A senior Canadian lawmaker and secretary to the minister of foreign affairs apologized on Friday after his flirtatious e-mails to a journalist with Xinhua news agency were made public.
Bob Dechert, a Conservative MP for the Missisauga-Erindale riding near Toronto, was forced to explain the missives on Friday after a mass e-mail distributed to media, academics and political contacts the previous day described his amorous messages to Shi Rong (施蓉), the Toronto bureau chief for Xinhua. The e-mails, sent from Dechert’s parliamentary account, were dated around April last year.
One, dated April 17 last year and signed “Bob Dechert, MP,” read: “You are so beautiful. I really like the picture of you by the water with your cheeks puffed. That look is so cute, I love it when you do that. Now, I miss you even more.”
Photo: Screengrab from CBC News Web site
Another e-mail, sent three days later, read: “Dearest Rong ... How is your day? Did your interviews at Royal Bank go well? Did you get enough information for your articles?”
Informing her he had just arrived in Ottawa, Dechert then wrote: “I enjoyed the drive by thinking of you.”
“We [the Canadian House of Commons] will be voting at 6:30 p.m. If you have time, watch on TV or on your computer [on the CPAC Web site] and I will smile at you,” the message read, concluding with: “I miss you. Love, Bob.”
Dechert, who is married, played down the nature of his relationship with Shi on Friday.
“[Shi] is a journalist whom I have come to know as a friend. I met her while doing Chinese-language media communications,” he said.
“These e-mails are flirtatious, but the friendship remained innocent and simply that — a friendship. I apologize for any harm caused to anyone by this situation,” the Globe and Mail quoted him as saying.
The MP claimed the e-mails had been “leaked” as part of a domestic dispute between Shi and her husband. Shi told a Canadian newspaper that her husband had “hacked” into her e-mail account.
Dechert is one of the two secretaries to Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird, whose first visit abroad as Canada’s top foreign affairs official was to Beijing in July. Dechert assumed that position following the Canadian federal elections on May 2. Prior to the assignment, he was parliamentary secretary to the justice minister.
Dechert’s responsibilities under Baird are for North America and are unrelated to the Asia-Pacific region, government sources have told the Canadian Press, adding that he had been asked to give an account of his relationship with Shi to an unidentified government official.
As part of their functions, parliamentary secretaries answer questions in the House of Commons when the minister is not present, a government official said, adding that such a position normally does not come with access to Cabinet-level information and is usually limited to briefing notes.
Western intelligence agencies have long suspected journalists from Xinhua of also being under the employ of the Chinese intelligence apparatus. In at least one Western country, the domestic intelligence service operates under the assumption that Xinhua reporters are “undeclared” intelligence officers.
Beijing’s definition of what constitutes intelligence material is rather vague. It is known that journalists working for Xinhua, the People’s Daily and other state-owned publications are also tasked with producing neibu cankao ziliao (內部參考資料), or “internal reference reports,” on subjects that are deemed too sensitive for public consumption. Those reports are circulated only among Chinese officials.
While it has yet to be determined whether Dechert was the target of a “honey trap,” the Chinese intelligence apparatus has a long tradition of using attractive women to compromise or blackmail government officials, business leaders and individuals in the arms industry.
In an interview last year, Canadian Security Intelligence Service Director Richard Fadden said at least two Canadian Cabinet ministers at the provincial level, as well as a number of other government officials were “under the control” of foreign intelligence agencies.
While he did not specify any countries, it was widely understood that Fadden was referring to China.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS