Friends rallying to defend DIA spy
This is just nuts! How can the indefensible be defended like this?
A senior intelligence official is leading an effort within the Bush administration to defend former Defense Intelligence Agency China specialist Ronald Montaperto, who pleaded guilty recently to espionage-related charges involving Chinese intelligence. Lonnie Henley, a friend of Montaperto and another former DIA China specialist, has written e-mails and had telephone conversations with intelligence and policy officials criticizing the FBI investigation and seeking to downplay the damage caused by Montaperto’s 22 years of contacts with two Chinese military intelligence officers, according to officials familiar with the private support program.
The effort by numerous pro-China intelligence analysts is aimed at protecting their prestige and influence, and at shielding others in government who share Montaperto’s benign views of China and the Chinese military, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The result has been near-silence from the Bush administration and Congress on a major Chinese spy case, while at the same time President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior officials publicly criticized recent press disclosures of a classified anti-terrorism financial-tracking program.
There is nothing that the Chief can see that justifies this sort of thing. The mental myopia regarding the ChiComs is just as serious as it would be if we were downplaying the threat of the Taliban in Afghanistan. (Oh….right…or rather wrong…whatever.)
As deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia under Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John D. Negroponte, Mr. Henley is one of the most senior U.S. intelligence analysts. His defense of Montaperto and criticism of the FBI is unusual and has raised concerns among U.S. counterintelligence officials that there are others in the intelligence community who may have improperly shared classified information with China.
What’s the record have to say?
Montaperto pleaded guilty June 21 in federal court in Alexandria to one count of illegally retaining classified documents, based on statements to investigators and several classified DIA reports found in his Springfield home. He claimed he could not remember all the classified data he supplied Chinese intelligence officers Yang Qiming and Yu Zenghe. The guilty plea followed statements to investigators made by Montaperto in 2003 that included an admission of providing “top secret” information to Chinese military intelligence officers. Montaperto said he passed top-secret information to Mr. Yu, a military intelligence officer and attache at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, according to the court papers in the case.
Whay aren’t “Mr. Yu” et al declared personna non grata and kicked out of the country? We used to do this regularly to the Russians in similar cases!
Somebody needs to use a big broom to clean house in what apparently is a “China establishment” within the US intel community, and begin by identifiying what’s really been going on here: high treason!
“Treason doth never prosper – What’s the reason?
If it doth prosper, none dare call it treason.” – Sir John Harrington
Spies. Ropes. Trees. Some assembly required.