Barbara Howard: The spies among us — that is the focus of a new book out by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Daniel Golden. His new book, “Spy Schools,” takes a hard look at U.S. college campuses as hotbeds of spy activity by both domestic and foreign agents. Dan Golden is a senior editor at ProPublica, an investigative journalism outlet. Thanks for coming in, Dan.
Golden: Thanks, Barbara. Glad to be here.
Howard: So, what sparked your interest in campus spies?
Golden: I did an article about a professor at the University of South Florida. He was born and bred in China, but a U.S. citizen, and the FBI pressured him to spy on China. And they even asked the university to set up a branch in China as a base for his spying. And I thought this was amazing and unique. But intelligence insiders told me “No, no — you know, this is quite common,” the intrusion of U.S. and foreign intelligence into campuses. And so I thought, I have to look more.
Howard: Is it new? Was it always this way?
Golden: It's kind of waxed and waned. But globalization has kind of made universities into a front line for espionage, when there's so many foreign students and foreign professors. And some small, but interesting, percentage of them are spying. And at the same time, the FBI and CIA are trying to recruit the foreign students and send them home as agents for us. And universities used to sort of oppose domestic intelligence, but now they can look the other way.
Howard: Why? Why did they look the other way?
Golden: Well universities have a financial interest in looking the other way, because in terms of foreign espionage, they're opening branches in foreign countries, they're admitting more and more full-paying foreign students … and so they don't want to upset the apple cart there. And domestically, they get a lot of money for ransom programs from intelligence communities and the Pentagon.
Howard: So, we can see why colleges have an incentive to let this go on, but what is it that makes campuses fertile ground for spy recruiting or activities?
Golden: Well, they're very open places. I mean, you can go in there as a spy under some pretext and sidle up to somebody in a library or a cafeteria or an auditorium. And then the targets are appealing: you've got young and impressionable students who maybe you can indoctrinate and steer into a government position. You've got professors who, when the administration changes in Washington, might all of a sudden become important government officials. It's easier to reach these people on a campus than it is once they're in government, and so that's one of the core appeals.
I tell a story of a Chinese graduate student at Duke who worked on research that was called basic, but it was funded by the Pentagon and it was to build an invisibility cloak to hide our weapons. And this student essentially poached that research for China, arranged to have Chinese collaborators photograph the equipment, he took the research and put it on a website he started in China. He persuaded the professor through kind of trickery to share his research in China. And Duke woke up too late: the professor took away his key to the lab, but the damage was done, and the student went back to China, started a competing research institute and became a billionaire, ultimately.
Howard: So we've heard about a Chinese kid who's done this, has it worked the other way around — American students being recruited by foreign bodies?
Golden: That can happen, particularly in study abroad programs. So I tell the story of a student named Glenn Duffie Shriver who went to a university in Michigan, went abroad to China, liked it that there, went back repeatedly and ultimately was recruited by Chinese intelligence, which paid him $70,000 to try and penetrate the CIA.
Howard: What happened to him?
Golden: He was caught and imprisoned.
Howard: OK, So you've made some highly charged points in your book that places like Harvard's Kennedy School of Government are aware that there are spies in their midst, but they tend to look the other way. Why would they do that?
Golden: Well what's happening at the Kennedy School, and has for years I found, it’d never been reported before, that CIA intelligence officers go there undercover, particularly into the mid-career program which is rife with foreign targets, future foreign leaders in business and politics. And they use their foreign cover - The CIA does, you know, the cover they have at the embassy overseas as a State Department diplomat or political officer and they're not supposed to officially recruit their classmates. But the whole point of a mid-career program is sort of networking, so they can cozy up to the unwitting foreigner, get to be friends with them, and eventually, you know, use them as an asset when everybody's gone back abroad. And the Kennedy School has very elaborate web of connections with the CIA and with U.S. intelligence. It sends lots of its graduates there. And so again, it doesn't want to offend the CIA, it sees itself as a professional training ground for our government and lets this go on.
The interesting thing is some of the foreigners are also spies. I mean, there was a case of a Russian spy going to the mid-career program, who posed as a Canadian under a different name. His name he used at the Kennedy School was Heathfield, but his real name was Andrey Bezrukov. And so it's like at the Kennedy School, you have no idea who you're sitting next to.
Howard: I recall he and his wife lived in Cambridge - she was a realtor. Their kids, ostensibly in high school, were unaware of all of this until their parents suddenly were taken away one day and they were left high and dry, it sounds like.
Golden: That's right. It was one of the cases that led to the TV show "The Americans." But you know, illegals that Russia sort of seeds in the U.S.
Howard: OK so, the CIA and other foreign bodies are actively doing things at Harvard's Kennedy School, it sounds like, and you've documented this with CIA agents among the students and instructors there. Does it explain why the Kennedy School was quick to rescind the invitation to Chelsea Manning to speak there?
Golden: Well, it speaks to the clout that the CIA has at the Kennedy School that it would rescind an invitation it had made because of the CIA protesting. It also shows how much times have changed because in the 1970’s. Harvard didn't hesitate to fight with the CIA over the issue of covert spying. Harvard adopted pretty stiff guidelines, saying its faculty and students could not participate in CIA intelligence operations. The CIA pushed back and said it would disregard those guidelines and ultimately, hardly any other universities adopted them and the effort came to naught. Now even Harvard is yielding to CIA intimidation.
Howard: Is this activity just at Ivy League schools?
Golden: Not at all. I mean, I have examples in my book of Ivy League schools and other private universities, state universities, even small liberal arts colleges.
Howard: So, is there a role to be played in these schools to be helping the CIA?
Golden: I have no problem with overt activity, which would be the CIA coming in holding a career day and inviting people to work for it. You know, my book focuses on the covert, clandestine activities which often involve trickery and those are, I think, inappropriate in an academic context.
Howard: OK so John Le Carre, he knows a thing or two about espionage — he's a famous author of spy novels, and he calls your book closely researched, timely and shocking. Well, it is clearly closely researched, it is shocking, but what is it that makes your book timely?
Golden: I mean, obviously, Russian spying is very much in the news. And I have new examples of Russian spying at American universities. Similarly, with Chinese theft of intellectual property, I show that that goes on at universities more broadly, that one of the big political issues today is globalization versus nationalism. I mean, that was — it's sort of the heart of the Trump campaign, Brexit, [the] French presidential campaign, and this is kind of a case study of it. You've got these global institutions, these universities that go across borders, they accept people from all countries based on intelligence and research ability and teaching ability. And then you've got these nationalistic institutions, these intelligence agencies burrowing in and trying to take advantage of that global atmosphere. And so in a way, the biggest currents in the world are reflected in this spy versus spy battle that I chronicle.
Howard: OK thanks, Dan.
Golden: Thank you.
Howard: That's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author Daniel Golden. His book is called “Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI and foreign intelligence secretly exploit America's universities."
