A gay Islamist porn star , an Uyghur male Chinese opera singer pretending to be a woman -Two examples of how the obsession with diversity compromised security

December 04, 2016

Excepts
30 years ago:

One night in the Forbidden City Shi told Boursicot a story no romantic could resist: he was a

woman who had been forced to go through life as a man because her father wanted a son.

A short time later, the men became lovers, although the sex, Boursicot would later say,

was fast and furtive, always in the dark.

When Chinese authorities discovered the affair, Boursicot passed them French documents,

first from the embassy in Beijing and later from his posting at the consulate in Ulan Bator in

Mongolia.

About two years ago:

The German citizen of Spanish descent confessed to secretly converting to Islam

in 2014. From there, his story took a stranger turn. Officials ran a check on the

online alias he assumed in radical chat rooms. The married father of four had used

it before — as recently as 2011 — as his stage name for acting in gay pornographic

films.

Officials were withholding the name of the 51-year old, as well as the alias he used

as a porn actor and in chat rooms. Before he was hired in April, officials insist, he

was thoroughly vetted. They said they had interviewed former employers and

others who knew him.

Those who have interviewed the suspect say he may have been mentally ill, and

perhaps even had multiple personalities, according to the senior intelligence

official.

Chinese spy persuaded his French lover

he was a woman

Shi Pei Pu, 1938-2009

JULY 6 2009

THE sexually convoluted love affair between Shi Pei Pu, a Beijing opera singer and spy, and a French

embassy worker created one of the strangest cases in international espionage and was the inspiration

for the Broadway show M. Butterfly.

Shi (pronounced Shuh), who has died in Paris, was convicted of espionage in France in 1986 with

his lover, Bernard Boursicot. Shi, thought to be 70, had been believed for years to be a woman, at least

by Boursicot, who became a laughing stock in France.

Boursicot, who is 64 and is recovering from a stroke, showed no sadness when he learnt of Shi's death.

He said: "He did so many things against me that he had no pity for, I think it is stupid to play another

game now and say I am sad. The plate is clean now. I am free." He said they last spoke a few months

ago and Shi told him he still loved him.

In the 1988 Broadway play and the 1993 film of M. Butterfly, Boursicot was depicted as a high-ranking diplomat and Shi as a beautiful female opera singer. In fact, Boursicot was a 20-year-old high school dropout who worked as an accountant at the French embassy

in Beijing. His few sexual experiences had been with male schoolmates and he wrote in his diary that

he was determined to fall in love with a woman.

Shi was 26 when they met, delicate and charming. He lived as a man and taught Chinese to the

diplomatic wives. He told Boursicot he had been a singer and a librettist in the Beijing Opera. One

night in the Forbidden City Shi told Boursicot a story no romantic could resist: he was a woman who

had been forced to go through life as a man because her father wanted a son. A short time later, the

men became lovers, although the sex, Boursicot would later say, was fast and furtive, always in the

dark.

When Chinese authorities discovered the affair, Boursicot passed them French documents, first from

the embassy in Beijing and later from his posting at the consulate in Ulan Bator in Mongolia.

Boursicot spent most of his life outside China and was involved with men and women. On his rare

visits to Shi, sexual contact was circumscribed. On one visit, Shi presented a four-year-old boy,

Shi Du Du, who, Shi said, was their son.

In 1982, Boursicot, then living with a male, Thierry Toulet, arranged for Shi Pei Pu and Shi Du Du to

live with him in Paris. Shortly after, Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu were arrested. Shi first told the police he

was a woman, but admitted the truth to prison doctors, showing them how he hid his genitals.
Shi Du Du explained to police that he was from China's Uygur minority and had been sold by his

mother.

"It was not that my mother did not love me," he said. "We were starving."

Boursicot, hearing that Shi Pei Pu had always been a man, sliced his throat with a razor blade in prison.

Shi and Boursicot received six-year sentences for espionage. They were pardoned a year later.

Shi enjoyed the spotlight, performing in public as an opera singer, but disliked talking about his

romance with Boursicot, particularly the sexual specifics.

Shi is survived by Shi Du Du, who lives in Paris and who, Boursicot said, has three young sons.

Joyce Walder The New York Times

Arrested German spy was a onetime gay porn actor

— and a secret Islamist

By Souad Mekhennet and Anthony Faiola November 30

BERLIN — Two weeks ago, German intelligence agents noticed an unusual user in a chat room known as a digital hideout for Islamic militants. The man claimed to be one of them — and said he was a German spy. He was offering to help Islamists infiltrate his agency’s defenses to stage a strike.

Agents lured him into a private chat, and he gave away so many details about the spy agency — and his own directives within it to thwart Islamists — that they quickly identified him, arresting the 51-year-old the next day. Only then would the extent of his double life become clear.

The German citizen of Spanish descent confessed to secretly converting to Islam in 2014. From there, his story took a stranger turn. Officials ran a check on the online alias he assumed in radical chat rooms. The married father of four had used it before — as recently as 2011 — as his stage name for acting in gay pornographic films.

Authorities on Tuesday said they had arrested him on suspicion of preparing to commit a violent act and for violating state secrecy laws. His arrest was first reported in Germany’s Der Spiegel. But two German officials familiar with the case — a senior intelligence official and a senior law enforcement official — revealed new details about his double life in interviews with the Washington Post. They include his role in pornographic films, which could cast a fresh light on the judgment and vetting of the German intelligence agency at a critical time.

News of the case sparked a storm of outrage in Germany, even as critics said it raised serious questions about the country’s bureaucratically named domestic spy agency, known as the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).

As they scramble to contain a proliferation of new threats from the Islamic State terrorist group and lone wolves in Europe, German security officials have been credited with foiling plots. But they also have stumbled — including in the case of Jaber al-Bakr, a Syrian who was arrested last month on suspicion of planning an attack and who managed to kill himself while on a 24-hour suicide watch in a Leipzig jail cell.

Enter the unfolding case now of a porn actor-turned-Muslim-convert-turned-spy-turned-Islamist turncoat.

“It’s not only a rather bizarre, but also a quite scary, story that an agency, whose central role it is to engage in counterespionage, hired an Islamist who potentially had access to classified information, who might have even tried to spread Islamist propaganda and to recruit others to let themselves be hired by and possibly launch an attack” against the domestic intelligence agency, said Hans-Christian Ströbele, a member of the Parliamentary Control Committee that oversees the work of the German intelligence services.

The agency “needs to tell us immediately what exactly happened and how it could happen that somebody like this was hired,” he said.

One senior BfV official, who discussed the matter on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media defended the agency, said it was virtually impossible to protect against a breach like this.

“How should anyone have known this? He had acted under different names and identities online,” he said. “Not his real name. One has to say that we were able to find out about all this very quickly and also actions were taken fast.”

Officials were withholding the name of the 51-year old, as well as the alias he used as a porn actor and in chat rooms. Before he was hired in April, officials insist, he was thoroughly vetted. They said they had interviewed former employers and others who knew him.

Those who have interviewed the suspect say he may have been mentally ill, and perhaps even had multiple personalities, according to the senior intelligence official.

But in hindsight, even officials in German security circles were asking how such a lapse was possible.

“With all the information coming out about this individual, the question has to be raised: how he was able to end up in the intelligence service and was able to hide all this from his workplace but also his family,” said the senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the case.

In April 2016, the man began working for the BfV, charged with monitoring potentially violent Islamists in Germany. The ranks of Salafists — an ultraconservative sect of Islam — have been rapidly growing. In September, Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic spy agency, estimated that there are at least 9,200 in Germany, up from 5,500 three years ago.

However, other members of the German intelligence service also charged with watching chat rooms noticed a user who claimed that he was working for the domestic spy service and offering vital information. They began a direct chat with him.

The user offered to facilitate access to the spy agency’s headquarters in Cologne so that Islamist militants could commit violent acts “against unbelievers.” The man, however, provided so much detail about his directives and role at the agency that the spies chatting with him were able to identify and arrest him by the following day.

In custody, the man, officials say, admitted under interrogation that he was a secret convert to Islam and that he had the aim all along to infiltrate the domestic spy agency so he could warn “his religious brothers” about the agency’s investigations.

He told investigators that he had converted in 2014, after telephone conversations with somebody in Austria who went by the name Mohammed. Investigators asked him if this was Mohammed Mahmoud, an Austrian Egyptian who joined the Islamic State and who previously had run a website where he translated speeches of al-Qaeda leaders. The arrested man refused to confirm a surname.

Officials say there is no evidence yet that the suspect provided harmful details to Islamic militants. But German politicians charged with overseeing the domestic spy agency’s work were calling for a review of its vetting procedures.

“One can be grateful that this came out,” said André Hahn, a member of the agency’s parliamentary control committee from the Left Party. “But it appears to have been rather a coincidence. It could also have happened that he would have worked there for years.”

Stephanie Kirchner contributed to this report.

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