China aimed to influence the Trump administration to accept a pro-China 'Grand Bargain'
The scheme allegedly involved a former director of CIA
Class 13 of my Foreign Influence Operations course will be posted Monday. This will be the final class. But that doesn’t mean it will be my final post! I will still write bonus content for paid subscribers, but those posts will be tied more to current events and will be published as opportunity arises (rather than on a set schedule). The course will remain up for paid subscribers to enjoy at their own pace.
Also: the following Rant! pairs very nicely with CLASS 12: DON’T SAY MEAN THINGS ABOUT BEIJING. Check it out now!
ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
An endorsement from the American president can really help a foreign country’s policy become a reality. And a recently unsealed indictment in the United States outlines how China allegedly aimed to influence the Trump administration by corrupting people with access to the president, including a former CIA director.
The Department of Justice indictment alleges that Gal Luft, a US-Israeli citizen who was co-director of a Washington, DC-based think tank, accepted money from China to recruit former CIA director James Woolsey to promote a “grand bargain” between the US and China. At the time—in the run up to the 2016 election—Woolsey was an adviser to the Trump campaign and looked like a shoo-in for a cabinet-level position in the administration.
According to the indictment, Luft’s think tank began receiving $350,000 in annual payments from CEFC China Energy’s nonprofit wing at the same time Luft agreed to target Woolsey. Luft was allegedly working in cahoots with Patrick Ho, a former home affairs secretary of Hong Kong and head of CEFC’s nonprofit. (The indictment does not name Ho, referring instead to co-conspirator-1; however, the description matches public reports about Ho. Nor does the indictment name Woolsey, but again, open sources make it clear it is him.)
A string of bribery scandals
Ho was arrested in New York in 2017 and convicted of bribing African leaders on behalf of CEFC. He spent three years in prison and was released in 2020. But before all that, he allegedly worked with Luft to promote pro-China policies in the US and make Woolsey the public face of those efforts.
According to correspondence between Luft and Ho, Luft said he would “educate” Woolsey about what to say publicly. Part of this effort involved a series of “interviews” between Ho and Woolsey, which would be published in a number of international publications and sent to academics and others (who were likely seen as influential thinkers on US policy toward China).
There’s only one problem: Luft actually wrote the interviews based on topic suggestions from Ho. They then attributed them to Woolsey, who was aware his name was being used. The dialogue referred to the US negotiating “a grand bargain” with China, but with terms favorable to the Chinese government.
Ho and Luft also discussed (allegedly) bringing Woolsey to China on an “undercover” trip (they later refer to it as a “silent trip”) to begin laying the groundwork for the grand bargain. Luft told Ho that Woolsey was being considered for a cabinet-level position in the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security, or Director of National Intelligence. As Luft told Ho, Woolsey represented “a supremely unique opportunity for China.”
Ho responded, “This side would like to see him assuming something with a ‘China’ profile,” adding that of the three possibilities, Secretary of Defense would be especially good.
Did the ‘Grand Bargain’ involve Taiwan?
In short, Luft was the middleman that allowed a former Chinese government official who went on to be convicted of bribery to target the former director of CIA and Trump administration adviser to make him the vector for Chinese influence, and that same former Chinese official was providing input about what administration position his “side” would prefer Woolsey assume. Luft accepted payment from principals in China to do this, and he never registered with the Department of Justice as an agent of a foreign government, as legally required (allegedly).
While the DOJ indictment of Luft does not outline the full details of the “grand bargain” China was hoping to strike with the Trump administration, the fact that they hoped their target (Woolsey) would become Secretary of Defense suggests China was hoping to make moves on Taiwan without any US pushback.
Maybe these guys never should have been directors of intelligence agencies?
In case you were hoping the former director of CIA would know better than to allow his name to be slapped on a number of pro-China policy articles he didn’t write and whose topics were suggested by a Chinese national (possibly—probably, almost certainly—acting on behalf of the Chinese government), you’d be wrong. Woolsey accepted payment from Luft’s think tank for these “consulting services.”
He has not been accused of any wrongdoing. After all, as far as he was concerned, it was the think tank that was paying him, not China. But perhaps someone with such a background should have asked more questions? Or, maybe he did ask questions but was happy to turn a blind eye to being the target of foreign influence? He would not have been the first Trump adviser to do so. (Of course, Donald Trump himself turned a blind eye to it, as well.)
Woolsey was involved in another foreign influence scheme around the same time. This one involved another former intelligence agency director, one who went from the empirical evidence world of intelligence to the batshit crazy QAnon conspiracy world: Michael Flynn.
Woolsey was a member of Flynn’s consulting firm. Woolsey and his wife (who, by the way, is also referred to in Luft’s indictment; she managed the paperwork for payment) pitched to Turkish nationals a $10 million contract to discredit a Turkish cleric residing in the United States and wanted by the Turkish government. At the time, Woolsey was an adviser to the Trump campaign.
However, when Flynn, Trump’s future national security adviser, read Woolsey into plans to kidnap that same Turkish cleric on behalf of the Turkish government, that proved too much for Woolsey, who reported the plan to American officials. (There is no evidence Woolsey ever carried out the work he pitched to discredit the cleric.)
Every Accusation a Confession
Besides acting as a foreign agent, Luft is also wanted for illicit arms trafficking (attempting to sell Chinese weapons to Libya and the United Arab Emirates, among others) and for attempting to broker a number of Iranian oil deals (and thus contravening sanctions). The DOJ calls that illegal, but maybe Luft is just a real entrepreneurial guy.
He is also the Republican party’s missing “whistleblower”. The guy the GOP said has evidence that Joe Biden and his family were involved in corrupt deals with China was himself involved in corrupt deals with China (allegedly). Furthermore, he served as the vector through which China targeted a top Trump campaign adviser who they both hoped would become a cabinet-level official in the Trump administration. He was the one acting on behalf of China to influence a president (allegedly).
Luft claims the charges against him are politically motivated, saying Biden is trying to silence him. However, as Marcy Wheeler (@emptywheel) has pointed out, the indictment was filed before Luft brought his Biden allegations to the GOP, making it impossible for the indictment to be some kind of political retribution.
Luft was arrested in Cyprus in February. He is currently on the run after being released on bail to await extradition to the US. I won’t be surprised when he ends up in Hong Kong.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of stories you should be reading
RUSSIA
Inside the Secretive Russian Security Force That Targets Americans (WSJ)
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s secret calendar reveals a decade of deep Kremlin ties (Business Insider)
ECUADOR
How Ecuador Became a Gold Rush Country for Drug Cartels (NY Times)
UNITED STATES
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
What’s so striking to me about this is how country A hired a national from country B to influence country C. You probably can’t speak to how common that might be, but are you able to speak to whether that would generally be something country B’s intelligence services would have been interested in? I have to imagine that if an American living in Italy was acting as a Malaysian agent to influence Belgium, somebody in the US IC would have found that notable. Or would they have said “it’s none of our business?”
It’s just striking to me how no one has even bothered to ask Israeli intelligence officials if they had any clue, even though the response would likely be “no comment.” I sort of think it would have been bad if they knew and didn’t say anything, but also would have been bad if they didn’t know.
These influence operations are not benign, they cost lives. As long as Putin believes he can influence US presidential elections the war will drag on. China believes the same. $$$$ & patience.