The Spy Within: Larry Chin and China's Penetration of the CIA

by Tod Hoffman

Overview

The Spy Within is the riveting true story of one of the most significant cases is the history of espionage—the penetration of the CIA by a Chinese spy for 30 years. Larry Chin was as a double-agent whose spying encompassed such pivotal events as the Korean War, the Cultural Revolution in China, the Vietnam War, and Nixon’s groundbreaking visit tor Beijing. Chin’s reports were circulated to China’s top leaders and read by Mao, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping.

“Suspenseful cloak-and-dagger reenactment of the FBI sting that exposed a Chinese-American double agent in 1985…Hoffman possesses a solid command of his material and conveys the secretive nature of espionage agencies with a novelist’s panache,” said Kirkus.

“Hoffman renders a well-researched example of the Chinese approach to espionage,” wrote Booklist.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940045580991
Publisher:	Bev Editions
Publication date:	01/13/2014
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	393 KB

About the Author

Tod Hoffman, author of four books, was an officer with The Canadian Security Intelligence Service for eight years. His forthcoming book "Al Qaeda Declares War: The African Embassy Bombings and America's Search for Justice' is being released by University Press of New England in 2014. He lives in Montreal.

Read an Excerpt

Alexandria, Virginia, November 22, 1985
The interview was at a critical juncture, the agents knew. Control of the situation still eluded them, but they could taste it. They had successfully leveraged what little hard information they had to where he was leaning from seeking legal advice to confessing. The momentum was moving in the agents’ direction, and they weren’t about to allow it to shift . . .
Larry Chin faced a conundrum. If he hoped to convince the agents of his value, he’d have to accentuate his importance. The alternative was to maintain his innocence and run the risk of learning too late that the case against him was incontrovertible. There seemed no in-between option . . .
“Well, it’s a very long story.” Chin sighed. He looked Roth right in the eye as he said this.
Roth, who had been mostly silent to this point, preoccupied with taking notes of the proceedings so that the flow of the interview would be accurately preserved for the use of the US attorney, looked directly back at him.
Softly, he said, “Mr. Chin, we’ve got all night . . .”
“In 1948 . . .”
The agents were dumbfounded.

Table of Contents

Prologue     1
Unsub     3
Planesman     19
Larry Wu-Tai Chin     42
Bernard Boursicot     68
Eagle Claw     87
A Very Long Story     116
The Preliminaries     208
The Trial     235
The End     261
The Visit     271
Coda     281
Acknowledgments     283
Author's Note     285
Bibliography     287
Notes     291
Index     303

Editorial Reviews

Since the end of the Cold War, China has replaced Russia as America's number one intelligence threat, leading in 1998 to the formation of the Congressional Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. Hoffman, who served on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, tells the story of Larry Wu-Tai Chin (1918-86), who spent over 30 years working as a translator for the CIA in China, passing along to the People's Republic many items of political and military value that were supposedly read at the top levels in Beijing. The really interesting parts of this tale are the operational details, the story of the secret dance leading up to Nixon's playing the China card, and the probable damage that was done to American agents in the PRC. Chin was a successful spy because he was patient and attentive to detail-as well as lucky, until he was arrested in the mid-1980s during a string of spy scandals. He committed suicide after being convicted in February 1986. This easy-to-read book is suitable for the historical espionage collections of public and academic libraries. With end notes and a bibliography; photos would have been a nice addition. (Index not seen.)
—Daniel K. Blewett

Library Journal

Suspenseful cloak-and-dagger reenactment of the FBI sting that exposed a Chinese-American double agent in 1985. When the case of Larry Wu-tai Chin broke, revealing that the retired CIA employee had passed reams of documents to the People's Republic of China over the course of more than 11 years, it came at a humiliating time for the Agency, writes Canadian author Hoffman (Le Carre's Landscape, 2001, etc.). The so-called Year of the Spy found an unprecedented number of turncoats like John Walker and Jonathan Jay Pollard bleeding secrets to foreign governments. Chin's treachery was first detected by an anonymous source codenamed Planesman; Hoffman "connects the dots" and links Planesman to a protege of Kang Sheng, the notorious head of China's secret services. During an extended interview conducted by three FBI agents at his apartment on November 22, 1985, Chin spilled his secrets. Born in 1922 in Beijing, he found that learning English was his ticket to ingratiating himself with the Americans during the turbulent communist revolution and beyond. The Cold War atmosphere of mutual distrust and paranoia allowed Chin to enjoy American protection on the one hand, living the high life in California and Virginia with his second wife, while passing documents to the Chinese via a handler in Hong Kong and Canada on the other. As Mao Zedong and President Nixon moved toward their historic rapprochement in 1971, both sides needed confirmation of the other's intentions. "China trusted Nixon's motives based on the information Chin passed them," one agent commented. However, despite Chin's claim to have acted only for the advancement of Sino-American relations, he also got rich in the process and wasconvicted in 1986 on 17 counts, including conspiracy and filing false tax returns. He committed suicide in prison shortly thereafter. Hoffman possesses a solid command of his material and conveys the secretive nature of espionage agencies with a novelist's panache. Agent: Beverley Slopen/Beverley Slopen Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews