He described hostile warnings over the radio as the warship's crew prepared for a possible confrontation.
More at the link...