Yu Qiangsheng

"PLANESMAN" redirects here. For the submarine crew position of the same name, see diving plane.

In this Chinese name, the family name is Yu.

Yu Qiangsheng
俞强声
Yu circa 1960
Born	1940 (age 84–85) Yan'an, Shaanxi, Republic of China
Disappeared	1986 Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong, British Dependent Territories
Status	Whereabouts unknown
Citizenship	People's Republic of China United States (from 1985)
Alma mater	University of International Relations
Employers	Ministry of Public Security Ministry of State Security
Parents	Fan Jin (mother) Huang Jing (father)
Family	Yu Zhengsheng (brother) Zeng Zhaolun (great uncle) Yu Dawei (great uncle) Zhang Aiping (uncle-in-law)
Espionage activity
Allegiance	United States (from 1980)
Agency	Central Intelligence Agency
Service years	1980–1986
Cryptonym	PLANESMAN

Yu Qiangsheng (FBI code name: PLANESMAN; Chinese: 俞强声; born 1940, disappeared 1986) is a former high-ranking Chinese intelligence officer who defected to the United States in 1985. Born into an elite princeling family, Yu ascended to head of North American operations for China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), during which time he acted as a double agent, passing information to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Described by his former FBI handler as "the ultimate risk taker", Yu ultimately fled China for the United States in 1986. His disclosures most famously exposed CIA officer Larry Wu-Tai Chin as having been a mole for China for more than 40 years.

Yu disappeared upon resettling in the US in 1986, but is reported to be alive, living under government protection.

Early life and family

Yu was born to father Huang Jing (黄敬) and his second wife, Fan Jin. Yu's mother was a journalist who later became vice mayor of Beijing and president of Beijing Daily. His father, born Yu Qiwei (俞启威), was born in 1912 to a prominent family in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. Yu Qiwei first married fellow schoolmate Li Yunhe from National Qingdao University (now Shandong University), and introduced Li to the communist movement. They later divorced, and after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Li fled to the Yun'an district of Guangdong Province where she first dated mutual friend and CCP spymaster Kang Sheng, and later, Mao Zedong, whom she married to become Jiang Qing, the inaugural first lady of the People's Republic of China and leader of the radical political alliance known as the Gang of Four. Huang remained friends with Kang Sheng, and went on to marry Fan Jin, Yu Qiangsheng's mother.

Yu had four siblings including his younger brother Yu Zhengsheng, now a retired senior Chinese politician whose career included assignments as the Communist Party Secretary of Hubei Province and Shanghai, and 8th Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultive Conference. The survival of the younger Yu's political career following the defection is attributed to either the influence of Zhang Aiping, his father-in-law, who at the time was Minister of Defense, or his friendship with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of Deng Xiaoping, who was confined to a wheelchair after being thrown out of a window by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

Police career

Yu's career in Chinese intelligence is believed to owe much to his father's dying request to his friend, CCP spymaster Kang Sheng, that he make then-18 year old Yu his adoptive son. Soon after, Yu found a seat in the University of International Relations, the foreign affairs school in Beijing run by Chinese intelligence.

After graduating in the mid-1960s amidst the Cultural Revolution, Yu found a position within Ministry of Public Security as a civilian policeman at the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. Soon after, like many cadres of the era, he was sent down to the countryside. Upon his return, he became the leader of a task force enforcing the One Strike and Three Anti's Campaign, which targeted people said to exhibit the 'counter-revolutionary' behaviors of 'graft and embezzlement', 'profiteering' and 'extravagance and waste.' The task force was notable for arresting artist and writer Zhang Langlang (張郎郎), who was sentenced to death for criticizing the government, and accused of being a French spy.

Intelligence career

In 1974, Yu joined the Waishiju, the counterintelligence branch within the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the MPS. Despite not having participated in violent abuses that were trademarks of then-MPS spy chief Kang Sheng, Yu quickly rose through the ranks of the agency, moving to the fledgling Ministry of State Security soon after it split from the MPS in 1983.

Within the MSS, Yu reportedly served briefly as head of the counterintelligence-focused Beijing Municipal State Security Bureau, before becoming head of the agency's North America Bureau, which leads operations against the United States and Canada.

Defection

As a member of the MPS sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, Yu was unable to protect his mother from degradation at the hands of Red Guards. Having failed to prevent her humiliation, Yu reportedly became increasingly resentful of her treatment until he finally decided to contact the CIA.

In 1980, Larry Wu-tai Chin told his handlers about the arrival of a new undercover CIA officer assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. As chief of counterintelligence within the North America Department of the MSS, Yu was sent to try to recruit the new arrival, but instead opted to use the imprimatur of the officially sanctioned contact with a member of the CIA to defect to the United States himself. The intelligence he passed to the Americans enabled the CIA to identify Chinese moles within US intelligence, including Chin. In the words of Roger Faligot, "thanks to Yu's perfidy, Larry had signed his own death certificate when he faithfully reported to his Chinese paylords that a new US agent was in town."

According to a testimony before the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, Yu was the first to provide the United States Intelligence Community with an understanding of PRC intelligence operations.

In early 1982, Yu provided specific information regarding a Chinese mole: On February 6, 1982, the spy would arrive in Beijing on a Pan Am flight, stay in Room 553 of the Qianmen Hotel in Beijing, and call Zhu Entao, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the MPS, after which the spy will be appointed as a deputy bureau-level official. On February 27, the spy would return to the United States. The CIA decided then that the counterintelligence threat needed to be turned over to the FBI.

In September 1982, I.C. Smith, head of the China Counterintelligence Team of the FBI, received a message from the CIA that said the U.S. Intelligence Community had been penetrated by a longstanding Chinese mole. That's basically all it said. Didn't reveal the person's ethnicity, gender, nothing." Smith gave the source the codename PLANESMAN, a term for the person who operates the diving plane, a control surface which determines the elevation and depth of a submarine.

According to I.C. Smith:

"PLANESMAN was not just an ordinary Chinese citizen employed by the MSS. He was one of China's "golden youth", the offspring of China's political elite. I became convinced that the "golden youth" were in a better position to see the hypocrisy of the Communist system under which they lived ... I believe PLANESMAN saw this hypocrisy and at some point decided to hit back in his own way. His actions were simply audacious. He strolled around MSS headquarters, routinely photographing documents on desks, pulling files, and making inquiries, and being the son of those with influence, he benefited from special treatment. He even pilfered the desk of his supervisor, whom he referred to as the "Beijing Bitch", where he was able to gain access to the most secret of the information contained within the [MSS]. ... PLANESMAN in the flesh was a gregarious, animated individual who spoke in fractured English, but who seemed to have a very real zest for life. When we met at last after Operation Eagle Claw was over, he confirmed my long-held suspicion that he was the ultimate risk taker. I had the impression he would have paid the CIA to allow him to be their spy."

Escape

In October 1985, Yu fled China for the United States via Kai Tak Airport in British Hong Kong. At the time, he was purportedly on a visit to see his French girlfriend, a U.S. State Department employee.

Impact

Yu provided a number of state secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency, most famously revealing China's top spy in Washington, former analyst at the CIA, Larry Wu-Tai Chin, and French diplomat Bernard Bouriscot, who had been recruited by Chinese intelligence using a honeypot.

In China, Yu's defection prompted a reorganization of the MSS and the sacking of the inaugural director of the MSS, Ling Yun. When his successor, Jia Chunwang was asked to comment on the defection of Yu, Jia only responded, "It's very regrettable." It led to even greater restrictions on overseas MSS operations at a time when Deng Xiaoping, already wary of stirring controversy as China opened-up to the west, had grown fond of using People's Liberation Army military attaché's as the primary intelligence resident of China's overseas embassies.

Declassification

On 1 September 1986, the news of Yu Qiangsheng's escape to the United States was exclusively reported by Agence France-Presse, and was subsequently reported by the Los Angeles Times and other American media as well as Hong Kong media.

Later life

Details of Yu's life following his debriefing remain unclear.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government spread likely apocryphal rumors of Yu's assassination. Chinese state media claimed that Yu had been pursued by five special agents and drowned in the sea off the coast of South America. Other accounts allege Yu was fed radioactive salt while in South America. In December 2015, I.C. Smith dispelled assassination rumors, adding that he spent a number of evenings moving pub-to-pub with Yu in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C.

In truth, according to journalist Roger Faligot: "Yu was put under witness protection; he assumed a new identity and was sent to live in a safe house near San Francisco. He apparently remained in contact with his cousins in Taiwan."

In popular culture

• David Ignatius, foreign affairs contributor to The Washington Post and spy novelist, published a four-part serialized fiction novella titled The Tao of Deception which provides a fictionalized account of Yu Qiangsheng's defection to the United States and extraction from Hong Kong.