as we do surveillance of chi, he would regularly pull into a gas station. and we thought we was doing countersurveillance because he d wash the windows every time he got gas. we felt that gave him a 360-degree view, a perspective of what was around him. in the end, in hindsight, he just didn t want to pay for a car wash. chi mak would travel every saturday into a hardware store. so i made the opinion he was meeting with a foreign intelligence officer in there. that turned out not to be the case. what it turned out is we actually put a body in there that chi mak was cheap.
the significance to china. and we asked, did you do it to help the chinese? he said absolutely. and my response was, but wouldn t that also hurt the united states navy? and he eventually came around and said, i guess you re right. i can t help china without hurting the united states navy. how come that conversation wasn t recorded? well, a lot of different reasons. the first reason was we were doing it in a prison. and when we went over there, we never expected him to talk. and it was not policy to record all of our interviews. it just wasn t our method of operation. when chi mak finally confessed to me that he had been passing information to china. part of me was delighted, this was a break through, and now he
decade. the technology that chi mak gave china significantly reduces the gap, the technological gap between the united states navy and the chinese navy. a minor incident in the words of the chinese naval commander on friday after top level talks with the u.s. over the south china sea. beijing sounding off a warning to washington after a u.s. warship sailed close to man-made islands claimed by beijing this week. with only 55 vessels in washington s western pacific fleet, u.s. ships are outnumbered more than five to one by china, but now, both sides agreed to follow guidelines to avoid clashes. but beneath the diplomacy, tensions are simmering. i m certain there are many other people like chi mak in the united states, working on behalf of china, absolutely. there are people in this country who are gathering defense information to take back home. to help their countries develop
industry engineer, chi mak, was found guilty conspireing to export u.s. defense technology to communist china. when chi mak was found guilty, all of the faith that we had to put into this investigation from the very beginning was finally justified, finally paid off. the conviction of chi mak on all charges by a jury of his peers was extremely satisfying to me, it was a huge win for the whole intelligence branch. once the decision had come out that chi was guilty of the charges, the rest of the family came in on a plea deal. the mak family was charged together, all pled guilty to aiding a foreign government, international traffic and arms regulations, conspiracy, false official statements. chi mak is currently serving
you ve left another trail in the dust. if they really know their house, they ll come back and say, how did that thing get moved? literally there was dust on things and the fib would spray dust and replace the dust we moved so it couldn t be detected. you leave the room exactly how you left it. pretty impressive. when we went into chi mak s house, we were surprised at the amount of information he had taken and stored in his home. this house was dense with documents. he had them stacked by the front door, on the kitchen table, in his bedroom, in his computer room, a second bedroom, all over the house. when i saw that much information in there, i felt validated. a lot of research, a lot of manpower had gone into this first entry into the house. and this was validation that, again, we were on to the right person. that we had a guy who was collecting information. and this is the information that we thought was at risk that may have already gone to china or may soon go to china.