Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War With China (21 page)

A secret FBI report on President Nixon's relationship with Marianna Liu, a beautiful Hong Kong bar hostess, was given to J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau's director. This photo of Liu and Nixon was taken in 1966 at the Den, the popular nightspot where she worked.
Hong Kong Standard

This secret 1976 FBI document repeats unconfirmed reports that Liu "was a regular bedmate" of former vice president Nixon during his visits to Hong Kong in the 1960s. Liu, found and interviewed by the author, denied both a romance with Nixon and British and US suspicions that she worked for Chinese intelligence.

Katrina Leung and her husband, Kam, face reporters outside the federal courthouse in Los Angeles on December 16, 2005, after she pleaded guilty to lying about her affair with FBI agent James J. Smith and failing to pay taxes on thousands of dollars the bureau paid her as a double agent. Although the government said she secretly passed FBI secrets to Chinese intelligence for years, she was not charged with espionage.
AP Images

The Spymaster: Geng Huichang moved up in 2007 to become chief of the MSS, the Ministry of State Security, as part of a government shakeup by President Hu Jintao, who sought to consolidate his power by naming five political allies as ministers.
CNS

Michael W. Emmick prosecuted Katrina Leung for copying FBI secrets for China. The Justice Department was stunned when federal judge Florence-Marie Cooper threw out the case against
PARLOR MAID
, charging government "misconduct." She singled out Emmick, but later retracted her remarks about the prosecutor, saying he was not responsible.

ETHEREAL THRONE
: Jeff Wang, a defense engineer, lost his job after being falsely accused as a Chinese spy by an FBI informant who had a personal grudge against him. Denise Woo, a decorated FBI agent, was dismissed and prosecuted after she tried to clear the innocent man. She is shown here in happier times, receiving a congratulatory handshake from then FBI director Louis Freeh.
FBI

Chinese intelligence penetrated the CIA for thirty years with Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a top translator for the agency, who was caught by the FBI when he was careless with a Beijing hotel room key. A Catholic priest in New York's Chinatown may have been sent by China's spy service to try to help Chin escape when the FBI closed in.
AP Images

Wen Ning, code name
ANUBIS
, spied for the FBI while a diplomat inside the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles. He later went to prison for illegally exporting electronic parts and militarily useful technology to China.
Courtesy of Herald Times Reporter, Manitowoc

Family of spies: Chi Mak, shown here with his wife, Rebecca Chiu, secretly passed sensitive Navy documents on US weapons systems to China for more than twenty years. He was convicted and in 2008 sentenced to twenty-four years in prison. The government charged he headed a spy ring that included his wife, his brother, Tai Mak, and Tai Mak's wife and son. All five were convicted on various charges.
FBI

"I work for Red Flower of North America." Tai Mak's phone call to his contact in Zhongshan, China, was intercepted by the FBI. About to board a flight to Hong Kong, he was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport with computer disks containing data about the Navy's Quiet Electric Drive, designed to allow submarines to run silent. He was sentenced to ten years.
FBI