Friday, August 5, 2011

non Book Review: Tiger Trap by David Wise

This is the first time I am reviewing a book I have not read. Instead my review is simply based the author's willingness to espouse the same ludicrous assertion that China conducts espionage differently from other countries by relying on the so-called grains of sand approach. This approach alleges that instead of relying on professional spies and dastardly derring-do, China collects tidbits of data from the millions of cooperative Chinese in America. Putting all the scrapes of information together and incredulously, China gets the design of the latest multihead missile system or some other equally devastating secrets.

The FBI has been claiming this theory for decades to justify their indiscriminant and racially prejudiced actions taken against Chinese Americans in America. No one has seen fit to challenge the notion that bits and pieces of information could possibly add up to the secrets the U.S. holds dear. Since J. Edgar Hoover first made this claim as a cattle prod to hit over the heads Chinese Americans, this bit of racist rant has persisted within the law enforcement community.

Whatever the merits of his book, that the author would continue to promote this myth about the Chinese way of spying calls to question as to his intelligence and integrity. Some years ago, I have written a summary of the well known bias of the FBI towards Chinese Americans.

See the book review in the Wall Street Journal for an actual review that attempts to explain the grains of sand hypothesis. The review mentioned FBI expert Paul Moore, a prominent proponent of this hypothesis. As I have pointed out in the past, Moore is the car pool buddy of Robert Hanssen, a senior FBI official and eventually convicted for leaking secrets to the USSR. Yet Moore who never smelled a rat sitting next to a real spy can readily speculate that any two ethnic Chinese talking at a cocktail party could be passing secrets.

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