Japanese Consulate Suicide
I haven't seen much about this in the press, but figured I'd carry some comments from Masaru Sato, former senior intelligence analyst at the Foreign Ministry, on supposed evidence that their encrypter in Shanghai was blackmailed and driven to suicide by Chinese agents: China's actions at the Shanghai Consulate General were nothing short of "dirty intelligence-gathering." If you look at the way in which intelligence agents from communist countries operated during the Cold War, you can see this kind of method was used toward hostile countries. In their counterespionage efforts, China and the former Soviet Union housed their communications specialists at their respective embassies. Whenever they left the compound, they were accompanied by a secret police escort. The Foreign Ministry, too, placed similar restrictions on its communications specialists, not allowing them to interact with the locals. In the past, there was also a rule calling for these specialists to spy on each other, looking for anything out of the ordinary. With the end of the Cold War, however, the world's intelligence agencies tended to avoid these "dirty" intelligence-gathering tactics. After learning of this incident in Shanghai, I found it surprising that China--or at least a local public security division branch--was still conducting activities banned by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which in the eyes of the Chinese government may be a "product of imperialists." China has remained adamant over its innocence, criticizing Japan--the clear victim in this instance--instead of apologizing over the matter. ...China has been acting in violation of not only international law, but also the rules of the international intelligence community. Japan would be able to win support from a great majority of countries, as far as the Shanghai incident is concerned. During the Cold War, a Japanese security official living in the Soviet bloc was expelled on suspicion of spying. Japan retaliated by kicking out a Soviet Union Embassy staff member. The comment Tokyo released at the time was to the effect that, although Japan felt the case highly regrettable, it nonetheless "hopes there will not be any adverse impact on Japanese-Soviet relations." The Soviet side also expressed its "wishes to see the incident resulting in no negative effect to the Soviet-Japanese relationship." Although the sentiments were hollow, both sides were aware of the need to bring these kinds of problems to an end.
