Thanks very much to David Wise for his time and interesting book, “Tiger Trap” – and to Bev for putting this together.

One correction, though is that this is my website:

http://www.theatlantic.com/steve-clemons/

Really appreciate the good comments and questions from folks. And for those interested, my Twitter address is @SCClemons.

All best.

David — when I commented on your book in the opener above and at The Atlantic, I intimated that Tiger Trap and Parlor Maid were essentially hackers — just of a different sort. That said, have you looked at the issue of hackers from China or more broadly national security hackers more broadly?

I imagine that with the rise of China — and the sense of concern the US has about it’s place in the world — that this topic will be around for a long time, so hope that you will get another chance for ‘more space.’

That would have been fun for me. I found these cases so intriguing — and I think they reveal a great deal about China’s appetite, innovation, and patience.

You are nice – but I didn’t know I was heading out to Kabul until a few days ago — but wanted to keep my commitment to the FDL Book Salon — and was very interested in this book.

David Wise’s book reads like a thriller — and most discussions of this material are so dry, less well researched, and show fewer patterns. I really did enjoy the book.

No — haven’t. Should I?

I happen to be in Dubai at the moment and am on my way to Kabul with the spouse of the Washington Post’s Dana Priest. Priest co-authored the important series on America’s sprawling national intelligence establishment – suggesting that it really is too big and too self-propelled to be manageable. Do you agree with Dana Priest’s general characterization of the intelligence industry – and if so, does this present an even more penetrable opportunity for China and others spying on the US?

Interesting point — all that said, I know some extremely talented thoughtful intelligence personnel working for the US. I think that the real issue is strategy, focused, patient purpose — and this is what comes out about China’s efforts in ‘Tiger Trap.’

David — do the FBI and CIA see you as a friend or foe?

Reading David Wise’s book, it’s tough to face the fact that Smiley’s characters — and those of a more sophisticated intelligence era — bear much resemblance to those US agents depicted in David Wise’s book. Your point about backbearings is really interesting, and at some level, I’m sure that has gone on inside the FBI and CIA after these cases emerged and were internally sorted out. David Wise might want to add more.

Your point is an important one.

fascinating. how would you compare the spycraft that China put forward through its agents with what you wrote about and researched on Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames?

For those following this, David Wise authored “Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI’s Robert Hanssen Betrayed America” as well as “Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million”

exactly.

good question.

fascinating — the circumstantial stuff is obviously disconcerting.

Thanks — I’m not sure that would be a true statement during the Cold War. We spent considerable time and effort penetrating, in quite creative ways, the inner circle of the Soviet leadership. But China may be tougher — would like to know David’s thoughts.

Nice to have you join us.

I think it enables you to edit/fix anything that you post

Today on my page at The Atlantic, I shared with folks some historical context that there was a time when China-sourced funds may have been flowing through political channels. California Lt. Governor Leo McCarthy’s campaign was one of the first of these — and then much of this blew up during President Clinton’s tenure…but there was also a major Chinese-American donor who sat next to George H.W. Bush at a fundraiser and raised a lot of eyebrows. Turned out he was a deadbeat dad and owes his wife a lot in child support. In your research did you run into any of these efforts to penetrate the political set?

lol – probably so. Good line. It seems to me that your expertise in spy lore has long been needed on the Asia side of the equation. I think that one of the interesting things about this book is that it broke out of the more dominant Transatlantic Spy Trap.

If you can go in to it further — what are your real feelings about Wen Ho Lee. In the book, the fact that he intersected so directly with the real players in your book struck me as a pretty big indictment.