Pod Insights Odd Lots The Sixth Bureau, Episode 1: Your Friend From Nanjing About this episode It’s an open secret that the Chinese government has engaged in a global campaign to acquire intellectual property from foreign rivals. At the center of that campaign is the Ministry of State Security, China’s elusive intelligence agency. The US has apprehended hundreds of people accused of giving information to the MSS, but the agency’s inner workings have been a mystery — until now. Today, we’re bringing you Episode 1 of The Sixth Bureau, a limited-run series from The Big Take. The series follows an MSS intelligence officer whose mission was to acquire the crown jewels of American aerospace companies. With aliases, blackmail and the occasional break-in, he targeted corporate giants. That is, until his sloppiness — and a cunning FBI sting — led to a stunning reversal: Xu Yanjun became the first Chinese intelligence officer ever convicted on American soil. Listen to Episode 2, available now in The Big Take. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 2,007 words · 18 speakers
0:13 Speaker 00 Today's date is Wednesday, April 25, 2018. The time is 3:12 PM.
0:24 Speaker 00 The following is a consensual body recording with the subject, Ji Chaojun. The recording starts now.
0:41 Speaker 01 There's a guy sitting in a red Chevy Malibu in front of an apartment complex near downtown Chicago. He's waiting for someone to walk out of the apartment building. After a few minutes, the person does. He's young, and he's wearing a warm-up jacket and glasses. He has a buzz cut. His name is Ji Chaojun.
1:02 Speaker 01 The guy in the red car gets out, walks toward Ji, and yells to him in Mandarin.
1:09 Speaker 02 Are you Ji Chaojun? Yes. Hi. Hi, how may I help you? Is it a good time to talk? I beg your pardon? There's something I'd like to talk to you about.
1:21 Speaker 03 We were all holding our breath because this is that interaction that we've prepared for.
1:27 Speaker 04 The two men are being watched.
1:30 Speaker 03 Ji's a little confused, a little flustered, and you can see that in his body language. He keeps his distance.
1:36 Speaker 02 You are a friend from Nanjing sent me to you?
1:41 Speaker 04 This reference to Nanjing, it's code. It's a way of saying, hey, we know the same people. And Ji, he understands it.
1:50 Speaker 02 Oh, I get it now.
1:53 Speaker 03 I think at that point Ji's demeanor relaxed, and their body language got closer.
2:01 Speaker 02 Is it a good time to talk? Roughly, how long will it take? My car is parked over there in red. No problem, no problem.
2:10 Speaker 04 The two men walk towards the red car and get in.
2:16 Speaker 02 I'm not sure if you are aware. Something went down with the friends in Nanjing. I am not aware. Do you know whom I am referring to?
2:25 Speaker 04 G hesitates. The man pulls out his phone.
2:31 Speaker 02 Let me show you this.
2:34 Speaker 02 Xu Yanjun. It's Xu Yanjun.
2:38 Speaker 04 Xu Yanjun.
2:43 Speaker 02 I have heard of him. Have you heard that something happened to him recently? I am not aware.
2:51 Speaker 01 The stranger says his name is Chen and suggests that the two of them go somewhere more private than his car. He says he has a room at the Hyatt, which is nearby. At first, G tries to get out of it.
3:02 Speaker 02 I really don't have time right now. I apologize.
3:05 Speaker 01 But Chen pushes back. This is important.
3:10 Speaker 02 When people have issues such as this talk with you, they come to me. But I do not want to talk too much about it because... Okay, I understand.
3:19 Speaker 01 G gives in. They drive to the hotel.
3:22 Speaker 03 And it was immediate. Let's start moving. Let's start getting into place. So at that point, I left for the hotel and got to the lobby.
3:32 Speaker 04 Chen parks the car and the two men walk into the hotel.
3:37 Speaker 03 I am simply a spectator sitting near the hotel bar and enjoying my afternoon. But my true goal is to keep my eyes on the two individuals that are briskly walking into the hotel lobby and making their way to the elevator.
3:52 Speaker 04 The two men take the elevator up to a room. G sits down at a small table at the foot of the unmade bed.
3:59 Speaker 03 We'd already gone into the hotel room and placed a camera.
4:03 Speaker 04 Chen takes off his coat and drapes it over a chair. He's dressed like an accountant: a blue button-down khakis and a cellphone holster. He closes the curtains, but that plunges the room into complete darkness. So he reopens them. They both laugh awkwardly.
4:24 Speaker 01 Chen sits down. He pulls a sheet of paper out of his pocket, unfolds it, and hands it across the table. It's a recent article from a Belgian newspaper. "Chinese Spy Arrested in Brussels at the Request of the United States." The spy is Xu Yanjun, the same person Chen name-dropped to Ji back in his car. Ji knows Xu Yanjun well. Xu works for China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, and so does Ji. Both of them are spies.
4:56 Speaker 03 We were aware of Ji Chaojun's relationship with his MSS handler, Xu Yanjun. Our goal was to use the information that his handler was arrested.
5:11 Speaker 04 Chen tells Ji that the friends in Nanjing don't know how Xu Yanjun's cover was blown.
5:19 Speaker 02 We don't know if the problem was with your communications with them. We don't know why is the US on to him. So I was sent to let you know to stop contacting them for now. Okay.
5:30 Speaker 01 Chen warns Ji, "You could now be in danger." He hands Ji a cellphone. He says Ji should only contact him from now on, and only on this device.
5:40 Speaker 03 Your handler was arrested. Don't talk to anybody else at this time. Any information that you need to relay back should go through me.
5:47 Speaker 01 Chen's making it clear. I am now the only person you can trust.
5:53 Speaker 02 So they sent me here to talk to you, but at this time, please stay low-key. Don't send them any text messages. Don't send them WeChat messages. Don't email them, because we don't know where things went wrong. So act like nothing had happened, act normal.
6:13 Speaker 04 The two men leave the hotel room, and Chen drives Ji back to his apartment. Before Ji gets out of the car, Chen makes sure he has the cellphone.
6:24 Speaker 02 Did you grab the cellphone? Yes, it's in my pocket. Thank you for your help. Give me a bit of time. Don't tell anyone about this. Okay.
6:35 Speaker 04 The whole interaction lasts about two hours. Chen drives off, parks, and speaks into a hidden microphone.
6:43 Speaker 00 Today's date is April 25, 2018. The time is 5:03 PM.
6:51 Speaker 00 Ending the concentral monitoring.
7:00 Speaker 01 What Ji didn't know that afternoon was that this stranger off the street, who knew his name and his biggest secret, was actually an undercover FBI agent. And the person watching them was an agent too.
7:14 Speaker 04 A lot of what the undercover agent had said to Ji was a lie. But one key detail was true. Xu Yanjun, Ji's MSS handler, had been arrested.
7:24 Speaker 05 ...to announce federal criminal charges for conspiracy to commit economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
7:32 Speaker 04 Xu wasn't just Ji's handler. He was running MSS operations all over the world. And he was at the center of one of the most significant spy rings the FBI has ever taken down.
7:46 Speaker 01 The MSS is believed to be the world's largest intelligence agency. But the people who work there are basically ghosts. We rarely learn their names. And even when we do, it's usually an alias. Xu Yanjun was the first intelligence officer ever to be lured out of China, arrested, and tried in the US.
8:05 Speaker 06 We had never been able to convict in the United States and put in prison a staff MSS officer. So it was very clear to me that we were making history.
8:16 Speaker 01 What this case cracked open for the first time was a view from inside the MSS, revealing thousands of pages of emails, chats, audio recordings, classified Chinese government documents, even Xu's personal diary.
8:30 Speaker 07 It was just strange the way he kept records of everything. Not only what happened, but his own feelings about them.
8:37 Speaker 08 I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn.
8:48 Speaker 04 At the heart of Zhu's mission was an advanced technology that China has been after for years, one that has proven uniquely difficult to copy, much less surpassed.
9:02 Speaker 04 The jet engine. The jet engine, one of the marvels of this century of marvels. It was a marvel when it was invented over 80 years ago, and it still is today. Only a few countries in the world know how to make them really well.
9:17 Speaker 09 China has said, this is a national priority that we get this information. The MSS was tasked to do it. It fell down to Zhu Yanjun at that time.
9:29 Speaker 10 He's right out of central casting.
9:31 Speaker 11 Zhu is basically out there trying to steal corporate secrets, is doing that with the full support and cooperation of his government.
9:40 Speaker 09 He did it multiple times, over multiple years, right through an extensive network around the world.
9:45 Speaker 12 These are things that could be catastrophic.
9:47 Speaker 13 The idea that we could get Zhu, it opens up so many doors to understanding what the Chinese government is up to, what information they have about us, how they work. It's like a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity.
10:00 Speaker 06 If the American people truly understood the scope of Chinese espionage inside the United States right now, they'd be shocked, they'd be outraged.
10:09 Speaker 14 It's the people of the United States who are the victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history.
10:21 Speaker 09 Stealing American technology, giving it to Chinese companies who can then undercut American companies and Americans go out of business. That is their stated goal. They want to replace the United States as the world's only superpower. And they're on track to do what they're claiming they're gonna do.
10:44 Speaker 01 There's a lot of change and straight up chaos happening right now. Some of it may end up being noise, but we are witnessing the formation of a new world order. And one thing's clear: China is the new economic and military superpower alongside the US. The two countries have been going head to head for the last few decades. Not that long ago, the US was still ahead of China in almost every advanced technology. That time has passed. China's caught up in so many ways, thanks to a ton of investment, talent, innovation, and one more thing: spying.
11:25 Speaker 01 From Bloomberg News and iHeart Podcast, this is The Sixth Bureau. I'm Jordan Robertson.
11:32 Speaker 04 And I'm Drake Bennett. This is a story of the inner workings of one of the world's most mysterious and powerful spy agencies, and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.
11:59 Speaker 04 On the next episode...
12:03 Speaker 06 We are in the business of exploiting your weakness, your needs, your vulnerabilities, and we're good at it.
12:11 Speaker 10 That recording was almost dumb luck. I cannot believe they didn't turn that recording off.
12:16 Speaker 08 The helicopter that the Marine Corps is going to fly, the next level helicopter, there's no reason that the Chinese government needs to know the specifications of that. There's no reason an employee of any American company should be prepared to pass that sort of information over.
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