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On a hot Florida day late in 2005, Ko-Suen "Bill" Moo was preparing for the endgame of a covert operation he'd been orchestrating for nearly two years. He had arrived in Fort Lauderdale at 5 am on Nov. 7, as the city was recovering from the onslaught of Hurricane Wilma two weeks earlier. Moo checked into a $350-a-night room at the plush Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, and now, a day after arriving in town, the Korean-born businessman was ready to sign what promised to be a lucrative contract. In a few days, he'd head back to Hollywood International Airport to see off a plane, chartered for $140,000 to carry a special package. Moo would catch a commercial flight and meet up with his cargo in Shenyang, a city in northeastern China. The cargo was costing him nearly $4 million, but it was worth it. He would clear $1 million in profit once he made the delivery to his clients, senior officials in the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Moo's package was an F110-GE-129 afterburning turbofan engine, built by General Electric to power America's latest F-16 fighter jet to speeds greater than Mach 2 (1500 mph). Over lunch in the Marriott's restaurant, 58-year-old Moo told the arms dealers who had arranged the purchase that he would soon be looking for additional engines--or even an entire F-16. But what the Chinese army wanted most of all was an AGM-129A, the U.S. Air Force's air-launched strategic nuclear-capable cruise missile. The stealth weapon, which flies at 800 miles per hour, can deliver a 150-kiloton W80 warhead to a target 1800 miles away.
Like everything else Moo was shopping for, the missile is guarded by at least three laws forbidding its sale or the transfer of its design details to foreign countries without government permission. Moo knew this quite well. In addition to working as a covert agent for China, he had a day job in the U.S. aerospace industry. For more than 10 years Moo had been an international sales consultant for Lockheed Martin and other U.S. defense companies in Taiwan. He was arguably the Taiwanese air force's most critical arms broker.
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2 comments:
Hi Peter,
China has taken advantage of the open society of other countries like the USA, which gave possibility to get access to almost everything.
Other countries are not free to do that in China.
You are so right there Harry.
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