Fake Think Tank Consultant Lures American for Chinese Spy Efforts

Here is more from the Washington Post:

An American journalist who was paid at least $100,000 to develop U.S.-based sources for China’s intelligence apparatus was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday.

Thomas W. Pauken II moved to China in 2010, at a point when “his life was a mess and he needed a clean slate,” according to his attorney. He found work as a writer, videographer and copy editor, cycling through different Chinese radio and broadcast networks.

Then, in 2017, Pauken met a woman who went by the name Cathy and recruited him to become a Chinese intelligence asset, according to court records. Over seven years beginning in 2019, Pauken traveled periodically to the United States to develop sources with access to sensitive information, and was told his reports were so important they were being sent to China’s president, Xi Jinping.

Pauken eventually determined that Cathy, who posed as a think tank consultant, in fact worked for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), its lead civilian intelligence agency. She pressed Pauken to develop sources in the U.S. with access to classified information that could be filtered to the Chinese, court records state, though none of his sources produced any. 

 

The article notes that the FBI arrested Pauken at a Crowne Plaza hotel near Washington Dulles International Airport in February.