China and Iran using private detectives to spy on dissidents in US

IRAN and China are reportedly using private detectives to spy on dissidents living abroad in Western democracies such as the United States.

Investigators in the US are increasingly being hired – often under false pretences – by the regimes to surveil, threaten and even repatriate foreign nationals living lawfully there.

Law-enforcement officials told The New York Times that over the past two years federal charges and various complaints had given details of cases in several states, in which private investigators, mostly unwittingly, were drawn into such schemes.

In one example from July 2022, Craig Miller, a department of homeland security (DHS) employee, and Derrick Taylor, a retired DHS agent turned private investigator, were arrested and charged by the US justice department for their role in a Chinese plot of “transnational repression” to silence dissidents.

This was made possible by Mr Taylor allegedly spying on dissidents and gathering negative information gained from law-enforcement databases.

Many of these assignments come via the internet, with no face-to-face contact of any kind, said Wes Bearden, a Dallas-based private investigator and an officer of the World Association of Detectives, who explained to the newspaper that “if you’ve got somebody on the other side – an intelligence professional who can lie and create smoke and mirrors – sometimes it’s hard to vet those clients correctly”.

In another case from July 2021, a private investigator was hired by Iranian intelligence to spy on Masih Alinejad, an Iranian dissident living in Brooklyn, New York.

Michael Mckeever said he was told that he was to monitor a woman, identified as a missing person from Dubai, who had fled to avoid paying a debt. “Will need high quality pictures/video of persons living in the address and cars they drive,” one email from the Iranian operator to Mr Mckeever read.

The client wanted “photos of faces and cars” and their licence plate numbers and, “if possible picture of envelopes in mailbox”.

The FBI concluded that a kidnap attempt was being run directly by the Iranian government’s intelligence agents. Upon being contacted by the FBI, Mr Mckeever co-operated with US law enforcement, which helped lead to the Iranian operatives involved being arrested and the kidnapping thwarted.

The FBI says it has contacted professional groups to warn them about these schemes. “It strikes me as low-cost, low-risk state-sponsored terrorism in the 21st century,” said Bruce Hoffman, at the Council on Foreign Relations.