Larry Chin

 

Larry Wu-tai Chin (simplified Chinese: 金无怠; traditional Chinese: 金無怠; pinyin: Jīn Wúdài; August 17, 1922 – February 21, 1986) was a Chinese Communist spy who worked for the United States Government for 37 years (1944–1981), including positions at the U.S. Army and the CIA, while secretly being a mole for the Communist Party's intelligence apparatus from the very beginning.[4] He kept passing classified documents and secret information to the People's Republic of China even after his retirement, until he was finally exposed in 1985.

Chin was one of China's most valuable foreign intelligence agents of the entire Cold War period; he supplied the PRC with top-secret information on American foreign policy initiatives relating to China, as well as biographical profiles of CIA agents. In 1970, he passed CIA documents to Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai regarding President Richard Nixon's desire to open relations with the PRC; Mao therefore knew about Nixon's intentions well in advance of his diplomatic overtures, which allowed him to alter his policy (such as the volume of anti-American rhetoric in the state-controlled Chinese press) in order to extract the maximum political concessions from the Americans. Chin was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Early life

Born as Chin Wu-tai in Peking, Republic of China, in 1922, he attended Yenching University.

Chin was recruited by the Chinese Communist intelligence apparatus (then called the Central Department of Social Affairs) in 1944, during World War II. He was specifically directed to find employment in an American government agency (at the time, the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek was working closely with the Americans against Japan). Chin, who spoke good English, was hired by the United States Army, and was appointed to work as a translator of Chinese language at the U.S. Army Liaison Office in the city of Fuzhou.

From 1945 to 1949 Chin was a translator for the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, and from 1949 to 1950 for the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong (then under British rule). During this time, he passed countless classified documents to the Chinese Communist intelligence service, that was directed during the early years of the PRC by Li Kenong and was named first the Liaison Department and later the Central Investigation Department. Chin was regularly, and highly paid for his services.

Korean War

Chin served as a Chinese translator in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, helping to debrief Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war. He misrepresented the intelligence that he was translating from captured Chinese soldiers resulting in the loss of U.S. forces and missed tactical opportunities. Many of these Chinese soldiers intended to defect to South Korea. He also provided the Chinese government with the names of captured Chinese soldiers who were revealing information or declared themselves opposed to Communist Party rule and intended to defect. The Chinese then specifically requested these soldiers by name to be released back to China before the armistice negotiations could take place. This delayed the negotiations process for over a year.

Penetrating the CIA

Following his U.S. Army service, Chin applied to and was accepted by the CIA. He was assigned as a Chinese language translator and analyst of the Chinese Communist press at the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), where he continued his espionage for China. He was posted in Okinawa (1952–61), Santa Rosa, California (1961–71) and Rosslyn, Virginia (1971–81). According to No Kum-Sok, the North Korean pilot who defected with a MiG-15, Larry Chin was one of his CIA handlers after his defection.

As an FBIS analyst and one of the CIA's few fluent Chinese linguists, Chin was able to pass along such information as Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs) on China and East Asia, biographical profiles and assessments of fellow CIA employees, and the names and identities of the Agency's covert agents. He was also in a position to provide information about recruited deep-cover agents in China. Due to the CIA's policy of internal compartmentalization, Chin did not know their real names or identities; however, based on the intelligence they provided, he could infer such things as their locations, employers, and levels of access. Chinese counterintelligence could then attempt to identify them by determining who had access to what information. Once the agents were identified, they would routinely be arrested and executed, or, alternatively, fed false information to be communicated to the CIA. Most significantly, in 1970 Chin provided to the Maoist leadership in Beijing CIA documents that revealed the plans of President Richard Nixon to engage China in order to form a tactical alliance against (and put pressure on) the Soviet Union. Mao, knowing in advance of American designs and objectives, could squeeze maximum concessions from the Nixon administration.

During his long term as a spy, Chin was lavishly compensated for his services. His skill at laundering those espionage profits was reputed to be without peer. Chin purchased apartments and tenements in the low-income section of Baltimore, Maryland and made huge gains as a slumlord. Chin also cultivated the persona of a womanizer with a gambling addiction. It was later believed that while Chin did indeed show signs of compulsive gambling, that he did not so much apply his espionage profits towards financing gambling junkets; rather he used the cultivated persona of a high roller to help cover up his unexplained affluence from espionage as gambling winnings. Some CIA coworkers noted suspicious behavior and expressed concerns that Chin's lifestyle did not match up with what a CIA salary could afford, but this was dismissed largely by friends and coworkers who gambled with Chin and would occasionally see him indeed win at gambling. Not once during Chin's tenure in the Army or CIA was he suspected of espionage or placed under investigation. In fact, in 1980 Chin was awarded a medal from the CIA for his long and distinguished service.

Reveal

Only five years later did any allegation of espionage arise. In 1985, Yu Qiangsheng, a high-ranking Chinese intelligence official, defected to the United States and exposed Chin's espionage identity. On November 23, 1985, Chin was arrested. He was held at the Prince William County, Virginia jail, as the United States Marshal's Service typically places espionage suspects in Washington, DC-area county jails.

In 1985, Larry Chin had charges prepared against him for espionage on behalf of China.

The first espionage count accused Chin of having conspired with Chinese intelligence agents to transmit defense-related documents potentially damaging to U.S. interests or advantageous to those of China. The second espionage count charged Chin specifically with having transmitted to a foreign agent in 1952 information about the location of prison camps in Korea where Chinese prisoners were held.

In 1986, Chin was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for espionage and tax evasion. Chin admitted to the espionage, but he also claimed his deeds were intended to improve relations between China and the United States. Chin stated he would fully cooperate with debriefings in an effort to avoid further charges.

Given Chin's money laundering skills, it is unknown exactly how much money the Chinese paid him for his spying. Chin had rolled over most of his espionage income into real estate, as evidenced by his purchases of low-income housing. It is believed that Chin's proceeds exceeded $1 million, making him one of only five known American spies to have made such a large amount by espionage. Aldrich Ames, Clyde Conrad, Robert Hanssen and John Walker are the other four.

Death

On the day of his sentencing, when guards arrived at Chin's cell in the Prince William-Manassas Regional Adult Detention Center to transport him to court, they found him lifeless with a garbage bag over his head. An autopsy concluded that Chin had committed suicide in his cell. His body was buried in Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California.

A cenotaph believed to be for Chin was found in Fragrant Hills in Beijing by a visitor passing by in 2017.

Impact

Chin was one of China's most important foreign intelligence assets of the Cold War era. Due to his services, the Chinese government was able to extract the maximum political concessions from Richard Nixon in return for a tactical alliance against the Soviet Union. The majority of CIA agents in China were compromised and executed, or fed false information to be reported back to the Agency, and the Chinese leadership could have determined how accurate were U.S. intelligence assessments concerning the PRC's intelligence, political, economic, and military infrastructures.