Enemy Within the Gates
By William F. Jasper The New American, February 19, 1996
A fifth column of alien subversives is becoming a growing threat to our national security.
The arrests of Russian immigrants Nikolay and Svetlana Ogorodnikov in October 1984 on espionage charges revealed the bare tip of a potentially catastrophic iceberg. The Ogorodnikovs emigrated to Los Angeles in 1973 as Jewish refugees, but were actually agents of the Soviet KGB. From FBI agent Richard Miller, whom they suborned with sex and money, they obtained secret documents for their Moscow spymasters. According to the FBI, those documents provided the KGB with "a detailed picture of FBI and U.S. intelligence activities, techniques, and requirements." The New York Times, in an unusual display of common sense and concern for the obvious national security implications of the Ogorodnikov affair, noted on October 20, 1984, "The circumstances of the couple's entry raise questions [of] how well American security agencies are able to scrutinize tens of thousands of Soviet emigrants, mostly Jews and Armenians, who have come to the United States since the late 1960s."
Alarming Evidence
But that was more than a decade ago, before the "collapse of communism," during the dark days of the "Cold War." Surely no such antiquated concerns need disturb our serene complacency today. Right? Or are we sublime fools courting national suicide? Consider these cases which, unfortunately, are far from unique:
Michael and David Smushkevich. Immigrating to the U.S. in 1981 as refugees, these two brothers from Lithuania soon established a multi-billion-dollar, West Coast-based, global crime empire. Michael, a former scientist of the Moscow Missile Construction Institute, and David, a physician, were arrested in 1990 as the masterminds of a $1 billion medical insurance fraud scheme, reportedly the biggest health care scam in U.S. history. Using an elaborate network of hundreds of front companies and sophisticated marketing programs, the Smushkeviches generated a tidal wave of phony insurance billings and sent multitudes of unsuspecting patients to corrupt doctors who charged exorbitant rates for unnecessary and expensive tests. The brothers apparently were also involved in massive foreign currency exchange scams, drug trafficking, the Soviet émigré racket, and other criminal activities. It is interesting to note that after arriving as a "refugee," David Smushkevich was issued a Soviet passport by the Soviet consulate in San Francisco and made frequent trips to the Soviet Union. He was obviously a KGB-approved mafiosi.
Paul Lai. One of the most prominent figures in New York City's Chinatown business community, Mr. Lai served on Governor Mario Cuomo's Asian-American Advisory Committee, and was well connected to City Hall and to political figures ranging from the local school board to Congress. He has pleaded guilty to murder-conspiracy and racketeering. Another prominent Chinatown businessman and associate of Lai, Clifford Wong, was convicted in January 1995 of murder, extortion, and racketeering, and is serving a life sentence in prison. Behind their respectable fronts, Lai and Wong were, in reality, vicious crime lords who dominated Chinatown's drug and alien smuggling trade, prostitution, gambling, protection racket, and other criminal activities. Receiving almost no media attention is the fact that both men were Chinese immigrants who had strong ties to the communist regime in Beijing and who worked closely with agents of the Peoples Republic of China in their various "enterprises."
Wu Bin, Li Jing Ping, and Zhang Pinzhe. Wu Bin came to the United States from Red China in 1990 on a work visa. He soon violated his visa, however, and disappeared into the "underground economy," where he hooked up with Li Jing Ping, a "former" Red Chinese official who had established an electronics firm in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Zhang Pinzhe, a Chinese agent posing as an English student at Old Dominion University. In 1992 the trio was arrested by U.S. Customs, but not before they had shipped critical defense technology to our Chinese "friends."
Abu Nidal. In March 1993, a federal grand jury in St. Louis, Missouri indicted four Palestinian men on charges that they had planned a series of terrorist acts for the notorious Abu Nidal group, which a 1988 U.S. Defense Department report called "the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence." The men, one of whom was already in prison on death row for the murder of his daughter, were accused of plotting to kill Jews in the U.S. and to blow up the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. They were also implicated in a massive nationwide food coupon fraud ring. In October 1994, Tawfiq Musa, Loie Nijmeh, and Saij Nijmeh were sentenced to prison on federal racketeering charges.
Vyacheslav Ivankov. On June 8, 1995, the FBI arrested Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of the top bosses in the brutal Russian mafia organization in New York City. He had been sent from Russia, reportedly to oversee the burgeoning mob activity which operates from the heavily ethnic Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, known to many as "Little Odessa." The arrest was heralded as one of the triumphs of the new cooperative crime-fighting arrangement between the FBI and the KGB. However, one intelligence specialist told THE NEW AMERICAN it is doubtful that Ivankov was operating as a "free agent" without KGB approval. More likely, the notorious gangster was sacrificed to a larger purpose.
Oklahoma City. In the months since the explosion which took 169 lives in America's heartland, THE NEW AMERICAN has been pursuing an intensive investigation of the crime. The evidence we have gathered thus far (and are continuing to develop) strongly indicates that five or six Iraqis, who had come to Oklahoma under a controversial asylum program after the Persian Gulf War, were involved as co-conspirators with Timothy McVeigh in delivering the explosives-laden Ryder truck to the Murrah Building.
How Many Agents?
The above are but a few of many dramatic examples which illustrate the enormity and the deadly seriousness of our "open borders" crisis. Between 1984 and 1994, the U.S. admitted over 500,000 legal immigrants from the People's Republic of China alone. During the same period, America received more than 276,000 legal immigrants from the Soviet Union and "former" Soviet states. Hundreds of thousands more arrived from other communist tyrannies and terrorist protectorates. How many of these are true refugees, and how many are agents of destruction? Justin Yu is a reporter in New York City for the World Journal, one of the largest Chinese language daily newspapers in the United States. For years he has written about and warned of the massive campaign of espionage, penetration, and subversion by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) against the United States. "The PRC has been sending thousands of agents here for years, both as legal and illegal immigrants," Yu told THE NEW AMERICAN. "They come as students, diplomats, researchers, visiting scientists, businessmen, refugees, or are smuggled in" through numerous land or sea routes used to penetrate our porous and under-protected borders. Yu has interviewed many of these agents over the years. While many of them were captured and deported, many more succeeded in getting refugee status, or otherwise obtained legal residency. Still others remain here as illegals. Many are here as willing "agents" of the Red Chinese, while others are here under duress, faced with the prospect of brutal treatment by gangsters here and harsh retribution for their families back in China if they don't perform as ordered.
Smuggling Racket
For anyone who is willing to look, the evidence of PRC influence and control in the Chinese crime syndicates is palpably obvious, says Yu. It is particularly conspicuous in the Chinese émigré smuggling. "In five counties of Fukien Province in China, almost all the young people between the ages of 15 and 35 have been cleared out and sent to the U.S.," according to Yu. "The Public Security Bureau agents go house-to-house and tell them they must leave. They provide the young people with documents and the PRC's Border Guard boats transfer them to the large smuggler ships off shore." The alien smugglers are known among the Chinese as "snake hats," says Yu, and contract with the PRC. The current smuggling charge they assess each piece of human "cargo" is about $35,000. The Chinese peasants do not have even a fraction of that amount, naturally, so must serve as indentured slaves in America until the sum is paid. From time to time these smuggling operations are uncovered, often due more to chance than vigilance. Such was the case in June 1993, when the Golden Venture, a ship carrying nearly 300 illegal Chinese aliens from Fukien, ran aground off the coast of the New York City borough of Queens. At least ten of the passengers drowned. Similar smuggling affairs have been discovered at west-coast ports. Chinese aliens have also been apprehended in groups of 50 to 100 coming across the U.S.-Mexican border, using the same trails that hundreds of thousands of aliens from over 100 other countries use. On a recent trip along the California-Mexico frontier, retired Border Patrol Agent Bob Stille showed this reporter a small valley east of San Diego where the Border Patrol had captured a large group of aliens from Red China. After the Chinese consulate had been contacted, a Chinese attorney appeared with bail money and, as in times past, the aliens were released into his custody, pending deportation hearings. By the time the hopelessly backlogged immigration courts can schedule a hearing, the aliens have often disappeared. Or they have filed for asylum, which can buy them months -- or even years -- of delay in deportation. Many other Chinese take a much longer and more circuitous route, according to Yu. "Some go through Russia and the other countries of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and then on to France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Holland, and Italy," he explains. "Some stay there for a while or even settle in those places, or go on to Central or South America before making it to the U.S. One thing from this is very clear: They can't get through the Russian/Soviet areas without the cooperation of the Russian and Chinese governments. Those are very long, complex, and expensive routes requiring a great deal of coordination. So there is some apparent Sino-Soviet collusion involved in this." Yu recalls that one time he was attending a deportation hearing when one of the Chinese illegals asked him for assistance. "He had a green diplomatic passport, but was uneducated, couldn't speak English, and obviously wasn't a diplomat. All of his papers had been provided by the PRC." Once the hapless émigrés arrive here, they have little choice but to work at whatever jobs they can find or are assigned to, or whatever criminal activities may fit their hands. "The Chinese communists run the Chinese gangs here in the U.S.," says Yu. "The drug running, smuggling illegal aliens from China, gambling, racketeering, prostitution, you name it." A prime example of this, he points out, is the recent high-profile trial and conviction of Paul Lai. "Lai is openly pro-communist and frequently socialized with the PRC officials," notes Yu. "During the communist celebration at New York's City Hall Park on September 1, 1995, Lai stood next to the Chinese consul general under the red flag. The previous year, in September 1994, when anti-communists demonstrated against the Red celebration, he had martial arts thugs attack the demonstrators and rough them up."
Espionage Concern
As previously mentioned, over the past decade more than half a million Chinese have immigrated to the U.S. from the PRC mainland. How many thousands more have come illegally is anyone's guess. But the permanent immigrants and illegals are not the only source of concern; thousands of Chinese visitors are constantly visiting some of our most sensitive defense installations. The December 1994 Reader's Digest revealed just one of our many tragic security losses as a result of these disastrous policies:
In September 1988, China exploded a "neutron" bomb whose intense radiation can kill even the crews of heavily armored tanks. Western observers had considered the weapon beyond the reach of Chinese technology. They were right. The FBI confirmed that the Chinese government had obtained the crucial data about the weapon from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a nuclear-weapons facility outside San Francisco.
A federal investigation, reported Reader's Digest, "revealed that the Department of Energy had permitted more than 100 Chinese scientists to visit U.S. weapons laboratories in the previous two years."
Russian Mafia
Then there are the hundreds of thousands of émigrés from the Soviet Union. What kinds of security measures have been taken to screen these recent arrivals? Almost none. Which is why the Russian mafia is cutting such a ferocious swath of terror across America. Long before the Russian mafia had become a sexy media topic, the Soviet Union was deeply involved in promoting organized criminal activity in the U.S. and other Western nations. The 1980 Mariel boatlift initiated by Moscow's surrogate in Havana is a striking case in point. Genaro Perez, a defector from Castro's secret police, the DGI (which operates under the control of the Soviet KGB), revealed that the Mariel operation was part of Fidel's "Plan Bravo" to insert agents who would "incite Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and blacks" to riot and revolution. Another DGI defector, Mario Estebez Gonzalez, testified that he and about 3,000 other Cuban agents infiltrated into the U.S. among the 130,000 Marielitos. These and other defectors also revealed the Soviet-Cuban plans for expanded narco-terrorism, the use of narcotics both as a weapon to destabilize and subvert American society and to fund terrorist group operations. The communist/drug cartel/terrorist connection, which has been exposed in numerous studies and congressional hearings, was most definitively revealed in Red Cocaine, the authoritative 1990 book by national security expert Dr. Joseph D. Douglass Jr. However, Dr. Douglass' message has fallen on deaf ears, as have the warnings of many of those who have gone before him. In 1968, General Major Jan Sejna, one of the highest-ranking officials of the Communist Czechoslovak regime, defected, bringing with him detailed knowledge of the Soviet narco-terrorism plan launched in 1956. German defense analyst Hans Graf Huyn explains:
In 1956, the Soviet Union started a project studying the use of drugs as a means of destabilizing Western society. The project was organized under the auspices of the Soviet "Defense Committee" in cooperation with the KGB, the GRU, the Ministry of Health and the Soviet Academy of Sciences.... Following Directive M-220/00-0050 of 16 July by the Bulgarian state security service [KDS], over 50% of heroin trade in Europe, plus a proportion of the North American trade, was managed by KDS through its "trade organization," KINTEX, at Boulevard Antonov 66, Sofia. At KINTEX, Western mafia groups delivered heroin in exchange for firearms which were transferred to terrorist groups operating in the West.... The Cuban and Nicaraguan intelligence services, both affiliated to the KGB (GRU), organize drug operations out of Colombia into the United States.
Once the narcotics are in the U.S. they are fed into distribution systems that are dominated by criminal syndicates composed almost entirely of recent immigrants (legal and illegal) from Russia, Ukraine, Jamaica, China, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Haiti, Mexico, the Mideast, etc. What percentage of the massive drug trafficking business is run by freshly arrived foreigners? THE NEW AMERICAN asked that question of Special Agent John Dowd, who recently retired from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) after 25 years on the front lines of the drug war. Agent Dowd replied: "I'd say conservatively 90 percent." Joseph Occhipinti, the legendary DEA/INS officer who now heads the National Police Defense Foundation, concurs, saying that there's no question that the drug trade is "overwhelmingly in the hands of aliens" who have taken full advantage of our pitifully lax immigration laws. In 1973, A.H. Stanton Candlin revealed in his massively documented opus, Psycho-Chemical Warfare, the enormous Chinese communist drug offensive against the West which had begun even earlier than the Soviet effort. But America's foreign policy elites were not going to let a minor thing like that stand in the way of U.S.-Sino rapprochement. They still prefer to cover up these unpleasant facts. "Nobody [in Washington] wants to hear about this," Dr. Joseph Douglass told THE NEW AMERICAN, "They'd rather pretend it isn't happening. But you can see the unmistakable earmarkings of Soviet state operations in the drug trade and organized crime activities all around us. The KGB and GRU are still as healthy and alive as before, so the appropriate question is, why would they stop now?"
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