Chinese Secret Service Netted Gore, Now After Bigger Prize

Reports by way of the Financial Times that Chinese hackers attacked the White House and got into the files of President-Elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain is further confirmation that the U.S. has been under assault by the People’s Republic of China. The process is ongoing. In its earlier gathering of intelligence, the biggest known prize its Ministry of State Security (MSS) netted was then Vice-President Al Gore.  Terry D. Turchie and Dr. Kathleen Puckett, former FBI officials, report the story in their new book, Homeland Insecurity.

 Homeland Insecurity which deals with addiction to political power and the resulting compromise of national security examines Guanxi, the Chinese practice of patience and micro-examination in the spy business. It is a practice just becoming known to intelligence services in the West. The examination extends into the way the MSS manipulated then Vice-President Al Gore which resulted in the yielding of high-tech secrets. .

How could such a thing happen? Turchie and  Puckett answer” They view themselves as too smart to be had. Their intellectual abilities, coupled with the large egos that their positions both demand and expand, make them invulnerable in their own minds to unwitting manipulation.”

The MSS must have smiled when they met Al Gore. Its patience factor showed up ten years later when Turchie and Puckett, connecting the dots as FBI people do, show the net results of the yielding of those high-tech secrets:  the successful testing by the Chinese of laser-weapons that led to the capability to blind American military satellites in the Taiwan Straits.

And it is not just Al Gore who is examined in Homeland Insecurity.  The addiction to power and the undermining of national security by eleven other Washington politicians are also put under the glass by the authors who are now retired from Federal service.

Terry Turchie, a Unit Director in Counterterrorism and a Deputy Assistant Director was one of the very few to be awarded the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service in both Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism. Dr. Kathleen Puckett,  a Special Agent for 23 years and a founder of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Program, conducted several psychological studies for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Terry Turchie and Dr. Kathleen Puckett are also the co-authors of  the award winning book Hunting the American Terrorist.

Homeland Insecurity 9781933909332, History Publishing Company, is available at Barnes and Noble, Borders and better bookstores nationally.

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