Bishop is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And the affidavit of FBI Special Agent Scott Freeman stops short of accusing Bishop’s unnamed paramour, a Chinese national, of being an outright spy. (In other words, if the government suspects her of being a Chinese Anna Chapman, it’s yet to charge her with espionage.) But it alleges that Bishop chatted openly with her about U.S. nuclear systems and “war plans,” and as their affair wore on, she had him checking on what the United States knew about sensitive Chinese naval systems.

Bishop allegedly met the woman identified only as Person 1, a “27-year-old female citizen of the People’s Republic of China” in the United States on a student visa, at a defense conference. By June 2011, the two had begun a relationship. So far, so unremarkable. But by June 2012, Bishop supposedly e-mailed Person 1 classified information on “existing war plans, information regarding nuclear weapons, and relations with international partners.” Unbeknownst to Bishop, he was or would soon be under physical and electronic surveillance.

The FBI’s Honolulu Division has issued a press release containing more details.

At the Atlantic Wire, meanwhile, J.K. Trotter describes the arrest of Bo Jiang (name order reversed), a researcher at NASA’s Langley Research Center whom Republican congressman Frank Wolf has labelled a Chinese spy and accused of stealing imaging software for use by the Chinese military.

On Monday evening an officer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a NASA-affiliated Chinese researcher named Bo Jiang while Jiang was onboard a China-bound passenger jet that was taxiing at Dulles International Airport, in Washington, D.C. The particulars of the arrest — an airplane about to leave, a foreign citizen — gave the arrest a cinematic feel, reminiscent of the escape scene in Argo, only in reverse. Gawker called it “a total James Bond scenario.” […]

[…] We don’t know […] if there was any kind of confusion in Jiang’s encounter with the FBI — after all, the arrest warrant indicates that Jiang cooperated with the FBI, and willingly indicated that he was in possession of computer equipment. As for the contents of what he was carrying, that’s even sketchier. At the time of his arrest, Jiang was working on aviation safety — not nuclear launch codes. It’s possible that he just wanted to bring work home while he visited his friends or family in China.

Congressman Wolf, however, isn’t giving Jiang the benefit of the doubt. He told Discovery News that “what they did here potentially could be a direct threat to our country. The Chinese have the most comprehensive spying program in Washington that has ever been. They make the KGB look like they were the junior varsity or freshman team.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: defense, espionage, honey, NASA, nuclear, spy, United States
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The charges from the probe, called “Project Honeygate,” mark the culmination of a two-part investigation that began in 2008 and included U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. attorney’s office in the northern district of Illinois. In the first phase, federal authorities charged 14 individuals for allegedly evading about $80 million in anti-dumping duties.

The latest phase of the investigation included an undercover agent, who took a role as director of procurement with a cooperating honey supplier. The resulting investigation led to two of the nation’s largest honey suppliers — Honey Holding and Groeb Farms Inc. — entering into deferred prosecution agreements with the government and paying $1 million and $2 million in fines, respectively.

[…] U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has pushed federal officials to crack down on counterfeit honey imports, said the “successful sting operation is sure to be a buzz kill for would-be honey smugglers.”

“We need a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to honey laundering,” Schumer said in a statement.

The Associated Press’ Alexa Olesen examined the debate over anti-dumping tariffs and problems associated with honey smuggling in 2010 (via Tom Hancock):

Honey-laundering is just one of many unsavory practices that have besmirched China’s vast honey industry and raised complaints from competing American beekeepers. China produces more honey than anywhere else in the world, about 300,000 metric tons (660 million pounds) a year or about 25 percent of the global total. But stocks are tainted with a potentially dangerous antibiotic and cheaper honeys are increasingly getting passed off as more expensive varieties.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seized 64 drums of Chinese honey tainted with chloramphenicol, an antibiotic, at a warehouse in Philadelphia. Last year, the agency said two Chinese honey shipments were found to contain the drug, which is approved for medical use but banned in food products because in rare cases it can cause aplastic anemia, a potentially fatal illness.

Experts say quality problems are hard to avoid in a business dominated by small manufacturers, many of whom are poor and uneducated.

[…] “If their bees got sick, the first thing in their mind is saving their bees instead of caring about the quality of honey,” said Wei, a honey dealer from Chengde in central China’s Henan province. “They can’t afford the loss of bees.”

In the more recent case, according to the AFP, ICE deputy director Daniel Ragsdale “was quick to insist there was ‘no health and safety risk’ despite some of the 4,900 barrels of seized honey being adulterated with antibiotics not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.”

Besides the dangers of direct ingestion, agricultural antibiotic use can accelerate the development of drug-resistant bacteria: see recent posts at CDT and IHT Rendezvous.

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As scientists race to investigate the sudden and inexplicable collapse of bee colonies in America and Europe, international smugglers are coming up with new and imaginative ways to get Winnie the Pooh’s favourite snack into breakfast cereals and onto supermarket shelves.

‘Honey laundering,’ the authorities call it.

As the name suggests, honey laundering involves disguising drums of the sticky stuff from China by selling it to a third party—usually a distributor in another part of the world—then re-packaging it and re-exporting it, so that its source remains unknown.

According to an investigation by the Seattle Post Intelligencer, several tons of Chinese honey have this year passed through ports in Tacoma, Washington, and Long Beach, California, after being fraudulently repackaged as the product of Russia.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: fake goods, honey, honey laundering
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Honey and thousands of other Chinese food products are showing up more and more often on dinner plates around the world. Last year, China said it exported $3.8 billion worth of food to the United States including vast quantities of apple juice, garlic, sausage casings, canned mushrooms and honey.

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Read the rest of China’s Honey Industry Shows Sour Side – Don Lee (145 words)

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Post tags: food safety, honey
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