China Spies in U.S. Increase, Sessions Says : Intelligence: The FBI director tells a House panel of a ‘tremendous need’ for response. But he is criticized as wasting his agency’s resources.

China is making “widespread use” of the surging number of Chinese nationals in the United States to collect intelligence, creating “a tremendous need for a counterintelligence response,” FBI Director William S. Sessions said Thursday.

And despite unprecedented cooperation between Washington and Moscow, the Soviet Union has increased its intelligence operations in “sophistication, scope and number” in a climate that makes it easier to spy and harder to be detected, Sessions told a House panel.

Sessions delivered his bleak assessment as Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) criticized the FBI for devoting its resources to questioning Americans--including a schoolchild--who have written to Soviets or Eastern Europeans.

“You see how troubling this is?” Schroeder asked, referring to the 1989 case of Ian Glasson, a 12-year-old from Kimmel, Ind., who had written to the embassy of Yugoslavia seeking information for a school assignment, prompting an inquiry by an FBI agent.

“What is the threat to the United States?” Schroeder demanded.

“We cannot tell,” Sessions replied.

“Oh, come on,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), shaking his head in apparent disbelief.

Sessions, who testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, noted that “some organizations or activity that looks innocent may not be.”

That explanation failed to persuade Schroeder, who said that sending agents to question Americans who have written to Soviets or Eastern Europeans “does not look like a credible use of resources.”

Sessions provided no specifics about Chinese intelligence operations, but he cited the increasing number of Chinese nationals in the United States in calling attention to the potential threat from Beijing.

Using Sept. 30, 1989, figures, Sessions said China had more than 2,600 diplomatic and commercial officials in the United States--”an official presence greater than that of the Soviet Union.”

The number of Chinese students and scholars studying in the United States rose to more than 40,000 last year, Sessions said, while more than 8,000 Chinese groups including about 25,000 people visited America.

In addition, 20,000 Chinese emigres are allowed to enter the United States annually, he said.

“This large presence of (Chinese) nationals creates a tremendous need for a counterintelligence response as the FBI has documented the widespread use of these . . . nationals . . . for intelligence collection,” Sessions said.

The FBI director’s focus on a mounting threat from Chinese spies contrasted with statements by U.S. government sources last summer in the wake of last June’s crackdown on political dissent inside China.

Those sources said that concern over Chinese intelligence operations in America had lessened, at least temporarily, because revulsion over the bloody crackdown had sharply reduced contacts between Chinese embassies and consulates and ethnic Chinese in this country.

The most significant Chinese espionage case to become public in recent years involved Larry Wu-tai Chin, a former CIA analyst who committed suicide in 1986 after being convicted of spying for China for 30 years from inside the U.S. intelligence system.

Sessions said that the FBI anticipates that Soviet espionage will continue to increase. There is “an inaccurate public perception that events in the Soviet Union equate to a decreasing intelligence threat to our nation,” he said.

“This has created an environment in which intelligence operations are easier for the Soviets to initiate, harder for the FBI to identify and neutralize and increasingly more difficult for the FBI to explain to the public and some sectors of government the threat of Soviet intelligence activities,” Sessions said.

The FBI director credited arms control agreements, business opportunities both here and in the Soviet Union, U.S. emigration policies, and cultural and educational exchanges with giving Soviet intelligence services “greater opportunity than ever before to exploit the United States and its citizens.”