New in SpyWeek: Seoul Sister? The Sue Mi Terry Fallout and More
Also: The Secret Service under fire, the DCIA's Gaza peace missions, more Russia disinfo ops, Cannon fire at DoJ, Windows' epic crash and empty chairs in Aspen
SpyWeek columnist Seth Hettena is away this week.
Koreagate Redux: Back in 1976, official Washington roiled with revelations that South Korea’s CIA had conducted a clandestine influence campaign on Capitol Hill to persuade members of Congress to reverse a decision by the Jimmy Carter administration to withdraw U.S. troops from the embattled nation. This week, the Acela Corridor was roiled by the criminal indictment of Sue Mi Terry, a top former CIA analyst and prominent think tank expert on the two Koreas, on charges that she acted as an unregistered secret agent for Seoul, whose agents lavished thousands of dollars worth of luxury goods and cash on her to help promote South Korean security interests. Terry admitted to the FBI during its investigation that she had resigned from the CIA in 2009 to avoid being fired over what she described as the agency's "problems" concerning her contacts with South Korean intelligence.
Terry facilitated their access to U.S. officials, testified in congressional hearings and wrote think tank and newspaper pieces pushing South Korea’s interests, all the while concealing her arrangements with the agents, who posed as diplomats, according to the indictment. One of those pieces, in The Washington Post on Mar. 3, 2023, “South Korea takes a brave step toward reconciliation with Japan,” was co-written with her husband Max Boot, a prominent national security columnist at the Post and author of an influential book on U.S. intelligence during the Cold War, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam. On Thursday, the Post affixed an Editor’s note to the Boot-Terry piece noting the indictment and saying, “If true, this is information that would have been pertinent for The Post’s publication decision. Ms. Terry has denied these charges and has asserted through counsel that the allegations in the indictment are unfounded.” No word yet on the standing at the paper of Boot, who was not charged in the case. Neither he nor the paper’s communications director responded to emails requesting comment. We’ll have more on this case in the coming days.
Rocky Mountain Low: For years now, the Aspen Security Forum has attracted the nation’s top intelligence and military officials to the toney ski resort town in the Colorado Rockies for unclassified but frank, on-the-record discussions with journalists and top experts about the most urgent security challenges around the world. CIA Director William Burns was a regular, but this week he, along with several other top Biden officials, bowed out because of what Forum organizers delicately referred to as “recent events.”
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