https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/chinese-gate-crashers-military-bases/2023/09/04/id/1133152/By Charlie McCarthy | Monday, 04 September 2023 01:40 PM EDT
As many as 100 incidents described as potential espionage threats by Chinese nationals have occurred at U.S. military bases and other sensitive sites in recent years, according to government officials.
Chinese nationals, who at times posed as tourists, were found crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico, and appeared to be scuba divers swimming in murky waters near a U.S. government rocket-launch site in Florida, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The overall incidents have involved people called gate-crashers because of their attempts to get onto U.S. military bases and other installations without proper authorization.
The individuals typically are Chinese nationals pressed into service and required to report back to Beijing, U.S. officials said. The trespassers use what appears to be scripted language when confronted by security guards at the bases, according to officials familiar with the tactics.
The incidents appear designed to test security practices at U.S. military installations and other federal sites.
The incidents spiked after a Chinese balloon overflew the U.S. earlier this year carrying what officials said was surveillance equipment, the Journal reported.
The news outlet said that the Defense Department, the FBI and other agencies held a review last year to try to limit the incidents.
The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., challenged the U.S. description of the incidents.
"The relevant claims are purely ill-intentioned fabrications," said Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson with the embassy, the Journal reported. "We urge the relevant U.S. officials to abandon the Cold War mentality, stop groundless accusations, and do more things that are conducive to enhancing mutual trust between the two countries and friendship between the two peoples."
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., said Congress might look at legislation to prevent future incidents because most trespassing laws are state and local, and not federal.
"We need to work closely with our state and local partners to train them and equip them," said Crow, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, the Journal reported. "Right now, they don’t know how to deal with it."
The incidents have ranged from the benign — people seeking the nearest fast-food restaurant, which Google Maps shows as being on a base — to ones more troubling.
In a recent incident, a group of Chinese nationals claimed they were tourists and had reservations at a commercial hotel on a base at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. The trespassers tried to push past guards.
"The advantage the Chinese have is they are willing to throw people at collection in large numbers," said Emily Harding, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former deputy staff director at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Journal reported.
"If a few of them get caught, it will be very difficult for the U.S. government to prove anything beyond trespassing, and those who don’t get caught are likely to collect something useful."
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
