Say Anything Blog

A recent article by the “Northwest Institute for Economic Security and Global Awareness” claims some foreign students could be spies or terrorists.  Authors of the study e-mailed and mailed copies of their article to campus officials for comment. Copies were also widely distributed by Internet and snail mail. The article is getting wide attention throughout the region now as the “cat is out of the bag” despite attempts to dismiss the article by Minot State University administration.  READ THE ARTICLE FOR YOURSELF! Truth or BS?

Why North Dakota is a Tempting Terrorist and Espionage Target

By S. Wong and J. Gonzalez, Northwest Institute for Economic Security and Global Awareness
February 2007

North Dakota is one of the last vestiges of American innocence. The state is home to some of the most friendly, trusting and easygoing people in the nation.  A low population with deep farm roots, North Dakotans are far removed from big city terrorist-savvy brethren. 

While the world has changed, particularly since September 11, 2001, North Dakota has not.  This blissful ignorance of real-world threats right under their noses makes them ripe for the picking by terrorists and espionage artists.

In addition to relative isolation, North Dakota is not a wealthy state.  Without a second thought, colleges and city governments are throwing open the doors to foreign cash cows.

Bringing in tuition-paying students from abroad will boost bottom lines of financially strapped colleges and universities.  People from overseas will flock to cities and towns, bringing tourist revenue and economic prosperity.  The more the better.

What we fail to appreciate is that not all foreign students and visitors are here for innocent purposes.  People on city councils and in university administration let monetary greed cloud judgment. 

They don’t ask a simple question: Of all the places in the world for foreign students and visitors to go, why would they want to come to a cold, isolated backwater town?

We need only look at our recent history. In 2000 and early 2001, North Dakota aviation schools were booming.  Flight training was bringing in tons of cash as seemingly wealthy Middle Eastern men clamored to learn how to fly airplanes.  Only on September 12, 2001 did we come to realize that we may have trained terrorists how to turn commercial aircraft into weapons.

North Dakota is a high profile target because it has two major Air Force bases: Grand Forks and Minot.  Both of these bases bring jobs and have a major economic impact on these two prairie cities.  As an example, Minot Air Force Base’s economic impact report boasted it contributed more than $380 million in fiscal year 2006 to the Minot area economy.

  Far too many local residents of these air base cities fail to appreciate that these military installations are high profile strategic targets for terrorists and people working for countries that are hostile to the American way of life. 

A long-running national joke is that if North Dakota were a separate country, it would be a major nuclear power.  Minot Air Force Base is one of a few military installations in the nation with two of the three legs of the nuclear triad: B-52 bombers and ICBMs.  Grand Forks Air Force Base has a series of classified missions that are crucial to the global fight against terrorism.

Both Grand Forks and Minot have a sizable percentage of citizens who work for the Department of Defense, the U.S. Government and for defense contractors. Both Minot and Grand Forks also have under-funded state universities that are currently seeking to recruit as many students from China as possible.  Under a gossamer of encouraging ethnic diversity, they are opening wide an avenue for military and economic espionage, and potential terrorist intelligence gathering.

A classic example of greed and gullibility is the announcement by Minot State University (MSU) in February 2007 that it created a new Master of Science in Management (MSM) to bring Chinese and American students “together to study and apply management principles in class and on work-related projects.” 

Chinese students would be paired one-on-one with a U.S. student to study a problem related to the American student’s workplace – a workplace that could include government contracts and tantalizing trade secrets.

The Chinese students would live on campus for about a year – a campus less than 15 miles from Minot Air Force Base.  Classes would be held at night and weekends so that students could work for local industries or study during the day.  Chinese students would have opportunities to visit Minot Air Force Base according to MSU’s program documentation.

According to the brochure describing the MSU Intercultural Graduate Management Cohort,
“Students will also visit many regional businesses, such as electric utilities and electric generation plants (hydroelectric, biodiesel, wind, and coal), insurance companies, an intermodal agricultural center, farming operations, agricultural processors, large retailers, entrepreneurs, a regional hospital, and the Minot Area Chamber of Commerce.”

Most of the places the Chinese students would be invited to visit are coincidentally prime terrorist targets.  They also include businesses with trade secrets some foreign companies and governments desperately want to exploit.

    MSU administration and staff became interested in Chinese students when it hired a Chinese national in 2005 to be dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.  Visits in 2006 arranged by Dr. Yueh-Ting Lee (Li Yue-Ting) culminated in an agreement with a Chinese university for cultural exchange.  Minot city fathers and MSU administration couldn’t have been happier.

  What no one has asked is why Chinese students would want to come to an isolated fourth-tier state college for an education?  Why only to study business?  Why was the program ramrodded through the College of Business despite strong faculty objections?

  The local Minot population believes that all Chinese visitors are as friendly and benign as the staff at the Happy Panda Chinese restaurant.  What they fail to appreciate is that the People’s Republic of China is a communist nation still at odds with the American way of life.

In January 2007, China sent a missile into space to demonstrate that it has the capability to destroy our satellite navigation systems, space-based communications, and intelligence collection satellites.  China is a nuclear power that is working hard to ensure its bombs have global reach. 
 
Chinese citizens regularly come to our country to spy on our military installations and steal our technology.  While most probably don’t, a significant number do.  Just ask the FBI.

In February 2005, David Szady,  the FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence warned that of all the nations that send spies to the United States, China was by far the worst.  It topped North Korea, Russia and Iran combined.  He noted that a common ploy was for Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. to study then get jobs in industry and defense operations.  He advised that American institutions and businesses should err on the side of caution, particularly when dealing with Chinese nationals.

Szady warned that the Chinese typically used students, delegations, researchers, false-front companies and visitors to engage in espionage.  “If you have a little national asset, whatever it is [the Chinese want it] … and they need it to make their missile fly straight or so they can compete in electronic warfare … .”
Dr. Larry M. Wortzel is a former U.S. military intelligence officer and expert on Chinese intelligence services.  He has also testified before Congress on Chinese espionage efforts in the United States. 

In his November 2005 Heritage Lecture, “Sources and Methods of Foreign Nationals Engaged in Economic and Military Espionage”, Dr. Wortzel warned:
“China is still an authoritarian, one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party with a pervasive intelligence and security apparatus.  The Chinese government is able to identify potential collectors of information and, if necessary, to coerce them to carry out missions on behalf of the government because of the lack of civil liberties in China.”

Dr. Wortzel testified before the House Judiciary Committee (HJU 23433), “It is very important to recognize that Chinese diplomatic missions abroad monitor the activities of their businessmen and students to cultivate informants, and before Chinese citizens get passports or travel permission, they are often interviewed by China’s intelligence security services and sensitized to intelligence collection requirements.”

  According to the U.S. government’s OISS “Intelligence Threat Handbook” (June 2004) for interagency OPSEC (operations security) support staff, “intelligence collection activities of five nations that traditionally have been considered hostile to our national interests and have used their intelligence services to harm the interests of the United States … [are] Russia, The People’s Republic of China (PRC), Cuba, North Korea, and Romania.”

  The handbook makes clear that the Chinese use both overt and clandestine human intelligence networks to obtain information for the Chinese government.  In describing Chinese intelligence operations, the handbook warns that many students attending schools in the United States “have been tasked to collect information by the Chinese government.” 

  The Chinese are particularly interested in collecting high technology and military information, making colleges and universities near military installations the choicest targets of all.  China’s top espionage agencies have typically “encouraged Chinese students to remain in the United States as long-term penetration agents.”
  The Intelligence Threat Handbook was emphatic: “The FBI has stated that virtually all Chinese allowed to leave the PRC for the United States are given some type of collection requirements to fulfill.”  Sending “students” to the U.S. to spy for the Chinese Communist Party is par for the course, particularly at schools close to military installations and defense contractors.

A former administration official at Minot State University, who declined to be named, said, “This new international cohort program was entirely driven by the Chinese.  We offered for students to take classes on-line or to send over instructors, but they declined.  They were emphatic that students from China come here, attend classes off hours, and each Chinese be paired with an American working in industry.”  The former official added, “I doubt this program would exist if there wasn’t an air base here.”

In the mean time, MSU and city officials, students and others are invited to tour China, trips sometimes subsidized by the Chinese government.  The campus newsletter, Inside (Dec. 2006), announced a study trip to China the following May: “The trip is being subsidized by SIAS University, MSU’s partner institution in central China.”

SIAS International University is located in Xinzheng, in the Henan Province of the People’s Republic of China, and is a Western-style private college.  It is owned by SIAS Group and was founded by a Chinese businessman in 1998, who now lives in California. SIAS is affiliated with Zhengzhou University, a Chinese government school.

SIAS University has a number of exchange partnership agreements with American colleges that include not only Minot State, but Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT; and Fort Hays State University, Hays, Kansas.  All are located near defense contractors or military installations.

In the case of Minot State’s new cohort program, the pairing of Chinese nationals with American business owners and employees should sound alarm bells.

Giving foreign students unfettered access to American businesses opens the door for economic espionage.  Economic espionage is essentially the unauthorized theft of trade secrets to the benefit of foreigners and the detriment of American companies.  It is also punishable under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (18 U.S.C. secs. 1831-39.)

According to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division,
“Trade secrets are all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs, or codes whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically or in writing, which the owner has taken reasonable measures to protect; and has an independent economic value.  ‘Trade secrets’ are commonly called classified proprietary information, economic policy information, trade information, proprietary technology, or critical technology.”

The FBI warns that foreigners, particularly Chinese, engage in economic espionage by targeting and recruiting “susceptible people” who work for American companies and research institutions.  They also “establish seemingly innocent business relationships between foreign companies and U.S. industries to gather economic intelligence including classified information.”

  Trade secrets make American companies competitive in the marketplace.  They provide jobs.  Economic espionage damages our economy and costs an estimated $30 billion annually.  Most companies aren’t aware that they are targets of economic espionage until it is too late. 

The Intelligence Threat Handbook notes that company spies typically attempt to “purloin critical intelligence through duping unwitting employees of the organization, and even through the direct involvement of foreign intelligence services.” 

The handbook also explains that “[a]nother ploy is to create situations in which the employees of a targeted facility can be induced to give their proprietary information away, in the mistaken belief that the individuals requesting the information have been properly authorized to receive it.”

Could the studying of an actual business as a foreign student project be an unwitting vehicle for economic espionage?  Could an educational institution and professors supervising the projects be held liable for aiding and abetting economic espionage?  It is certainly possible.

The handbook mentions that the FBI was called in to investigate and prosecute a “business education professor from India who taught a night class at a Maryland college [and who] required each of her students to write a term paper on the company where they worked.”  A student got suspicious when the professor kept asking for more detailed information and possibly proprietary data.

Student projects, joint ventures and joint research projects are common avenues for economic espionage.  “Proposals for mutually profitable cooperative enterprises are one means of collecting critical information that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.”

Spies can use commonly available technology to garner information during company visits, a trade fairs, and near military installations.  All they need is a cellular phone with digital imaging and transmission capability.  Point, shoot and send.

In conclusion, while not all foreign students and visitors come to America to engage in espionage, a fair number do, particularly from China.  The Chinese Communist Party directs a large and growing espionage network of agents that pose as students, researchers, businessmen and cultural exchange facilitators.  They pray on the uninformed, greedy and gullible.

Businesses and institutions at or near military installations and defense contractors need to be especially wary.  They need to institute firm policies that prohibit economic espionage. 
Small colleges and cities are often blinded to real threats by monetary greed. 

In exchange for a few trips to China and a pittance in foreign student tuition, they are selling their country and local industries down the river. 

It is a mistake of epic proportions.

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