The Scientist and the Spy

by Mara Hvistendahl

  In the FBI’s view, employees were a common vector through which trade secrets leaked out to China. The bureau regularly briefed corporate security officers on how to detect “insider threats” in their companies, and the criteria provided were quite broad. Some purported warning signs were obvious, like employees who unnecessarily copied proprietary information or seemed overly interested in spy work—what the FBI calls James Bond Wannabes. But other behaviors potentially meant nothing. Corporate security officers were told to look out for employees who had marital problems and money issues, and were vulnerable to flattery. Viewed in this light, the smug guy at the water cooler who was going through a divorce suddenly became a potential industrial spy—especially if he was from China.

  In a number of cases, the insider threat approach panned out, and a Chinese or Chinese-American employee of the victim company had ended up convicted of an offense. Greg Chung, the Boeing engineer who was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison for stealing space shuttle secrets, was an insider. So was Xiang Dong Yu, a product engineer at Ford who got nearly six years in prison for trying to transport four thousand sensitive documents to China, and Ye Fei and Zhong Ming, software engineers who were arrested at San Francisco International Airport while attempting to leave the country with microprocessor design trade secrets belonging to several of their former employers, including Sun Microsystems. But there were other cases in which the investigation of an insider suspect was seriously botched. Was Lily Cheng an accomplice in a federal crime? Was she a person who had gotten unwittingly mixed up in illegal activity and who might be turned into a potential informant? Or was she what she purported to be: a consultant who was helping DBN license seeds?

  In the months that followed, the FBI subpoenaed Stine for an image of Cheng’s company-issued computer and secured a court order to get subscriber information and subject line headings from her Google, Hotmail, and MSN accounts. In an affidavit attached to one warrant application, Mark mentioned in support of probable cause the fact that Robert and Cheng spoke Mandarin together—an unremarkable detail that, because of the focus on Operation Purple Maze, morphed into a marker of guilt.

  ELEVEN

  WINTER 2011–2012

  After a winter spent with his family in Florida, Robert traveled to Iowa to join a Chinese agricultural delegation led by Xi Jinping. Wang Lei flew in from Beijing to join him. The timing was fortuitous for DBN and Kings Nower. As China’s vice president, Xi was widely expected to be tapped to be the country’s next top leader. He had gotten his start as a deputy party secretary in Hebei, a rural county in eastern China that happened to be Iowa’s sister province, and he had long-standing ties to the state. On his first trip to Iowa in 1985, Xi had stayed with a couple in a small farming town, sleeping in their son’s bedroom beneath football-themed wallpaper. As he toured agricultural sites on that early visit, he met a young governor named Terry Branstad. Now, after stints in finance and education, Branstad was again governor, and Iowa’s economy relied on the export of vast quantities of pork, corn, and soybeans to China. State officials spared no expense in welcoming Xi on his return visit. That meant that any businesspeople who accompanied the anointed leader would get prime access to Iowa’s agricultural facilities.

  Robert tagged along as the delegation toured a Pioneer research facility, using the name tag of another man in the group, Wu Hougang. In Robert’s somewhat dubious account of this event, tour organizers handed out name tags as participants filed off the bus, paying no attention to who got what name. Whatever the story, the real Wu was chairman of a fishery company in northeastern China. As a prominent businessman, his image could easily be found online. He had jolly features, with round cheeks, a broad nose, and the sort of waistline that in China is called laoban du, or “boss belly.” Even in rural Iowa, where locals often had trouble telling East Asian people apart, it was easy to ascertain that he looked nothing like the small-framed, professorial Robert. But it did not occur to Robert that anyone would actually check.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY, while Wang Lei was elsewhere, Robert slipped into the cornerstone event of Xi’s visit: a symposium at the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates, held in the stately former Des Moines Public Library on the bank of the Des Moines River. A relic from an era when government buildings were adorned with lavish touches rather than furnished for perfunctory use, the library had recently been given a $30 million overhaul, thanks in part to funding from Monsanto.

  Robert strode through heavy mahogany doors into an atrium decorated with gold-leafed molding. Above the marble staircase was an engraving that read FOOD IS THE MORAL RIGHT OF ALL WHO ARE BORN INTO THIS WORLD. Every October, researchers from around the world gathered in the hall for the awarding of the $250,000 World Food Prize. The brainchild of Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, the prize was intended to recognize those who made outstanding contributions to food security. In recent years, though, the World Food Prize Foundation had cultivated close ties with both industry and China. The previous October, Monsanto CEO and president Hugh Grant and DuPont executive vice president James Borel were featured speakers at the conference accompanying the prize. They were joined by executives from Walmart and Kraft. The foundation now treated Xi with similar reverence. Staff were preparing to memorialize his visit by hanging a large bronze plaque in the hall’s ballroom. In the years since Borlaug had envisaged the prize, food security had become big business.

  Robert took a seat in the ballroom. Elsewhere in the audience were the U.S. agriculture secretary, the Chinese agriculture minister, and Governor Terry Branstad. Eventually Xi stepped up to the podium. He talked of deepening cooperation between the United States and China by jointly conducting research and working together to improve food security. Afterward the Chinese side agreed to buy $4.3 billion worth of U.S. soybeans—an agreement that a USDA official called a “momentous one for U.S.-China agricultural relations.”

  Although the talk that day was all of cooperation, the truth was more complicated. In his State of the Union address a few weeks earlier, President Obama had signaled a desire to get tough on China for intellectual property theft. “I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules,” he said. And yet the United States and China were locked in an awkward embrace from which neither side could easily extricate itself. It wasn’t just China’s purchase of vast amounts of corn and soy, which helped the American economy. The United States also depended on Chinese manufacturers, who made everything from iPhones to auto parts; on a steady flow of Chinese students, who often paid full tuition and helped keep U.S. universities afloat; and on Chinese scientists, who staffed American labs. For each of these relationships, in turn, there was a flip side in China. American grains fed China cheaply and had done so since the early 1970s, when one of the first products that Nixon arranged to be exported to China was corn. The students trained by American universities returned to China better equipped to contribute to economic growth there. And while many of the overseas Chinese working in American labs preferred a Western working environment, a portion could be lured back to lead labs in China. If the two countries were on the brink of a technological cold war, it was a conflict with no clear winner. The United States and China had become, in essence, frenemies.

  As Robert listened in the ballroom, wearing another man’s name tag, his fate was starting to shift. He felt at ease in America, and that ease, he thought, made him good at his job, even when what was asked of him was illegal. On the phone one day, the Stine consultant Lily Cheng complimented him on his ability to understand both sides—both the United States and China. His family connections might have gotten him hired, but he had proved his worth, no matter what Dr. Li said.

  And yet his confidence was rapidly fading. Understanding both sides meant that there were times when he was suspended between them. His sister and parents were in one country and his wife, kids, and social life in another
. His livelihood in one, his life in another.

  Without Law or Heaven, the cruel nickname assigned to him by his childhood classmates, was becoming strangely apt. For a while he still had heaven on his side, thanks to his church. But other aspects of his existence had become more complicated. At U.S. airports on his trips to and from China, he noticed that he was often pulled aside for searches. It was unclear how much longer he could continue to outrun the law.

  TWELVE

  SPRING 2012

  Kevin stood in a field on DBN’s new farm, surveying the land. The sky above him was cloudless, and the air smelled of peat, yet the scene was not entirely pastoral. Realtors called the area around Monee Far South, meaning south of Chicago. The property sat at the junction of suburban comfort and crumpled-up beer cans, in a stretch of homes in varying states of disrepair.

  Kevin was excited about being officially hired to work with DBN and eager to help, so when Robert told him that DBN was looking to buy a farm in Illinois, he had offered to help scout out land. Robert responded that he had it under control. These forty acres were the result. The land had poor soil and inadequate drainage. The house was not much to speak of, either. A squat tan brick dwelling with small windows, it stood atop a small hill, to the right of a clearing just large enough for turning around a pickup. Three run-down outbuildings encircled the left side of the clearing, looking like they might be easily toppled in a storm.

  Robert had asked Kevin to plant strips of test corn on the land, with the goal of comparing how the varieties performed. Robert said he wanted everything aboveboard and by the book. He had instructed Kevin to find publicly available hybrids developed by small seed companies. If the trials went well, he explained, DBN would license the seeds, send them on to a winter nursery in South America, and eventually export them to China. The seeds had to be conventional, with no genetic modifications, so that they could be sold commercially in China.

  That this was a grand fiction was difficult for Kevin to discern; the plan actually struck him as a good idea. It was the sort of project that Robert claimed to be doing with Stine—and the sort of cooperation that U.S. scientific organizations encouraged.

  Kevin did question the choice of location, though. He doubted whether the soil on the test plot was consistent enough to give meaningful results. A few weeks earlier, he had asked Robert: Why here? Did Monee approximate agricultural conditions in China? No, Robert said. The plot was near O’Hare International Airport. Representatives from DBN frequently flew in on direct flights from Beijing to Chicago. Monee was convenient. The logic baffled Kevin. It was as if Robert had selected a car based entirely on how close the dealership was to his house.

  The agronomist heard the roar of a tractor as Brian Schubbe approached on his John Deere machine, pulling a sixteen-row planter behind him. Robert had hired Schubbe, a local farmer, to plant commercial crops elsewhere on the farm, and as part of the deal Schubbe had agreed to help with the research plot.

  Kevin opened a bag, hoisted it upside down, and dumped five pounds of seed into one of the receptacles attached to the planter. The seed rattled as it settled in the bin. Schubbe did the same with another strip test bag, and the two men made their way down the length of the machine, pouring a different bag of test seed into each box.

  In an era of massive industry consolidation, finding small seed companies that were interested in collaborating with DBN was difficult. But through his networks of contacts, Kevin managed to find two partners who agreed to provide small amounts of seed for the trial. Money would change hands once DBN selected seeds for export.

  The other hybrids he planted in Monee came from his sister, Lynette, who like Kevin was a hobby breeder, and from Kevin himself. He saw in the test plot the possibility of finally getting one of his backyard seed lines commercialized. He knew the odds were long, especially with the land as poor as it was, but it was worth a try. As benchmarks against which to track the growth of the test seeds, Kevin also planted a handful of “check hybrids,” most of them well-known varieties belonging to Pioneer and Monsanto.

  DBN’s plan to license American hybrids made sense to Kevin because he knew that Chinese companies had trouble breeding top-notch seeds on their own. Agronomists speak of “races” of corn, and those races subdivide into groups. Like animal breeders, agronomists in the United States strive for a pure lineage, working with inbreds that have been kept separate, or bred within a certain group and race, for generations. China did not have well-maintained groups, Kevin knew. Corn breeding was a long-term game, and it was impossible to catch up in a generation. So Chinese companies had to import seeds—legally, or so Kevin believed—and then use the preferential market access they were given in China to turn a profit.

  After they had poured all the seed into the planter, Schubbe fired up his tractor. As he hauled the planter down the length of the field, sixteen pairs of blades angled toward one another in V shapes, carving sixteen furrows into the soil. The seed dropped into these furrows, and then a second row of blades pushed soil over the newly planted seed. Kevin trailed behind on foot, checking the depth and spacing of the seeds. Decades of fastidious engineering and experimentation had turned the planter into a machine that for Kevin had the precision and beauty of a symphony. When it came to American innovation, he thought of this, not the huge conglomerates that had taken over the seed industry.

  A few months earlier, as part of New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement, farmers from around the country had traveled to Zuccotti Park to protest corporate control of food and agriculture. “Farmers are hanging on by their fingertips,” one explained. They blamed commodities speculation and greed. Tenet number four in the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City asserted of the corporate overlords: “They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.” Kevin saw genetically modified seed as a breakthrough innovation and didn’t share more radical farmers’ concerns about poisoning the food supply. But he, too, worried about corporate consolidation.

  For Kevin, the effects of consolidation were most apparent in the impact on the land. When Monsanto first began marketing genetically modified seeds, Kevin recalled, company representatives had promised that the company would consider the health of farmland by rotating pesticides out of production after a number of years. As time passed and Monsanto could not come up with a competitive new pesticide, the company began inserting Roundup Ready traits in seemingly everything, leading to the development of Roundup-resistant weeds.

  The solution was to “stack” traits onto seeds by tweaking additional genes, creating the seed equivalent of broad-spectrum antibiotics. But just as broad-spectrum antibiotics gave rise to superbugs that were resistant to multiple drugs, stacked traits led to hyper-resistant superweeds. Critics believed that resistance was one reason that companies like Monsanto were so interested in China. Developing-world markets were virgin territory. Because China had not yet commercialized genetically modified seeds, it didn’t yet have superweeds. Once government policy changed, the company’s seed could be wildly successful there.

  In bringing an antitrust suit against Monsanto, Justice Department officials had promised to finally do something about these issues. In the meantime, Kevin was focused on broadening his potential sources of income. He hoped that the DBN gig would lead to more work in China, bringing him closer to his goal of retracing his father’s footsteps. He had started studying Mandarin by collecting fortune cookies from Chinese buffet restaurants and logging the words printed on the slips of paper into an Excel spreadsheet. Understand, success, corn. He now signed off his emails to Mao Li, DBN’s assistant in Beijing, with Zuihao de wenhou, a translation he had found online for Best regards. He was becoming an international scientist, he thought. He had counterparts in China, people who easily moved between the two countries and whose allegiance was mainly to research.

  But Kevin was starting to suspect tha
t Robert was not one of them. The bond he had once felt with the DBN employee had given way to strained communications. It didn’t help that Robert could be tactless. At one point he mentioned to Kevin that the agronomist was not DBN’s first choice for the consulting gig. Kevin could not imagine why he had been told this, but now that he knew, he had trouble forgetting it.

  And yet if someone had told Kevin that the Monee tests were a ruse, that they were somehow an elaborate cover for illicit activity targeting two American seed companies, he would have been shocked—not by the fact of the crime but by the thought that anyone would be stupid enough to mess with Monsanto and Pioneer.

  THIRTEEN

  SPRING 2012

  When the Chinese agriculture delegation led by Xi Jinping arrived in Iowa, Mark Betten received a tip that Robert Mo and Wang Lei would fly in for the occasion. He didn’t know what the men hoped to gain from the experience or exactly how it connected to efforts to reverse engineer seed, but he figured it would be worthwhile to surveil them nonetheless. At the Des Moines airport, Mark tailed Wang Lei as he filed out of the arrivals hall and boarded a bus to a hotel. His team didn’t manage to locate Robert, so he told Pioneer security to be on the lookout. Sure enough, Robert surfaced the next day at Pioneer’s research facility. Corporate security confirmed that he had checked in for a tour using the name Wu Hougang.

  Within the FBI, foreign delegations were seen as a common feature of economic espionage cases. The Intelligence Threat Handbook, a publication used by the Interagency OPSEC Support Staff to train U.S. government organizations on national security threats, included a passage that could have described Robert’s surreptitious tour of Pioneer. “Visitors are an obvious vector for loss of critical information,” it read. “[One] situation involves foreign visitors accompanied by a diplomat who attempts to conceal the visitors’ identities or official positions during the visit.” In this case, the diplomat whom Robert had accompanied happened to be the future leader of China. Mark’s team worked every angle of Xi Jinping’s visit. Agents dug through the trash in Wu Hougang’s hotel room, hopeful his castoffs might yield insight into DBN’s plans. They tailed Robert to a meeting at a sports bar. The next day, Mark watched from outside the World Food Prize Hall as Robert showed up for Xi’s speech.