As soon as Trump became president and news about how much time he was spending at Mar-a-Lago came out I said to friends that no intelligence service worth a damn would miss is the opportunity to have their intelligence agencies select agents to fork out the $200,000 and join the club and endeavor to ingratiate themselves to the president.
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On reflection, while it is likely the Russians have agents there since they already might as well be on the president's staff, they really needn't have bothered.
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Other countries, both adversaries and friends, quite likely have agents of one sort or another there either posing as Americans or admitting their foreign nationality. I expect that MI-6, the German BND, France's DGSE, ASIS from Australia, spies from Canada, India, Pakistan and even South Korea might be members, and certainly, the Mossad has agents who are members.
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It wouldn't surprise me if the North Korean's have spies there as well.
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It is almost certain that Li Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, are Chinese spies or report to Chinese spy agency handlers. (The original story was reported in Mother Jones and The Miami Herald).
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After Mother Jones on Saturday revealed that Yang, who goes by Cindy, had been peddling entrée to the Trump family, the Trump White House, and assorted GOP powerbrokers, national security experts noted that this situation could pose a threat, presenting opportunities for espionage or blackmail targeting the president and his inner circle. They expressed concern the Yang’s efforts to broker interactions with Trump and his clan could be exploited by Chinese intelligence. “Guess who else has 100% known about this from the beginning?” tweeted Susan Hennessey, a Brookings Institution fellow who previously worked as a National Security Agency lawyer. “Chinese intelligence services.” Samantha Vinograd, a CNN national security analyst who worked for the National Security Council during the Obama administration, noted: “Our intel community has said China poses one of the most significant counterintelligence challenges—my money is on the Chinese Govt having at least picked up on [Yang’s] access if they didn’t direct it.”
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There's no way a Chinese national who was a member of Mar-a-Lago and was cozying up to Trump and other Republican power brokers would not be controlled by the Chinese spy agency, the Ministry of State Security or a similar top-secret agency charged with spying on the United States.
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According to leaked French intelligence files, China has been employing beautiful female spies — the dreaded "honeytrap" method — and blackmail to steal business secrets from French executives. And it wouldn't be the first time that China has used such tricks to gain access to privileged information. Here, a brief guide.
How does the "honeytrap" work?
A beautiful woman wines, dines, and even beds a mark to get information from him, a la many a Bond flick. The French intelligence reports cite a case in which a young Chinese woman slept with a top French researcher at a major pharmaceutical company, a man unaware that she was a spy and that the encounter had been videotaped. "When he was shown the recorded film of the previous night in his hotel room... he proved highly cooperative," says an intelligence official.
Have other countries fallen victim to Chinese "honeytraps"?
Yes, in early 2010, Britain's MI5 accused the Chinese government of using honeytrap schemes to hack into corporate British computer networks. Two years earlier, MI5 had distributed a document titled "The Threat from Chinese Espionage" to security officials, British banks, and businesses, explicitly warning executives of honeytraps and subsequent blackmail attempts: "Chinese intelligence services have also been known to exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships and illegal activities to pressurize individuals to cooperate with them," it read. "Hotel rooms in major Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai which have been frequented by foreigners are likely to be bugged. Hotel rooms have been searched while the occupants are out of the room."
I knew I wrote about kompromat on Daily Kos before but until I checked didn’t realize that I wrote about it three times. Of course thanks to Donald Trump we all know what the word means:
In Russian culture, kompromat, short for "compromising material" (Russian: компрометирующий материал, translit. komprometiruyushchy material), is damaging information about a politician, a businessperson, or other public figure, used to create negative publicity, as well as for blackmail and extortion. Kompromat may be acquired from various security services, or outright forged, and then publicized by use of a public relations official. Widespread use of kompromat has been one of the characteristic features of the politics of Russia and other post-Soviet states. WIKIPEDIA
Afterword:
Hopefully, the truth will be revealed. My opinion is that if she was selling access to rich Chinese business people since China has state capitalism I think anyone who is at that level is associated with Chinese intelligence and whether an actual agent or not is taking direction from them and is reporting back to them.
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