104. The Chinese Spy Scandal: Breaching Westminster (Ep 1)

15:52Gordon Corera:And there's some commercially available tech called, I think it's called Deep Face Live that can actually allow you to set up. So if you and I, Gordon, are having this conversation, we could look and sound like totally different people.

16:04David Davis:So what you're telling me, David, is right now, I could be talking to an MSS officer rather than David McCloskey. That's right. I think I'd spot the sense of humor. Well, that could, yeah, exactly. I think I could tell. I think after all our conversations, I could tell if this was actually a deep play, McCloskey.

16:20Gordon Corera:Apparently, the hairline is the hardest thing to fake.

16:24David Davis:I'm looking really closely at the camera. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Have a look at that.

16:27Gordon Corera:But the point being, so then in these kind of Zoom rooms, oftentimes what has happened in these cases is the person who has brought in, their microphone or their headphones don't work. And so then a link is sent via the chat to fix the audio. And then on that link, when they click it, malware is deposited onto their computer. And so you're absolutely right on the sort of trawling the Westminster bars. It's like, if you think about the old school kind of agent recruitment cycle, spotting, assessing, and even developing. Now, a lot of that can be done online with these new tools. It's pretty remarkable.

17:06David Davis:They'll start with just that message over LinkedIn. Then you might have the Zoom meeting. And then next comes the offer of an all expenses paid trip to China and to meet someone in person. And then the request to just do some consultancy reports for a client about topical issues. Maybe just write us a report about Britain's relationship with Europe and how it's going on. This is being used, according to this alert, to target parliamentary staff, economists, think tank employees, geopolitical consultants. So people who work broadly around Westminster, MI5 warned these people would then get paid in cash or cryptocurrency.

17:41David Davis:Now, personally, I think that should raise some alarm bells if those are the only ways you're being offered to pay for your consultancy.

17:49Gordon Corera:Why didn't someone edit Shirley's LinkedIn message? Do you have a sense? Because it strikes me that someone who had some proficiency with English would have looked at that and said, we could make this 10 times better.

18:04David Davis:I'm always reminded, someone told me something about scam messages, the email scams, which are not spy-based, but financial-based, that actually there was an advantage for having ones which were actually quite poorly written. You're after people who are kind of desperate, naive, or stupid enough to engage. And actually, someone who either doesn't spot or does spot and doesn't care about that kind of bad language is actually already, you've narrowed it down to someone who's more likely to engage with it. Whereas someone who's smart, wait, I don't know if that's true, but I agree, it does seem odd.

18:39David Davis:People are being offered money for consultancy, writing reports. The point is building a relationship, isn't it? These reports aren't going to contain secrets but the idea is a kind of cultivating someone luring them in one step at a time to write a report even if it's just open source build a relationship and then you start to ask for more sensitive material you know in the latest that alert referred to a desire to get insider insights and i guess that's the point it's not secrets it's not classified documents is it because there's not many of those in westminster but what there is is insider insights.

19:15David Davis:And that's pretty useful stuff, isn't it?

19:18Gordon Corera:Well, I guess the gossip, even if it's not a state secret, is pretty useful for targeting purposes. I mean, if a particular MP is in debt or having an affair, there is value in learning sort of who's up and who's down and where the cracks and seams might be in people. And if you don't have someone who's on the inside of that bubble who can tell you this stuff from the outside, it'd be pretty hard to determine. And I guess it's also helpful, for example, if a parliamentary committee is traveling, let's say, to Taiwan, which China obviously claims, you could disrupt those plans or pass that information to another element inside MSS who would be able to actually spy on them during the trip, as an example.

20:01David Davis:And I mean, what you also see is there's this kind of long-term patient attitude that Chinese intelligence had of building up networks of people who have influence and so that they can basically have influence or interfere with political life. What in practice that means is shaping political debate. So you make sure that some subjects, I don't know, Tibet and other areas are raised or raised in ways that are sympathetic to China. That's what building influence allows you to do. And I mean, there is this very interesting case, it's worth just spending a couple of minutes on, which goes back a few years to January 2022, when there was another alert by MI5.

20:39David Davis:and actually the first really prominent alert, there'd been one kind of smaller one before about Russia, but this was a kind of prominent alert warning Parliament about a specific individual called Christine Lee, who was a lawyer with a Chinese background, who'd come to Britain, been in Britain for a long time, and was acting as a kind of ambassador for China-UK relations, and an advocate for the Chinese community. And in that role, she was very active within Parliament. Now, MI5 said it received intelligence, suggesting she was the conduit for money flowing into the UK political system with its true origins in China hidden.

21:15David Davis:Now, specifically, she was working not for the MSS, but something called the United Front Works Department, which is a really interesting organisation. People describe it not as an intelligence agency, but as an influence agency. So, its job is to spread the word about China and to build networks of influence about China, rather than be a covert clandestine organisation. But the Chinese Communist Party describe it as their magic weapon because it's helping create influence around the world. In this case, Christine Lee was said to be the conduit for funding to be passed across the political spectrum.

21:49David Davis:One Labour MP, Barry Gardner, had received close to half a million pounds to support his work, donations to his political office. But she'd also met with Theresa May and David Cameron, both of whom ended up as Prime Minister. She'd donated to the local party of Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, when he was Secretary of State for Energy. And MI5 had been kind of warning people for a while about her activities, which they considered suspicious. And then eventually, I think they decided they needed to go public about it.

22:16Gordon Corera:What is the connection between MI5 and MPs on something like this? How does that practically work?

22:25David Davis:So it's really interesting because MPs historically have kind of guarded themselves against being the subject of, if you like, domestic spying by the security service. Kind of understandably, there is a kind of supposed to be a relative kind of firewall around Parliament. So Parliament has its own security team, its own director of security, which liaises with MI5. But there was this kind of historic kind of concern that you don't necessarily want a security service which spends its time. And I think you can understand why, kind of poking around MPs, looking at their finances, looking at who's funding them, doing background checks on candidates.

23:06David Davis:There was a concern, I think, for many years that you could then end up with a security service being used as a political tool. and being used to go after enemies. And that's something you see in lots of other countries. So there's quite strict criteria, for instance, about whether MPs' phones can be tapped. And the reason is people have been worried. And there have been points in the past, including the 80s, when there were worries that MI5 was getting a bit drawn into politics. You had a government then who wanted them to spy on CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and other left-wing groups.

23:37David Davis:And people from MI5, some felt they did open too many files on people. So there's always been this kind of slight caution about getting too involved in politics. But then the problem is, if you don't look, that leaves a kind of free reign for Russians and Chinese agents to start interfering in political life. So there's a kind of, you find it with MPs, they're like, we don't want to be spied on or vetted or be poked around by MI5, but also we want to be protected against Chinese and Russian spies. The two things are there at the same time. There's a kind of natural tension. But then since the last 10 years where we've seen Russian interference and now Chinese interference, I think there's more engagement now.

24:17David Davis:And you find there's a much, probably a more healthy relationship between the two sides.

24:21Gordon Corera:Well, it's tough, isn't it? Because what is the line between sort of an influence operation slash espionage and just lobbying? That's a pretty fuzzy kind of barrier. And I mean, I guess in this case, the concern, you know, go back to Christine Lee. I mean, the concern would be that China is essentially trying to kind of support, or maybe, you know, to put it uncharitably, buy off a kind of a new generation of political candidates, which obviously is very concerning.

24:53David Davis:Yeah, and I think that was one of the particular worries there was that it was a long term game from China. So they were backing people early in their career to get into parliament in public life. You know, what someone described to me, I remember when I covered it at the time, as a seeding operation. In other words, they were seeding people into the system across the political spectrum. So it's worth saying Christine Lee disputed the claims about her. She took a court case against MI5 to challenge some of these claims, but she lost that case. And we've not heard that much from her since. I mean, I did try and contact her for a long time and didn't hear back.

25:28David Davis:So it's a very interesting story, though, about some of the concerns that have existed around Parliament.

25:32Gordon Corera:The patience reminds me a bit of the way the Russians view the illegals program, this kind of long term patience with letting these operations kind of run. And in any given three, six month period, maybe nothing is really happening. But there's kind of a willingness to invest and wait and see if these things bear fruit over the long term. But of course, Gordon, there's a much more recent and dramatic case involving Parliament in the last few months. So maybe let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll look at how that spying case collapsed.

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28:38Gordon Corera:well welcome back gordon i think maybe you should give us the briefing on this most recent case in parliament uh for those maybe in particular across the pond here uh us americans who have not been

28:52David Davis:following in as closely as you have yeah because this became a big story for quite a few weeks here in the uk but i'm aware others you know we've got a lot of international listeners might not or followed it, but two people had been charged under what's called the Official Secrets Act. Quite an old piece of legislation. We'll come back to that. Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry. Christopher Cash worked in Parliament, including for the China Research Group, which is a very influential and generally seen as quite hawkish group on China, which provided briefings for Parliament inside and outside.

29:24David Davis:The interesting thing is these two individuals, so Christopher Cash in Parliament in the UK, he'd spent time in China and got to know the other Christopher, Christopher Berry, who's still based out there. Important to say at the outset, both men denied the charges. So we'll come to the fact the case didn't go to trial, but they have consistently denied the charges and they were going to deny them in court. So these are just allegations. But the allegation is not in this case that this was through LinkedIn, but thanks to this personal collection. And the allegation was that there were senior officials in China who were in contact with Christopher Berry, including some quite senior ones in Beijing.

30:05David Davis:And there were messages being passed and instructions being passed, if you like, from officials in China through to Berry, through to Cash in London to provide information. And there were going to be messages which were going to be used in the case in which Berry tells Cash about some of these contacts and Cash responds, you're in spy territory now. Now, however, you know, I think the defence were going to dispute whether some of these officials in Beijing were really the people who people said they were. So it's certainly complicated. But the allegation was that there was a tasking here by the Chinese state to get information from parliament.

30:45David Davis:So things like who might win a Conservative Party leadership campaign. And there was a kind of dialogue between the individuals that this was confidential information, not necessarily top secret, but confidential. To some extent, again, it's the kind of off-the-record gossip that people in Westminster thrive on.

31:03Gordon Corera:It's not like you're lifting documents from a safe inside SIS and bringing them out. So it is kind of trading in information that's maybe not public, but also potentially not classified either.

31:16David Davis:Exactly. Exactly. And it was claimed that they were asked by handlers to provide information on British attitudes to the subject, which is very sensitive in China, of forced labour in Xinjiang, which is the province which is home to the Uyghur minority, and where there have been claims that they've been used in forced labour. And there have been talk about then trying to boycott or not buy products used with that kind of labour. And that's something China's very sensitive about. And there are other subjects as well, which are alleged to have been the subject of requests, including potential sanctions on China, and the review of the sale of a semiconductor plant in the UK.

31:59David Davis:All, as I said, allegations denied by the men. And again, there is this question, as you said, is this even spying when there's not access to secret? But it's back to that question, what's China after? Is it after insight, understanding, and influence, which is something much broader than secrets. And the response of the men was that this was just gossip and publicly available information. And it's important to say that the two men didn't have the chance to defend themselves in court, even though a lot of these allegations have come out. So it is tricky. But the crucial thing is they didn't get the chance to defend themselves in court because just days before the trial is due to start, the charges are withdrawn.

32:40David Davis:The case collapses. Now, this becomes a massive political story as there's a blame game between, on the one hand, the prosecutors, the Crown Prosecution Service, as they're called in the UK, and on the other hand, the government. and it turned on whether or not they could prove in court under the Official Secrets Act that China was indeed an enemy or to put it in a different terms a threat to the interests and the national security of the UK at the time the offences were committed and basically as the trial approached, there was this sudden realisation that the prosecutors were not getting what they felt they needed in order to be able to stand up the case in terms of material from the government, not about what the men had alleged to have done, but about how to view China.

33:40David Davis:And it's all to do with the fact this was the Official Secrets Act, which is an archaic piece of legislation under which, in the language of the old act, you had to say you were passing information to an enemy. And in here, enemy got defined as someone who posed a threat to the national security of the time. So they needed witness statements from the government being precise about what it meant to be an enemy and whether China hit that standard. And they could see, I think, as the case approached, that the defence were going to hammer on this point. And of course, this is all happening as the current government is trying to build better relations with China.

34:18David Davis:So the whole thing collapses. And there is this question, like, was it collapsed by the government? Or was it just a kind of cock up or conspiracy, as we like to put it? Which one was it? What's your sense of that? Well, my sense was a bit of both. I think both sides tried to blame each other, the prosecutors and the government, for not having the evidence they needed. There are definitely people I've heard in government, particularly in the Foreign Office, who were never very keen on this case going to trial. And there are a lot of people linked to the Foreign Office around government who might have felt that as well.

34:52David Davis:And I think it was more cock-up than conspiracy, but I think both sides got cold feet about this case, basically. I think the prosecutors were suddenly thinking, we've taken this to court, but we're not sure we're going to win this, and it's going to be a problem if we don't win this. And I think the government is thinking, this is a problematic case, especially if we don't win and we're going to have to kind of say in court how we see China as an enemy. And so both sides kind of get cold feet and then try and blame the other for not being willing to kind of go through with it. And you kind of think, why did it take a year to get to that position if you realise you haven't got the evidence needed?

35:32David Davis:I mean, that's just, I find that bizarre, frankly.

35:35Gordon Corera:It does highlight, I think, maybe two themes around Chinese espionage that are, I don't know if they're evergreen, but they seem consistent across a lot of different cases and countries. And one of them is that there is this constant tension between what Western countries might see as their sort of political or national security interests. And frankly, let's be honest, commercial interests, right? Where there's tension between those two things. And as a result, elements inside any Western government who are going to be really loathe to sort of rake the Chinese over the coals because there's an understanding of how important the sort of commercial ties are.

36:15Gordon Corera:And then the second piece is like, what's the difference or at what point is passing rumors and sort of non-public information become actual espionage? And it's really hard to define where that line is in a case like this where it's not a former CIA officer who's passing classified documents to the Chinese intelligence service, right? That wasn't happening in this case. And so it becomes really kind of squishy to define espionage, I guess, in a way. Like, where is that line?

36:48David Davis:And I think the thing people say is that this was partly a problem of the old legislation. There's a new National Security Act, which makes it easier to prosecute. Because the weird thing in in the uk is putting aside this case in the past actually working for a foreign intelligence agency wasn't a crime in the uk so working for the russian state or the you know chinese state wasn't a crime because the official secrets act basically said it was only the passing of a document containing material damaging the uk interests to a country considered an enemy constituted a crime and so the new national security act does change the kind of boundaries which I think makes it easier.

37:26David Davis:We've already seen some other prosecutions under this. So it was always going to be a kind of difficult and a very high profile case. I think the government wrongly thought that it would disappear quickly, but instead it just raised all these questions about China. And I think one of the questions is, it should be possible to have a grown-up relationship with China in which you trade with them, there's economic investment, but you also call out when they're spying. And I think someone said to me, someone who knows this world very well, said the problem with the way the Brits handled this was almost the kind of worst of both worlds because it made the UK look weak.

38:02David Davis:And they said the Chinese will be kind of laughing at the UK for this, for not being able to do it. So I think the thing was pretty disastrous. And even the head of MI5 at that briefing I was at in October, which was just as it was all collapsing, said he was frustrated. I've definitely picked up, speaking to a lot of people, a lot of frustration amongst people who worry about security at the way this was handled and the kind of fallout of it.

38:25Gordon Corera:And again, I guess it's important to say these are allegations. Nothing was proved in court because the charges were withdrawn. Some of the underlying pieces of this do help to illustrate this kind of, I guess, pattern of activity as it relates to China's intelligence services and the way they interact with the West. I mean, it's not just Britain. Isn't that right, Gordon? I mean, other countries are sort of starting to sound the alarm about Chinese espionage as well.

38:57David Davis:Yeah. I mean, the Canadians have done it. The Australians did it very early. I mean, the head of the Australian Foreign Intelligence Service offered a public warning about someone he said had deep connections with a foreign government. You can work out which one that is. and who acted as, as he described it, as a puppeteer to finance potential parliamentary candidates. And that became quite politicised, I think, in Australia, because it was like, are you accusing us of taking Chinese money? These things have a habit of becoming very political and quite hot. But they're also a sign, I think, that it's not just the UK, but a number of Western countries which have seen similar kinds of activities.

39:33And I guess it's not just the Chinese going after parliaments, is it?

39:38Gordon Corera:You've said that the, I think it was the head of MI5 a few years back had some pretty staggering numbers for you about the scale of the outreach in the UK.

39:49David Davis:Yeah. So this is back in 2023. I went to this really interesting. It was the first time the Five Eyes, so US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the heads of the security agencies publicly appeared together. And I had to go, David, I had to go to California to cover it, which was a terrible burden. A terrible burden. It was a terrible burden. All us British journalists who were there were like, wow, it was like sunny in October and we'd come from kind of rainy London. We're like, hello, California. It was very nice. We were there, obviously, for the serious business of hearing these security chiefs talk about China, basically, and give a warning.

40:26David Davis:They'd gone to Silicon Valley, actually, and to Stanford to talk about it, to warn about some of the stuff you mentioned earlier, the kind of theft of intellectual property and venture capital firms being used. But the head of MI5 did an interview with him there, and he talked about the epic scale of Chinese espionage and said that more than 20 ,000 people in the UK had been approached covertly by Chinese spies. And that includes, you know, particularly over LinkedIn, but other ways as well. 20 ,000 people covertly approached just in the UK. I mean, it's astonishing, isn't it, in terms of back to that issue of the numbers game, that they play.

41:03Gordon Corera:Well, and I guess it's also, if you think about maybe an ordinary person's LinkedIn profile, there's a lot of information on there that'll help you understand what sorts of information they might have access to or have had access to in the past. It's not hard to build a kind of simple network map of who they're connected to. And so if you're looking at getting access to somebody, you could sort of come up with five different people you could start to connect with to get access to that person. I mean, there's a lot of information out there publicly that we all make available that I think really enables this kind of targeting.

41:42David Davis:Yeah. And I think that that scale gives you a sense. It's not just kind of politicians, people who work in Westminster or another parliament who are getting approached, but also, David, former spies. Because here we go, So in early 2017, a self-employed consultant living in Leesburg, Virginia, called Kevin Mallory, gets a message over LinkedIn. And it's from a Chinese headhunter. And it comes at an opportune or maybe a misopportune at a time because he's heavily in debt. And what's more, Kevin Mallory is not just any old consultant. He is a former CIA officer who spent 20 years in the US intelligence community.

42:21David Davis:and I think the story of what happens to him is a really interesting case study of how one of these pitches from the Chinese over LinkedIn evolves, leads to meetings, and in his case, leads to a pretty dramatic downfall.

42:38Gordon Corera:Well, Gordon, that sounds like an unimprovable cliffhanger. So let's end our first episode exploring how China spies there. We are going to be back for round two where we'll get into the Kevin Mallory case. But if you want to listen to that right now, go and join the Declassified Club, is what we would say, at therestisclassified.com, where you'll get access to all of that right now.

43:03David Davis:Great Christmas present for those of you, but do be careful if you get approached by someone over LinkedIn suggesting you join the club. Just do double check, just to make sure it's someone legit not trying to lure you into being an agent of the Ministry of State Security, because you never know.

43:20Gordon Corera:Not someone looking for a remote consultant to cooperate. If you're approached on that front, you know, to look away. We should also say, Gordon, we are doing a live show next month in London on the 31st of January at the South Bank Center. You can get your tickets for that also at therestisclassified.com. We'll see you next time. See you next time.

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