NEW YORK—Dozens of fake bomb threats targeting New York-based performing arts company Shen Yun appear to be a part of a systematic campaign of criminal activity by the Chinese regime on American soil—a problem that will need to be addressed at the top diplomatic levels, several experts told The Epoch Times.
Shen Yun has long been a prime target of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), presenting high-calibre dance and music shows under the tagline, “China before communism.” It was founded by practitioners of Falun Gong, a faith group brutally persecuted by the CCP since 1999.
Investigations of bomb threats, especially if they involve suspects outside of the country, are routinely handled by the FBI, said former federal prosecutor Nathan Williams. There’s a dedicated federal statute criminalizing bomb threats, he noted.
“What is occurring is a form of extortion, threats of physical injury if a certain behavior isn’t instituted, or a certain form of expression isn’t terminated,” said Marc Ruskin, former FBI agent and federal prosecutor.
“Extortion is one of the federal crimes that could be used to investigate and prosecute the individuals who are committing these bad acts,” he told The Epoch Times.
Most of the emailed threats have targeted U.S. theaters as well as the Shen Yun training facilities in upstate New York. Some, however, were aimed at Shen Yun shows in countries across Europe and in Taiwan. Several cybersecurity experts previously told The Epoch Times the CCP is most likely responsible for the threats.
Given the international scope, the investigation would likely go beyond the FBI, according to Matthew Shoemaker, former intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
“A couple different agencies, at the very least, are going to take this seriously,” he said.
The investigation would likely involve the National Security Agency (NSA), which could help trace who sent the emails. The State Department may get involved, too, given implications for diplomatic relations with China. The Treasury may jump in if there’s a money trail to follow, he said.
If the investigation confirms the CCP’s involvement, the matter would likely get briefed to the White House, Shoemaker said.
He said the briefing would say: “This is what we see the Chinese doing. Do we want to have any sort of response right now, or are we just going to let this slide and are we going to wait to see if they continue doing it this way?
“That’s where you start getting presidential level input.”
Nicholas Eftimiades, an expert on CCP overseas operations, tied the threats to the CCP’s broader strategy of silencing critics and growing its global influence.
“It’s coercion and intimidation, and it’s just part of the CCP’s unrestricted warfare activities against the world, literally,” said Eftimiades, a veteran of the CIA, DIA, and State Department.
In a way, he said, the actions amount to terrorism.
“It absolutely cost them nothing to do, and then you have the entire disruption on the part of the receiving party, plus the implications for the threat amongst other dissident organizations,” he told The Epoch Times.
Coordinated Campaign
The campaign to sabotage Shen Yun goes back nearly two decades, right from the company’s founding in 2006.
The scale of the campaign—a foreign government “exporting criminal behavior and activity” into the United States in a “concerted, targeted, and organized” fashion—is “a very significant violation of international norms,” Ruskin said.
“Often people who are acting in a threatening way will push the envelope to see how much they can get away with,” he said. “A further escalation is almost guaranteed if no actions are taken and no reasonable borders are established as to what kind of behavior is acceptable or not acceptable.”
Shoemaker expressed a similar opinion.
“The Chinese sometimes do this as a form of probing,” he said. “They want to see what our response is. They want to see whatever particular government’s response is, if there is a response, how long it took them to respond.
“We would have to send some sort of clear message to, in this case, the Chinese of: ‘Don’t ever try this at all,’” Shoemaker said.
“That way they stop it before it goes any further.”
It’s not an accident that the regime chooses to attack Falun Gong and Shen Yun, said Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.).
“Why would they even worry about something that’s basically entertainment? Because it tells a story,” he told The Epoch Times.
Anyone who’s been to the show “realized there’s a story of the culture that existed before there was communism.”
“What does the CCP want? They want things that enforce their power, that they’re the saviors,” he said. “That’s why they’re threatened by this.”
Any dictatorship or authoritarian regime that wants to stay in power would first try to defeat the religion or otherwise make it conform to its rule, he added. “Because otherwise it threatens their rule when God can be more powerful than them, they don’t want it.”
John Lenczowski, a former Soviet affairs adviser to President Ronald Reagan, agreed that ideology is “the heart of the matter.”
International Investigation
Some of the threatening emails targeting Shen Yun were sent using email addresses that belong to the Taiwan Ministry of Justice (TMJ). The email metadata, reviewed by The Epoch Times, showed the emails were processed by the Ministry’s own email servers, indicating that somebody gained access to those email accounts. Several cybersecurity experts told The Epoch Times, however, that all the metadata information can be spoofed.Spoofing the detailed fingerprints of multiple TMJ email servers, however, seemed unnecessary, if the culprit was simply a random person bent on sabotaging Shen Yun, the experts noted.
“This would be way too much trouble for an individual who just has a problem with Shen Yun,” said Casey Fleming, cybersecurity expert and CEO of Black Ops Partners.
Examining the metadata with his team, he concluded that the CCP was the most likely culprit.
Gary Miliefsky, a cybersecurity specialist and one of the founding members of the Department of Homeland Security, voiced a similar sentiment.
Eftimiades said the use of TMJ fingerprints signals a more serious operation.
“That tends to indicate more official government engagement on the part of China,” he said.
Even emails from spoofed addresses can be traced, the experts said, though for the FBI, the investigation gets more tricky when the trail leads abroad.
“When you get into encrypted and international servers, it gets a little bit more difficult to obtain that evidence,” Williams said.
The bureau has liaisons at U.S. embassies around the world that coordinate international investigations with local police, Ruskin explained. But there’s little chance China would be willing to cooperate.
That’s where the intelligence community would step in.
The foreign-facing intelligence agencies have “a different way of obtaining information” than what’s available to the FBI domestically, Williams said.
Shoemaker confirmed as much.
“The more sophisticated you are, and the more resources you have at hand, the easier it is for you to mask it, or it’s easier for you to follow the trail. It‘ll just take more time and it’ll take more resources.”
The problem is, if the FBI finds the bad actors with the aid of intelligence assets, it may not be able to use that evidence in court.
“A lot of times you’re dealing with classification issues,” Williams said.
The intelligence community may not be interested in revealing what kind of information it has access to, doubly so if the culprit is in China where the chances of extradition to the United States are nil.
Diplomatic Pressure
Even if the criminals behind the bomb threats aren’t charged, if the investigation confirms CCP’s involvement, the U.S. government may want to address it diplomatically, the experts said.“There’s a whole wrap of possible diplomatic actions that you can take as a result of this type of activity,” Eftimiades said.
Exposing the CCP’s involvement would be a start, he noted.
“There’s the whole logic of public shaming, particularly individuals or governments for engaging in this type of thing,” he said.
On the diplomatic level, the U.S. government doesn’t need to prove CCP’s culpability beyond reasonable doubt, as in a criminal case, Williams said. It can rely on intelligence assessments and investigative reports that don’t need to reveal the underlying classified information.
The CCP’s cyber operations are often run through Chinese technology companies, Eftimiades said.
“You can expose and sanction those.”
CCP officials can be sanctioned, too.
If the responsible actors suddenly find themselves unable to leave China for fear of arrest, that could be a “big game changer,” he said.
Recently, U.S. authorities have put more resources into the Chinese regime’s repression of dissidents in the United States.
“We condemn such acts of intimidation and urge protection of the right to free expression,” a State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times, adding that the department urges “the Chinese Communist Party to end its now 25-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong.”
But experts who track the regime’s abuses say more action is necessary, or Beijing is likely to become even more brazen.
“This is a playbook that could be unleashed on anybody,” Levi Browde, executive director of Falun Dafa Information Center, said in a March webinar.
Coercion and intimidation from Beijing are hardly unusual, said Eftimiades.
“It’s what the dissident community has lived with for decades,” he said.
“Maybe now the world is taking a little notice and we'll do something about it.”
