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Subject: U.S., China Team Up in Drug War; New Center Helps Nations

Eavesdrop on Traffickers
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U.S., China Team Up in Drug War; New Center Helps Nations Eavesdrop on
Traffickers
The Washington Post; Washington, D.C.; Oct 31, 1998; John Pomfret; Douglas
Farah; 

Sub Title: 
          [FINAL Edition]
Start Page: 
          A01
ISSN: 
          01908286

Abstract:
In a step toward joint operations to fight international crime, the United
States and China have
established a secret electronic surveillance post along China's border with
Burma to eavesdrop
on narcotics traffickers from the Golden Triangle, one of the world's
biggest sources of heroin,
Chinese and U.S. sources say.

The U.S. government has also given China several dozen jeep-like Humvee
vehicles for
narcotics interdiction in mountainous terrain along the Burmese border. In
addition, Chinese
sources said, the United States has established a secret fund that Chinese
officials can access
to run the surveillance center and fight drug trafficking.

The listening post, staffed by Chinese and U.S. agents near the Chinese
border town of Ruili in
southern Yunnan province, marks a significant step forward in a U.S.
intelligence-sharing
relationship with China that dates back to 1971. It follows on the operation
in the 1980s by the
CIA and its Chinese counterpart of listening posts in China's far-western
Xinjiang Autonomous
Region to monitor Soviet nuclear weapons tests.

Full Text:
Copyright The Washington Post Company Oct 31, 1998


In a step toward joint operations to fight international crime, the United
States and China have established
a secret electronic surveillance post along China's border with Burma to
eavesdrop on narcotics traffickers
from the Golden Triangle, one of the world's biggest sources of heroin,
Chinese and U.S. sources say.

The U.S. government has also given China several dozen jeep-like Humvee
vehicles for narcotics
interdiction in mountainous terrain along the Burmese border. In addition,
Chinese sources said, the United
States has established a secret fund that Chinese officials can access to
run the surveillance center and fight
drug trafficking.

The listening post, staffed by Chinese and U.S. agents near the Chinese
border town of Ruili in southern
Yunnan province, marks a significant step forward in a U.S.
intelligence-sharing relationship with China
that dates back to 1971. It follows on the operation in the 1980s by the CIA
and its Chinese counterpart
of listening posts in China's far-western Xinjiang Autonomous Region to
monitor Soviet nuclear weapons
tests.

The 1995 opening of the Ruili post illustrates the complexities of America's
multitracked ties with China,
which simultaneously can include negative as well as positive engagements.
While U.S. agents were
shuttling from Washington to Ruili, Yunnan's provincial capital of Kunming,
and Beijing, installing the
listening post, the countries were bickering over Taiwan, an island of 21
million people that China views as
a renegade province.

That dispute climaxed in 1996 when China lobbed missiles over Taiwanese
territory and the United States
dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups to warn China that Washington
would not tolerate an attack
on Taiwan. But those tremors did not affect the establishment of the
listening post, Chinese sources said,
adding that intelligence cooperation is insulated from what one Chinese
source called "short-term" troubles
in the relationship.

In fact, the Ruili listening post is only the most advanced of a host of new
initiatives that U.S. intelligence
and law enforcement agencies are launching with China to battle
international crime. Following the October
1997 summit in Washington between President Clinton and Chinese President
Jiang Zemin, a liaison group
for law enforcement agreed last month to draw up a list of U.S. and Chinese
criminal suspects who are
believed to be operating in each other's country.

The group also is to arrange the exchange of law enforcement personnel and
an agreement to share
evidence and harmonize judicial procedures. Officials said the group's
ultimate goal is the formulation of a
legal cooperation agreement and an extradition treaty.

A March 1998 State Department report on drug trafficking said China also has
agreed to establish a "real
time e-mail link with Washington to exchange information more rapidly on
drug trafficking and traffickers."
The link and other steps toward cooperation are important, the report said,
because "heroin from the
Golden Triangle transits China in quantities which U.S. government experts
believe significantly affect the
United States. Chinese officials note that more than 90 percent of the
heroin that flows through China
comes from Burma."

China is not simply a transit country. It has a drug problem of its own, a
sensitive issue for the Communist
Party, which rose to power in the 1940s partly on its ability to deal with
China's then-massive opium
problem. China wiped out drug addiction in the 1950s. With economic reforms
and an opening up to the
outside world in the past 20 years, drugs have returned. Heroin is now
readily available in every city;
opium dens have sprouted up in western towns. Ecstasy, known as the "head
shaking medicine," is popular
in discos in Guangzhou and Shanghai.

U.S.-China cooperation on anti-narcotics operations has not always been
easy. Chinese law enforcement
agents still smart from "Operation Goldfish," a 1988 joint counter-narcotics
operation so named because
packets of heroin were concealed inside goldfish shipped from China to a
California pet store.

In 1990, a federal judge in San Francisco granted political asylum to Wang
Zongxiao, a Chinese suspect
who was sent to the United States by China to be a government witness in the
case. The judge accepted
allegations that Wang's testimony had been coerced by Chinese authorities.
Wang was released in 1997
and remains in the United States. Subsequent attempts to work with China
were stymied by a belief in
Beijing that the United States could not be trusted, U.S. agents said.

Sources said the United States and China began serious negotiations about
the Ruili post in late 1994,
when a team from the department in China's Ministry of State Security that
deals with organized crime
traveled to the United States. Talks were held with the CIA, sources said.
In 1995, following Jiang's
approval, the station was established.

Sources said the station was initially staffed by Americans who trained
Chinese experts. It is unclear if
American agents continue to live at the station or simply fly in and out on
occasion. Sources in China said
the station focuses mainly on Burmese narcotics trafficking organizations,
which dominate much of the area
along Burma's 1,200-mile border with China.

Two U.S. sources confirmed the existence of the listening post, describing
it as small, staffed by fewer than
a dozen people, and possibly mobile.

The diminutive interceptor can be targeted to pick up communications. It is
run by the CIA, and the
information it generates is closely held. The data is not dispersed to other
U.S. law enforcement agencies,
such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to law enforcement
officials, but rather is used for
direct interdiction by the Chinese and for intelligence purposes. Both
sources described the program as
important in interdicting drugs going into China and in transit to other
countries, but also stressed the
cooperative nature of the intelligence gathering as a confidence-building
measure.

Chinese sources said the intelligence generated by the station has allowed
Chinese officers to break four
cases, each involving hauls of more than 220 pounds of heroin. In one case,
Chinese officers found 360
pounds of heroin stashed in the lining of a truck traveling from Ruili to
Kunming, a Chinese source with
knowledge of the case said.

U.S. officials said China has made strides not only in interdicting drugs,
but in going after precursor
chemicals that are shipped to South America and are crucial to manufacturing
cocaine in Peru, Bolivia and
Colombia. According to the State Department report, Chinese officials in
1997 seized 300 metric tons of
precursor chemicals intended for illegal shipment overseas, a fourfold
increase over the amount seized in
1996.

Some cooperation between China and the United States has been slowed by the
inability of the DEA to
dispatch a full-time agent to Beijing. The State Department blocked the
chosen officer's appointment
because he had had a bad relationship with a U.S. ambassador to an Asian
country several years ago,
sources said. In the interim, the DEA has assigned two agents to China
temporarily.

[Illustration]
INFO-GRAPHIC,,Brad Wye

Credit: Washington Post Foreign Service