WEBVTT 00:00.592 --> 00:11.021 [SPEAKER_00]: M-S-S-W-M-D-A-S-S-W-M-D-A-S-S-W-M-D-A-S-S-W-M-D-A-S-S-W-M-D-A-S-S-W-M-D-A-S-S-W-M-D-A-S-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-D-S-W-M-S 00:23.449 --> 00:31.915 [SPEAKER_02]: and some new addition of the spy drug podcast, Karen Greenberg can't be with us because it's technical problems today, unfortunately, we will miss her. 00:32.295 --> 00:39.740 [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, lots going on in the news, but it's one to a flag that we have even Javers, as our special guest today. 00:39.780 --> 00:49.047 [SPEAKER_02]: He's a CNBC senior Washington correspondent, who's got us fascinating tale of Chinese espionage, which we're gonna talk about. 00:49.167 --> 00:49.827 [SPEAKER_02]: But first, 00:50.788 --> 01:00.546 [SPEAKER_02]: I know I speak for all, but in the entire spike talk community to congratulate Casper cell and Alexis Wilkins on their engagement. 01:02.432 --> 01:03.172 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, good to know. 01:03.312 --> 01:04.153 [SPEAKER_01]: I missed that. 01:04.233 --> 01:04.673 [SPEAKER_01]: Did that. 01:04.993 --> 01:05.593 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah. 01:05.693 --> 01:09.935 [SPEAKER_02]: They're engaged now, which and I don't know. 01:09.955 --> 01:11.816 [SPEAKER_02]: Are they making their home in Las Vegas? 01:13.136 --> 01:18.978 [SPEAKER_01]: So they're now jointly funding the multiple lawsuits. 01:19.058 --> 01:23.380 [SPEAKER_01]: The two of them have filed over being defamed by the press. 01:24.640 --> 01:27.862 [SPEAKER_02]: They're like a couple of an 01:31.968 --> 01:34.510 [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, a lot's going on in our corners of the world. 01:34.530 --> 01:42.337 [SPEAKER_02]: Let's start with the case of David Gold Rush. 01:43.278 --> 01:53.066 [SPEAKER_02]: As he's been tabbed online, his middle name is not Gold, but he's the guy who the FBI discovered had a lot of gold bars in his basement. 01:54.207 --> 01:56.549 [SPEAKER_02]: And he has made a deal with the government 01:56.869 --> 02:07.917 [SPEAKER_02]: And you can see why he made a deal because the CAA does not want that dirty laundry, you know, ending up in court in public. 02:07.977 --> 02:11.220 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's just, well, first of all, let's be specific. 02:11.360 --> 02:15.503 [SPEAKER_01]: It was 298 gold bars worth $46 million that the feds found in his home. 02:20.667 --> 02:36.220 [SPEAKER_01]: uh... as well as two million dollars in cash but you know who's counting uh... look at this is such a unbelievable case uh... that has done so many in the intelligence community how did this guy david rush 02:36.840 --> 02:48.027 [SPEAKER_01]: who lied in his application to the CIA saying he went to two colleges, one of which was Clemson, I believe, and the other Rinseleer polytex that he never went to. 02:48.047 --> 02:50.048 [SPEAKER_01]: So he was a pilot. 02:51.329 --> 02:58.454 [SPEAKER_01]: He lied to get into the CIA and the CIA never bothered to do a basic background check. 02:59.494 --> 03:02.156 [SPEAKER_01]: That is actually what the college is he claimed. 03:02.516 --> 03:05.759 [SPEAKER_01]: but obviously his crimes here were much worse. 03:06.419 --> 03:20.970 [SPEAKER_01]: He creates this classified program that he uses to steer nearly $200 million to himself that he takes control over and that leads to all the gold bars and the cash. 03:21.390 --> 03:39.726 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and, um, um, other, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh 03:44.897 --> 03:52.585 [SPEAKER_01]: that he had leaked top-secret defense information to an official from a foreign government that was not identified. 03:53.425 --> 04:02.694 [SPEAKER_01]: Rush admitted his plea that he disclosed quote the existence and certain descriptive information of a US government, clandestate human source. 04:03.530 --> 04:08.013 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I got to say, when you read that, he blew a source. 04:08.453 --> 04:11.335 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's just not a terminology. 04:11.895 --> 04:12.155 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 04:12.716 --> 04:13.096 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 04:13.797 --> 04:14.877 [SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty bad. 04:15.297 --> 04:18.900 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've talked to some former CIA senior case officers. 04:19.000 --> 04:21.401 [SPEAKER_02]: They can chiefs about this since this broke. 04:23.203 --> 04:31.152 [SPEAKER_02]: yesterday and they are just sputtering mad this guy would have gone over the line. 04:31.172 --> 04:40.303 [SPEAKER_02]: I suppose he leaked this identity to somewhat friendly intelligent service who reported it back to CIA, but 04:41.204 --> 04:44.647 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just amazing that this went on for a long time. 04:44.687 --> 04:55.875 [SPEAKER_02]: This guy fooled everyone and he was establishing a totally super top secret program at the CIA. 04:55.935 --> 05:00.138 [SPEAKER_02]: He invagled a number of people to get involved with it. 05:00.938 --> 05:06.521 [SPEAKER_02]: And it was totally funny, and he was using it to, you know, enrich himself, apparently. 05:07.161 --> 05:13.845 [SPEAKER_02]: We don't know why he needed to enrich himself with gold bars, that's still a mystery for me. 05:19.260 --> 05:38.300 [SPEAKER_02]: you know bank account anyway I think more will be learned more will be leaked out as this case goes on even though the feds are closing it because the security breach here is just immense and and some people should pay for this. 05:38.960 --> 05:43.421 [SPEAKER_02]: at CIA headquarters, especially in the counterintelligence branch. 05:44.101 --> 05:46.862 [SPEAKER_02]: How did he even get employed by CIA? 05:47.142 --> 05:52.443 [SPEAKER_02]: How was he able to carry this out this immense program with subterfugious CIA? 05:52.463 --> 05:53.304 [SPEAKER_02]: It's just amazing. 05:53.604 --> 05:58.905 [SPEAKER_01]: Do we know if there is a CIA inspector general investigation into this? 05:59.503 --> 06:21.261 [SPEAKER_02]: There was a CIA inspector in general cases, my understanding, but this is going to be the agency is going to try to paper this over as thickly as it can, because there's lots, they don't want rightfully don't want to expose the public scrutiny, but other stuff just their own in aptitude. 06:22.022 --> 06:28.187 [SPEAKER_02]: in hiring this guy alone, um, uh, that is don't want that, you know, examine much further. 06:28.227 --> 06:37.694 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but one would think heads should roll for the people who were responsible for betting this guy for overseeing what he was doing and, you know, 06:38.314 --> 06:42.076 [SPEAKER_02]: Um, don't hold your breath. 06:42.176 --> 06:53.041 [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, let's talk about this this case in England of the B1 bombers escaping quickly from under chair threat. 06:53.301 --> 06:55.062 [SPEAKER_02]: What do we know about that? 06:55.262 --> 07:06.188 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, look, there seems to be a lot of evidence pointing to Iranian involvement, and I think the Brits have suggested that. 07:07.598 --> 07:11.500 [SPEAKER_01]: set it and certainly the U.S. government has backed that up. 07:11.540 --> 07:26.489 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the idea that we had to scramble to remove these B1 bombers from a British air base back to the United States is pretty alarming on its face. 07:26.569 --> 07:32.432 [SPEAKER_01]: It means they got there was an intelligence stream that came in that caused them to act extremely quickly. 07:33.333 --> 07:52.068 [SPEAKER_02]: And what I've read is that there was a threat of a mass drone attack, the kind of which Ukraine has launched against Russia, where they smuggled drones into Russia in a truck, and then unleash them onto Russian oil refineries and so on. 07:52.688 --> 08:00.474 [SPEAKER_02]: And according to some UK reporting, that was the threat that caused the B1 bombers to be evacuated, 08:01.415 --> 08:24.529 [SPEAKER_01]: gee what a sorry case this is yeah and and it does let me look they could still fly from bases in the United States to targets in the Middle East if that's what's needed in a ran or or Yemen or wherever um but it's gonna take a lot longer there's much more logistical problems and it is a sign of just how 08:25.724 --> 08:52.328 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, as much as we've decimated the Iranian air force and the navies in the bottom of the ocean and, you know, we've taken out all their leaders and all that, the Iranians are still punching back, finding all sorts of innovative and different ways to strike back at the United States drones, you know, hiring criminals to do assassination plots. 08:53.008 --> 08:59.749 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, all sorts of ways that they're keeping us off balance and that's the bottom line here. 08:59.769 --> 09:00.790 [SPEAKER_02]: Right. 09:00.830 --> 09:03.570 [SPEAKER_02]: They're still standing up and fighting. 09:04.511 --> 09:06.931 [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and there's no easy way out. 09:07.031 --> 09:11.772 [SPEAKER_02]: Or certainly no short term way out for the Trump administration of this war with the rent. 09:11.932 --> 09:15.853 [SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, as we are taping this, um, 09:16.233 --> 09:18.655 [SPEAKER_01]: The Atlantic has just moved a story. 09:19.876 --> 09:29.543 [SPEAKER_01]: Reporting at the White House is now considering a military strike against Iran before the midterms. 09:30.504 --> 09:41.412 [SPEAKER_01]: And this might, you know, clearly seems to have a political dimension to it somehow that Trump people think that if they show strength, 09:43.138 --> 09:44.339 [SPEAKER_01]: prior to the voting. 09:45.420 --> 09:47.062 [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to help them on the other hand. 09:47.162 --> 09:54.990 [SPEAKER_01]: It would remind folks of just how unpopular this war is and what a mess they've gotten us into. 09:55.330 --> 09:56.952 [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have a lot of details. 09:57.773 --> 10:04.680 [SPEAKER_01]: The Atlantic says any strike campaign would put the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the region as well as Gulf of Halalize at risk of Iranian. 10:04.920 --> 10:06.681 [SPEAKER_01]: retaliation, so there is that. 10:07.282 --> 10:26.856 [SPEAKER_01]: But I was got a tip yesterday that in quite know what to make of, which is that up to 400 service members from the Barclay Air Force Base in Louisiana, which houses the B-52s among other things. 10:27.576 --> 10:30.138 [SPEAKER_01]: I've read appointment orders this week to go to the Middle 10:33.120 --> 10:37.342 [SPEAKER_01]: So that could be, um, what's the emergency? 10:38.242 --> 10:51.147 [SPEAKER_01]: The emergency is the midterms and somehow somebody thinks that's trying to ran again, resuming the war, uh, is going to somehow show strength and help the president, but, you know, given that, uh, 10:52.402 --> 11:01.511 [SPEAKER_01]: multiple Republican candidates out there see reading the polls are walking away and distancing themselves from the Iran war. 11:02.652 --> 11:16.505 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not quite sure how that helps help helps the Republicans in the midterms like Mike Rogers for instance the Republican candidate in Michigan and one of the you know one of the fiercest Senate 11:17.423 --> 11:26.569 [SPEAKER_01]: races in the country right now and one of the most consequential because of he wins that's a pick-up for Republicans that complicates. 11:26.829 --> 11:31.332 [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, he said he will now vote for ending the war in Iran. 11:31.372 --> 11:40.378 [SPEAKER_01]: So how does was zooming the war in Iran help Mike Rogers beat Abdul El-Sahed and he's got to be crying in his beer right now. 11:46.542 --> 11:50.723 [SPEAKER_02]: of the kind that Trump was said he was going to end, of course he claimed he's ended eight wars. 11:51.403 --> 12:00.065 [SPEAKER_02]: I wish I was going to end eight times he's ended this war, but yeah, and Ukraine war was going to take a day. 12:00.085 --> 12:10.367 [SPEAKER_02]: He's going to end that even before he took office, I keep wishing for a report to say President Trump, would you please name the eight wars that you've stopped 12:11.537 --> 12:27.742 [SPEAKER_02]: Anywho, we got another spy scandal in Germany, the former head of the B&D, Germany's foreign and token service has been arrested on charges of treason for selling secrets, not good. 12:29.322 --> 12:49.651 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, first of all, Germany's intelligence service, military security service in general, and even the President of Prime Minister's Chancellor's Office has been riddled, which Russians buys, wherever this bit it can just constant problem with the Germans since the end of war two. 12:50.091 --> 12:52.512 [SPEAKER_02]: So this is just not good. 12:54.213 --> 13:11.619 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what we have here is something that ought to be familiar to a lot of former US intelligence officials, which is that Heming, who had been ahead of the B&D back in from 1998 to November 2005. 13:16.647 --> 13:22.311 [SPEAKER_01]: was in the private intelligence business, like a lot of former spokes, right? 13:22.351 --> 13:23.933 [SPEAKER_01]: You, this is what you do. 13:24.633 --> 13:42.226 [SPEAKER_01]: And so he was assembling information and he was paying his former top staffer at the B&D, who was also arrested for providing him with hundreds of classified documents that he could then use in his 13:44.708 --> 13:50.772 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you got to wonder where B&D's counterintelligence counter-espin service was all long. 13:50.892 --> 14:08.783 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this went on for apparently for years, um, um, unimpeded, uh, just like the case of David Gold Rush, uh, you know, this just reveals significant security lapses inside the service and 14:13.058 --> 14:29.633 [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, let's move on to our special guest today, Im and Javers, who's a senior Washington correspondent for CNBC, he's a veteran Washington reporter, he's worked at Politico with a ill congressional reporter, who I first met him years ago, he's also the author of 14:31.455 --> 14:49.933 [SPEAKER_02]: broker trader lawyer spy the secret world of corporate espionage which paved the way for him to write this recent story for CNBC called Inside Man, how Chinese spies use lies, love and betrayal to target a federal reserve employee. 14:50.514 --> 14:52.756 [SPEAKER_02]: So without further ado, let's bring them on. 14:58.128 --> 14:59.988 [SPEAKER_02]: even Javer's welcome to Spy Talk. 15:00.468 --> 15:11.450 [SPEAKER_02]: You have written a fascinating spy story, but it's also a cautionary tale about how Chinese espionage works and how it can ensnare people. 15:12.251 --> 15:23.092 [SPEAKER_02]: It starts with the trip of John Harold Rogers and advisor to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to Shanghai in 2013. 15:23.573 --> 15:24.753 [SPEAKER_02]: Pick the story up there. 15:24.873 --> 15:26.073 [SPEAKER_02]: Tell us what happens next. 15:26.413 --> 15:26.673 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 15:26.733 --> 15:27.193 [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. 15:27.214 --> 15:28.634 [SPEAKER_03]: First of all, thank you for having me. 15:28.734 --> 15:30.896 [SPEAKER_03]: I really appreciate you guys talking about this story. 15:30.916 --> 15:37.159 [SPEAKER_03]: It tells us so much about what the Chinese want to know about the United States and so much about our vulnerabilities. 15:37.780 --> 15:42.302 [SPEAKER_03]: And John Rogers was a senior advisor at the federal reserve, so he was a researcher. 15:43.143 --> 15:49.026 [SPEAKER_03]: Not somebody sort of in the thick of defense decision-making, but somebody who's got a more of an academic background. 15:49.046 --> 15:51.748 [SPEAKER_03]: And in 2013, he went to a conference 15:56.250 --> 16:13.415 [SPEAKER_03]: And while he was there, he met a young man named Cumin Lee, or who he believed was named Cumin Lee, who approached him and told him that he was a Chinese academic, and he was somebody who was interested in global finance, and they struck up a conversation. 16:14.055 --> 16:22.303 [SPEAKER_03]: And then when Rogers returned to the U.S. over the following months and years, there was sort of an ongoing email correspondence between the two. 16:23.364 --> 16:35.215 [SPEAKER_03]: And what Rogers said he believed was that humanly was a graduate student who was working on a PhD in finance and had a lot of questions about American financial issues. 16:36.556 --> 16:47.826 [SPEAKER_03]: And what the U.S. government ultimately came to conclude was that who was a Chinese spy, an intelligence officer, who was working for one of their services, and who was using a fake name. 16:47.906 --> 16:56.413 [SPEAKER_03]: They said his real name was Jin Chuan, and he was trying to pry out of John Rogers' economic secrets from inside the Federal Reserve. 16:56.836 --> 17:04.840 [SPEAKER_02]: One thing that's fascinating about the story is how it displays how espionage classically works. 17:05.240 --> 17:14.865 [SPEAKER_02]: You start asking your prey for very innocuous materials and just begin to establish that relationship of having 17:15.625 --> 17:24.252 [SPEAKER_02]: your recruit, your target, start giving you stuff that's not classified, not even sensitive, just establishing the relationship. 17:24.552 --> 17:27.755 [SPEAKER_02]: But then a woman comes into the picture, right? 17:28.552 --> 17:35.874 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this so this relationship kind of goes along for years without really heating up between humanly and John Rogers. 17:36.354 --> 17:41.376 [SPEAKER_03]: And there are these birthday greetings and Christmas notes from home into John Rogers. 17:41.936 --> 17:43.536 [SPEAKER_03]: He's apparently sending a lot of gifts. 17:43.576 --> 17:46.157 [SPEAKER_03]: At one point, he sends a copy of the art of war. 17:46.677 --> 17:48.037 [SPEAKER_03]: He's sending silks. 17:48.077 --> 17:50.118 [SPEAKER_03]: He's sending or Chinese, you know. 17:50.558 --> 18:08.752 [SPEAKER_03]: Nick Nax to Rogers to try to appreciate himself over years, but at some point we see that relationship shift and that happens right after one particular New Year's Eve where Rogers is online and he's a guy who's at this point in his mid-50s. 18:09.312 --> 18:16.798 [SPEAKER_03]: He's been divorced several years before he's got four grown children who are either out of the house or on their way out of the house, 18:17.379 --> 18:19.283 [SPEAKER_03]: He's alone at home on New Year's Eve. 18:19.824 --> 18:21.688 [SPEAKER_03]: He's feeling depressed in his own language. 18:21.728 --> 18:23.252 [SPEAKER_03]: He says he's feeling like a loser. 18:24.314 --> 18:27.701 [SPEAKER_03]: And he logs on to a website called AsianDating.com. 18:28.524 --> 18:37.471 [SPEAKER_03]: And here he meets a young woman in Shanghai who is named as Yulu, who goes by Yulu, and refer to her as Yulu in the story. 18:38.712 --> 18:42.155 [SPEAKER_03]: Who is 24 years younger than he is, he's immediately smitten. 18:42.955 --> 18:47.999 [SPEAKER_03]: They start exchanging messages back and forth. 18:48.059 --> 18:51.302 [SPEAKER_03]: The relationship goes from zero to 100, very, very quickly. 18:52.178 --> 19:02.110 [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and Roger starts to be very interested in going to Shanghai to meet with you in person because that's of course better when you're dating somebody than chatting with them online. 19:02.768 --> 19:07.651 [SPEAKER_03]: and incomes humanly with all sorts of solutions to how they can get together physically. 19:08.671 --> 19:21.678 [SPEAKER_03]: A ranging for Rogers travel to come over and give a lecture to come and meet with some professors arranging a story that would be acceptable to his bosses at the fed for explaining why he's doing this travel paying for some of the travel. 19:22.278 --> 19:25.760 [SPEAKER_03]: Rogers goes to Shanghai meets you to twice. 19:26.910 --> 19:30.591 [SPEAKER_03]: The second time he meets her in person, she becomes pregnant. 19:31.511 --> 19:42.575 [SPEAKER_03]: And immediately their conversation online, we obtained a treasure trove from our sources of text messages between Rogers and UU and Rogers and Oman. 19:43.015 --> 19:45.716 [SPEAKER_03]: And immediately their conversation becomes about babies and love. 19:45.736 --> 19:46.696 [SPEAKER_01]: Can I break in here? 19:46.756 --> 19:52.818 [SPEAKER_01]: Because, I mean, this is one of the more intriguing aspects of the story that 19:55.758 --> 19:59.941 [SPEAKER_01]: Rogers meets this woman online, the Asian dating service. 20:00.101 --> 20:21.796 [SPEAKER_01]: And then Lee, the Chinese spy, is offering to help facilitate, pay money, how does Lee know about the relationship with the woman and was he in communication with you, the woman Rogers has fallen for separately 20:23.700 --> 20:25.002 [SPEAKER_03]: what was going on with Rogers. 20:25.443 --> 20:38.182 [SPEAKER_03]: So there's a lot we don't know about this situation and the key piece of evidence that we don't have is whether Rogers connected to UU at first on that Asian dating website or whether UU connected to Rogers first. 20:38.989 --> 20:42.953 [SPEAKER_03]: I think that might give you a sense of better sense of what's going on here if we do that. 20:42.993 --> 20:55.304 [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know you use exact role here, but we do know in the text messages at some point Rodgers tells humanly that he's met this woman and that they're having this relationship and then it's heating up. 20:56.105 --> 21:03.812 [SPEAKER_03]: Rodgers at first, by the way, does not know that you, you can't speak English and Rodgers doesn't speak Chinese. 21:04.012 --> 21:11.518 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you wrote that that her responses online were perfectly were in perfect English. 21:11.718 --> 21:13.399 [SPEAKER_01]: They seem to be word of it. 21:13.419 --> 21:16.862 [SPEAKER_01]: So obviously somebody is writing that for her. 21:17.680 --> 21:20.922 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, the Google Translation apps are pretty good these days. 21:20.962 --> 21:25.525 [SPEAKER_03]: And if you're just texting, you can probably do Google Translate. 21:26.825 --> 21:30.528 [SPEAKER_03]: And Rogers attorney told me that a lot of this relationship was based on Google Translate. 21:30.608 --> 21:33.049 [SPEAKER_03]: It couldn't have happened in the pre-Google Translate era. 21:34.070 --> 21:44.316 [SPEAKER_03]: So there is a real question here, I think, whether who mainly knew about you before Rogers told him and whether you was a plant by whom 21:45.589 --> 21:56.597 [SPEAKER_03]: because very quickly after Rodgers, Kels, whom in, ostensibly for the first time about you, you, we see whom in conversation directly with you. 21:56.677 --> 22:04.763 [SPEAKER_03]: He's talking directly to you and Rodgers is asking him to do that because of the time's own difference, the language barrier, cultural challenges. 22:05.344 --> 22:09.147 [SPEAKER_03]: He really needs whom in lead to sort of intervening on his behalf with you, you 22:09.827 --> 22:15.193 [SPEAKER_03]: to explain certain things to her, to ask her questions about what's going on. 22:15.614 --> 22:18.597 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a whole series of negotiations here about the wedding. 22:19.158 --> 22:23.442 [SPEAKER_03]: And, humanly, it becomes essentially, you know, a romantic inter- 22:25.805 --> 22:27.885 [SPEAKER_03]: He's interceding romantically between these two. 22:28.306 --> 22:29.506 [SPEAKER_03]: He's arranging for the wedding. 22:29.526 --> 22:39.068 [SPEAKER_03]: So he's like, he's cupid and a wedding planner and a logistics maven and sort of a passport control officer because he's arranging for visas and travel and paying for everything. 22:39.488 --> 22:47.369 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, he is at the center of Rogers' emotional and romantic life in a way that would seem very creepy if it wasn't happening to you. 22:47.629 --> 22:49.750 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, this strikes me as a, 22:51.435 --> 23:10.982 [SPEAKER_01]: and innovation in honey trap, tactics, the idea that the Chinese intelligence planted, fetching young woman on an Asian dating site to bring in to fetch random US government officials as a target for espionage. 23:11.182 --> 23:13.444 [SPEAKER_03]: But here's what we don't know, Mike, and I think it's important. 23:13.504 --> 23:15.505 [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know you use real role here. 23:15.545 --> 23:19.527 [SPEAKER_03]: We reached out to you to try to get her to talk to us, and we have not been able to reach her. 23:20.708 --> 23:26.932 [SPEAKER_03]: So there's one scenario where you, you, is sort of a winning Chinese intelligence agent, and she's participating in this intentionally. 23:27.573 --> 23:35.398 [SPEAKER_03]: There's another scenario, though, where she's kind of a victim, she could have been effectively trafficked to John Rogers by Chinese intelligence. 23:36.002 --> 23:40.666 [SPEAKER_03]: Or there's a third scenario where this thing was kind of weirdly playing out on its own. 23:40.706 --> 23:42.668 [SPEAKER_03]: This relationship was happening for its own reasons. 23:42.788 --> 23:47.832 [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, and Chinese intel just kind of piggybacked on top of a thing that was going on anyway. 23:48.334 --> 23:49.954 [SPEAKER_03]: And we just don't know, right? 23:49.994 --> 24:02.918 [SPEAKER_03]: So we can't say for sure that this was a honeypot by Chinese intelligence, but it's very clear that once it did happen, Chinese intelligence was willing to push the limits on it and take advantage of it and use it as a way to get to Roger's. 24:03.078 --> 24:06.659 [SPEAKER_01]: Not to get ahead of the story, but the Fed's prosecute Rogers. 24:07.199 --> 24:09.762 [SPEAKER_01]: I want to hear, yeah, you walk us through that. 24:09.902 --> 24:17.250 [SPEAKER_01]: But did they have a theory or an assertion about the nature of the relationship with you and who she was? 24:17.270 --> 24:24.338 [SPEAKER_03]: They're very quiet about you and whether she's a wedding agent or a victim or just collateral damage. 24:24.558 --> 24:25.559 [SPEAKER_03]: And we just don't know. 24:25.619 --> 24:27.561 [SPEAKER_03]: She is still by the way, living in the U.S. 24:28.520 --> 24:38.850 [SPEAKER_03]: Um, she and Rogers had a daughter, you know, very quickly after they met, um, and the daughter is here and you use here and we, we tried to, like I say, we tried to reach her, we were unsuccessful and I'd love to hear from her. 24:39.451 --> 24:41.313 [SPEAKER_03]: If she's watching this, you know, call me. 24:42.678 --> 24:48.582 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is a long-established technique of both Russian and Chinese intelligence. 24:48.642 --> 24:57.828 [SPEAKER_02]: We've been very limited on our side using honey traps because of the possibilities of blowback and things going off the rails and so on. 24:57.868 --> 25:00.589 [SPEAKER_02]: It's not the best way to recruit a spy. 25:01.790 --> 25:06.635 [SPEAKER_02]: Russians and the Chinese are not inhibited at all by this practice. 25:06.955 --> 25:14.603 [SPEAKER_02]: We saw this with, I think you could say, with a representative Eric Swallwell, a member of the intelligence committee. 25:14.743 --> 25:15.284 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 25:15.684 --> 25:17.506 [SPEAKER_02]: And Christine Fang, right? 25:19.448 --> 25:22.291 [SPEAKER_02]: We've seen this in other Chinese, that's the United States, 25:23.432 --> 25:27.513 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think with the intelligence committee, you expect espionage, right? 25:27.533 --> 25:30.974 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, what was so shocking about this story to me was this is the Federal Reserve, right? 25:30.994 --> 25:35.616 [SPEAKER_03]: And these guys are economics, wants, their PhDs, they're doing international finance. 25:36.416 --> 25:37.956 [SPEAKER_03]: They're not trained for this. 25:38.436 --> 25:39.457 [SPEAKER_03]: They don't see it coming. 25:39.477 --> 25:42.878 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, they have briefings in security, you know, they're aware of security. 25:43.398 --> 25:46.999 [SPEAKER_03]: But it's not, if you're on the intelligence committee, you really should see it coming. 25:48.400 --> 25:59.655 [SPEAKER_03]: If you're in the Fed and you're an academic and you're discussing very esoteric financial things with academic peers, you know, you could see how a person like that would be sort of blindsided by this. 26:00.218 --> 26:17.812 [SPEAKER_01]: Although I got to say, I mean, you reproduce some of the text messages between Rogers and Lee and in which Lee is requesting information and documents from from the federal reserve. 26:18.032 --> 26:19.293 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is early on. 26:19.453 --> 26:20.694 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm just looking. 26:20.774 --> 26:24.738 [SPEAKER_01]: I said, how does the Fed evaluate the trade war with China proposed by Trump? 26:24.778 --> 26:28.861 [SPEAKER_01]: Will it just monetary policy to cooperate with the trade war? 26:29.482 --> 26:36.828 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering, this is Lee, the Chinese spy writing to Rogers, the Federal Reserve official. 26:37.328 --> 26:44.394 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering if you could help us collect answers from your colleagues or documents and teach us when we meet. 26:44.454 --> 26:45.996 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, it would seem to me. 26:46.436 --> 26:46.796 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:46.816 --> 26:47.097 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:47.117 --> 26:47.377 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:47.397 --> 26:47.657 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:47.697 --> 26:47.998 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:48.018 --> 26:48.378 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:48.398 --> 26:48.658 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:48.679 --> 26:49.019 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:49.039 --> 26:49.379 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:49.399 --> 26:49.720 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:49.740 --> 26:50.100 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:50.120 --> 26:50.541 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:50.561 --> 26:50.821 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:50.841 --> 26:51.201 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:51.241 --> 26:51.582 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:51.602 --> 26:51.962 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:52.002 --> 26:52.503 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:52.523 --> 26:52.943 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:52.963 --> 26:53.284 [UNKNOWN]: That's right. 26:53.304 --> 26:53.604 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:53.624 --> 26:53.984 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:54.004 --> 26:54.425 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:54.445 --> 26:54.885 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:54.905 --> 26:55.386 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:55.406 --> 26:55.786 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:55.866 --> 26:56.327 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:56.347 --> 26:56.667 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:56.687 --> 26:56.968 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:56.988 --> 26:57.348 [SPEAKER_01]: That's right. 26:57.438 --> 27:03.001 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree with you what Roger's lawyer said is like this guy is an academic. 27:03.061 --> 27:04.182 [SPEAKER_03]: He's very naive. 27:04.822 --> 27:16.709 [SPEAKER_03]: And by this point, whom in Lee had become like one of his best friends in the world, Roger's actually asked whom in Lee to be the best man at the wedding with you that would took place in Hong Kong. 27:17.630 --> 27:22.453 [SPEAKER_03]: So he thought this was like one of his best friends in the world after years and years of having this relationship. 27:22.793 --> 27:30.519 [SPEAKER_02]: I must say, no, I have a day here seeking quite convenient, I just want to tell you what the lawyer said. 27:30.619 --> 27:31.980 [SPEAKER_03]: I have to give all sides of the story. 27:32.060 --> 27:37.584 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can say he's just an academic, but, you know, he resues papers, right? 27:37.724 --> 27:41.046 [SPEAKER_02]: Or news reports online, whatever. 27:41.427 --> 27:48.272 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, what Chinese has always been doing is no secret hasn't been a secret for a long time. 27:48.832 --> 27:53.555 [SPEAKER_03]: So, and the questions, the questions get more and more detailed from whom in lead to Rogers, right? 27:53.575 --> 28:11.286 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, initially it's sort of broadly about the trade war and it really seems to accelerate in the Trump era because the Chinese seem to become much more desperate for intelligence on the US economic sort of establishments response to Trump's trade war and his anti-China approach to the world. 28:11.886 --> 28:12.907 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think, you know, 28:13.567 --> 28:20.311 [SPEAKER_03]: You can see this escalating need on the part of the Chinese to understand what the hell's going on here once Trump arrives on the scene after the 2016 election. 28:21.032 --> 28:35.201 [SPEAKER_03]: And Roger starts to respond and starts to give humanly material and he starts to email his colleagues inside the Fed asking them the same questions that humanly is asking him and then producing those answers for humanly. 28:35.341 --> 28:40.084 [SPEAKER_03]: Again, the defense from Roger's lawyer is that none of that was inappropriate and none of the 28:41.745 --> 28:44.246 [SPEAKER_03]: were secrets in any real sense, right? 28:44.326 --> 28:51.850 [SPEAKER_03]: So you have to think of the Fed as having a very different security set up and very different classification system then say the Pentagon or the CIA. 28:52.410 --> 28:54.211 [SPEAKER_03]: So these things are not top secret. 28:55.351 --> 28:59.353 [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of this is academic work that's shared in the academic community more broadly. 28:59.413 --> 29:01.534 [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of it is just speculation. 29:02.074 --> 29:10.998 [SPEAKER_03]: And so his lawyer says that Rogers, in all of his interactions with humanly, never turned anything over to the Chinese that was actually a secret. 29:11.878 --> 29:33.298 [SPEAKER_03]: But the real question for investigators is that a lot of this happened in these hotel rooms in China, which we can get into, and investigators have no idea really what actually happened in those hotel rooms in China, because the FBI can't operate there, so they couldn't wire the rooms or get a cooperating witness into the room in the same way that they would, if they were investigating an espionage case that was happening here. 29:33.598 --> 29:42.266 [SPEAKER_01]: So walk us through how the feds get on to Rogers and the prosecution that follows. 29:42.366 --> 29:53.015 [SPEAKER_03]: So this is where it goes completely bonkers and off the rails because at the same time the John Rogers is the target of this Chinese espionage operation that's operating for years. 29:55.019 --> 30:18.944 [SPEAKER_03]: his marriage with you is kind of breaking down and he is again let's say romantically lonely as an euphemism and he goes online and starts meeting people online and he starts exchanging messages with them in a romantic way and nude pictures and then he starts exchanging nude pictures with these people online and he doesn't realize 30:19.911 --> 30:30.125 [SPEAKER_03]: Again, naivetay or willful ignorance or whatever it is, he doesn't realize that these people are not who they say they are, and they don't have his best interest at heart, and they're not actually romantically interested in it. 30:31.022 --> 30:44.497 [SPEAKER_03]: And at some point, the people he's sending the nude pictures to, figure out who he is that he's a high ranking official inside the Fed, and they say, we have your nudes, we're going to send them to the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, unless you give us X, Y and Z. 30:44.517 --> 30:51.104 [SPEAKER_03]: They're also threatening his young daughter, they know where his house is and where the bus stop is, you know, all this personal information about him. 30:51.144 --> 30:51.644 [SPEAKER_03]: And suddenly, 30:52.513 --> 31:06.908 [SPEAKER_03]: over the course of one weekend, he is horrified to find out that his news are in the possession of the people he concludes our, you know, hackers or fraudsters in Africa who are now going to do this to him to store him. 31:07.526 --> 31:11.629 [SPEAKER_03]: So at the same time, he's the target of a Chinese espionage operation. 31:11.669 --> 31:18.133 [SPEAKER_03]: He's also blundered into making himself the target of a African extortionary. 31:18.614 --> 31:28.661 [SPEAKER_03]: And he, at this point, kind of has an emotional meltdown moment, goes to his boss at the Fed, confesses that he's had this extortion against him. 31:29.421 --> 31:41.990 [SPEAKER_03]: And the boss is at the Fed then arranged for him to sit down with the Inspector General staff at the Federal Reserve, sort of the in-house cops, if you will, at the Federal Reserve, to figure out what to do about this. 31:42.810 --> 31:56.480 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's when he goes in and sits down for a two and a half hour recorded interview, which we got a copy of, and which we use in the story, and sort of that becomes the linchpin to this whole, to Rogers' whole life really fond of art. 31:56.945 --> 32:01.947 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he lies to the investigators, that's not a great step for him. 32:02.467 --> 32:18.552 [SPEAKER_02]: I want to talk to you more about, or ask you more about what the federal government may have learned from this and whether they are taking precautionary messages, steps through messages to federal employees to watch out for stuff like this. 32:18.812 --> 32:22.193 [SPEAKER_02]: But we have to take a commercial break for our sponsors. 32:26.265 --> 32:27.065 [SPEAKER_02]: All right, we're back. 32:27.286 --> 32:32.629 [SPEAKER_02]: Let's wrap up the federal investigation of John Harold Rogers. 32:32.729 --> 32:33.649 [SPEAKER_03]: What happened next? 32:34.310 --> 32:49.699 [SPEAKER_03]: So he has this emotional moment and goes into the fellow reserve IG to sit down and the inspector generals officers who interview him do this recorded session that lasts about two and a half hours and it's really this come to Jesus moment. 32:49.719 --> 32:51.660 [SPEAKER_03]: He really unburdened himself of every tango. 32:52.180 --> 32:56.741 [SPEAKER_03]: tells them everything that's going on in his life, and it's a messy life, emotionally at this point. 32:57.361 --> 33:01.822 [SPEAKER_03]: And he's the target of now these two different conspiracies, and it's clearly eating him. 33:03.063 --> 33:09.904 [SPEAKER_03]: But the Inspector General's agents also were aware of Rogers's contact with the Chinese. 33:10.324 --> 33:15.105 [SPEAKER_03]: And this had been flagged to them as a concern previous to this recorded session. 33:15.605 --> 33:18.026 [SPEAKER_03]: So in the interview, you can hear them saying, 33:22.447 --> 33:37.923 [SPEAKER_03]: And they sort of brush off the nude extortion thing and really start Kinding him down on questions about his relationship with the Chinese and with movement Lee and what he turned over They asked him if he'd ever turned over anything that was considered inside 33:38.403 --> 33:39.904 [SPEAKER_03]: fed information to the Chinese. 33:39.924 --> 33:41.525 [SPEAKER_03]: They ask him all about whom in lead. 33:41.545 --> 33:51.290 [SPEAKER_03]: He describes him as this big muscular bodybuilder type who knows all about the NBA and speaks great English and describes him as his best friends as he loves him like a brother. 33:51.971 --> 34:02.717 [SPEAKER_03]: And then the IG agents are clearly trying to pin Rogers down on exactly what he's been doing with these Chinese context that he has and all this travel back and forth to China. 34:03.268 --> 34:14.859 [SPEAKER_03]: and during the course of that, Rogers explains to them that, who mainly had asked him to teach some courses, academic classes in China, affiliated with universities. 34:16.000 --> 34:19.283 [SPEAKER_03]: But these classes had kind of morphed into something very different. 34:19.303 --> 34:30.153 [SPEAKER_03]: They ended up taking place, not in a classroom necessarily, but often in a hotel room, and not in front of a group of students, but actually in front of just two or three people. 34:31.193 --> 34:37.556 [SPEAKER_03]: And US government would later conclude that two out of the three people in the room for at least one of these sessions were Chinese spies. 34:38.876 --> 34:57.143 [SPEAKER_03]: And that the Chinese would ask him questions about the material in advance and sort of give him what the government saw as tasking orders to go collect information for them and then give these classes in these hotel rooms at night with these Chinese intelligence officers about what the Fed was thinking. 34:57.939 --> 35:00.941 [SPEAKER_03]: Um, so Rodgers said this was all about board. 35:01.441 --> 35:06.004 [SPEAKER_03]: I was just teaching in an academic way, I was giving a very similar presentation that I do to students. 35:06.024 --> 35:07.645 [SPEAKER_03]: He taught at Georgetown as well. 35:08.486 --> 35:16.111 [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but the U.S. government clearly saw these classes at night in hotel rooms in China as a very thin cover for asking us. 35:16.711 --> 35:17.292 [SPEAKER_03]: And so, 35:18.324 --> 35:26.050 [SPEAKER_03]: over a multi-year investigation, which just really took a long time, the IG's office starts working with the FBI. 35:26.931 --> 35:35.518 [SPEAKER_03]: And then years later, Rogers is out walking his dog in his neighborhood in Vienna, Virginia, and is popped by an FBI team and arrested. 35:36.738 --> 35:38.759 [SPEAKER_03]: And his shocked is shocked to be arrested. 35:38.819 --> 35:41.341 [SPEAKER_03]: He had no idea how that he was still under suspicion. 35:41.361 --> 35:44.843 [SPEAKER_03]: He had no idea that this investigation had been going on for years. 35:46.103 --> 35:48.865 [SPEAKER_03]: He's arrested and he's charged with two counts. 35:49.145 --> 35:51.146 [SPEAKER_03]: One is conspiracy to commit espionage. 35:51.546 --> 35:53.847 [SPEAKER_03]: And the other is lying to federal investigators. 35:54.928 --> 35:58.970 [SPEAKER_03]: And then we go forward to a jury trial, which was another fascinating element in the story. 35:59.847 --> 36:18.381 [SPEAKER_02]: even did you get a sense from going through all these materials this interrogation is on if there did come a point that he did understand that he was conducting some level of espionage but that he was just into deep couldn't get out. 36:19.041 --> 36:20.302 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a really good question. 36:20.322 --> 36:23.384 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I can't say what was in his head for sure. 36:23.485 --> 36:26.587 [SPEAKER_03]: I think you go, you know, any reasonable person might have concluded that, 36:28.208 --> 36:39.878 [SPEAKER_03]: Deluded was he's so infatuated with you, or so desperate for whom in Lee is interventioned in his personal life that he sort of was willfully blind to what whom in Lee was asking him for and what this really looked like. 36:39.918 --> 36:44.822 [SPEAKER_03]: You do see messages between Rogers and whom in Lee, where Rogers is saying to whom in Lee. 36:45.566 --> 36:48.728 [SPEAKER_03]: We have to make this look legitimate in the eyes of the Fed. 36:49.268 --> 37:13.700 [SPEAKER_03]: So if I'm going to teach these classes, there has to be a syllabus, there have to be students, I have to give grades, and we have to be able to answer questions that the Fed poses to me about this in order for it to be to seem legitimate, which gives you the sense that he kind of thought that's maybe might not be legitimate and was trying to paper that over with some respectable things that he could point to if he was ever questioned 37:14.820 --> 37:15.401 [SPEAKER_03]: But we don't know. 37:15.521 --> 37:16.502 [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know what's in his head. 37:16.542 --> 37:19.004 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, he says he didn't have any idea until much later. 37:19.705 --> 37:25.970 [SPEAKER_01]: So just to close the loop, he goes to trial just this year in federal court. 37:27.051 --> 37:28.853 [SPEAKER_01]: Where in DC or DC? 37:29.314 --> 37:32.857 [SPEAKER_01]: DC and and what happens? 37:33.987 --> 37:43.549 [SPEAKER_03]: So the prosecution makes the case the defense lays out the argument that I've laid out to you guys, which is, you know, just an naive academic didn't see this coming, the acknowledged that humanly was a spy. 37:44.049 --> 37:54.912 [SPEAKER_03]: They say essentially that Rogers was a duke and he didn't really understand what was happening here and just was a sucker and had been betrayed by a man who he saw as one of his best friends in life. 37:55.837 --> 38:04.101 [SPEAKER_03]: and the jury kind of buys the defenses argument and they end up acquitting him on the conspiracy to commit espionage charge. 38:05.021 --> 38:09.744 [SPEAKER_03]: But they convict him, they find him guilty on the charge of lying to investigators. 38:10.484 --> 38:14.426 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's because at one point during the recorded conversation, 38:15.137 --> 38:25.877 [SPEAKER_03]: years before with the Fed IG, the Fed IG agents asked Rogers, have you ever shared private Fed documents with anyone in China, and Rogers said no. 38:27.497 --> 38:44.793 [SPEAKER_03]: And never, sorry, never, he said it was the word, yes, good catch, never, and they could prove in fact that he had sent a sensitive document to a Chinese co-author at a university in Foodham, not even to whom in Lee, but to another guy in China. 38:44.813 --> 38:47.075 [SPEAKER_03]: But that was clearly a lie. 38:47.976 --> 38:49.536 [SPEAKER_03]: by Rogers to the investigators. 38:49.576 --> 38:51.657 [SPEAKER_03]: So he was lying to federal officials. 38:52.317 --> 38:58.019 [SPEAKER_03]: His lawyer defends him on that point, too, and says, well, look, you know, he went into that interview because he was panicked about the news. 38:58.079 --> 39:01.179 [SPEAKER_03]: And he was thinking about this sex stortion that was happening against him. 39:01.900 --> 39:04.840 [SPEAKER_03]: And his personal life and it was deeply embarrassing, he was traumatized. 39:05.581 --> 39:08.981 [SPEAKER_03]: And so naturally, he wasn't thinking about every email he'd ever sent to the Chinese. 39:09.001 --> 39:10.882 [SPEAKER_03]: And they asked him this kind of question out of the blue. 39:10.922 --> 39:13.603 [SPEAKER_03]: And he didn't really intend to lie. 39:13.623 --> 39:13.943 [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't 39:15.083 --> 39:38.059 [SPEAKER_03]: uh... the jury didn't buy that argument by the defense and they found it what was the sensitive document that the feds by soon that was the basis for the feds charge of espionage conspiracy to commit espionage so what was the sensitive document i mean there were a couple of documents that he sent that really that were the centerpiece of this trial uh... one was about washing machine tariffs of all things 39:38.819 --> 39:54.286 [SPEAKER_03]: Another one was sort of a briefing manual to brief somebody who'd been appointed to the Federal Reserve Board about what the Fed was thinking about various issues and those two documents sort of where I think the highlights for the federal government of things they were concerned about. 39:54.946 --> 40:01.629 [SPEAKER_03]: Rogers lawyer argues that neither of those documents contained any real secrets that they were things that were. 40:02.169 --> 40:03.710 [SPEAKER_03]: perfectly available in the public domain. 40:03.830 --> 40:17.616 [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, and whether they were stamped, you know, internal federal reserve only on the document, the underlying contents of the document were in essence public information already by the time that he sent them. 40:17.776 --> 40:21.418 [SPEAKER_01]: You know what struck me about this is, I mean, 40:21.798 --> 40:44.208 [SPEAKER_01]: There aren't any real national security secrets that jeopardize America's security in these documents, but that some of them, I mean, listen, I mean, day trade or hers, you know, look very closely and want to know everything about what the Fed might be doing. 40:44.528 --> 40:47.630 [SPEAKER_01]: So it is all over the country and every big hedge fund. 40:47.690 --> 40:47.890 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 40:48.350 --> 41:09.421 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm looking at one point in June of 2019, Rogers Prince out to documents, one of which came from a category that applied to economic forecast prepared by the Fred staff for its interest rate setting committee and for operations where the Fed buys and sells bonds according to Fed guidelines. 41:09.801 --> 41:10.502 [SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, 41:11.262 --> 41:26.178 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, I don't see any real national security secrets there, but if you're trying to like game the market and if you have some insight into what the feds might be doing on interest rates, you could, um, you could really make some money there, right? 41:32.734 --> 41:33.595 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think so. 41:33.755 --> 41:39.839 [SPEAKER_03]: Actually, I think what the Chinese were trying to do with Rogers was getting a real holistic view of the way the Fed thought. 41:40.439 --> 41:46.062 [SPEAKER_03]: At various points, they're pressing him for like different ways, different members of the Fed board see the issue. 41:46.123 --> 41:47.243 [SPEAKER_03]: Who disagrees with Trump? 41:47.323 --> 41:49.124 [SPEAKER_03]: Who agrees with the chairman of the Fed? 41:49.365 --> 41:53.807 [SPEAKER_03]: Which categories are these guys in what are the fault lines inside the Fed? 41:53.847 --> 41:54.468 [SPEAKER_03]: How does it think? 41:54.968 --> 42:13.556 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, much more of a macro view of the Fed, rather than trying to gain any one particular decision, although it is clear from the conversations with women, Lee, that Rogers was talking to him about interest rate deciding meetings ahead of those meetings and making predictions about what the Fed would do. 42:13.576 --> 42:19.118 [SPEAKER_03]: But again, the lawyer argues that because Rogers didn't himself know, he was just a 42:24.186 --> 42:31.209 [SPEAKER_03]: He was just speculating and that his speculation was it just as good as anybody you'd see on CNBC or in the Wall Street Journal or anywhere. 42:31.930 --> 42:35.871 [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody in the financial world speculates about what the Fed's going to do before their big meetings. 42:36.872 --> 42:39.793 [SPEAKER_03]: And so the lawyer says this was just the same as that. 42:39.853 --> 42:41.354 [SPEAKER_03]: They were just kind of shooting the. 42:41.954 --> 42:47.817 [SPEAKER_03]: the bull financially, and Rogers didn't actually turn over anything other than his own thoughts and his own insights. 42:47.937 --> 42:59.163 [SPEAKER_01]: So just to complete the loop here, he's equitted on the espionage charge, but convicted on the line to investigators charge, and then he's sentenced to federal prison. 42:59.643 --> 43:04.205 [SPEAKER_03]: Yep, this 38 months 30 years, very fairly stiff sentence. 43:04.405 --> 43:09.768 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, very long sentence for for lying to federal investigators, typically sentences are much a shorter than that. 43:10.468 --> 43:11.729 [SPEAKER_03]: His lawyer is appealing that. 43:12.129 --> 43:13.910 [SPEAKER_03]: His lawyer argues that the judge 43:14.750 --> 43:16.390 [SPEAKER_03]: sentence him on a quitted conduct. 43:16.930 --> 43:22.712 [SPEAKER_03]: What he's what the lawyer is saying is that the judge basically became convinced that Rogers wasn't back to spy. 43:23.172 --> 43:33.154 [SPEAKER_03]: And even though the jury acquitted him on that, the judge threw the book at him on the sentence, on the lying issue, because she felt that he was really a spy. 43:33.274 --> 43:35.314 [SPEAKER_03]: And so they're going to fight it. 43:35.394 --> 43:35.715 [SPEAKER_03]: We'll see. 43:35.735 --> 43:37.375 [SPEAKER_03]: He's been in prison for a long time already. 43:38.556 --> 43:39.476 [SPEAKER_03]: He's a diabetic. 43:39.917 --> 43:40.998 [SPEAKER_03]: He's getting up there in years. 43:41.178 --> 43:43.199 [SPEAKER_03]: He's not having a good experience behind bars. 43:43.239 --> 43:46.402 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm told not that anyone does, but it's been particularly difficult for him. 43:47.353 --> 43:48.534 [SPEAKER_03]: his life is clearly ruined. 43:48.654 --> 43:51.075 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, God only knows what's going to happen to his marriage. 43:51.095 --> 43:52.236 [SPEAKER_03]: He's still married to you. 43:53.036 --> 43:55.018 [SPEAKER_03]: But God only knows what'll happen to that when he gets out. 43:55.738 --> 44:03.162 [SPEAKER_03]: He's been, you know, embarrassed humiliated, you could say, by all this discussion of the nude pictures and his online sex habits and stuff. 44:03.182 --> 44:05.724 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, nobody wants that out of the public domain. 44:05.744 --> 44:09.266 [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, he's had enormous consequences for this. 44:10.346 --> 44:11.547 [SPEAKER_03]: And his lawyer says he didn't do anything 44:17.495 --> 44:20.997 [SPEAKER_02]: to go back to the start, it's a cautionary tale too. 44:21.637 --> 44:29.021 [SPEAKER_02]: And I wanted to ask whether the Fed, in particular, with the federal government in general, has learned about this. 44:29.202 --> 44:32.063 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, in the counter-intelligence field, everyone knows. 44:32.403 --> 44:37.586 [SPEAKER_02]: This is a game that the Chinese or any other opposition intelligence services play. 44:37.626 --> 44:43.970 [SPEAKER_02]: But as the Fed put out a circular to its employees, 44:44.590 --> 44:52.732 [SPEAKER_02]: using this case as an example of telling its employees to be aware of these kinds of connections with what they have. 44:53.012 --> 44:57.093 [SPEAKER_02]: They have innocent Chinese sites, dating sites, and so on. 44:57.393 --> 45:03.915 [SPEAKER_03]: They have and they've sort of up their warning level to employees inside the fed as a result of this case. 45:04.715 --> 45:20.019 [SPEAKER_03]: But there have been other cases, I mean there was an IG report from the Fed just a couple weeks ago, which said that somebody who was resigned from the Fed and was leaving for another job downloaded a whole bunch of information and apparently walked out the door with it in an inappropriate way. 45:20.119 --> 45:32.542 [SPEAKER_03]: And so there were real questions here about the Fed's ability to control the information inside the Federal Reserve and their own naivety about just how desperate foreign intelligence services are to get any scrap. 45:33.122 --> 45:33.883 [SPEAKER_03]: of what's going on in there. 45:33.923 --> 45:39.871 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, think about Rodgers is not a, you know, he's a senior guy, but he's not, you know, a member of the Fed board. 45:39.931 --> 45:42.073 [SPEAKER_03]: He's not in the room for the big decisions. 45:43.015 --> 45:48.301 [SPEAKER_03]: And yet the Chinese were willing to spend, you know, a dozen years burrowing into his personal life. 45:48.361 --> 45:50.324 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's intimate intimate way. 45:50.682 --> 45:52.223 [SPEAKER_02]: You don't play the long game. 45:52.243 --> 45:57.125 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you might call this espionage with Chinese characteristics. 45:57.646 --> 46:12.414 [SPEAKER_02]: If the script were flipped in the CIA, for example, was looking at a low-level Chinese research, and they probably would skip over him and say, this is not worth our time and money and the potential problems down the line. 46:12.754 --> 46:14.235 [SPEAKER_02]: That's a good thing for a bigger game. 46:14.575 --> 46:15.455 [SPEAKER_02]: I thought there was. 46:19.317 --> 46:23.160 [SPEAKER_01]: I talked to it's not the CIA is not there again. 46:23.620 --> 46:31.225 [SPEAKER_03]: I talked to a former CIA station chief for the piece named Ralph Goff who was a longtime multi station chief. 46:31.285 --> 46:43.093 [SPEAKER_03]: You guys might know him, but he said that the agency would never consider this operation because one Rogers didn't have access to all the stuff that they 46:43.473 --> 46:53.859 [SPEAKER_03]: that they want, they would want, and to that Roger's personal messy emotional life made him very obviously likely to be the kind of guy who's going to blow up in your face. 46:54.019 --> 46:57.741 [SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, you want to deal with people who are a little bit more rock solid than that. 46:58.141 --> 47:09.748 [SPEAKER_03]: And if you're this CIA and if you're recruiting us as far into foreign country, you're going to want to recruit people who have the information and are kind of emotionally and tactically stable and not doing all these 47:13.264 --> 47:17.449 [SPEAKER_01]: How about warnings about these Asian dating sites? 47:17.529 --> 47:19.071 [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't even know that this was a thing. 47:19.171 --> 47:22.695 [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even know that this was a thing. 47:23.196 --> 47:26.419 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a cautionary tale there for a lot of people. 47:26.439 --> 47:27.561 [SPEAKER_02]: Who's behind that? 47:28.542 --> 47:31.265 [SPEAKER_02]: Who's running the Asian dating site? 47:31.305 --> 47:32.086 [SPEAKER_02]: Look, I don't know. 47:32.106 --> 47:32.767 [SPEAKER_02]: It's good question. 47:34.028 --> 47:37.512 [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm sure Chinese intelligence is monitoring sites like that. 47:37.732 --> 47:45.860 [SPEAKER_03]: Well, yes, and look, I mean, you know, spying is an old old game and these are, it always depends on human frailty at the end, right? 47:45.900 --> 47:52.467 [SPEAKER_03]: And human motivation and our emotions and our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities and the spies prey on that. 47:52.527 --> 47:56.852 [SPEAKER_03]: You find somebody who has the information or you believe has the information you want. 47:57.373 --> 48:13.335 [SPEAKER_03]: And you find out what their weakness is and what their needs are and you feel those and you get the guy to come to your side and that's just that's the way it's always been done it probably is the way it always will be done that's certainly what happened here Roger said at trial that he was devastated they felt like he 48:13.495 --> 48:18.658 [SPEAKER_03]: It duped that he thought whom in Lee was his friend, and he was horrified to find out that he'd been betrayed. 48:19.799 --> 48:21.340 [SPEAKER_03]: But that's what spies do, right? 48:21.740 --> 48:22.781 [SPEAKER_03]: You get into your life. 48:22.841 --> 48:25.643 [SPEAKER_02]: And you don't recruit, you don't recruit happy people. 48:26.183 --> 48:27.044 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. 48:27.904 --> 48:29.325 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, a fascinating tale. 48:29.665 --> 48:31.226 [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for sharing it with us. 48:31.306 --> 48:32.827 [SPEAKER_03]: Eman is great to have you on this show. 48:32.847 --> 48:33.548 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thanks, guys. 48:33.568 --> 48:34.068 [SPEAKER_03]: Really appreciate it. 48:36.304 --> 48:37.985 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's it for this week's by-talk. 48:38.065 --> 48:42.749 [SPEAKER_02]: Be sure to check out our complete podcast archive on Apple or wherever you get your podcast. 48:42.809 --> 48:57.679 [SPEAKER_02]: And if you haven't already, do check out thespitealk.co new site on Sub-Sack, where we offer steady diet of scopes and original analyses from the intersection of intelligence, form policy, and military operations. 48:57.719 --> 48:59.000 [SPEAKER_02]: Just Google Spitealk. 48:59.540 --> 49:01.241 [SPEAKER_02]: You're quickly fined your way there. 49:02.102 --> 49:11.191 [SPEAKER_02]: This edition of the Spy Talk podcast was smoothly produced, as always, by can I, and expertly edited by Molly Hawkey for MSW Media. 49:11.932 --> 49:13.394 [SPEAKER_02]: See you around, I'm Jeff Stein. 49:13.414 --> 49:14.675 [SPEAKER_02]: Am I going to go to golf? 49:14.955 --> 49:15.816 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Karen Greenberg. 49:16.297 --> 49:17.198 [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening. 49:18.174 --> 49:26.577 [SPEAKER_00]: For more original reporting and insights like this, subscribe to SpyTalk.co on Substack and follow us on Twitter at Talk Under Score Spy. 49:27.057 --> 49:34.200 [SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed our podcast, subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 49:34.220 --> 49:42.043 [SPEAKER_00]: M-S-W-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-E-M-