Spy University: How Intelligence Agencies Recruit Their Next Generation

0:00 [Music] welcome to radio who what why I'm Jeff Schekman once upon a time at the apogee of the Cold War the CIA recruited the best and the brightest from our most elite universities these universities were as someone once referred to them a nursery of spooks but today like everything else espionage has its own creative destruction today colleges and universities are still at the epicenter of espionage but it's all been impacted by globalization technology the free flow of international students and

0:46 professors and yes 9/11 it's as if the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about is now the military industrial intelligence and university complex bringing this all into bold relief is my guest Daniel Goldin Daniel Goldin want to Pulitzer Prize for his Wall Street Journal series on admission preferences to elite colleges which became the basis of his best-selling book the price of admission he's written extensively on how US companies have dodged taxes by moving their headquarters overseas and he was a 2011 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his stories about for-profit colleges exploiting veterans students and the homeless it is my pleasure to welcome Daniel Goldin here to radio who want wide to talk about spy schools how the

1:33 CIA FBI and foreign intelligence secretly exploit America's universities Daniel Goldin thanks so much for joining us my pleasure Jeff there's a long history of espionage agencies the CIA in particular being involved with universities talk a little bit first about that early history about the earliest recruitment of kind of the best and the brightest well as you mentioned you know dating back to the days of the OSS that the CIA's precursor there was heavy university involvement it was it was really kind of borne out of Yale and and they were very very close and then as you know what happened was there was a kind of giant split in the 60s and 70s

2:20 and then became a lot of hostility and a gulf between them culminating in the church committee investigation the mid-70s which found that at least 300 academics were secretly helping the CIA by providing leads and introductions and so on and and there was a backlash against that and Harvard adopted a set of guidelines that said no you know no professors or students could could undertake intelligence operations for the CIA or help them on would it help them recruit unwitting foreign students and you know that was kind of an opportunity to kind of establish academic freedom but the problem was hardly any other universities adopted the Harvard

3:06 guidelines and the CIA made clear that it wasn't going to pay any attention to them and didn't think that they you know had any validity and so since then they're there started to be a gradual reconciliation and then after 9/11 the pace really picked up and again again now universities and US intelligence are very close you know there's a lot of proliferation of intelligence community and Pentagon funding for fur universities for for curriculum for research and other things and and as a whole you know new network of ties and and as you mentioned it it's not simply that it's come full circle because globalization has made a huge difference so you know we now have about a million

3:54 foreign students and hundreds of thousands of foreign you know scientists and researchers and professors and you know some of them are here to you know gain access to sensitive research or or cultivate sources on us you know politics and economic policy but at the same time the FBI and the CIA are very interested in recruiting you know well well-connected foreign students and professors and sending them home as our agents and well in the early days you know you know and then still now the recruiting of US citizens by u.s. intelligences is over you know they say who they are the recruiting of the foreign students and professors is often you know over in clandestine and so globalization

4:41 has has changed the picture a lot but and and the other aspect of it is because the u.s. because of the change mood in the country and the financial relationships universities turn a blind eye to all this and they allow this kind of covert recruiting to go on the what extent did 9/11 play a key role in the way this has moved forward I think it played a key role because it it you know universities after that didn't want to seem unpatriotic and the view of the intelligence agencies changed you know I remember Rochester Institute of Technology they had been close to the

5:26 CIA and then it turned out in the 90s that the president you know was secretly doing work for the CIA and they kicked the CIA off campus and then after 9/11 they welcomed him back in and you know the CIA played a big role there and you know was suggesting topics for senior theses and the like so it's just and there's there's been a lot more you know funding in this area from the government there's academic centers for cybersecurity and all these kinds of programs that universities of course you know love to get funding and of course this works both ways because as you talk about foreign governments are looking at US universities as vehicles for them obtaining information as you talked

6:11 about for example in the story of Glenn Shriver well yes Shriver was that that's another aspect of it the American students and professors who go abroad depending on where they go and what they're doing are liable to be recruited by either domestic or foreign intelligence and Shriver was a student at Grand Valley State in Michigan who went on a study abroad program to China fell in love with the place learning the language went back a number of times and and after college right after college was recruited by Chinese intelligence covertly they were they were pretending to be so Shanghai - municipal government official - they paid him $70,000 to try and enter

6:58 the CIA and he was caught and imprisoned and but it's kind of worsened because he wasn't somebody with you know an amazing student or special stood out in any particular way and it's kind of an average kid so it was kind of a signal that in you know in China at least and maybe other countries American students were were vulnerable and and also foreign but foreign governments aren't just recruiting Americans when they get there they they're they're very active in the US i I tell the story in my book of a another of a Chinese graduate student named rue pong woohoo he went to went to Duke and it was working there on sensitive Pentagon funded research about

7:44 how to build an invisibility cloak to hide our weapons and and he basically you know stole this research by various means he brought in Chinese collaborators who photographed the equipment at Duke and he tricked the professor into committing to share his research in China and he started a website in China with a Duke research and Duke finally woke up and took away his key to the lab but they still gave him a doctorate and then he went back to China and with government support started a company in an institute that you know sort of compete with but Duke can use its research and today he's a billionaire two of the issues that really lie inside all of this is the degree to which universities rely so

8:30 heavily today on government contracts number one and also the degree to which universities rely on revenue from foreign students talk about both of those things well you're right I mean that they do rely heavily on federal funding and on revenue from foreign students and partly because there are other sources of revenue in some case they're drying up or not doing as well so for public universities you know many states have have cut back their their funding and for private universities you know the percentage of alumni who donate to universities has been going down so they get fewer smaller gifts so they're very increasing reliant on big gifts from individual donors on federal support for the kind of programs we're talking about and their percentage of

9:17 foreign students have gone up because they pay full tuition they don't necessarily get as much financial aid as American students and some public universities even have three tiers of tuition you know one level of tuition for in-state one level for out-of-state and a higher level for international students talk about the degree to which this is going on not just at elite institutions as we talked about the way it used to work but it's going on in colleges and universities everywhere both small colleges and large state universities yes that's I found examples of kind of intelligence activity or interest kind of pervading as you say every level the elite private schools the state universities and even a small

10:02 liberal arts college there's there's Marietta College in Ohio you know tiny little college kind of you know just in the middle America and it unexpectedly has this very bizarre partnership with a university in beijing called the university of international relations which is partly funded and overseen by china's intelligence ministry and is known in china for training china spies and and and yet Marietta sends its faculty over to teach there it takes university of international relations faculty over at Marietta it takes you I our students you know coming over for for a year or a semester to which is to study at Marietta and they have this very close relationship and the main

10:49 reason is that Marietta has a little small endowment and the uir helps it recruit full tuition paying Chinese students so there's a financial motive and the whole thing's fascinating was set up by this kind of mysterious professor at Marietta whose father was a minister in Mao tse-tung's cabinet Labor Minister very close to Mao and who it turns out from some WikiLeaks documents that came out a few years ago is also a US government informant about Xi Jinping because he knew you know he knew the Chinese president growing up they were very close friends and so this guy has ties to both the US and Chinese government's and he he set up this partnership and the other funny thing is that and this partnership extends in every way except one marianna doesn't

11:36 send students to the university of international relations because Munoz that if its graduates have that on their resume they won't be able to work for the US government which is well aware that this is China's spy school and so it sends that students out to China to a different University but you know trying to figure what exactly is going on but it seems like one motivation for the university of international relations - to send its people third for the exposure to America - to Marietta College is that first of all they probably couldn't get away with having a partnership with a high profile University somebody would notice that this school that you know was linked to Chinese intelligence and the other reason is that that this gives you don't China's future spies a sort of taste of

12:23 American culture you know the minor league baseball and you know barbecue and you know the sort of everyday American life they learn what it's like and later they can fit in better and on the other side of the educational equation it's even going on in places like Harvard's Kennedy School which has got ground zero for some of it yes I mean the Kennedy School is has a web of ties to the CIA and has had for a long time and what I discovered that's never been reported before but it's gone for many years is that the CIA places agents undercover in the Kennedy schools mid-career program which is about two-thirds foreigners and their future

13:11 foreign leaders and in business and the military and government and what happens is you know a CIA intelligence officer has been overseas you know say that their cover there is you know a diplomat like a political officer in an embassy then they're sent for training for a year to the Kennedy School and they use the same cover so you know and I looked at the old photo the Kennedy School of all the participants and somebody be listed as a political officer from an embassy and yet you know I was able to find out that they were actually in the CIA sometimes you know afterwards they acknowledge that sometimes I interviewed them and they they Fest it up sometimes you know one guy died in his obituary said you know legendary CIA agent dies but his photo roster at the Kennedy School says

13:56 you know political office or you know embassy in Madrid and so what happens is they're there and you know they're there rubbing elbows with these future foreign leaders who could become great assets for them overseas and you know these these programs are all about networking so they make contacts that the foreigner doesn't know that this person's from the CIA they think they're you know going out for a beer with somebody from the State Department how reliable has all of this been you know when we think back to what went on with respect to the OSS in the early days of the CIA in the Cold War there was a certain intelligence a certain reliability with respect to those elites that were recruited when

14:42 it's become as widespread as it is as we're talking about how reliable is the whole operation in that regard well I mean I think that in general that the success rate is pretty low but you know if you get one really successful you know agent that's that are the asset that that's a huge deal so I mean you know from the point of view of US intelligence I mean yeah a lot of the foreigners who they recruit you know may not actually help and it might be easier to to agree to provide information when you're comfortably to US campus and it's a couple of years before you're going home than it is when you actually go home to go ahead and provide information so you know I think it's a low success rate but you know it can you know you

15:28 can't have a huge success like on the other side I mean I you know that Cuba had a tremendous success with an agent who was recruited at a u.s. campus Johns Hopkins so what happened was there was a US mayor puerto rican student named margarita Velasco has a very bright young woman the daughter of a judge and law professor in puerto rico who sympathized with the Puerto Rican independence movement and it kind of sees Cuba as a model you know of that could be an island that stood up to the US and she went to Princeton wrote a you know very praising thesis about Castro was recruited by Cuban intelligence went to grad school for Johns Hopkins at Johns

16:15 Hopkins and there she recruited Ana belén Montes who was also a Puerto Rican descent who eventually rose to become the top analyst in the US government on Cuban policy and was kind of setting our Cuba policy while she was providing all sorts of classified documents about it to Cuba and she's probably the most damaging in certainly Cuban mole ever in the US government may be from any country and she was successful for a long time until she was finally caught and sent to prison for 25 years and very little had been written about Velasquez so I focused on her and she after recruiting Montes she ended up also in the US government in USAID in Latin America which was a useful place for Cuba to have her and then when Montez was arrested a lot of included guilty

17:02 such as cooperating Velasquez realized she would be named and that the jig was up and she fled to Sweden her husband was a Swedish diplomat and I tracked her down there she's teaching public high school in in in Stockholm even though she's under indictment in the US it's there's no extradition agreement for espionage between the two countries and the funny thing is I interviewed her at the principal the school where she teaches and it's a school to use as a curriculum from Cisco Systems out here in California so they're always sending students and teachers on field trips to Cisco Systems into California and the principal said to me you know it's a funny thing you know we love Marta she's a wonderful teacher but you know we we

17:50 often ask her you know would you like to go back to the u.s. joining our field trips and he says for for some reason he said she you know she never to go she never wants to chaperone on these trips she just wants to stay in Sweden of course you know I knew why she can't come back to the u.s. without being arrested for espionage to what extent are there any formal ties between the FBI the CIA and the universities and how much of it is simply the university's looking the other way well there is a kind of umbrella organization that was set up a key figure in the reconciliation between US intelligence and the universities was Graham Spanier who's now unfortunately better known for

18:36 his role in the Sandusky case but you know was president of Penn State for about 15 years and and felt he realized that you know US intelligence was kind of skulking around on campuses and he wanted to make it a more open relationship and let them go through the front door and he founded something called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board which has 20 or 25 college presidents and people from FBI and CIA and they briefed the universities on their activities on campus and in return you know the universities you know grant them access and Spanier also helped by calling lots of colleges whose presidents weren't on and shib and saying you know the CIA is

19:22 going to drop by tomorrow you know the next week and they'd like access to your campus they want to interview these professors or these students or whatever and he opened a lot of doors for the intelligence agents now the problem was you know he thought that this meant that once they went through the front door they wouldn't skulk around and go through the back door but my sense is they do both you know when it suits them they let the college know that they're coming and when it doesn't suit them they don't let the college know that they're coming on the intelligence community side how much of this effort is coordinated and well-thought-out versus how much of it is really ad hoc on the part of both the CIA in the FBI well I'd say you know it's sometimes won

20:09 and sometimes the other like I think you know the CIA has a domestic division and National Resources Division and you know if they have a intelligence officer and one of their US officers and the guys got nothing to better it better to do we might you know print up some fake business cards get it you know get a false identity and go over to a campus and see if he can strike gold with a you know foreign student or professor you know and might have it might have a target in a given you know department or field and and try that or might go to an academic conference you know nearby which be full of scientists from all countries and identify somebody interesting there and go there posing as a you know as a scientist or a businessman or a consultant or something and sidle up to somebody who might help

20:57 us intelligence and get a conversation going so you know I mean I think that's sort of part of the job description but it's not planned by the agency but on the other hand there have been major agency efforts you know so one of them I write about is when I ran before the Iranian nuclear agreement one thing that CI wanted to do to slow down Iran's develop a nuclear weapon was to get its top nuclear scientists to defect to the US you know so kind of reduced the the the key you know make inroads among the key people that were near and needed to build a bomb and so but you know it's not easy to recruit these people in Tehran so they set up academic

21:43 conferences and kind of outside Iran in the United States and in in Europe and so on secretly funded by the CIA and tailored to the research interest of whatever Iranian scientists they wanted to defect and then they would you know invite the scientists to come to the conference and you know often the guy would come and with his handlers and they would separate him from his handlers and try and talk him into defecting to the US so I mean that was a sort of academic strategy that was thought-out and expensive and in some cases successful to what extent if at all our large global multinational businesses involved in any way in these

22:30 efforts that's something you know I didn't really research and I can't you know really give you a solid answer I mean obviously for these academic conferences you know the CIA needed intermediaries you know they needed businesses and other institutions to be the ostensible you know sponsors of the conferences so in that sense they needed corporate support another thing is that there's a whole you know bunch of companies that have sprung up as CIA fronts and dealing with academia so that for example let's say the CIA is interested in having a professor briefed it on you know some important issue you

23:16 know a conflict in the Middle East or something but that they know that professor doesn't want to have on his resume that he gave a talk to the CIA you know might hurt him when he is trying to you know do research overseas or something because of the CIA's reputation so instead of the CIA staging the conference they do it through a front the most common one is central technology so then they can bring the professor in the professor can tell them all about you know what's going on in the Middle East or Latin America or whatever the specialty is and on his resume he can he can put you know I gave a speech for Central technology and you know nobody's the wiser is there any consistency into how

24:01 students young people whether they're international students even domestic students react to this today well I mean I think that it's widely divergent of course I mostly heard about the cases where where you know they express some interest or you know that those cases have blossomed into something and but I think that often first of all they don't necessarily know as I mentioned the international students that it's the CIA or the FBI recruiting them it's usually somebody you know persons posing as something something else so they may not know and they may not know for for a long time you know even when they go back to their home country they they may not necessarily know that the person or place they're providing information to is US intelligence you know they might

24:49 just think that they're you know helping out the US business or a consultant or something so so they're not necessarily you know witting participants and then you know I think it depends on you know their viewer their home country their viewer their home government and also whether the CIA or FBI has any pressure points on them like there's a professor at the University of South Florida named da Jean pong who was of interest to the FBI because he had gone to that spy university I mentioned in China which not everybody who goes there becomes a spy and he probably didn't but he'd gone there and then he was director of South Florida's Confucius Institute which

25:35 these Institutes of language and culture which are somewhat controversial instruments of Chinese soft power but they're funded and staffed by China and the FBI thinks some of their people are spies so the FBI was interested in him and he got in trouble for financial transgressions and having porn in his computer and a bunch of other things and the FBI went to him and they said you know you've got two choices you know you can lose your professorship and go to prison for your financial wrongdoing or you can you know will intercede with the university to make sure you keep your professorship but you have to spy on China and on the Confucius Institutes for us and they even asked to South Florida you know would it set up a

26:22 branch in China as a base for his spine so you know in that case I mean he certainly didn't want to help the FBI and but he really didn't have a lot of choice but to pretend to go along and finally what about the reaction from American students that are recruited or tempted to be recruited by a foreign agents well of course in the Schreiber case he went along with it I mean you know students are sort of young and impressionable and in some cases like Schriver they tend not to know how deep they're getting in so in that case Schreiber he didn't he didn't have any ideological reason for helping China I mean he needed the money they were paying him and he thought he could manipulate them he thought well I'll play Chinese intelligence I'll take

27:08 their money but I won't help them well of course that's ridiculous because once they paid you you know they own you you know they can blackmail you well you know then you can always say if you don't help us we're gonna tell you no the US authorities that you know you're you you took money from Chinese intelligence so so he just you know these students that they're young they're innocent and often there whether they're American or foreign and they're often you know out of their depth and I think probably if they get involved like this state in their later years they regret it I mean I think obviously Shriver regrets that I think margarita Velasquez the the one is now teaching in Sweden I think you know it's possible she might regret it too but you

27:54 know when you're when you're 20 years old and either you're ideologically vulnerable or you need money or you just have too much self-confidence and a taste for adventure you can you know get into things that you know and when you're more mature years you might think twice about so you know what happens is that there's a you know whenever intelligence agencies operate there's a lot of collateral damage and these students and sometimes also the professor's can be can be the victims and is it your sense this is going to continue to go on is there anything that's gonna really push back against it oh I think it'll continue to go on and probably even more intensively I mean you know now you know that the Trump

28:41 regime you know Trump is you know so littering and unpredictable I'm sure foreign countries are frantically trying to figure out what in the world is going to do next and so you know they're probably very eager to get intelligence and universities are one of the places they would go to try and find people who could who could tell them and you know for the for the US side I mean I don't think you know this is a government that cares too much about the civil liberties of foreign students or professors so um I doubt there's gonna be a lot of breaks on what the the CIA and FBI do so yes I think it'll go on and and if anything intensify Daniel Goldin his book of spy

29:28 schools the CIA FBI and foreign intelligence secretly exploit American universities Daniel I thank you so much for spending time with us here on radio who what why thanks Jeff was a great pleasure thank you thank you and thank you for listening and for joining us here on radio who watt why I hope you join us next week for another radio whoo wat why podcast I'm Jeff Scheck but if you like this podcast please feel free to share and help others find it by rating and reviewing it on iTunes you can also support this podcast and all the work we do by going to who what why dorg forward slash donate