There’s only so much oxygen in the media universe at any one time. And much of it, understandably, is being taken up now by Iraq, Iran and North Korea. But if that weren’t 
the case, you’d think there’d be a lot more attention to the fact that a prominent Republican activist and fundraiser has been arrested on suspicion of being a double-agent for the People’s Republic of China.
Katrina Leung was a prominent Southern California GOP operator and also a highly paid informant for the FBI. Over the years the Bureau paid her just less than $2 million for her information. For that entire time, however, she was actually a double-agent, providing all manner of highly classified information to the PRC.
There’s more here than just a gotcha for Republican scribblers who tried to make the 1996-1997 campaign finance scandal into a sort of Red Scare manque — though there’s plenty of that, the one really clear spy turns out to have been not just a Republican, but something of a high-roller in the club.
More importantly, Leung’s treachery seems to have profoundly compromised the entire 1996-97 investigation. The details remain sketchy. And, of course, what we’re hearing at this point comes almost entirely from the government — or, in other words, from the prosecution side. But Leung — and two of her FBI handlers who she managed to seduce — were placed at key points in the investigation, where it would have been easy to give the Chinese excellent real-time knowledge of the investigation and the ability to misdirect it.
A couple weeks ago, Joe Lieberman (who, if he can manage to raise some money, may be the Dems’ chief contender — what’s the point of being a New Dem if you can’t raise cash? and that’s coming from a New Dem…) asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Leung may have funnelled money into GOP coffers in the 1990s. Senators Leahy, Grassley, Specter then asked Orrin Hatch to open an investigation in the Senate. But Hatch responded that his committee was “too busy” to hold such hearings. Imagine that.
For all the politics, the real issue here is the FBI and its series of disasters in the field of counter-intelligence. I suspect Louis Freeh’s much blackened reputation will get several shades darker over this (security lapses he ascribed with no evidence to the Clinton White House now seem to have come from his own shop). But the problem is clearly institutional and not at all limited to his inglorious tenure. Ames, Hanssen, now this. More about this soon.
