Chinese envoy decries ‘irresponsible’ coverage of Tory MP’s e-mail affair
STEVEN CHASE
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 10:35AM EDT
The Chinese government says the Bob Dechert affair is a private matter and it’s “irresponsible” for the press to imply Beijing had any hand in it.
Mr. Dechert, a Conservative MP with special foreign affairs duties, says amorous e-mails he sent to a journalist with China’s state news service are part of an “innocent friendship.” These include messages where he said he loved Shi Rong, a Toronto correspondent for Xinhua News Agency.
Canada’s top spy last year warned that the Chinese were trying to infiltrate Canadian politics. Western intelligence agencies consider Xinhua a tool of the Chinese state that collects information for Beijing.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Ottawa told The Globe and Mail the country has nothing to say about the personal relationship between Mr. Dechert, 53, and Ms. Shi. Both are married to other people.
“We have noted related reports, but are in no position to comment on ‘domestic disputes’ and privacy of those involved,” the embassy spokesman said, asking he not be named. “However, it must be pointed out that it is irresponsible to use this to defame the Chinese Government.”
The Prime Minister’s Office is standing by Mr. Dechert, saying it has no information to contradict the Mississauga–Erindale MP’s assertion that he has not engaged in “inappropriate behaviour.”
Among the cache of leaked e-mails that brought this matter to light, though, is an especially personal letter about an entanglement gone sour – one that raises more questions.
The Harper government treated this missive, written in Chinese, seriously enough that it went to the trouble of translating it while investigating what transpired between Mr. Dechert and Ms. Shi.
The e-mail, titled “Old Fox,” was part of the same bundle of e-mails hacked from Ms. Shi’s inbox last week and sent without her consent to more than 240 business, academic and political contacts. She blames her husband for the leak.
Mr. Dechert is never mentioned by name in this note – a fact Tory government officials cite when defending their decision to stand by the MP.
This e-mail, however, appears to be counselling Ms. Shi on a relationship she’s having with an older man – something that was more a friendship and is now on the rocks.
Dated June 26, 2010, it was purportedly sent to Ms. Shi by fellow Xinhua correspondent Qu Jing.
“About the old man, tune him out,” reads the e-mail from Ms. Qu, which then goes into a lengthy diatribe about how men treat their girlfriends as “clothes” that they can wear or discard as they see fit.
“About the sad tales you told me about him keeping you waiting for a long time, put it out of your mind. I have experienced the same,” Ms. Qu writes to Ms. Shi. “Sweep him into dust bin, he is not good enough for you.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/chinese-envoy-decries-irresponsible-coverage-of-tory-mps-email-affair/article2165561/
Fallout from Dechert affair creates ripples in China
STEVEN CHASE , MARK MACKINNON AND COLIN FREEZE
OTTAWA, BEIJING AND TORONTO— From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Sep. 14, 2011 9:22PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 14, 2011 9:24PM EDT
The Chinese government has waded into the controversy over the Bob Dechert affair, a sign that the fallout from a Canadian MP’s relationship with a journalist for China’s state-controlled news agency is creating ripple effects in international relations.
The Chinese embassy in Canada only infrequently makes public statements to Canadian news media.
An embassy spokesman told The Globe and Mail that China considers Mr. Dechert’s travails a private matter. He also said it’s “irresponsible” for the press to imply that Beijing had any hand in it.
More than five days ago, Mr. Dechert, a Conservative MP with special foreign affairs duties, admitted to sending amorous e-mails to Xinhua News Agency correspondent Shi Rong. He denied compromising Canadian secrets and said his “flirtatious” messages – which include professing love for the younger woman – were part of an “innocent friendship.”
Canada’s top spy last year warned that the Chinese were trying to infiltrate Canadian politics. Western intelligence agencies consider Xinhua a tool of the Chinese state that collects information for Beijing.
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Ottawa said the country has nothing to say about what he framed as a couple’s quarrels.
Both Mr. Dechert, 53, and Ms. Shi, whom colleagues estimate is in her 30s, are married to other people. The MP’s intimate e-mails to the Chinese journalist were broadly leaked last Thursday night to more than 240 contacts across Canada, a move Ms. Shi blames on her husband.
“We have noted related reports, but are in no position to comment on ‘domestic disputes’ and the privacy of those involved,” the Chinese embassy spokesman said, asking that he not be named. “However, it must be pointed out that it is irresponsible to use this to defame the Chinese government.”
The Prime Minister’s Office is standing by Mr. Dechert, saying it has no information to contradict the Mississauga–Erindale MP’s assertion that he has not engaged in “inappropriate behaviour.” Officials say by this they mean that he has not compromised Canadian state secrets.
There are further indications, however, that the relationship between Mr. Dechert and Ms. Shi went deeper than a friendship.
Little noticed in the cache of leaked messages and photos that brought the Dechert affair to light last week were two notes, apparently written by Ms. Shi’s husband and sent to a broad range of contacts, that accuse her of being in love with the MP.
One of these notes accused Ms. Shi of seeking to dissolve her marriage “in order to be in love” with this “congressman,” or MP. “This is the Shi Rong you should have known,” the angry note says in Chinese.
Another is apparently directed at Ms. Shi’s Xinhua editors in Beijing.
“Shi Rong’s husband found out about these problems but failed so many times to persuade her [to stop], so [I] wanted to reflect this situation to [Xinhua] which sent her to work” in Canada. “Shi Rong was praised many times by headquarters and has also almost reached the end of her posting, [so she] is afraid this thing will affect her future development.”
In all, recipients report receiving three e-mails from her address over the space of six hours: one with the MP’s e-mails and other correspondence, another with no attachments and a third from Ms. Shi telling them to disregard what they’d read.
Ms. Shi is the Toronto correspondent for Xinhua. A Chinese-language journalistic colleague of Ms. Shi said acquaintances of the Xinhua reporter had the impression her husband did not live with her full time in Toronto but resided in Beijing and visited from time to time.
A Globe journalist visited Xinhua’s Toronto offices Wednesday but was turned away by two staffers who refused to discuss the matter.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/fallout-from-dechert-affair-creates-ripples-in-china/article2166657/
Chinese reporter, ‘Old Fox’ more than friends in e-mail
STEVEN CHASE AND MARK MACKINNON
OTTAWA AND BEIJING— Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, Sep. 13, 2011 10:43PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 14, 2011 9:11AM EDT
Bob Dechert calls “flirtatious” messages he sent to a journalist with China’s state media part of an innocent friendship but among the cache of leaked e-mails that brought this to light is an especially personal letter about an entanglement gone sour – one that raises more questions.
The Harper government treated this missive, written in Chinese, seriously enough that it went to the trouble of translating it while investigating what transpired between Mr. Dechert, 53, and Xinhua News Agency correspondent Shi Rong.
Mr. Dechert is a Conservative MP with special duties to assist the Minister of Foreign Affairs, while Ms. Shi is the Toronto correspondent for Xinhua, an organization that Western counter-intelligence agencies consider a tool of the Chinese state. Both are married.
The e-mail, titled “Old Fox,” was part of the same bundle of e-mails hacked from Ms. Shi’s inbox last week and sent without her consent to more than 240 business, academic and political contacts. She blames her husband for the leak.
Mr. Dechert is never mentioned by name in this note, a fact Tory government officials cite when defending their decision to stand by the MP.
This e-mail, however, appears to be counselling Ms. Shi on a relationship she’s having with an older man – something that was more than a friendship and is now on the rocks.
Dated June 26, 2010, it was purportedly sent to Ms. Shi by fellow Xinhua correspondent Qu Jing.
“About the old man, tune him out,” reads the e-mail from Ms. Qu, which then goes into a lengthy diatribe about how men treat their girlfriends as “clothes” that they can wear or discard as they see fit.
“About the sad tales you told me about him keeping you waiting for a long time, put it out of your mind. I have experienced the same,” Ms. Qu writes to Ms. Shi. “Sweep him into dust bin, he is not good enough for you.”
Members of the Harper government, which has refused to fire Mr. Dechert from his parliamentary secretary post, keep repeating that the MP has denied any “inappropriate behaviour” and that it has “no information to suggest otherwise.”
In e-mails that that Mr. Dechert has already admitted writing – and are widely circulated in the media – he professes his love for Ms. Shi and fawns over a picture of her.
The Mississauga Erindale MP did not respond to a request for an interview Tuesday and Ms. Shi has avoided answering media calls since the story broke.
University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman, who has been interviewed by Ms. Shi in the past, said he is surprised Mr. Dechert hasn’t been removed from his duties.
“It’s really bad judgment,” he said of Mr. Dechert’s conduct. “There’s no doubt Xinhua is strictly under the thumb of the Chinese authorities.”
Little is known about Ms. Shi. Mr. Wiseman said she told him she’d previously studied in England and was especially interested in the works of Oscar Wilde.
He said during past interviews he pressed Ms. Shi on how Xinhua works.
It is taken as a given by those who study China and its security apparatuses that correspondents sent abroad by the Xinhua newswire are agents of the state, and journalists only on the side.
“I explicitly asked her whether she belongs to the Communist Party,” Mr. Wiseman said.
“And she danced around it and said no.”
And I said ‘Well, hold it, how can you work for them without being a member?’ So she said she was just very good [at her job], as if her other qualities had made up for that.”
He said he didn’t give this much credence.
Xinhua colleagues of Ms. Shi described her as a “naive” rookie foreign correspondent and denied that the newswire’s reporters engage in espionage.
A long-time Xinhua correspondent, retired after 40 years with the newswire and two postings abroad, said he and his colleagues were too busy trying to appease editors in Beijing to do espionage on the side. He said demands on correspondents are even higher since Xinhua – like media companies worldwide – expanded operations in recent years to include broadcast and online media..
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/chinese-reporter-old-fox-more-than-friends-in-e-mail/article2165156/
GLOBE EDITORIAL:Bob Dechert is flirting with trouble
From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Sep. 13, 2011 8:23PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Sep. 13, 2011 11:00PM EDT
Bob Dechert, the MP for Mississauga-Erindale, ought to fully clarify his dealings and conversations with Shi Rong, a reporter in Toronto for the Xinhua news agency, which is owned by the Chinese state, even if he was merely flirting, as he says. If he does not, he will invite suspicions that he fits a pattern described last year by Richard Fadden, the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency, of some Canadian political “figures who have developed quite an attachment to foreign countries” – among which Mr. Fadden clearly intimated that he included China. His words were expressed indiscreetly, but they were not retracted.
Although Mr. Fadden referred to provincial and municipal politics, federal politics are not immune.
Mr. Dechert is one of the two parliamentary secretaries of John Baird, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and a member of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee. Presumably, he has access to some confidential information. Though it has been mentioned that he also belongs to a five-MP panel that will have a role in considering potential justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Chinese Communist Party is hardly likely to be looking for an agent of influence at 301 Wellington St., Ottawa, to manipulate Charter litigation.
Xinhua is not simply a front; it churns out news stories that in many respects resemble those of ordinary wire services. On the other hand, it is not neutral. Some of Xinhua’s foreign correspondents also write “internal reference reports” for party and government officials.
Chinese intelligence agents are said to gradually cultivate contacts with mid-level officials, first eliciting routine information, but eventually extorting genuine secrets. If such a process was in the works in this instance, Ms. Shi’s jealous husband may have done Mr. Dechert and Canada a favour by distributing his foolish e-mails, before it went too far. In any case, Mr. Dechert must be completely frank with the Canadian authorities about a friendship that was, to borrow Mr. Fadden’s phrase, “quite an attachment.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/bob-dechert-is-flirting-with-trouble/article2165037/
Tory MP urged to resign over emails to Chinese journalist
Married parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs sent ‘flirtatious’ emails to journalist
CBC News Posted: Sep 14, 2011 2:33 PM ET Last Updated: Sep 14, 2011 2:19 PM ET
The interim leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, Nycole Turmel, has joined the chorus calling on MP Bob Dechert to resign as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs.
The Conservative MP from Ontario admitted on Friday that he had sent “flirtatious” emails to Shi Rong, a journalist working in Toronto for China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua.
“He should step down and there should be an investigation,” Turmel told reporters in Quebec City, where her caucus is holding a retreat in advance of Parliament’s return next week. “We believe it is inappropriate what happened. He’s a key person.”
The emails were sent in April 2010, when Dechert was serving as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice. Some members of the media received the messages when they were circulated to a wide distribution list of contacts from the journalist’s email account late last week.
In his Friday statement, Dechert said Shi’s account was hacked as part of a domestic dispute.
One of the emails was signed “Love, Bob” but Dechert denies they represent evidence of a full-fledged romantic affair.
Security questions raised
Dechert, who was appointed parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs in May, said he met Shi while doing interviews for Chinese-language media and she became a friend. He maintains the emails were nothing more than a flirtation, but the relationship has raised questions given Shi’s employer.
Some Xinhua journalists have been linked to the Chinese government’s intelligence-gathering activities.
Although his responsibilities as one of the parliamentary secretaries for foreign affairs do not include Asia, Dechert is on the executive of the Canada-China Legislative Association, a group of MPs and senators who work on exchanges of parliamentary delegations to foster the relationship between the two countries. He also travelled to China with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on government business in 2009.
On Tuesday morning, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said he’s known Dechert for a long time and he trusts him still. For several days now, Baird has downplayed the possibility that the emails indicate any security threat.
NDP MP Jack Harris accused the government of inconsistency.
“This government let loose the CSIS director to talk about influences by foreign governments in Canada and here we have what is commonly regarded as the next best thing to a spy agency with one of their representatives in this kind of communication with the parliamentary secretary,” Harris said Tuesday on Power & Politics with Evan Solomon. “The government’s messaging doesn’t ring true here.”
“To dismiss this out of hand which the government has done doesn’t do justice to the situation and the concerns that Canadians would necessarily have,” adds Harris, who called on Dechert to resign.
“It’s an unfortunate lack of judgment on Bob’s part,” said Joyce Murray, a B.C. Liberal MP who is also on the executive of the Canada-China group. “It damages the credibility of MPs that work to build these relationships [between countries].”
Murray stopped short of calling for Dechert’s resignation on Tuesday, but said it only takes common sense to know that this relationship is unwise. “It undermines confidence that MPs are focused on business,” she said, claiming such a revelation could leave the impression their work is “vulnerable to personal agendas.”
Murray was unimpressed with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s comments on the situation Tuesday, which she found too dismissive of the possibility of a security threat.
“It’s up to the government to take it seriously,” she said.
Murray finds the Dechert emails particularly unfortunate given the current state of Canada’s relationship with China.
“The prime minister and his team did such a poor job relationship-building in China for the first few years [of the Harper government],” she said, calling Harper’s early efforts “botched diplomacy.”
While things had started to shift more recently to a less confrontational approach to the trading relationship, “the Chinese are very sensitive to issues of image and respect,” Murray said, deeming Dechert’s behaviour “not helpful.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/09/14/pol-dechert-folo.html
Chinese security spies often placed in newsrooms around the world
Published On Tue Sep 13 2011
By Bill Schiller
Asia Bureau
BEIJING—China routinely places state security agents in Xinhua news bureaus around the world, according to a senior Chinese journalist.
Foreign correspondent jobs are appointed by the Ministry of State Security for set periods, and while they may write the occasional story, their job is intelligence gathering, he said on condition of anonymity.
The rare acknowledgement of the practice comes as debate continues in Ottawa about the relationship between Mississauga MP Bob Dechert and Xinhua News Agency’s Toronto bureau chief, Shi Rong.
Dechert, is parliamentary secretary to Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird, with a security clearance giving him access to sensitive information.
His relationship with Shi appeared to blossom after Dechert turned up on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first trip to China in December 2009.
By April 2010, Dechert’s emails — apparently made public by Shi’s angry spouse — gush with the kind of affection that seems well beyond what Dechert has publicly declared a “friendship.”
“You are so beautiful,” he wrote. “That look is so cute. I love it when you do that.” And later, “I miss you. Love, Bob.”
Both Dechert and Shi are married.
No one has yet accused Shi of being an intelligence agent — and part of what analysts call “a honey trap.”
Baird insists such concerns are “ridiculous.”
But intelligence specialists have expressed concerns about that possibility and are calling for an investigation.
“I think (Baird’s) comments are premature, and he should wait until an investigation, either by CSIS or the RCMP, has been conducted,” former CSIS analyst J. Michael Cole said in an email Tuesday, noting China has “a long history of using espionage.”
And it’s not as if Ottawa doesn’t know.
Cole said “nearly half of CSIS’ counterintelligence resources are focused on China.”
This week, the experienced Chinese journalist who spoke to the Star said that at his media outlet a number of “foreign correspondents sent abroad had no previous connection to journalism.
“Those sent from our unit weren’t actually from our unit, but from the Ministry of State Security,” the contact said.
He made clear that these “correspondents” weren’t just “approved” by the Ministry.
“They were appointed by the Ministry,” the contact said.
The media outlet’s editors had no say in the matter.
“Were they actually reporters?” the Star asked.
“Of course not,” the journalist replied.
While they did file journalistic stories back home, the contact said, their training was aimed at intelligence gathering.
Typically, the aspiring correspondents attended the University of International Relations in Beijing or another similar university in Nanjing, “where they learned to master a foreign language and how to do intelligence work,” the journalist said.
They would then work abroad for a set number of years, “and then disappear,” he said. “You wouldn’t see them again.”
How many agents the State Security Ministry actually appoints depends on the rank and importance of the media outlet. There are several major media outlets that maintain correspondents abroad.
“With a powerful, high ranking media outlet, the Ministry of State Security might say, ‘You have 20 positions? Maybe we can send five.’ ”
The Xinhua News Agency reportedly has 120 correspondents abroad.
“But how many are actually doing that kind of work is highly confidential,” the contact said. “I don’t know.”
He said he didn’t think the agents would need to engage in “illegal methods” to gather information.
“As a reporter you get access to all kinds of people anyway, so it’s not like you’d really have to engage in illegal activity,” he said.
In one of Dechert’s self-proclaimed “flirtatious” emails in April last year, for example, he notes that Shi interviewed officials at the Royal Bank of Canada.
It’s not clear whether Dechert acted as a go-between to help Shi organize the interviews, but he asks helpfully, “Did you get enough information for your articles?”
About three weeks later Xinhua promoted Shi’s article on how the Royal Bank weathered the 2008 financial crisis to emerge stronger, as an “exclusive” based on access to two top senior executives.
Shi graduated from Peking University. In a 2005 article she wrote that she has worked for Xinhua since 1998. Once a “visiting scholar” in the U.K., she had an internship at Reuters, where she developed an interest in the oil industry.
But Xinhua reporters’ responsibilities — and influence — can go well beyond simply reporting news to the public.
At home and abroad they are asked to write special reports that are called “internal reference,” some of which can be read by the public. Others can be read only by Communist Party officials or, for the most important, only very senior leaders. These reports normally run 70 to 80 pages per day.
But what might attract a Xinhua reporter in Canada to Dechert?
CSIS analyst Cole notes that there’s much to recommend Dechert as a target for espionage.
“A mid-level, middle-aged government official with access to information. He’s married, which creates another entry point for blackmail,” he says. “What’s key is not so much the position or rank, but rather his access.”
“His lack of judgment, using his government email . . . points to weaknesses that would have been identified by a professional intelligence agency,” says Cole. “The Chinese are past masters at this game.”
The fact that Dechert isn’t actually on the Asia-Pacific desk doesn’t matter, says Cole. Dechert actually works on North American matters for the Foreign Minister.
And there’s a lot in that portfolio that the Chinese would like to learn, he notes.
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1053288
Dechert’s emails should spark reminders about security, expert says
Published On Tue Sep 13 2011
Bruce Campion-Smith
Ottawa Bureau chief
OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird continues to stand by embattled MP Bob Dechert for his flirty emails with a Chinese reporter but behind the scenes Tory politicians need a reminder about the potential dangers of flirting with foreign agents, a security expert warns.
The electronic liaisons should spark concerns because Chinese journalists “are not necessarily what they appear to be or that they might occupy more than one function,” Wesley Wark said.
“They might not be journalists in a purely Western sense,” said Wark, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs.
“There are known cases in the past where Chinese media representatives have clearly been fronting for Chinese intelligence. That very much fits the modus operandi of Chinese intelligence,” Wark said.
In addition to its Toronto office, China’s Xinhua news agency also has a bureau in Ottawa. It has sent one of its journalists along on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s annual Arctic trips during the last two years. Other journalists on the trip recall the Xinhua reporter as an enthusiastic picture-taker, keenly snapping photos during stops across the north, notably of the military aircraft used to transport the tour.
Publicly, the Conservatives have been feigning indifference over the incident, with Baird calling attention to the story “ridiculous.” On Tuesday, he again backed Dechert, saying he had little more to say on the matter.
“In a way, there’s a lot of smoke and no fire in the Dechert case. There’s no suggestion that he betrayed state secrets or was asked to do,” Wark said.
“But the cautionary message has to be that … there’s always the possibility that someone is trying to develop you in what might appear as purely innocent or even romantic friendship,” he said.
“That is how intelligence services work when they want to put politicians into a position where they might be compromised or might be prepared to give up information.”
Wark said Dechert’s emails evoke memories of the security misstep of Maxime Bernier, who was forced to resign as foreign affairs minister in 2008 after it was revealed that he had left secret documents at his girlfriend’s house.
In the wake of that incident, internal security was stepped up along with a warning driven home to MPs that they need to be “very sensitive of potential threats to security,” Wark said
Wark wonders if the Conservatives have forgotten the lessons from Bernier’s security lapse.
“I would hope that behind the scenes and quietly there is a further reminder being put out at a very high level that we have to take this very seriously,” Wark said.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1053170–dechert-s-emails-should-spark-reminders-about-security-expert-says
