State Department Counterintelligence: Leaks, Spies, and Lies

by Robert David Booth

  On March 28, 2003, while Keyser was involved in negotiations with senior South Korean officials, he attended a meeting with the US commander of the Pacific fleet in Korea and shortly reported to Cheng the substance of those discussions. The FBI and DS continued to monitor the relationship closely. It was not difficult to discern that Keyser was sharing information with Cheng. What would be hard to do was link his disclosures to specific identifiable US Government classified documents. It also was a matter of finding something unassailable that would stand up in a court of law. It was a matter of getting lucky too.

  One e-mail sent to Cheng caught the attention of DS and FBI when Keyser spelled out his next proposed luncheon: “It is a Spanish/Mediterranean place I mentioned that my Gonfei journalist/MSS [Li Zhebgxin] favors. Perhaps we will see him there. If so, shall I introduce you? And as what?”

  Keyser acknowledged that he was meeting and conversing with a foreign clandestine intelligence officer working under journalist cover, a very tricky business at best, even for someone as experienced as Keyser. Even worse, as we discovered by combing through the databases, Keyser had not alerted his EAP supervisors or DS of his conversation with a hostile foreign agent—clearly ignoring IC regulations. While he was willing to acknowledge his professional relationship with a suspected MSS clandestine intelligence officer to a suspected NSB clandestine intelligence officer over the unclassified e-mail system, he did not deign to advise the department’s counterintelligence office or submit a contact report.

  The FBI and DS couldn’t help but shake their collective heads. Truthfully we were getting pretty good at that neck exercise. Besides the technical coverage, the FBI and DS agents followed and filmed Keyser and Cheng sharing many quiet lunches alone.

  E-mail communication between Keyser and Cheng in June 2003 indicated that the two were planning a private rendezvous in Taiwan without the knowledge of Keyser’s supervisors, office colleagues, or wife. On June 28, Keyser sent an e-mail to Cheng via his office computer in which he cryptically said, “I look forward to hearing from you personally when you take me on the grand Plan A or Plan B around Taipei.” Additional e-mail queries revealed that Keyser researched flight information from Tokyo to Taipei and reviewed the availability of hotel rooms in Taiwan for September.

  With increasing alarm, the FBI and DS agents reviewed Keyser’s e-mail communication with Cheng as they prepared for their Taiwan vacation. On August 30, Keyser informed Cheng that he was “glad that the logistical plan seems OK. I’ll try hard for 1830 and I’ll let you know if something prevents—also let you know when I’m in striking distance.”

  The DS agents had already alerted their FBI colleagues that Keyser was scheduled to depart the United States for a scheduled, official trip to Qing Dao in mainland China where he would represent the department at an international forum and that Keyser would be taking a department laptop computer with him on the trip to assist with his presentations. According to department rules, the information on the computer could contain only unclassified data on the hard drive, but given Keyser’s apparent disregard for security regulations, anything was possible. Even more disturbing, the FBI confirmed that, along with his department computer, Keyser would be taking his personal laptop to China and probably Taiwan as well. Despite the counterintelligence concerns, there was nothing DS could do to prevent the trip without tipping its hand.

  On the afternoon of August 30, as Keyser was preparing to travel to the PRC, Cheng left Dulles Airport for a flight to Taiwan via Los Angeles. On August 31, Keyser flew from Washington to the PRC and arrived in Qing Dao on September 1. That same day he sent a message to Cheng, now relaxing in Taiwan and visiting her supervisors at NSB headquarters: “Since I seemed to have navigated the most [complex] part of the journey successfully, I’m encouraged that the departure plan will work equally smoothly—on Tuesday from Qingdao to Seoul to Tokyo. If all that works, I’ll continue on the rest of the journey as planned. If something happens, I’ll do my best to let you know by cell phone and internet e-mail.” The message was sent via e-mail over an unsecure system from China and handled by one of only three servers in the PRC authorized by the Beijing government to handle e-mail communications. One had to wonder what the MSS may have made of the contents of the message. The MSS’s dossier on Keyser, started in 1976, was growing in leaps and bounds.

  Contemporaneously with his communication with Cheng, Keyser sent an unclassified e-mail to his immediate superior in Washington, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly: “Right now, I plan to stay in Japan the remainder of the week, but to be on annual leave. Through brilliant timing, I hit a period when virtually everyone I would have wanted to see has dispersed to the four corners of the globe, from Washington to Seoul to Beijing. As it happens, I have some personal friends in Japan I’ve wanted to catch up with, including an old friend whose wife passed away in June following a battle with leukemia. Back in the office Monday morning Sept. 8.”

  Kelly replied that Keyser’s annual leave request had been approved. When Assistant Secretary Kelly was subsequently interviewed by the FBI concerning Keyser’s clandestine travel to Taiwan, he stated that had Keyser requested permission to travel to Taiwan for either personal or official reasons he would have unhesitatingly denied any such request for a variety of regional political reasons. Without fanfare or official notification, Keyser departed on a flight to Taipei the following day.

  Keyser’s smokescreen was elaborately constructed. What most disturbed the investigators were the two laptops that Keyser took to both Chinas. In an e-mail on August 30 to one of his department colleagues, he stated that he was bringing “a laptop and accessories” to Qing Dao to help him with his work. What concerned the investigators was the possibility the laptops contained classified information and, if so, that he might share the contents with NSB officials while vacationing in Taiwan with Cheng.

  The investigators later discovered their fears at the time were justified. FBI forensic analysts confirmed that a floppy disk found in Keyser’s residence held “34 files, nine of which are classified data. All 34 files on the floppy disks show a ‘date created’ and ‘date last modified’ of August 29, 2003—two days before the defendant departed the United States for China—indicating that he downloaded all of the files onto the floppy to take with him overseas. Moreover, 9 of the classified files on the floppy disk show a ‘date last accessed’ of September 1, 2003 and all 9 of those files have corresponding ‘link’ files on the hard drive of the laptop, indicating that they were accessed from the laptop on September 1, when he was in China.”

  Given the sensitivities of the case, the FBI decided that none of the US counterintelligence assets in the PRC, Taiwan, or Japan would be alerted to Keyser’s presence in Qing Dao as there was probably nothing they could do to further the investigation. Keyser was in the PRC, headed to Taiwan, and completely outside the reach of DS and FBI investigators.

  Keyser was a model diplomat in the PRC, all the while advancing US foreign policy and debating issues with his Chinese counterparts. At the conclusion of his trip to Qing Dao, he returned to Beijing, flew to Korea, and eventually caught a flight to Japan. He had now returned to the DS–FBI’s radar scope.

  According to subsequent statements provided to the FBI on February 14, 2006, Keyser averred he did not associate with anyone other than Cheng while in Taiwan. However, his subsequent polygraph examination indicated deception on the point. When he was asked if he had illegally provided classified information to any foreign intelligence service while in Taiwan, the needles on the machine also indicated two points of deception. The FBI also questioned Keyser:

  Agent: “[W]ho did you meet with when you went to . . . Taiwan?”

  Keyser: “Just Isabelle Cheng.”

  Agent: “[Are] you sure that Isabelle Cheng is the only person you met with?”

  Keyser: “I’m certain.”

  Agent: “The only person you decided to see in Taiwan in 2003 was a known intelligence officer of the NSB.
Is that what you’re saying to us today?”

  Keyser: “The only person I saw when I was there was Isabelle Cheng.”

  According to his testimony, Keyser only went to Taiwan to spend three days with Cheng. Of course, neither his wife nor supervisor was privy to his visit. He asserted that he and Cheng spent the time in Taiwan sightseeing and that he had contact only with “clerks, shopkeepers” and similar individuals and denied any meetings with Taiwanese officials.

  A review of Keyser’s credit card transactions for the period of September 3–5, 2003, in Taipei reflected one purchase for $570.01 at the Christian Dior II Taipei and a debit of $333.19 at the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei hotel. Apparently Keyser incurred no other expenses during his three-day stay in Taipei unless he paid for his meals, transportation, and other tourist incidentals with wads of cash that he brought with him from Japan. That scenario seems unlikely.

  To further disguise his travel to Taiwan, when Keyser submitted an official travel voucher for repayment for expenses, he stated that he took annual leave because he “found prospective interlocutors to be out of town.” There was no claim of any expenses for the Taiwan leg of his travel on his department travel voucher.

  Eventually at the direction of DS/CI, the RSO at the American embassy in Tokyo reviewed the Japanese immigration arrival and departure records and confirmed that Keyser arrived in Japan on September 2, departed the following day aboard China Airlines, Taiwan’s national carrier, returning to Narita International Airport in Tokyo aboard China Airlines on September 6 before boarding the nonstop United Airlines flight to Dulles International Airport. The Japanese government kept incredibly meticulous records as I had initially discovered when assigned there with Keyser in the late 1970s.

  DS agents were taken aback when they belatedly discovered that Keyser did not hide his trip to Taiwan from the US embassy staff in Tokyo. Douglas Morris, assigned to Tokyo in September 2003, told me in July 2007 that everybody at the embassy was aware that Keyser traveled to Taiwan that September. They were all stunned to hear that he had attempted to cover up his trip to Taiwan when he returned to the United States. Maria Malvines, another officer assigned to the US embassy in September 2003, also confirmed in June 2007 that she and other embassy staffers were fully aware of Keyser’s trip to Taiwan. She explained to me, following a class I was teaching at FSI, that the trip was not secret within the embassy community and she could not understand why he had lied on his US Customs form. Not surprising, given that they didn’t know the true nature of Keyser’s interest in traveling to Taipei.

  While Keyser would later claim that he was not required to report his 2003 personal travel to Taiwan, one has to wonder why he had previously disclosed personal travel to France in April 2000 and Ireland in 2003 while omitting Taiwan on his official department security forms. Had he simply forgotten about the three-day stopover in Taiwan? Given the elaborate preparations and deceptions preceding the travel, the excuse was not plausible.

  Once back in Washington, Keyser’s personal and professional relationship with Cheng accelerated. On October 3, 2003, e-mail communications between Keyser and Cheng were monitored as they made arrangements to meet at Les Halles restaurant at 12:30 for lunch. A review by investigators of Keyser’s official electronic calendar revealed that he listed a meeting at Les Halles with a “Juergen Probst.” The FBI would similarly monitor a luncheon engagement between the two on November 26, 2003, while Keyser’s calendar had him dining with a “John Metcalf.” Keyser’s attempt to disguise Cheng’s identity on his official calendar actually started on January 16, 2003, with a luncheon with “Ranade” and would continue until June 3, 2004, when he had a lunch with Cheng that was recorded in his calendar as “Ian Patterson.” These luncheon engagements were closely monitored by the FBI.

  When Keyser had lunch with General Huang on November 14, 2003, he duly recorded the event. Why conceal private lunches with Cheng but not General Huang? On May 22, 2004, Keyser also listed another meeting with General Huang on his calendar. One of the questions the FBI asked the DS investigators was just how Keyser managed his other duties given that fact that the NSB officials seemed to monopolize his time. There were smiles all around as we speculated that he must have taken a lot of work home with him. The little joke turned out to be on us when we later discovered how much work product he, in fact, kept at home.

  The relationship between the senior State Department officer and the young TECRO official began to evolve in a disturbing manner. In December 2003, FBI agents spotted what were described as “physical intimacies” between Keyser and Cheng during a luncheon at a downtown Washington restaurant. Prior to this development, there was nothing recorded or observed that suggested the two were involved in an intimate relationship. But we now feared that Keyser could be induced to engage in pillow talk that was above and beyond public lunch talk. A man supposed to protect secrets was most vulnerable when distracted by the presence of an attractive woman trained in the fine art of eliciting information. We suspected that Cheng had been trained in the fine art of seduction too.

  When General Huang, Isabelle Cheng, and Donald Keyser lunched together in early December, Keyser provided sensitive government information about Chinese premier Wen Jiabao as well as Keyser’s analysis of the military options being considered by the Beijing government should Taiwan initiate specific international or internal policies. The Justice Department would be able to confirm the contents of what Keyser relayed to General Huang and Cheng when it reviewed a secret NSB telegram written by Cheng and transmitted on December 5, 2003, from TECRO to NSB headquarters in Taipei. The NSB officials in Taiwan deemed the information so sensitive as to require special safeguarding within their own headquarters.

  Earlier Keyser was again observed by the FBI at another Washington restaurant on November 14 in the company of Cheng and General Huang. Following a meeting on November 25, Cheng returned to TECRO and composed a secret cable for NSB headquarters in which she listed the main talking points with Keyser. Cheng reported that “Donald Keyser, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Affairs of the US, continued to explain the recent diplomatic behavior of the PRC.” At the time of the luncheons, the federal investigators strongly suspected, but could not know, that following each of the NSB–Keyser meetings, Cheng prepared a written synopsis for NSB headquarters.

  On December 19, 2003, FBI agents observed Keyser picking up Cheng from TECRO in his personal vehicle and driving to an out-of-the way restaurant in Maryland. Following a two-hour dinner, Keyser drove Cheng to her apartment in Maryland. According to the FBI logs, Keyser stayed in the residence from 10:58 until 11:45. The following day back in headquarters, the DS and FBI investigative team speculated as to what happened during those forty-seven minutes behind closed doors. They guessed correctly because in 2006 Keyser admitted that while inside the residence Cheng removed her clothes and he touched her all over her naked body but did not engage in any sex act.

  Could it get worse? Yes, it did. Possibly most galling to the investigators was the discovery of an e-mail that Keyser had sent to Cheng in which he identified a former department employee as a possible recruitment target for the NSB. In a May 8, 2004, e-mail to Cheng, Keyser said, “This is the kind of person who is ripe for recruitment by careful, methodical, serious intelligence agencies. In the days of the Cold War, Soviet and East German intelligence officers were quite practiced at identifying people like this, people who did not wake up one day and say ‘I want to be a traitor’ but people whose relatively minor weaknesses and ego gratification needs made them potential targets.”

  Keyser also added that the former department official was disgruntled and had “spent a career in the foreign service not being taken seriously.” While the name of the former department employee was redacted in the court record, his identity was announced in the press. John Tkacik Jr. had previously worked in INR, but he was working for the Heritage Foundation as a senior research fellow at the time of the 2006 co
urt proceedings. When contacted by the press, Tkacik expressed outrage over Keyser’s actions and said that he “fervently hope[d] they throw the book at him.”

  Was Keyser pimping for the NSB? He claimed during the FBI-managed debriefings that he was merely trying to “tell Cheng that officials at the Department of State knew the subject official [Mr. Tkacik] was turning against them [i.e., the State Department],” and he was simply trying to let Cheng know that department officials knew.

  Keyser arranged for another get-together on May 22, 2004, so that Cheng, General Huang, and he could sit down and have an in-depth exchange of opinions regarding trilateral relations among the US, China, and Taiwan. In another secret cable that Cheng authored inside TECRO and sent to Taipei, she analyzed the contents of Keyser’s luncheon information to include “written materials for Huang’s reference.” It appeared that Keyser was not holding anything back from his friends.