Making Targets Of Chinese Americans

Connections to China doom security clearances more than ties to any other country

- Peter Waldman

For days after his FBI interrogation, Wei Su wondered: Where had the microphone been?

The agents had played him a scratchy recording of a conversation he’d had with a friend at a restaurant in Eatontown, N.J. Both men found it strange when a pot of hot tea they hadn’t ordered arrived at their table 30 minutes into the meal, but only later did Su, an award-winning scientist for the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate, form a hypothesis. He thinks the teapot was bugged.

On the recording, Su says, he can be heard telling his friend in Chinese to always use English when they spoke on the phone because the government was monitoring all his calls. He warned that “when you work with us, you need to be careful.” Su says the FBI demanded to know if “us” was a reference to Chinese intelligence. No, he answered, “us” simply meant his employer, the U.S. Army.

Nevertheless, questions about Su’s loyalty would propel a multiyear investigation that in 2016 prompted the U.S. Department of Defense to revoke the top-secret security clearance he’d held for 24 years. He retired the next year, humiliated, angry, and, the Pentagon later admitted, innocent.

Su’s ordeal reflects the U.S. government’s distrust of China, which flared during the Obama administration and has erupted openly during President Trump’s trade war. Signs of heightened scrutiny for Chinese Americans emerged in July when FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the bureau is investigating more than 1,000 cases of attempted theft of U.S. intellectual property, with “almost all” leading back to China. Last year the U.S. National Institutes of Health, working with the FBI, started probes into some 180 researchers at more than 70 hospitals and universities, seeking undisclosed ties to China.