Former Counterintelligence Chief Says FBI Searched NYC’s Chinese Police Station in January

While a New York Times report said that FBI counterintelligence officers searched an illicit Chinese police station in New York City during a raid last fall, the bureau has not yet actually confirmed that the raid took place. In testimony submitted to a House of Representatives subcommittee yesterday, a former chief U.S. counterintelligence official offered a slightly different timeline, saying that the FBI search took place in January of this year.

The former official making the claim is Bill Evanina, who served as the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center until January 2021. Although he no longer serves in government, Evanina has remained a frequent commentator on national-security and intelligence-related issues. He testified before a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on “Confronting threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party to the U.S. homeland” yesterday morning.

While he mentioned the Chinese overseas police station in Manhattan — one of over a hundred around the world, including several others in the U.S. ­— he did not speak specifically about the timing of the raid in his oral testimony. But in his written statement to the committee, he discussed at length Operation Fox Hunt, a wide-ranging Chinese government surveillance, stalking, and kidnapping effort to repatriate Chinese nationals from countries all over the world.

“In January 2023, the FBI conducted a search warrant of a suspected Chinese police station in New York City which was furthering this effort, and most likely more undisclosed illegal activity,” Evanina wrote.

The FBI didn’t respond to National Review’s request for comment on Evanina’s testimony, and a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York — which is carrying out a criminal investigation under which the raid occurred, according to the Times — declined to comment.

In response to a question during the hearing by Representative Anthony D’Esposito about the Chinese police station, Evanina said that the raid by the FBI and Justice Department “is a high threshold to obtain.”

“It’s a manifestation of the strategic plan by the Communist Party of China to not only influence or manipulate their own diaspora here in the United States, but provide an intimidation factor,” he added. Evanina also said that although he’s not aware of the locations of other Chinese police stations on U.S. soil, he’s “pretty confident that our law enforcement, both at the state, local, and federal level, are pretty aware of that.”

The human-rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders has linked China’s overseas police stations to Operation Fox Hunt-forced return schemes, though there’s no publicly available information linking the Chinese police station in Manhattan to those efforts. But its presence on U.S. soil was unauthorized, according to the State Department, and FBI director Christopher Wray called it an “outrageous” violation of U.S. sovereignty.

It’s not clear what other “undisclosed illegal activity” Evanina was referring to in his written testimony, but a Taiwanese government official said this week that a Chinese police station in France had carried out cyberattacks against Mandarin language-learning centers operated by Taiwan in France. National Review has attempted to reach Evanina through congressional staff who organized the hearing.

The police outpost was hosted in the office of the America ChangLe Association — a charity that supports immigrants from China’s Fujian province, and which is reported to have extensive links to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front influence operations.

While there were several people present at the group’s office, which also apparently hosted the police station, in mid January, the State Department told National Review later that month that the FBI had confirmed its closure. The America ChangLe Association’s website was taken offline sometime in January.