SpyWeek
Welcome to SpyWeek, our weekly newsletter, where we look at news from the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy, and military operations.
In From the Cold: A former Chinese spy who spent more than a decade working for the secret police in his homeland has come forward to expose a little-known political security bureau that he describes as “a bit like the KGB, the Stasi, and the Gestapo.”
The 39-year-old man, who goes by Eric, gave a series of on-camera interviews to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and shared hundreds of secret documents, text and voice messages, and bank records that show the inner workings of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), its domestic security service. “I believe the public has the right to know this secret world,” Eric told the ABC.
Not only that, there’s a connection between the Chinese secret police unit Eric worked for and Elliott Broidy, a controversial former big-time fundraiser for the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. More on that below.