By William Tucker
Contributor, In Homeland Security
A U.S. Navy officer has spent the last eight months in the brig for accusations ranging from espionage and attempted espionage to soliciting a prostitute. The U.S. media picked up the story last week, but there are few details available concerning the accused, Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin.
Speculation is rife with the potential secrets Lin may have provided to China, along with Lin’s alleged motivation for giving away U.S. secrets. Typically, counterintelligence (CI) investigations are difficult, because they are often conducted clandestinely and have an immense burden of proof. Lin is accused of providing intelligence to the Chinese verbally, which makes investigations of this nature even tougher.
Chinese Could Benefit from Edward Lin’s Intel
The U.S. collects intelligence on China just as China collects intelligence on the U.S. “Intelligence collection” is a broad term that encompasses a wide variety of activities beyond human intelligence. With Chinese military and economic expansion, the U.S. sought to keep tabs on Chinese activities that may undermine U.S. interests. Beijing is aware of this.
China also wants to know what U.S. capabilities entail and what exactly the U.S. is focusing on at any given time. With this information, China could make adjustments to its security and better mask its clandestine activities.
Lt. Cmdr. Lin, who worked on U.S. surveillance aircraft, would be privy to this information. Lin’s last duty station before his incarceration was in Hawaii, working on the Special Projects Patrol Squadron. This squadron flies both the new P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft and the older P-3 Orion.
While China is well acquainted with the P-3, the P-8 still poses some intelligence gaps for Beijing. Lin was well positioned to provide information on the P-8’s capabilities and portions of China or military units of special interest to the U.S. Hawaii is a priority target for Chinese espionage because of the archipelago’s strategic location in the Pacific and the intelligence collection that the U.S. conducts from the islands.
What Was Lin’s Motivation for Treason?
Whether Lin volunteered to provide China with this information or was induced is still a matter of interest. However, the charge of soliciting a prostitute may shed some light on his motivation. Lin served in the Navy as an enlisted sailor and made the jump to officer some three years later. His career was moving forward at a relatively notable pace. Before the espionage charges, there is no mention of previous disciplinary action.
Lin is married. Getting caught in a prostitute’s company would harm both his marriage and his career. Soliciting a prostitute and adultery are illegal activities under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). With this information in hand, Lin could have been blackmailed into serving Chinese interests.
There is also the claim that Lin may have volunteered to work with Beijing due to sympathies with his homeland. At the moment, there is no information available other than Lin’s ethnicity to substantiate this point, but it shouldn’t be ruled out either.
China actively targets citizens of foreign nations of Chinese descent through a variety of methods, including appealing to their ethnicity or through more unsavory methods such as threatening family members still living in China. CI investigations are not initiated simply because of ethnicity, but are largely based on behavior. This behavior is relayed to security officials through “complaint type” reporting or so-called “mole hunts.”
Moles, also known as insider threats, become the subject of an investigation even though their identity is unknown. These investigations begin when multiple intelligence leads in a target nation dry up all at once or other intelligence collection efforts suffer early and consistent defeat, suggesting an adversary has advance notice of these efforts.
It’s important to note that initiating a counterintelligence investigation on ethnicity alone will likely lead to numerous false positives and ignore numerous other nations that collect intelligence on the U.S.
Behavior Still the Best Method of Espionage Detection
Each year, the FBI and other members of the intelligence community open CI investigations to deal with threats originating from over 100 foreign nations. Though China and Russia are the most aggressive in intelligence collection against the U.S., focusing solely on these nations ignores numerous other threats.
Furthermore, ignoring other threats poses the possibility that intelligence collected by these nations can be passed along to China and Russia. Behavior will continue to be the best method for detecting an insider threat like Lt. Cmdr. Lin.
Some Questions Likely to Remain Unanswered in Edward Lin Case
Though it appears that Lin worked on behalf of the Chinese – he was arrested attempting to board a flight to China, after all – there are still a number of questions revolving around this case. Lin was incarcerated for eight months before his apprehension was made public. This typically occurs when investigators believe that Lin may not have been acting alone, or the foreign government contact may be domestically located.
This is an important point in any CI investigation. The investigation is not just about apprehending a suspected insider, but also stopping the loss of information and conducting a damage assessment. If another individual in this case remains at large, the information will continue to leak. By keeping Lin’s imprisonment quiet, investigators buy time to pursue additional suspects without tipping them off.
Many questions remain in the Lin case. Many of those questions will not be answered, even if the case goes to trial. Prosecutions of espionage cases face another difficulty in preventing the defense from having access to classified material. The prosecution often looks at other charges that fit the accused crime.
What we do know is that the U.S. will remain a top target for espionage. Despite hacking and other cyber-related methods of extracting information from other countries, classic intelligence collection via humans hasn’t gone away.
[Photo credit: U.S. Navy]
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