Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: A quick note, this is the fourth episode of our series.
Speaker 2: If you missed the first three, we recommend going back
Speaker 2: and listening in order.
Speaker 3: Thanks. Who are we here to talk about Shoe and June?
Speaker 4: Jordan and I are in Cincinnati across the table from
Speaker 4: FBI Special Agent Bradley Hall. You've been hearing Bradley talk
Speaker 4: about Shoe over the last couple episodes, but now you're
Speaker 4: going to hear from him in a different way. You're
Speaker 4: going to hear about his own involvement in this case,
Speaker 4: which begins when ge engineered David John comes back from
Speaker 4: his trip to China, the trip where he met Shoe
Speaker 4: yen June.
Speaker 2: When we sat down with Bradley, we already knew how
Speaker 2: David had gotten on shoes radar LinkedIn, but that didn't
Speaker 2: explain how David had gotten on the FBI's radar, or,
Speaker 2: for that matter, how Shoe did, and that was something
Speaker 2: we really wanted to know. So how does this case
Speaker 2: begin for you?
Speaker 3: So when you guys flew here, I imagine you had
Speaker 3: digital tickets right right If you buy a ticket last minute,
Speaker 3: or you buy in cash, or there's a number of
Speaker 3: different traits. The airlines are required to report that to TSA.
Speaker 3: And if you ever get a ticket it has four
Speaker 3: s's on it, it means you've hit two or three
Speaker 3: of those criteria, which usually means someone's going to give
Speaker 3: you a secondary search. Well, when the ge engineering returned
Speaker 3: to the United States from his trip to China, he
Speaker 3: had these codes on his tickets. He was offered a
Speaker 3: secondary inspection.
Speaker 2: At which point they found cash on David Jones, a
Speaker 2: lot of cash sixteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: That was not well explained. And that's a starting point
Speaker 3: for this case.
Speaker 4: And so like, did Jang buy his ticket with cash
Speaker 4: or a last minute or was there something else that
Speaker 4: led to him being secondary? Is there anything we can
Speaker 4: say about that?
Speaker 3: I actually don't know the answer that question.
Speaker 2: Okay, can we talk any more about the secondary It
Speaker 2: seems like even if you had maybe known something before,
Speaker 2: is that kind of the first moment we can talk
Speaker 2: about in his case?
Speaker 3: I don't know if I get any more detail than that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So he was secondary, he did have his cash, right,
Speaker 2: it sounds like this was the moment that kind of
Speaker 2: led to everything else that we then have. Is that
Speaker 2: roughly correct?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 2: Let's just leave it at that for now, I think, okay.
Speaker 2: So Bradley was not going to tell us where this
Speaker 2: case started, and as much as we tried, we could
Speaker 2: never get anyone to tell us where this case started.
Speaker 2: We do know there were a bunch of hacks the
Speaker 2: FBI trace to the six Bureau years before, which allowed
Speaker 2: them to see some of Shu's colleagues correspondence with each other.
Speaker 2: We also know that cases like this one can start
Speaker 2: with the NSA flagging some email addressed or text or
Speaker 2: geotag or really any sort of digital foot we're leaving
Speaker 2: behind all the time, and so we think it's likely
Speaker 2: that at least one of Shoe's email addresses was flagged
Speaker 2: before he started talking with David John. So when he did,
Speaker 2: the FBI noticed, got David secondary at the airport and
Speaker 2: found the cash.
Speaker 4: And when the lead about Shoe and David came in,
Speaker 4: it landed on Bradley Hall's desk because David John worked
Speaker 4: at thee Aviation, which was headquartered in Cincinnati, and Bradley
Speaker 4: was the FBI's only counterintelligence agent there.
Speaker 3: We are spy hunters. We spy on the spies, We
Speaker 3: track the people whose job it is to not be recognized,
Speaker 3: to not be identified, to blend in. A drug dealer
Speaker 3: sells drugs, right, that's ipso facto illegal. It's very black
Speaker 3: and white. Counter Intelligence exists in the gray. These are
Speaker 3: people who are trained to blend in, who are trained
Speaker 3: to do things that look normal. So to find that
Speaker 3: piece of illegality is very, very difficult.
Speaker 4: Bradley is an intense guy. I mean we talked to
Speaker 4: him for almost six hours. We ate lunch, he didn't.
Speaker 4: We drank coffee, he didn't. We sipped from our bottles
Speaker 4: of water. He basically didn't.
Speaker 3: Let's take some morner, no finder.
Speaker 4: He's worked counterintelligence for his entire FBI career, and he
Speaker 4: chose it because someone told him it was the most
Speaker 4: challenging thing the Bureau does.
Speaker 3: If you have a fifteen a saxa in front of
Speaker 3: you saying the hardest thing that we do is kindter intelligence.
Speaker 3: That peaked my interest.
Speaker 4: But spy hunting isn't always as badass as it sounds.
Speaker 4: For instance, the first thing Bradley had to do after
Speaker 4: getting this lead was go to David Jones' employer and
Speaker 4: ask for their help.
Speaker 3: We went to Ge and said, you know, we have
Speaker 3: a concern. We by no means have a full picture,
Speaker 3: but we would like you to work with us.
Speaker 6: The bureau came in and said, you guys have a problem.
Speaker 2: This is Art Cummings, who at the time was chief
Speaker 2: security officer for all of GE's businesses.
Speaker 6: This is your problem.
Speaker 2: But this is the opportunity, the opportunity to work together.
Speaker 6: To potentially expose this intelligence officer whose job is to
Speaker 6: steal IP from American companies. That's just a beautiful operation.
Speaker 2: Beautiful for the FBI, but not necessarily for GE.
Speaker 3: A lot of companies. I would have said, thank you
Speaker 3: very much, what's the person's name, fired them, and walked
Speaker 3: away from it.
Speaker 2: Because the proposal raised serious risks. Helping an investigation that
Speaker 2: might lead to a trial would only draw attention to
Speaker 2: the fact that GE had had a security breach, which
Speaker 2: is a bad look when one of the major buyers
Speaker 2: of your jet engines is the US military.
Speaker 6: From like, guyser, are you prepared to expose this to
Speaker 6: DoD that you have billions of dollars of business with
Speaker 6: That shows that you were sloppy with their IP or
Speaker 6: with your IP buddy. That is a bad message all
Speaker 6: the way across the board.
Speaker 2: Plus, GE does a lot of business in China. Working
Speaker 2: with the FBI on a case that accused China of
Speaker 2: stealing trade secrets could jeopardize that business, but not working
Speaker 2: with the FBI with its own risks. The fact that
Speaker 2: the MSS was targeting David John meant they were after
Speaker 2: some of GE's most sensitive information.
Speaker 3: He was one of about ten to twelve engineers who
Speaker 3: are specifically on carbon fan blades and carbon fan blaid
Speaker 3: encasements on the GE engine system series.
Speaker 2: That's a very small group of people working on a
Speaker 2: very important technology.
Speaker 3: Yes, G is the only company in the world has
Speaker 3: ever commercialized this technique. Many have tried and failed, but
Speaker 3: GE is the only one. They're the crown jewel of
Speaker 3: jet engines.
Speaker 6: I'd say the loss of their most advanced commercial jet
Speaker 6: engine is a billion dollars.
Speaker 3: If they lost it, and.
Speaker 6: There's future revenue, and there's just that generation. The next
Speaker 6: generation jet engine builds on that one, and then the
Speaker 6: next one on that one, and then the next one
Speaker 6: on that one. That's real?
Speaker 2: Is that GE anymore? We tried repeatedly to talk to
Speaker 2: the company for the story, but they declined to comment
Speaker 2: each time.
Speaker 4: Ultimately, GE did decide to cooperate with the FBI.
Speaker 3: There were enough people, particularly in the C suite, who
Speaker 3: were who were open to the idea of okay, let's
Speaker 3: work with the FBI and see what we can do
Speaker 3: to protect ourselves.
Speaker 4: So Ge was in, but Bradley still had to convince
Speaker 4: one more person to get on board.
Speaker 3: David juhn oh I wanted to turn him to use
Speaker 3: him to operate against the namassas.
Speaker 4: Bradley wanted to make David his double.
Speaker 1: The double is someone who represents himself for herself as
Speaker 1: cooperating with the Foreign Intelligence Service, but actually under the
Speaker 1: control of our service, and it is a very delicate
Speaker 1: kind of operation because you have to persuade professional counterintelligence
Speaker 1: people on the other side that this is legitimate.
Speaker 4: The double agent David would help the FBI try to
Speaker 4: learn the details of who this MSS officer actually was
Speaker 4: and maybe even help catch him, and it was a
Speaker 4: good moment to try. In twenty seventeen, Donald Trump had
Speaker 4: just taken office for the first time and his administration
Speaker 4: was gung ho about going after China, so there was
Speaker 4: support at the highest levels of government for nabbing an
Speaker 4: MSS officer, but actually pulling it off would be a
Speaker 4: real hail Mary because it had literally never happened before.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of do you really think this
Speaker 3: is going to work? And your response was positive, is
Speaker 3: going to work?
Speaker 2: From Bloomberg News and iHeart podcasts, this is the Sixth Bureau.
Speaker 7: I'm Jordan Robertson and I'm Drake Bennett.
Speaker 2: On November first, twenty seventeen, David John started his day
Speaker 2: like any other day. Cup He drove to work and
Speaker 2: then a few hours later he was called into a
Speaker 2: meeting by GE Corporate Security.
Speaker 7: The engineer doesn't know exactly how much hot water he's in.
Speaker 2: This is Mike Regal, an agent who has pulled into
Speaker 2: work with Bradley on the case.
Speaker 7: He had like an interaction with you know, GE security
Speaker 7: people that was more like a general type discussion, kind
Speaker 7: of an opener.
Speaker 2: GE Security asked David about some unusual activity they'd noticed,
Speaker 2: specifically the five sensitive files he'd transferred onto his personal
Speaker 2: computer before going to China.
Speaker 3: They literally walk out, they say someone else wants to
Speaker 3: speak to.
Speaker 7: You, and then we come in. I'm sure his stress
Speaker 7: level went one hundredfold because obviously the guy's kind of
Speaker 7: in shock. It comes for like kind of like a
Speaker 7: meeting with security guys and two FBI people come walking in.
Speaker 3: It was a room meant for sixty seventy people and
Speaker 3: were sat at one tiny little corner of a table.
Speaker 3: We indicate that we are there for the same reason
Speaker 3: the G was there. These files were moved. We've learned
Speaker 3: from G that they went to China. That's a concern
Speaker 3: for us. Let's talk about it. And that's how the
Speaker 3: conversation starts.
Speaker 7: You know, you could have somebody that just unburdens himself
Speaker 7: and says, I know what you guys are here about.
Speaker 3: He didn't do that.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 4: They start by asking David about his trip to China,
Speaker 4: why he went, what he did, who he saw.
Speaker 7: You have to kind of eat this steak and small bites.
Speaker 4: David gives them a partial story.
Speaker 3: He went to a wedding, he went to a class reunion,
Speaker 3: he visited family back in the provinces, and then he
Speaker 3: flew home.
Speaker 4: He leaves out one thing his talk in Nanjing at
Speaker 4: the university. So Bradley and Mike remind him.
Speaker 3: We started talking about the fact that he had done
Speaker 3: a presentation without talking to G.
Speaker 7: His brain is thinking, let me think of a way
Speaker 7: to get out of this. Can I think of a
Speaker 7: way to get out this? Okay, let me give let
Speaker 7: me give a different version of that. I gave it talk,
Speaker 7: but it's not on important stuff.
Speaker 4: But Bradley and Mike already know exactly what GE files
Speaker 4: David took with him to China.
Speaker 3: Here's the file that you downloaded on March the twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: and here's the image that has GE proprietary on it
Speaker 3: that you cropped out when you put in your PowerPoint. Oops.
Speaker 7: They know about that. They've got that power point.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of I forgot to mentions.
Speaker 4: Then they ask him about all the cash he came
Speaker 4: back with. He lies about the amount and says it
Speaker 4: was repayment for a loan.
Speaker 3: I call it progressive truth telling. I let them tell
Speaker 3: the lie, and then I go back and I encounter
Speaker 3: it point by point. I had the bank records that
Speaker 3: showed where he'd put the sixteen thousand dollars the cash.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna show you ten ways past Sunday that I
Speaker 3: know what day you put the money in, which account
Speaker 3: of went is like, don't, don't, don't play right, just
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 7: So he's changing over time to the point where he
Speaker 7: emotionally just can't do it anymore.
Speaker 3: Like you could watch the realization wash over him that oh,
Speaker 3: this is more than just I downlois some files I
Speaker 3: shouldn't have. This is now something else.
Speaker 2: The questions keep coming and there doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: any escape. When David gets hungry, Bradley and Mike eat
Speaker 2: with him. When he has to go to the bathroom,
Speaker 2: they go with him. The walls were closing in.
Speaker 7: It's a voluntary interview, and he needs to know during
Speaker 7: a voluntary interview that it's very important that he can leave.
Speaker 7: It wasn't there, It wasn't his car being towed, and like.
Speaker 2: He couldn't drive away.
Speaker 7: Well, so there's being free to leave and having some
Speaker 7: logistical issues are two different things, right.
Speaker 2: The logistical issues Mike is referring to look something like this.
Speaker 2: While the FBI is talking to David, his phone is confiscated,
Speaker 2: his car sees from the ge parking lot, and his
Speaker 2: house is searched. Bradley hands him a phone so he
Speaker 2: can call his wife. They tell him to put her
Speaker 2: on speaker and to speak in English. David tells her
Speaker 2: not to go home.
Speaker 3: Because the FBI had just kicked in their back door.
Speaker 2: It's a short call. He hangs up, and the questioning continues.
Speaker 7: So this goes on for a long time, to the
Speaker 7: point that he he kind of I remember him breaking down.
Speaker 3: There's like a slumping of the shoulders. There's you know,
Speaker 3: an audible exhale where they go from that person who
Speaker 3: thinks they're walking out of the room that day to
Speaker 3: somebody realized that their life is fundamentally changed. We go
Speaker 3: from you know, the proper engineer who sits up with
Speaker 3: his hands on the table. We start getting to lean
Speaker 3: back for the lies, and then by the end, you know,
Speaker 3: he's slumped down in the chair right before he actually
Speaker 3: you know, starts to starts to tear up, like he
Speaker 3: started crying.
Speaker 2: And finally telling the whole story.
Speaker 3: He gives us as much as he could remember.
Speaker 2: David acknowledges that he knew something was fishy about the
Speaker 2: cash he was handed.
Speaker 3: After his talk, he eventually called it dark money. That
Speaker 3: he had known he had received dark money from someone
Speaker 3: in China, so deep down, maybe not as he was
Speaker 3: initially given the presentation, but after the fact that realization
Speaker 3: was there that he knew that it was dark money,
Speaker 3: he maybe not have known it was the MSS specifically,
Speaker 3: but at this point you'd be hard pressed to be
Speaker 3: ignorant to that type of thing happening.
Speaker 4: And yet Bradley and Mike couldn't help but empathize a
Speaker 4: little why being invited to share his expertise at this
Speaker 4: prestigious university in the country where he grew up was
Speaker 4: so appealing to David.
Speaker 3: He came from a very rural village. He literally was
Speaker 3: the son of a big farmer, like he grew up
Speaker 3: on dirt floors. He was the first person not only
Speaker 3: in his family but from his village to go to college.
Speaker 3: He was one of about ten to twelve engineers who
Speaker 3: worked specifically on carbon fan blades and carbon fan blaid encasements.
Speaker 3: This was a chance for him to brack about it.
Speaker 3: I know the secret sauce I'm one of very few
Speaker 3: people can do it. So there was an ego part to.
Speaker 7: It, right, and I understand that. I understand that motivation
Speaker 7: that this guy basically is like, I'm proud of my work.
Speaker 7: I like what I do, I'm excited about this. The
Speaker 7: MSS preyed on people that want to talk about what
Speaker 7: they do because they're proud of it. They're excited about it.
Speaker 7: They find it interesting. It's like, hey, we really like
Speaker 7: to hear about this. This sounds like great stuff. Would
Speaker 7: you like to come give a talk about this? Is
Speaker 7: that ego? Yes, I guess it kind of is, but
Speaker 7: it's human. Yeah.
Speaker 4: David was suspended without pay and eventually let go, But
Speaker 4: unemployment wasn't the worst thing he was facing. He could
Speaker 4: see possible prison time for violating expert control laws and
Speaker 4: for lying to federal agents. Or he could cooperate.
Speaker 3: You say, okay, there is a path forward, and you
Speaker 3: start to talk very gently about what that path can
Speaker 3: look like and that, hopefully at the end, will improve
Speaker 3: their position vice where it is right now, which is
Speaker 3: pretty bad. We couched it like this. You did wrong.
Speaker 3: You know you did wrong. You lied to me, you
Speaker 3: kept lying to me. You finally told me the truth,
Speaker 3: but you just set off to do this. They came
Speaker 3: to you, So how about we go get them.
Speaker 4: They told them to sleep on it. It had been
Speaker 4: a long day, a really long day.
Speaker 7: I was exhausted, you know. The interview was ours. I
Speaker 7: can't remember the exact number for some reason. Seven sticks
Speaker 7: in my brain, but it's hours long.
Speaker 3: Seven hours and forty two minutes.
Speaker 4: When it was done, Bradley and Mike drove David home
Speaker 4: because he had no car or phone.
Speaker 2: What was that ride like?
Speaker 3: Quiet?
Speaker 2: You're hearing only from Bradley and Mike here, because, as
Speaker 2: we said in the last episode, we tried really hard
Speaker 2: to talk to David John, but he wouldn't talk to us.
Speaker 2: We didn't get to hear from him directly what that
Speaker 2: day and night was like for him and how he
Speaker 2: went about weighing his options.
Speaker 4: Agreeing to be a double would be a huge risk
Speaker 4: for David. He'd be going up against the powerful intelligence
Speaker 4: apparatus of China, the country where he was born and
Speaker 4: raised and still had family. He had good reason to
Speaker 4: say no, but it was that or those potential charges
Speaker 4: and prison time, so he agreed to cooperate. The next day,
Speaker 4: he got a lawyer and signed a non prosecution agreement
Speaker 4: saying that no charges would be brought against him in
Speaker 4: return for working with the FBI. It was time to
Speaker 4: go spy hunting. With David on board, the FBI made
Speaker 4: their first move under Bradley's direction. David got back in
Speaker 4: touch with his contacts in Nanjing, but he couldn't come
Speaker 4: on too strong.
Speaker 7: You can't like get on there and say I've got
Speaker 7: a big laptop and it's ready to go, and guess
Speaker 7: what I want five million and I want it in
Speaker 7: an offshore account and here's the number. Right. He's immediately
Speaker 7: going to say, what the right, This is not for real,
Speaker 7: this is something, This is one of those FBI doors, right.
Speaker 4: Right, So they crafted a different kind of message to
Speaker 4: the person from NUAA who had first invited David to
Speaker 4: come give a talk, Chen fun.
Speaker 8: Teacher, Chen, I plan to go visit my elderly parents
Speaker 8: around the New Year after wrapping up a big project,
Speaker 8: because they aren't in the best health. After all, I
Speaker 8: likely won't have much time to left with him. I
Speaker 8: feel like I need to fulfill my familial applications. You'd
Speaker 8: be great together with old friends by then as well.
Speaker 4: Offering to visit the university during Chinese New Year was
Speaker 4: an empty offer.
Speaker 3: Chinese New Year is the single largest mass migration of
Speaker 3: people in the world. On an annual basis, everyone goes
Speaker 3: home to their own province or village or farm, et cetera,
Speaker 3: wherever they came from, which also means I can guarantee
Speaker 3: no one's going to be there for that period of
Speaker 3: time that we say that we're going because guess who's
Speaker 3: not going to be in school for Chinese New Year,
Speaker 3: Chen Fung or anyone else at any way, and it
Speaker 3: worked your.
Speaker 8: Trip back this time coincides with school holiday, most teachers
Speaker 8: and the students will pretty much be back to their hometowers.
Speaker 4: Bradley was banking on the fact that with the campus
Speaker 4: empty for vacation, chen Fung would pass off the hosting
Speaker 4: duties to someone else, someone who didn't actually have a
Speaker 4: university job, and Bradley was hoping it would be the
Speaker 4: important seeming official David had met on his trip, the
Speaker 4: man who had introduced himself as Cheu Huai. Bradley suspected
Speaker 4: he was actually an MSS officer.
Speaker 9: I discussed the list of Section chief Chu will organizer
Speaker 9: ex change this time wand bingo.
Speaker 3: I'll use this analogy. If it quacks and has webbed
Speaker 3: feet and you think it's a duck. We had feet
Speaker 3: and quacking at that point.
Speaker 4: Even though Bradley suspected Chiu Huey was his guy, he
Speaker 4: still didn't have his real name and title. But Bradley
Speaker 4: was right about him being MSS. Because of course, Chu
Speaker 4: Huai was actually shoe Yen June.
Speaker 3: I knew what he was without knowing what he was,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: But he was about to because shoe Yen June had
Speaker 4: made a key mistake before David came to China. Shue
Speaker 4: had sent him an email pretending to be Chen Fun
Speaker 4: and he had sent that email from a Gmail address,
Speaker 4: which meant the FBI could send search warrants to Google's
Speaker 4: parent company, Alphabet. Those warrant results revealed that the Gmail
Speaker 4: address was linked to an Apple iCloud account, so the
Speaker 4: FBI sent warrants to Apple too, and with those welts,
Speaker 4: Bradley came into some feathers and a bill in the
Speaker 4: form of one boring looking government document.
Speaker 3: I first thought, I wasn't sure what it was cosey
Speaker 3: as a Mandarin, but I saw a face in a
Speaker 3: military uniform, which makes it government. So we had a
Speaker 3: linguist he translated it. He called me back kind of
Speaker 3: a note of a flutter. Do you know what this is?
Speaker 3: I said, well, I don't know what it is. I'm
Speaker 3: going to guess. He says, it's better than what you're
Speaker 3: going to guess. It's the MSS officer's life from when
Speaker 3: he started college to when he joined the Communist Party,
Speaker 3: to when he joined the Ministry for Safe Security, and
Speaker 3: then every major progression in his career after that fact.
Speaker 4: It was an mss cadre form or basically shoe Yen
Speaker 4: June's resume.
Speaker 3: So I started sending communications back dev head Course saying
Speaker 3: known intelligence officer, and I got a little bit of
Speaker 3: a snarky call from a fairly high level analytical person
Speaker 3: at head Course saying, well, why are you calling this
Speaker 3: individual known into Like that's the highest level we can get.
Speaker 3: We are positive this person's intelligence saucer because I had
Speaker 3: his spy CV in front of me, and when I
Speaker 3: said that to them, there's like a pause on the
Speaker 3: call and then went you have what And it's not
Speaker 3: that it was confusion, like we know these things must exist, right,
Speaker 3: just the first time we'd ever seen it. That was
Speaker 3: the thing that took a case that was going fast
Speaker 3: and made it go light speak and why I have
Speaker 3: be able to prove he's an intelligence saucer. This was
Speaker 3: definitive proof. Again, apologies for the duck reference. We know
Speaker 3: it's a duck.
Speaker 2: Let's just take a moment here to reflect on the
Speaker 2: sloppiness of a Chinese spy relying on American tech companies
Speaker 2: Apple Google to conduct his top secret work. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's pretty wild.
Speaker 3: We can throw shade at that as well, right, Okay,
Speaker 3: he was using the most popular cell phone in the
Speaker 3: world at the time. Shocking. Did he read the forty
Speaker 3: five thousand pages that you have to sign on we
Speaker 3: get an alp A product? He didn't because he would have.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you'd have read, you know, paragraph forty five,
Speaker 3: subsection four hundred and twenty two, maybe he would have
Speaker 3: realized that.
Speaker 2: Right, and Shoe left all sorts of digital breadcrumbs. When
Speaker 2: you use your iPhone to take a photo, it captures
Speaker 2: GPS data, so the FBI was able to determine Shoe's
Speaker 2: exact location at the moment he snapped the photo of
Speaker 2: his cadre form that ended up in his iCloud account.
Speaker 2: He was in Nanjing, in the regional headquarters of the MSS,
Speaker 2: so not the best tradecraft.
Speaker 3: I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt,
Speaker 3: no question of his life. And that's a unicorn.
Speaker 2: The warrant results kept coming back. There were emails and
Speaker 2: other sensitive documents, and there was the diary that portals
Speaker 2: to Shoe's life and habits and feelings.
Speaker 10: Cards lost the seven hundred and ten to twenty New
Speaker 10: Peach Shoe twenty second through to Paris. I lost so
Speaker 10: much in the Stamach John undermind me having a leader
Speaker 10: like this, what's the point?
Speaker 2: And that was something Bradley could use. He began to
Speaker 2: build a sort of psychological profile of who Shoe was
Speaker 2: and what he would respond to, and that became a
Speaker 2: guide for how David communicated with Shoe and how they
Speaker 2: tried to get him to do what they wanted.
Speaker 3: I now knew where all his little buttons were. When
Speaker 3: you're trying very slowly to craft a message that looks
Speaker 3: and appears and feels real to them, to know that
Speaker 3: level of detail about their life and their mindset, it
Speaker 3: allows you to tweak what you put in the message
Speaker 3: on a daily basis so that we could keep him
Speaker 3: talking to our cooperator and keep the case moving forward,
Speaker 3: so that we could get to the ultimate end goal.
Speaker 2: Because Bradley wasn't just trying to talk to Shoe for
Speaker 2: his plan to work. Bradley needed to convince you to
Speaker 2: do things things he wouldn't normally do. Like, let David
Speaker 2: choose where they would meet next, which wasn't going to
Speaker 2: beat anging.
Speaker 7: Obviously, we're not going to allow the engineer to go
Speaker 7: back to China. Okay, that's you know, non starter, right,
Speaker 7: and why not because China is territory that we cannot control. Obviously,
Speaker 7: you know you couldn't go with him, and we're not
Speaker 7: certainly not going to allow him to go by himself.
Speaker 2: So while David and she were messaging back and forth,
Speaker 2: she was still under the impression that David is coming
Speaker 2: back to China for Chinese New Year, like he had said.
Speaker 2: But he's not going to China for all the reasons
Speaker 2: Mike just said. So they had to break the news
Speaker 2: that if they were going to meet, it would have
Speaker 2: to be somewhere else.
Speaker 4: But Bradley knew that was potentially a deal breaker. She
Speaker 4: would be disappointed and might just walk away, so they
Speaker 4: had to be strategic about it. Because of the diary,
Speaker 4: Bradley knew all about Shoe's work, resentments and the way
Speaker 4: he felt about his own superiors.
Speaker 10: Munch twenty sevens John rejected, you received today such an
Speaker 10: ungrateful person, has no shame. I don't will have my
Speaker 10: advantage so.
Speaker 8: They used that Hello Session chief, who unfortunately news to
Speaker 8: tell you, I can't go by for the new year.
Speaker 8: The Broughs today requested material for my work trip.
Speaker 3: To friends the big bad Boss.
Speaker 8: There are lots to be done, and he thinks he's
Speaker 8: inappropriate for a two weeks location right now. I'm very
Speaker 8: sorry about this.
Speaker 3: I can't go to China now because my boss says
Speaker 3: I have to go work on this specific.
Speaker 4: Project in France. Bradley was hoping that blaming this works
Speaker 4: trip on the boss was something she would understand and
Speaker 4: sympathize with, but he knew that wasn't enough on its own.
Speaker 4: He had taken something away David's trip to China, so
Speaker 4: now he had to give something in return, something to
Speaker 4: keep she in the game.
Speaker 8: I'm very sorry that I can come back to China
Speaker 8: for the new year and meet with you guys. I'll
Speaker 8: email you a directory of documents from a company computer
Speaker 8: per your previous instruction, please check.
Speaker 4: A directory is basically a list of all the files
Speaker 4: on your computer.
Speaker 3: And if you don't know any engineers, you've never worked
Speaker 3: with an engineer, they name them very specifically, and a
Speaker 3: lot of details contained within the titles of those files.
Speaker 3: It's because there's so many files and each is so
Speaker 3: specific to a piece of technology they're working on, et cetera,
Speaker 3: that you can glean a lot of information from.
Speaker 2: Your point of view. How big of a deal was
Speaker 2: a directory?
Speaker 3: What's huge?
Speaker 4: Ge gave Bradley a directory but altered it to remove
Speaker 4: anything proprietary. David sent it to she and it worked.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he has saying his pauses, it's working, it's working.
Speaker 3: He sent me this file. He created this directory for me.
Speaker 3: Almost no one ever does that.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: It's good. His gold is gold. We've got to work
Speaker 3: it hard.
Speaker 4: He starts peppering David with questions about his upcoming work trip.
Speaker 9: How long were you being as in March? Do you
Speaker 9: have plans to visit any other countries? I'm planning this
Speaker 9: year's foreign trouble and will love to see you overseas
Speaker 9: if it's convenient. The US isn't in my plan, so
Speaker 9: I like to see you in other countries.
Speaker 7: We would love for Ju to basically say I'll come
Speaker 7: to Cincinnati, Ohio. Sounds like a great town, right. He
Speaker 7: is not going to do that, So we have to
Speaker 7: find something that's intermediate, that's risky. But not as big
Speaker 7: a risk, right.
Speaker 2: David and Shoes start discussing European cities in France and elsewhere,
Speaker 2: But as Shoe gets closer to leaving China for the meeting,
Speaker 2: he seems to need more reassurance about his source. We
Speaker 2: chats aren't enough anymore. He wants to hear David's voice.
Speaker 2: He calls him, but David's not with Bradley and Mike.
Speaker 2: He's home with his family, so David doesn't answer.
Speaker 8: Hello, Session A Chief two.
Speaker 3: Sorry I meets your call.
Speaker 8: I was trying to put my child to sleep, just
Speaker 8: got free.
Speaker 2: Shoe responds, Do you have.
Speaker 9: A minute let's talk on the phone.
Speaker 8: How about another day? My family is sleeping.
Speaker 9: Shoe presses him, well, how about tomorrow. There's something I
Speaker 9: like to check in with you about if we meet
Speaker 9: in friends.
Speaker 2: The next morning, David messages Shoe that he can talk
Speaker 2: at eleven am. He meets up with Bradley and Mike.
Speaker 2: They decide to do the call from Bradley's car in
Speaker 2: the FBI parking lot, but David pretends he's in his
Speaker 2: car in the GE parking lot on his lunch break.
Speaker 11: This is Special Agent Regal Special Agent Bradley Hall. The
Speaker 11: date is February twenty eight.
Speaker 2: This call is a tricky thing for the FBI agents
Speaker 2: to pull off.
Speaker 11: About to start consensual telephone call, they.
Speaker 2: Need to choreograph it in real time without tipping Shoe
Speaker 2: off that they're there. So Bradley gives David specific instructions.
Speaker 3: So I've just said here, here's what we're going to do.
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you a pad of paper. I
Speaker 3: need you to write down as fast as you can
Speaker 3: what he's saying over here. I'm gonna point to what
Speaker 3: you say and we're gonna go as quick as we can.
Speaker 3: If it's something important, you need to give me a
Speaker 3: signal so that I know, because we need to keep
Speaker 3: this in natural flow. I said, it needs me natural.
Speaker 2: As you listen, you wouldn't know all of this is
Speaker 2: going on in the background. David sounds so normal. At
Speaker 2: no point does he let on that he's doing all
Speaker 2: this writing and signaling and adapting on the fly. It's
Speaker 2: really impressive.
Speaker 8: Oh, I do want to visit Belgium, Netherlands, in Germany.
Speaker 8: I would like to go check it out.
Speaker 2: David suggests a few countries in Europe where he and
Speaker 2: Sho could meet places he says he's always wanted to visit.
Speaker 8: If it works well for you, I can tell my
Speaker 8: colleage I'm visiting those places for fun, I assume, and
Speaker 8: they won't come along. I think those places may be
Speaker 8: more convenient.
Speaker 9: So so you're saying it's better to meet in Belgium,
Speaker 9: Netherlands or Germany, Right right, right, that looks too all right,
Speaker 9: Let's try our best to meet in Europe.
Speaker 3: Good good.
Speaker 9: If I need to communicate any details to you, I
Speaker 9: will send them to you through witchat.
Speaker 8: Okay, good night, Okay, goodbye, good night, goodbye, good night.
Speaker 8: Faction ship too.
Speaker 4: Sue has agreed to leave his home turf and meet
Speaker 4: David in Europe, somewhere in Europe. He believes that David
Speaker 4: is just a willing source to ge, ready to hand
Speaker 4: over whatever he needs, and so she is willing to
Speaker 4: do whatever he needs to to get the goods in
Speaker 4: this moment. That means he's willing to travel. This is
Speaker 4: a big win for the FBI.
Speaker 7: That's a huge step. That's like, that's definitely kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 7: this is a this is amazing and.
Speaker 1: I could just feel shees excitement.
Speaker 4: Here's James Olsen former chief of counterintelligence at the CIA.
Speaker 1: This is going to be the recruitment that is going
Speaker 1: to set him aside from all of his peers.
Speaker 3: This is big.
Speaker 1: This is a very big thing.
Speaker 4: There's this kind of dynamic where the MSS senior management
Speaker 4: is following us very closely, the FBI senior management is
Speaker 4: following us very closely. Like when this meeting is taking
Speaker 4: shape that there would have been an enormous amount of
Speaker 4: excitement in both places.
Speaker 1: Absolutely about the potential.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, they both are very close to a major intelligence coup.
Speaker 5: You're going head to head with the very smart people
Speaker 5: on both ends, and each side has to be smarter
Speaker 5: than the other. I could just see the jubilation with
Speaker 5: the FBI that he's coming our way.
Speaker 4: In the next episode.
Speaker 7: It's not just like a couple of dudes in suits.
Speaker 7: I mean, these are some legit looking like Seal Team
Speaker 7: six looking type dudes.
Speaker 3: So I'm bringing into a fatal funnel, into a fatal funnel,
Speaker 3: into a fatal funnel.
Speaker 2: This whole investigation seemed like it was out of a movie.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know there was going to be an
Speaker 2: escape plan.
Speaker 1: He's serving his country, I serve my country. He's a spy.
Speaker 7: I was a spy.
Speaker 1: He lived under cover.
Speaker 7: I lived under cover.
Speaker 1: He's doing what he's.
Speaker 7: Believing is right. I did what I believe was right.
Speaker 1: How are we any different?