PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
August 10, 2021

CONTACTS:
Hamilton Strategies, [email protected],
Beth Harrison, 610.584.1096, ext. 105,
or Deborah Hamilton, ext. 102

National Security Practitioners, China Experts Urge End To Eric Swalwell’s Access To Sensitive State Secrets
Concerned that Chinese Intelligence May Continue to Exploit His Compromise

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A group of thirty-three former senior executive branch civilian officials  and military leaders, retired legislators – including a former Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and two of that panel’s other past members – and authorities on the intensifying threats posed the Chinese Communist Party today urged immediate corrective action to address a clear “national security risk”: The possibly continuing compromise of some of our government’s most highly classified secrets in the possession of the House Intelligence Committee.

In an open letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sponsored by the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC), former HPSCI Chairman Pete Hoekstra and his fellow signatories noted that California Rep. Eric Swalwell “has admitted to having a relationship with a female Chinese spy known as ‘Fang Fang.’ Press accounts indicate that the Intelligence Community (IC) has prepared a classified report on the character of that relationship. Presumably, it also assesses the degree to which such behavior has compromised Rep. Swalwell, endangering information to which he has privileged access as a senior member of the HPSCI and that would be of interest to the Chinese Communist Party and its People’s Liberation Army.”

The authors of the letter include: former HPSCI members Reps. Michele Bachmann and Sue Myrick; former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.); former Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive Kenneth deGraffenreid; former CIA clandestine operations officer Charles “Sam” Faddis; former CIA Chief of Station Bradley Johnson; former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz; Captain James Fanell, U.S. Navy (Ret.), former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations, U.S. Pacific Fleet, and Brian Kennedy, Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger: China.

The signatories posed to Speaker Pelosi an urgent question: Has the Intelligence Community damage assessment “rendered a judgment about whether Eric Swalwell even now could be regarded – and run – by China’s Ministry of State Security as one of its intelligence assets?”

The open letter to the House Speaker concludes:“As you know, the magnitude of the threat we are facing from the Chinese Communist Party is such that we cannot allow any avoidable intensification of that danger to arise from unforced errors. Eric Swalwell’s continued presence on the House Intelligence Committee is one such error and we call on you to rectify it at once.”(Emphasis added.)

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To interview representatives of the Committee on the Present Danger: China,
contact [email protected],
Beth Harrison, 610.584.1096, ext. 105,
or Deborah Hamilton, ext. 102.

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