Spy Schools

by Daniel Golden

  * * *

  THE MORE THE FBI and CIA examined the Shriver case, the more alarmed they became. Shriver was bright and talented, but no more so than many young Americans in China. Perhaps Chinese intelligence was making overtures to them as well. Indeed, eight to ten other American students in China reported that a woman matching Amanda’s description, but using a different name, had approached them, too. The male students found her alluring, and at least one female student thought the woman “was hitting on her,” a person familiar with the Shriver investigation told me. The Ministry of State Security, this person said, had created a separate unit to recruit Western students in China.

  “I suspect other people than Shriver responded to the ad,” another insider said. “There was something about him they found attractive. Someone just graduated from college, incredibly young, impressionable, and not otherwise employed. That’s what makes this case so interesting. It’s not like he was a U.S. government employee and traveled over there. It’s the fact you have a blank slate with which you ultimately can infiltrate a government service.”

  U.S. investigators even suspected collusion at Grand Valley State. One of Shriver’s companions in the summer program at East China Normal also applied to the CIA later, as well as the FBI. The bureau wondered if program organizers might be identifying susceptible students with an interest in U.S. government service and steering them to China for recruitment. After Shriver’s arrest, both professors Ni and Shang were interviewed by the FBI and searched as they passed through customs with their study-abroad acolytes.

  “There were a few years that, every time I go through U.S. customs, I get checked thoroughly,” Ni told me. “They open everything, all my luggage, even my handbag, open my folders and flip through the pages and ask what is this, what is that.” Once, leaving the United States via San Francisco, “I had all the students’ information and material in my bag. They asked me why did I bring copies of students’ passports. I told them it was just in case students lost their passports.

  “I asked the FBI guy, he came later and talked to me again about the Shriver case, he said it’s just a random check, it’s unrelated. Personally, I don’t think it’s a random check.”

  Customs inspectors were “so rude,” Shang said. “They opened everything, even the syllabus.” Like Ni, Shang complained to FBI agents about his treatment. Shang told them that “both Ni and I were dissidents in China. So we are fighting for democracy, we are fighting for freedom. The way we teach our students is to let them experience the actual life, the actual China, to let them make their own judgment.”

  Neither professor was charged with any wrongdoing, and immigration authorities eventually stopped hassling them.

  * * *

  THE BUREAU DECIDED to alert universities nationwide that foreign intelligence agencies could be recruiting their students abroad. Agent Thomas Barlow, who had elicited Shriver’s confession, gave more than twenty talks about the case, primarily on college campuses. The FBI also hired a production company, Rocket Media Group, to make a film about it. Game of Pawns: The Glenn Duffie Shriver Story is a twenty-eight-minute docudrama with actors playing Amanda, Wu, Tang, and Shriver, who is both protagonist and narrator. A dizi, or Chinese transverse flute, warbles in the background.

  “There is an old Chinese proverb,” it begins, in a manner unfortunately reminiscent of the old Charlie Chan movies. “Life is like a game of chess, changing with each move. And to win the game, you must often sacrifice your pawns.”

  It repeatedly returns to the chess metaphor. “Do you think the Chinese would have just let you say no?” an FBI agent is shown asking Shriver. “Don’t you think they documented every meeting you had with them? If you didn’t give them what they wanted willingly, they would have used those recordings to blackmail you. You were just a pawn, one of many.”

  As the credits roll at the end of the film, Shriver himself addresses viewers from prison. “Recruitment’s going on, don’t fool yourself,” he says. “The recruitment is active, and the target is young people. Throw lots of money at them, see what happens … Espionage is a very big deal, a very big deal. You’re dealing with people’s lives, and that’s why it’s such a big deal.”

  Although FBI invitations to the January 2013 premiere of Game of Pawns billed it as a “compelling true story,” the movie was partly propaganda. It fictionalized two important elements of Shriver’s saga in an effort to persuade students that it could happen to them, too. First, it left the impression that Shriver was in college when China recruited him, rather than a recent graduate. Second, the cinematic Shriver took far longer than the actual one to catch on that Chinese intelligence was recruiting him. He was more naïve and less cocky than his real-life counterpart.

  “We endeavored to make Shriver better and more sympathetic than he was,” screenwriter Sean Paul Murphy told me.

  The bureau invited members of its higher education advisory board to the premiere and urged colleges nationwide to show the movie to students traveling abroad. However, instead of awakening universities to the threat of espionage, the FBI’s energetic promotion of Game of Pawns revived the academic mistrust of study-abroad intrusions by U.S. intelligence that had flared up two decades earlier over the Boren Awards. Many universities spurned the film, protesting that it was melodramatic or too long to fit into orientation, or that espionage simply wasn’t a major concern.

  At the University of South Florida, where the FBI had pressured Dajin Peng to spy on China, dean of undergraduate studies W. Robert Sullins asked education-abroad director Amanda Maurer in April 2014, “Are we doing anything with the Game of Pawns film?”

  “We have not shown the video to outgoing students for our summer programs,” Maurer answered. “I think that it is something that we could show to the semester students (we have more orientation time with them), but I want to take the time to view it with a couple of my staff members. I know that one faculty member feels very strongly that it is the wrong message to send students who are about to study abroad.”

  “I too think it might be the wrong message—overkill at best,” Sullins responded.

  When an FBI agent played the movie for University of Akron administrators, encouraging them to show it both at a school-wide event and at orientation for study abroad, Steven Cook was ready. Then assistant director for education abroad, and no relation to the Boren fellow of the same name, Cook had researched the Shriver case, previewed the film, and identified the inconsistencies. Shriver “knew what was going on,” Cook told me. “He made his bed. The film made it look like he was duped.” As a compromise, both Cook and the FBI agent talked about Shriver at orientation for students heading overseas; the film wasn’t shown.

  The University of Minnesota also begged off. The FBI “sure did push” the movie, said Stacey Tsantir, then the university’s director of international health, safety, and compliance. “They had an edict from the central office to get that out and spread to universities and campuses and in front of students. We accepted the DVD from the guy at our FBI field office, looked at it, and sent him pages and pages of feedback on why it wouldn’t work for our population.”

  Minnesota needed to inform students going overseas about issues like drinking, mental health, and cultural adjustment, not espionage, she said. “In the context of a university that sends thousands of students abroad a year, and where we have a couple of hours to give them pre-departure health and safety information, that is really not at the top of our list. Our statistics don’t show our students approached by intelligence agencies. I totally believe it’s happening, but there’s a risk-benefit analysis that as an educator you have to go through.” FBI agents “look at the world through an intelligence lens, which we value. We look at the world through a very different lens.”

  At American University, Dumont advocated full disclosure. If the FBI truly wanted to protect students, she told one agent, it should alert them that they might be approached abroad not just by foreigners but also by U
.S. intelligence. “I said to the FBI, ‘It’s not a bad idea to warn about foreign security agencies,’” she recalled. “‘I just want you to warn them about domestic security agencies.’ The FBI said, ‘That’s not our problem.’”

  * * *

  DUMONT WAS SPEAKING from experience. From 2006 to 2010, American University sent undergraduates to study for a semester at the University of Havana. The George W. Bush administration had restricted educational exchanges with Cuba, and American was one of the few universities licensed for study abroad there.

  One year, CIA officers in Washington approached the program coordinator before the group left for Havana. A graduate student at American, the coordinator spoke fluent Spanish and had numerous contacts in Cuba. The agents asked to have dinner with her; they said they just wanted to talk, but she understood that they were interested in recruiting her. Although they persisted, she managed to put them off.

  “She was very rattled,” Dumont told me. “At one point, they said, ‘We can pick a restaurant near your apartment.’ That disturbed her: how did they know where she lived?”

  That’s not the only time that the U.S. government has sought to use students to spy on its adversaries in Latin America, notably the Marxist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. Fulbright scholar Alexander van Schaick was in Bolivia interviewing peasant leaders for a research project on land tenure when an official at the U.S. embassy there told him in November 2007 to provide the names, addresses, and activities of any Cuban or Venezuelan doctors or field workers he encountered. Funded by the State Department, the Fulbright program provides stipends for teaching and research; scholars are prohibited from engaging in political activities in their host countries.

  “We know the Venezuelans and Cubans are here, and we want to keep tabs on them,” the embassy official told the appalled van Schaick, who didn’t comply.

  CIA officers, perhaps under foreign-service cover, are likely to chat now and again with professors at American branches overseas, said Mark Galeotti, the professor of global affairs at NYU and former special adviser to the British foreign office. “You’re a Western intelligence service,” he told me. “Where else would you find someone embedded abroad who already has language skills?”

  * * *

  AT GRAND VALLEY’S summer-abroad orientation, professors Ni and Shang bring up the Shriver case. A student in this very program—“a very nice kid, just a little bit naïve, as most of you are,” Ni likes to say—was once recruited by Chinese intelligence to spy on the United States. So be alert, Ni tells them. And remember that no gift is truly free.

  They don’t show Game of Pawns. Although it doesn’t mention Grand Valley by name, the film’s failure to clarify that Shriver had graduated before answering Amanda’s ad annoyed both professors. Also, it does identify East China Normal University, where Shriver spent his junior year. Officials at East China, which still hosts the Grand Valley summer students, have lamented to Ni and Shang that the film damages their school’s reputation.

  Neither professor is in touch with Shriver. The last time Shang talked to the FBI, he asked about Glenn. The agent said that Shriver was doing okay, and promised to pass along Shang’s greetings. “Why can’t he have another chance to do some positive things? He’s got ability, talent, personality,” Shang told me. “He just made a stupid mistake. We were good friends. I care about him.”

  Shriver earned a master’s degree in international business in prison, and was released in December 2013. Afterward, he visited Linda Kimble, the family friend and high school teacher, who had cancer. “He made it a point to come over and say hello,” Kimble said. “That spoke volumes.”

  “Glenn and I are doing really well,” his mother wrote in a September 2015 email that their lawyer shared with me. “If I could only have known the future I would not have been so stressed in the past.”

  When I asked Shriver, through his mother, for an interview, his answer reminded me of his susceptibility to the bribes from Chinese spymasters.

  “How much does it pay?” he responded.

  She says he meant it as a joke.

  PART 2

  COVERT U.S. OPERATIONS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

  6

  AN IMPERFECT SPY

  I first heard of Dajin Peng in 2011, when I was looking into the China-funded Confucius Institutes sprouting up on U.S. campuses. I came across a St. Petersburg Times report that the University of South Florida had suspended him as director of its Confucius Institute for taking thousands of dollars under false pretenses and violating immigration rules, among other offenses.

  Asked why Peng wasn’t punished more harshly, university spokesman Michael Hoad had cited his job security as a tenured professor. A follow-up editorial urged the university to fire Peng. Tenure “should not be a shield for unethical behavior,” it said.

  The Times clearly didn’t buy Professor Peng’s own explanation for his troubles. The FBI “decided to force me into a spy for the U.S.A.,” Peng told the newspaper. “This scheme goes all the way to President Obama.”

  Although it sounded ludicrous, I was curious. I emailed Peng, who declined to comment. I also called Hoad and asked if the FBI played any role in Peng’s case.

  USF had “no FBI contact that I’m aware of,” Hoad told me. “Our reaction is that anybody who is a spy doesn’t discuss it with a newspaper reporter.” Peng, he suggested, was just “frustrated and upset.”

  Years later, after leaving the university, Hoad apologized for misleading me. He said it was unintentional; he had no idea that the FBI was involved, because the university lawyers who briefed him never mentioned it. “My guess is that they wouldn’t tell me about it for the fairly simple reason that if they did, I would have to answer the question truthfully.”

  As a public institution, South Florida was susceptible to pressure from national security agencies, Hoad added. “A state university is going to be immensely deferential to the FBI.”

  I was talking to Hoad again because Peng had gotten in touch with me in May 2014, saying he wanted to tell his story and had “key evidences,” including FBI emails, to support it. After reading the emails, I realized that Peng’s experience might offer a rare glimpse of U.S. intelligence’s increasingly brazen campaign to co-opt American universities.

  I booked a flight to Florida.

  * * *

  MEETING PENG WASN’T easy. When I tried to firm up an appointment, he responded by email, “I am not allowed to use my office since I am in suspension. I do not think it is a good idea for us to meet at my apartment because I am afraid it might be taped [sic]. For the same reason it is not good for us to preset a restaurant.”

  On landing in Tampa, I called him from the airport. He suggested a rendezvous in a Walgreens parking lot, where he left his car, presumably as a precaution against being followed. We drove in my rental car to a Chinese restaurant run by a friend of his. There he led me through the dining area to a back room with bare walls, a flat-screen television, and one table, and closed the door. The waitress who served lunch knocked each time she entered.

  After this display of tradecraft, Peng relaxed. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his Samsung phone in a front pocket. He eyes were reddened and puffy, perhaps due to jet lag. He had just returned from Beijing by way of Dubai and Cape Town with his father.

  Chatting companionably in accented English as he selected dishes for us both, he struck me as affable, even gregarious. His charm, I would later realize, was like octopus ink, a camouflage to avoid predators. His childhood in China had taught him the value of deception, and the penalty for speaking his mind. Even his mentor and closest friend at South Florida, Professor Emeritus Harvey Nelsen, who helped hire him there, admits he doesn’t know Peng well.

  “He’s honest, but he’s also secretive,” says Nelsen, himself a former China analyst for U.S. intelligence. “He doesn’t lay all his cards on the table.”

  Divorced, with two sons at elite U.S. universities,
Peng was living with his widowed father, Xianyu Zhi. Through no fault of his own, Xianyu had been absent during most of Peng’s youth, and his very identity had been a mystery to his son.

  Xianyu had served as an officer in the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek. After the Chinese communists under Mao Zedong overthrew Chiang in 1948, he became a teacher in Wuhan and coauthored a geography textbook. The largest city in central China and the capital of Hubei Province, located at the confluence of the Yangtze and Hanjiang rivers, Wuhan was “a politically and economically prominent city” in the early and mid-twentieth century, though later in the century it would be “left behind by the country’s economic wave.”

  When Mao invited candid appraisals of his policies in 1956, urging his people to “let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend,” Xianyu unwisely took him at his word and criticized the government at a school meeting. He didn’t realize that the party chairman’s apparent tolerance was a ploy to flush out dissidents. Xianyu was arrested and sent to a labor camp, leaving his pregnant wife, Lixin Peng, at home. A high school teacher and administrator, Lixin was so respected for her success in preparing students for college that in 1956 the Chinese government invited her to a conference in Beijing, where she met Premier Zhou Enlai and Vice Chairman Zhu De, former commander in chief of the army.

  Ten days after their only child, a son, was born in 1958, Lixin was forced to divorce Xianyu to save her job, which she needed to support the family. The baby was given his mother’s family name and a first name, Dajin, that meant “Great Leap Forward”—a politically correct tribute to the disastrous industrialization program introduced by Mao that year.

  The government humiliated Xianyu by making him pull a coal cart through his Wuhan neighborhood. As he trudged through the streets, he would sometimes seek out his son and give him candy, defying a ban on contact with his family. Or Lixin, holding Dajin by the hand, would secretly meet her ex-husband at a friend’s house. She continued to see him even after authorities reprimanded her for it in her job evaluation. They wanted her to know that she was being watched and that her career and freedom were at stake.