A federal grand jury has indicted Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, on charges that she acted as an agent of influence for the South Korean intelligence service. According to the indictment, Terry was recruited in 2013 and received “handbags, clothing and at least $37,000 in covert payments to the think tank where she was employed.”
Terry’s lawyer says the charges of failure to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act are poppycock and malarky.
“Dr. Terry has not held a security clearance for over a decade, and her views on matters relating to the Korean Peninsula have been consistent over many years,” Mr. Wolosky said. “In fact, she was a harsh critic of the South Korean government during times this indictment alleges that she was acting on its behalf.”
He added, “Once the facts are made clear, it will be evident the government made a significant mistake.”
I would only point out that all he said can be true, and Terry can still be guilty as charged. This is from the press release accompanying the indictment.
Since leaving U.S. government service, TERRY served as a valuable source of information for the ROK National Intelligence Service (“ROK NIS”), the ROK’s primary intelligence agency. For example, in or about June 2022, TERRY participated in a private, off-the-record group meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State regarding the U.S. government’s policy toward North Korea. Immediately after the meeting, TERRY’s primary ROK NIS point of contact, or “handler,” picked up TERRY in a car bearing ROK Embassy diplomatic license plates. While in the car, TERRY provided her handler detailed handwritten notes of her meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State. TERRY’s handler photographed the notes while sitting in the car with TERRY.
Weeks later, at the request of her ROK NIS handler, TERRY hosted a happy hour for Congressional staff. Although the happy hour was under the auspices of the think tank where TERRY worked, the ROK NIS paid for it with TERRY’s knowledge. TERRY’s handler attended the event and posed as a diplomat, mingling with Congressional staff without disclosing that he was, in fact, an ROK intelligence officer.
She was a trusted member of an elite community where government and academia merged. As a prominent analyst in a high-profile think tank, she had access to people and information that, if not formally classified, was “non-public.” That information was passed on to a foreign intelligence service.
The matter becomes more interesting when you factor in her husband, Washington Post columnist and Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Max Boot. In March, Boot and Terry co-authored a Washington Post op-ed on Japan-South Korean relations (Opinion | South Korea moves to resolve a historical dispute with Japan) that, in the light of all the now-disclosed facts, seems a lot like a press release for the South Korean government.
On his desk, Yoon has a replica of President Harry S. Truman’s “The Buck Stops Here!” plaque, which Biden gave Yoon last year, and the famously stubborn president tells officials he will take responsibility for any fallout from improving ties with Japan.
If he succeeds, Yoon will establish himself as a profile in courage in Korean politics and write a hopeful new chapter in the fraught relations between South Korea and Japan.
In May, Boot and Terry were at it again with another Washington Post op-ed, this one on US-Japan-South Korea policy, titled Opinion | The United States, Japan and South Korea strengthen ties in response to China. Terry’s relationship with the South Korean intelligence service was not disclosed (not surprising), but neither was her relationship with Boot.
In the article, Boot/Terry emphasized that South Korea has already paid more than its fair share for defense.
Moreover, Trump is obsessed with the cost of defending South Korea without considering all of the benefits that accrue from a close relationship with the world’s 13th-largest economy — and a stalwart liberal democracy. As president, Trump demanded that South Korea increase its subsidies for the U.S. troop presence to more than $1 billion a year, but he still isn’t satisfied. Sounding a refrain he has echoed consistently since at least 1990, Trump told Time magazine in April, “I want South Korea to treat us properly. … They’ve become a very wealthy country. We’ve essentially paid for much of their military, free of charge.”
It doesn’t seem to matter to Trump that South Korea spends 2.7 percent of its gross domestic product on its defense — higher than the NATO target — and has one of the most capable militaries on the planet. Trump previously suspended joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises; in the future, he is unlikely to fund trilateral exercises.
This article is not alone.
Making the story more insane is that Boot is one of the foremost purveyors of the Trump-is-a-Russian-agent lie that effectively throttled Trump’s first administration.
That derangement led Boot to declare that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not a coward when he blew up himself and his children to avoid capture, see Washington Post Writer Max Boot Defends Al-Baghdadi’s Honor Because Orange Man Bad.
The story here is not that Max Boot is disgusting (he is) or that he was targeted for marriage (my speculation because Terry is definitely out of the league of women Boot was used to playing in) by Terry because his position at the Post gave her propaganda greater reach and her more Vuitton bags. The real story is how this happened. How long has the FBI known of Terry’s side gig? Did anyone at the Washington Post have any curiosity or qualms about the op-eds he was co-writing with his wife? And when did Boot, the spy-catcher of Trump’s first term, discover that his wife was a foreign agent of influence?
