SPY REPORTEDLY UNMASKED BY CHINA DEFECTOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490023-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 18, 2012
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: September 5, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490023-2
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE LOS ANGELES TIMES
5 September 1986
Spy Reportedly
Unmasked by
China Defector
By MICHAEL WINES,
Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON-A senior Chi-
nese intelligence .officer, reported
by foreign news agencies this week
to have defected to the West, is the
source who tipped the United
States last faW to the 33-year
espionage career of CIA turncoat
Larry Wu-tai Chin, according to a
government official familiar with
the case.
Yu Zhensan, once head of the
foreign affairs bureau of China's
Ministry of State Security, was
spirited to the United States "with-
in a couple of weeks, one way or
the other," of Chin's arrest last
Nov. 22, said the official, who
refused to be identified.
The source said that Yu has been
debriefed by American intelligence
officials, provided with a new iden-
tity and probably resettled else-
where since then, not necessarily
in the United States.
The official refused to explain
why Yu chose to flee China or
where he is now living. A French
report that Yu is now in Taiwan has
been denied by a government
spokesman in Taipei.
Chin, a 63-year-old retired CIA
translator and intelligence officer
at the time of his arrest, committed
suicide in his Virginia jail cell last
February, two weeks after being
convicted of spying for the Chi-
nese.
A Chinese agent since 1952, he
had access to virtually all secret
U.S. documents on China and the
Par East after 1970 and probably
gave most of them to Peking, U.S.
experts have said. One privately
described his work for the Chinese
as a "disaster" for American secu-
rity interests.
The unmasking of Chin last fall
clearly was a shock to CIA officials,
who had given him a medal for
superior service upon his 1981
retirement and later had rehired
'dim for part-time work at the
4gency, which had a shortage. of
Chinese-language translators.
Chin speculated during his trial
last December that one of his
Chinese contacts had defected to
the United States and turned him
but t U.S. officials so far have
declined to say publicly how they
Learned of his betrayal.
After Agence France-Presse and
Idle Japanese news service Kyodo
'reported Yu's defection this week,
however, an American official con-
ed that it was Yu who had
ped the CIA to Chin's activities.
Yu, said to be the son of two
ominent Chinese revolutionaries
d now in his late 30s, was one of
4e top officials in the Ministry oi
,fate Security, which was created
1983 to handle both intelligence
and counterespionage. He is among
the highest Chinese officials to
defect to the West since the Com-
munists took control of the country
in 1949.
His post reportedly gave him
wide knowledge of Chinese espio-
nage activities abroad, including
the names of Chinese agents and
suspected agents from other na-
tions working in China.
The French and Japanese news
services quoted foreign sources as
saying that Yu had fled to the West
through Hong Kong last January,
but the U.S. official indicated that
he left China well before then.
Defections by high-level Commu-
nist officials often are kept secret
by American intelligence officials
to confuse hostile intelligence ser-
vices and protect the defectors.
Rumors of Yu's flight to the
West began circulating among Chi -
nese officials about three months
ago, diplomatic sources have said,
but the Chinese government has
declined to comment on the issue.
U.S. and other diplomatic sourc-
es speculate that Yu's defection has
spurred the Chinese to retaliate
twice-in July by detaining and
expelling a New York Times corre-
spondent, John F. Burns, and last
December by arresting an Ameri-
can citizen on espionage charges.
That citizen, 67-year-old Roland
Shensu Loo of Los Angeles, was
accused of spying for Taiwan, but
the Chinese press took great pains
to link Taiwanese spying activities
to the United States. Loo's convic-
tion was announced by the Chinese
last month, and he is incarcerated
in China.
Times staff writer Jim Mann in
Peking contributed to this story.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/18: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807490023-2