The compromise of a Japanese code clerk by Chinese intelligence has raised calls in Japan for the creation of a central intelligence service to conduct offensive intelligence and counterintelligence.
A Japanese communications officer in Shanghai committed suicide after he was entrapped by Chinese intelligence agents who threatened to expose his involvement.
Japan's Interior Ministry was disbanded after World War II and the Foreign Ministry has become a bureaucracy that is averse to protecting security interests, Japan’s conservative daily Sankei Shimbun reported.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said the prime minister’s office was not told of the incident. “The Prime Minister's Office received no report [from the Foreign Ministry] at the time of the incident,” Abe told reporters.
The code clerk killed himself in May 2004 and left a note saying that a Chinese man tried to force him to disclose confidential diplomatic information, according to diplomatic sources.
The Chinese official was believed to be an agent of the Ministry of State Security, as Beijing's civilian intelligence service is called.
The newspaper reported that the late Deputy Prime Minister Masaharu Gotoda said the Foreign Ministry hid intelligence from the rest of the government as part of diplomacy. Gotoda proposed creating a "cabinet central intelligence bureau" as part of an administrative reform program initiated by former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.
The plan called for integrating Japan’s intelligence agencies, including the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, the Foreign Ministry's Intelligence and Analysis Service, the Public Security Investigation Agency, the Foreign Affairs Division of the National Police Agency's Security Bureau, the Defense Agency's intelligence headquarters, and other government intelligence agencies.
The plan was never implemented.
