This complete, full access, no-holds-barred story of the revolutionary espionage investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of spy Chi Mak, his extended family, and associate “Greg” Dongfan Chung, is told by retired FBI Special Agent James E. Gaylord, who managed them all as Case Agent from start to finish. For the first time, this tale is comprehensively detailed by the man who directed its every step, citing his experiences, the evidence, interviews, and FBI and courtroom documents. Mr. Gaylord’s ultimate insider view will surprise readers with its intimate and honest descriptions of behind-the-scenes events, intrigues, betrayals, obstacles, outrages, losses, victories and hilarity, identifying individual heroes and villains along the way. Although organizational friction, friendly fire, and bureaucratic cowardice jeopardized the outcome until the very last moments, Mr. Gaylord’s team persevered, fighting its way to historic victories.
The efforts of Special Agent Gaylord and his squad, call sign SARA-4, produced the most successful prosecutions ever against Red China’s spies, and broke the FBI’s string of prior prosecutive failures. SARA-4’s victories thus reversed FBI fortunes, creating new investigative and prosecutive templates and opening a floodgate of successful follow-on prosecutions of PRC spies. In this raw, first-person narrative of real events, Agent Gaylord also outlines significant “do’s” and “don’ts” of an espionage case, as well as how his team’s unique talents and strategies overcame the political and bureaucratic pressures frequently brought to bear to threaten their efforts. In addition, he highlights the problems, and the changes sorely needed, within the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), CIA, and related alphabet agencies, in the hope that this state of affairs can be righted in time to counter the dire, immediate, and ongoing PRC threat.
Mr. Gaylord’s account details some severe U.S. military and commercial advantages lost to our adversary, which led to current, all-too-familiar headlines of PRC parity in naval, aerospace, and outer space theaters, much of it gained through the Chi Mak and Greg Chung family spy rings. Special Agent Gaylord warns that similar thefts largely continue undeterred today, and in fact have increased dramatically in the face of a woefully inadequate U.S. intelligence community response. The betrayals of Chi Mak, Greg Chung, and countless others have saved the PRC billions in, and decades of, unproductive investments, while simultaneously “leapfrogging” it to technological parity via vetted, costly, protracted U.S. government and corporate research.
James E. Gaylord worked as an FBI Special Agent and Supervisor for 30-plus years, conducting Counterintelligence investigations until his retirement in March 2017. He was the Case Agent for the entire espionage investigation, prosecution, and conviction of U.S. citizen and L-3 Communications naval electrical engineer Chi Mak, his wife “Rebecca” Laiwah Chiu, brother Tai Wang Mak, sister-in-law Fuk Heung Li, and nephew “Billy” Yui Mak. Mr. Gaylord was also the Co-Case Agent and mentor for the follow-on economic espionage investigation, prosecution, and conviction of Chi Mak’s associate, “Greg” Dongfan Chung, a structural aerospace engineer for Rockwell and The Boeing Company. Thereafter, Agent Gaylord managed spin-off investigations of Mak and Chung associates, and prosecutions of other individuals for stealing U.S. technologies for Communist China.
