http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153283/China-arrests-security-official-suspicion-spying-U-S-greatest-breach-state-intelligence-decades.html


By
Daily Mail Reporter


PUBLISHED:

09:46 EST, 1 June 2012




UPDATED:

09:46 EST, 1 June 201



A top Chinese state security official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the U.S., sources have claimed.

It is a case both countries have kept quiet for several months as they strive to prevent a fresh crisis in relations.

The
official, an aide to a vice minister in China's security ministry, was
arrested and detained early this year on allegations he had passed
information to the U.S. for several years.


Detained: A top Chinese state security official
has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the U.S., sources have
claimed (file picture)
It is said he was sending details on China's overseas espionage activities.

The
aide had been recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and
provided 'political, economic and strategic intelligence', sources said.But
it is unclear what level of information he had access to, or whether
overseas Chinese spies were compromised by the intelligence he handed
over.




The case could represent
China's worst known breach of state intelligence in two decades and its
revelation follows two other major public embarrassments for Chinese
security.Both of them involved U.S. diplomatic missions at a tense time for bilateral ties.

The
aide, detained sometime between January and March, worked in the office
of a vice-minister in China's Ministry of State Security, the source
said.



Claims: The aide had been recruited by the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency, based at Langley, and provided 'political,
economic and strategic intelligence

The ministry is in charge of the nation's domestic and overseas intelligence operations.

He
had been paid hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars and spoke English.
Another source added: 'The destruction has been massive.'China's foreign ministry did not respond immediately to a faxed request for comment sent today.

The
sources did not reveal the name of the suspected spy or the vice
minister he worked for. The vice minister has been suspended and is
being questioned.

Investigated: Ambitious Communist Party boss Bo Xilai


The Ministry of State Security rarely makes public the names of its officials and does not have a public web site.

The
incident ranks as the most serious Sino-U.S. spying incident to be made
public since 1985 when Yu Qiangsheng, an intelligence official,
defected to the United States. Yu
told the Americans that a retired CIA analyst had been spying for
China. The analyst killed himself in 1986 in a U.S. prison cell, days
before his sentencing to a lengthy jail term.The
vice minister's aide was arrested at around the same time that China's
worst political scandal in a generation was unfolding, though the
sources said the two cases were unrelated.The
political scandal erupted in February when the police chief of
Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, took shelter for 24 hours in
a U.S. consulate. Chongqing's
ambitious Communist Party boss, Bo Xilai, was later suspended after it
emerged the police chief had been investigating Bo's wife for murder.Bo's wife is now being detained on suspicions that she poisoned a British businessman, Neil Heywood, in a dispute over money.

Washington
kept an official silence on that incident, but in late April relations
came under even more pressure when blind Chinese dissident Chen
Guangcheng escaped from house detention and sought refuge in the U.S.
embassy in Beijing.Chen
spent six days in the embassy, sparking a diplomatic crisis that was
only resolved when Beijing allowed him to leave the country last month
to take up an academic fellowship in New York.The
exposure of the espionage case could put more pressure on the powerful
Zhou Yongkang, who formally oversees the state security apparatus as a
member of China's top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing
Committee.The Bo and Chen
cases have already raised questions over the effectiveness of the
security establishment which, under Zhou, has become more costly to
maintain than the nation's military.
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