#Us spy network how to#
#Us spy network driver#
#Us spy network full#
#Us spy network free#

According to Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General who launched the Initiative, China had designs on American scientific prowess, and was running missions against targets “like research labs and universities.” In the summer of 2019, an F.B.I. Tao was arrested under a program called the China Initiative, begun by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice in 2018 to combat Chinese espionage. As he was hauled to the car, he called out to Peng, “I’ve made such a contribution to K.U.

#Us spy network how to#

Disoriented, he hardly knew how to protest. Other agents, he said, covered the rear exits. He was awoken by the arrival of federal agents, who handcuffed him. He had been awake for three days straight, and merely glanced at his home’s disorder before retiring to bed.

#Us spy network full#

It wasn’t until Peng met him at the airport in Kansas City that he got a full account of the F.B.I. mobile to China-and didn’t get service in America. The phone he carried was Chinese-like many visitors, he hadn’t taken his U.S. “This was normal for my life,” he told me. His flight to Kansas wasn’t until the next morning, so he spent that night in the airport to save money. His bags were searched before he was released. Had he ever travelled to Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, or Syria? No. Was he travelling with cash? About sixty dollars. What was the purpose of his travel to China? To care for his mother, who in recent months had twice attempted suicide. Peng could see, through the windows, her new neighbors gathering to watch.Ī few hours later, Tao deplaned in Chicago and was greeted by two agents from the Department of Homeland Security, who diverted him for questioning. agents took everything with Chinese characters on it, including a souvenir from the prestigious Fudan University. The objects she had just unpacked-commemorative plates, neglected cacti-were removed from shelves and left in disarray sealed boxes were torn open. Her first thought was to reschedule a handyman’s visit, which, under the circumstances, would have been embarrassing. She invited them in, confident that there was some misunderstanding. They produced a search warrant, telling her only that it had something to do with her husband. agents, their cars and mobile-lab vans bottlenecked in the leafy cul-de-sac. For the past seventeen years, she had worked as an imaging technician patients often told her that she would make a good doctor.Īround nine o’clock, Peng heard a knock on the door, which she opened to find a phalanx of F.B.I. Peng had been trained as a radiologist in China, but her husband’s all-consuming work had been cause to delay her American licensure. She then returned to the family’s new home, a modest, greenish four-bedroom with brick trim in a mazy subdivision of Lawrence, Kansas, to study for her medical boards.

#Us spy network free#

While he was in the air, Peng dropped off their fourteen-year-old twins for their first day at Free State High School. Tao was the last passenger to approach the jetway, and his boarding pass was given an extra check by a muscular man in uniform. He felt lucky that he wasn’t in China, where an untrusting cabbie would likely have taken him directly to the police, who weren’t known for their forbearance.

#Us spy network driver#

To his astonishment, he told me recently, the driver agreed. Tao produced a business card and promised that he would settle his account somehow. The driver escorted him to an A.T.M., but his bank card was also declined. Tao hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to hurry, but at the destination his credit card was rejected. Tao flew from Fuzhou to Beijing, then to Tokyo’s Haneda airport, and only then realized that his connection to Chicago left from Narita airport, fifty miles away. Tao’s wife, Hong Peng, had booked his return trip to the United States, and, in the interest of thrift, had arranged an itinerary of almost unfeasible complexity. He had spent the spring and summer tending to his ailing mother in China’s interior, and visiting collaborators at Fuzhou University, on the country’s coast. Tao is short, with a high forehead and a spiky hairline that give him the cautiously inquisitive appearance of a hedgehog. In late August of 2019, Franklin Tao, a forty-seven-year-old chemistry professor at the University of Kansas, departed China with just enough time to make it home for the fall semester. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.