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| Espionage: Sex, Spies and the âParlor Maidâ |
| 2003-04-14 |
| EFL An accused Chinese double agent who was having long-term sexual affairs with two veteran FBI counterintelligence agents was a key source for a special Justice Department campaign-finance task force, NEWSWEEK has learned. Set up six years ago in part to investigate an alleged Chinese plot to influence U.S. lawmakers, the task force has since disbanded: it was never able to prove the Chinese government was behind millions of dollars in suspect campaign contributions to former president Bill Clinton and members of Congress during the 1990s. But last weekâs arrest of Los Angeles businesswoman Katrina Leung — an accused spy whose code name was Parlor Maid — has prompted an intense FBI review to determine if she compromised highly sensitive counterintelligence investigations, including the campaign-finance probe. Leung, sources say, was the task forceâs chief source on prime target Ted Sioeng, a suspected Chinese âagent of influenceâ whose family and businesses contributed $250,000 to the Democratic Party in 1996 and an additional $100,000 to a California GOP Senate candidate. Leung and Sioeng (who sat next to Al Gore at his Buddhist-temple fund-raiser that year in Los Angeles) were âclose friends,â one source says. Task-force prosecutors hoped to use Leung to lure Sioeng back into the United States in the spring of 1997. But the ruse failedâapparently because Sioeng got suspiciousâand the case collapsed. Now FBI officials want to know if Leung sabotaged the probe and was actually protecting Sioeng. It just keeps getting better. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 Thanks, Janet Reno, for nothing |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-04-14 18:06:10 |