Asian Americans cite unfair scrutiny, lost diplomat jobs as China spy tensions rise
WASHINGTON — When Thomas Wong set foot in the United States Embassy in Beijing this summer for a new diplomatic posting, it was vindication after years of battling the State Department over a perceived intelligence threat — himself.
Diplomatic Security officers had informed him when he joined the foreign service more than a decade ago that they were banning him from working in China. In a letter, he said, they wrongly cited the vague potential for undue “foreign preference” and suggested he could be vulnerable to “foreign influence.”
Mr. Wong had become a U.S. diplomat thinking that China was where he could have the greatest impact. He had grown up in a Chinesespeaking household and studied in the country. And as a graduate of West Point who had done an Army tour in the Balkans, he thought he had experience that could prove valuable in navigating relations with the United States’ greatest military and economic rival.
As he looked into the ban, he discovered that other diplomats faced similar restrictions. Security officers made the decisions in secret based on information gathered during the initial security clearance process.
Similar issues range across U.S. government agencies involved in foreign policy and national security. In the growing espionage shadow war between the United States and China, some American federal employees with ties to Asia say they are being unfairly scrutinized by U.S. counterintelligence and security officers and blocked from jobs in which they could help bolster American interests.
They say that weakens the United States by preventing qualified employees from serving in diplomatic missions, intelligence units and other critical posts where their cultural background would be useful.
This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials from multiple national security agencies and a review of dozens of Defense Department documents on security clearance cases.
The concerns, most loudly voiced by Asian American diplomats, are urgent enough that U.S. lawmakers passed bipartisan legislation in December to try to constrain some practices at the State Department. The military spending bill of Dec. 14 includes language pushed by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., intended to make the department more transparent in its assignment restriction and review processes.
“We should be asking ourselves how to deal with the risk, not cutting off the people who have the best skills from serving altogether,” Mr. Wong said. “That’s a self-inflicted wound.”
A high bar
The State Department eventually reversed the ban on Mr. Wong after he and others raised the issue internally. Similarly, the State Department has lifted 1,400 assignment restrictions during the Biden administration, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced an end to the practice.
But there are still bars for officials to clear. Today, some 625 State Department employees remain under the ban, according to department data. In addition, counterintelligence officers can recommend bans after investigating employees with job offers to countries judged to pose special intelligence threats.
At the FBI, two counterintelligence officers said separately that they were persecuted because of their China background, according to interviews and documents examined by the Times.
Similar fears of Chinese espionage in American institutions led to the creation of the Justice Department’s China Initiative during the Trump administration, when the FBI investigated many ethnic Chinese scientists inside and outside the government. In some cases where the Justice Department was unable to find evidence of espionage, officials brought lesser charges, only to drop them — but not before damage was done to the scientists’ careers. The department shut down the China Initiative in 2022.
The processes inside the national security agencies have existed since before the China Initiative and occur in the secretive world of vetting for security clearances and assignments.
Critics say an American with family members in China is no more susceptible to becoming a Chinese intelligence asset than anyone else. And they say the U.S. government has failed to catch up to a population that has undergone vast demographic shifts in recent decades. One in four children in America has at least one immigrant parent, compared with 13% about 20 years ago.
Government employees have little control over those family circumstances. Some U.S. officials argue, however, that security clearance denials or job restrictions are still justified because of the Chinese government’s record of putting pressure on some foreign citizens by detaining or harassing family members in China.
Legislation in 2021 cited State Department data showing the agency had placed the most restrictions for posts in China, followed by Russia, Taiwan and Israel.
The State Department said in a statement that it does not practice discrimination based on race, ethnicity or national origin, and that Mr. Blinken is determined to build a diverse workforce. It also said its counterintelligence processes are based on guidelines from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and 13 criteria outlined in the Foreign Affairs Manual.
Senior Asian American officials do work throughout U.S. agencies, including on Asia policy. Vice President Kamala Harris’ mother is from India, and Katherine Tai, whose parents are from Taiwan, is the U.S. trade representative, a Cabinet post.
But Rep. Andy Kim, DN.J., a former State Department diplomat, said Asian American employees from across the government have approached him with concerns about the “constant specter hanging over them.”
Mr. Kim, who is Korean American, got a State Department letter a dozen years ago saying he was barred from working on issues involving the Korean Peninsula.
“It was one of the most disrespectful, humiliating experiences of my career,” he said.
Counterintelligence hunt
Many government agencies have their own internal security unit that investigates employees, often without notifying the employee or giving any insight into the process. In the FBI, the unit conducts polygraph tests and can recommend that the department withhold or revoke security clearances.
At the State Department, security officers would use information gleaned during regular background checks for security clearance to determine whether take the extraordinary step of putting an assignment restriction into the file of a diplomat.
For many U.S. officials, obtaining the initial top-secret security clearance is an intrusive process, but is needed for their jobs. Applicants list their ties in foreign countries and subject themselves to a microscopic review of their personal relationships, former employers, financial history and lifestyle.
Applicants with ties to China face a “very heavy burden” of persuasion that they are not potential intelligence threats, the decisions often say.
Diplomacy denied
At the State Department, a group representing Asian Americans has worked to push the agency to overhaul assignment restrictions. That has led to laws since 2016 aimed at forcing change.
“I know dozens of diplomats who have lost out on getting assignments to China, Hong Kong and Vietnam,” said Yuki Kondo-Shah, a diplomat in London who successfully fought an assignment restriction banning her from Japan.
Although the employees praise Mr. Blinken’s statement in March announcing a softening of restrictions, they worry about another limit still in place: the provision called assignment review, in which counterintelligence officers can recommend bans after a routine investigation of employees with offers for posts that department officials assert have special intelligence threats.
“It’s really problematic,” said Tina Wong, a vice president of the U.S. Foreign Service union.
The list of posts is classified, but the Times learned that in addition to China, it includes Russia, Vietnam and Israel, which is a U.S. partner.
Stallion Yang, a diplomat whom the State Department once banned from working in Taiwan, has gathered data for the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association, an employee group, about officials up for postings to one of the special intelligence threat countries. Since 2021, he said, he has tracked 22 cases of employees with ties to Asia who were under investigation for longer than the standard period of a month.
The association sent a letter to Mr. Blinken raising concerns. Last month, John Bass, the undersecretary of state for management, replied in a letter obtained by the Times that of 391 assignment-review investigations in the last year, only nine had resulted in a recommendation of rejection.
But diplomats say the number does not take into account employees who moved on to other jobs after the investigations dragged on.
One China-born American, Ruiqi Zheng, 25, said the State Department told her she would be denied a security clearance even though she had begun a selective fellowship there. After a clearance process lasting almost two years, she was rejected in 2021 because of ties to family members and others abroad, she said.
“Everyone I knew told me that it was too good to be true, that America would never accept foreign-born Chinese Americans like me,” she said. “But I chose to trust the process.”