This month a report was issued that had been commissioned in December 2022 and had been owed to Congress by December 2023. The House and Senate had given the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) the task of reporting on corruption among senior Chinese communists.
More than two years later the baby has arrived. Its weight, excluding front matter, is five pages of text, plus a bonus quarter of a page featuring an executive summary.
Taking Time
Reminds me of a story. A family friend had joined the CIA in the late seventies.
“What’s your job there?” we asked.
“I’m a Soviet analyst,” he answered.
“What do you do?”
“Once a week I get Time magazine and rephrase some Soviet article to write my own report.”
Now the ODNI is, among other things, an aggregator of intelligence from the CIA and all the other intelligence agencies. It has on tap many more writeups than just those of Time magazine.
So when will we again reach those towering heights of 1970s productivity when a rookie analyst could crank out a report (whatever the quality) weekly? What massive institutional transformations are required to restore that impressive standard to our faltering bureaus?
For this new ODNI item, “Wealth and Corrupt Activities of the Leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,” is truly, as China reporter Paul Berkowitz says, a pathetic insult “to Secretary of State Rubio who requested it by law in December 2022, Director Gabbard who released it, President Trump who needed it to protect our nation, and the American people who funded it.”
It’s so bad that the low quality seems deliberately provocative. Open the file and the first thing you’ll see at the top left is a placeholder showing that ODNI forgot to enter the title: “Example Title Goes Hee [sic] Example Example Example Example Example Example Example Example Example.”
It’s here at least
Well, at least this rush job has finally arrived.
The scantiness of the content is also severely disappointing. This includes a “list of well-known corruption cases within the Central Military Commission and the PLA,” material that could have been compiled by an intern. It’s pretty stale, too: “The information in the unclassified DNI report” relies on research published in 2012 “in Bloomberg News…, New York Times…, New Yorker, Washington Times, and other mostly reliable publicly available sources.”
Way back when, we asked our CIA friend what he’d do if his bosses caught him cribbing from Time magazine. Answer: “It’s what they expect. If my analysis doesn’t match that of Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, that’s what would get me in trouble.”
So at least, here in 2025, ODNI has given us a topic match between their congressional mandate and 13-year-old leftovers from such approved sources as Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Times, etc.
But if it is stale bread we must eat, why not the 2016 Panama Papers, the more than 11 million leaked documents that exposed some 214,000 tax havens in 200 countries? Including China? Remember this morsel, for instance? “Panama papers: China leaders’ relatives named in leaks.” Or how about “The Panama papers are super awkward for Beijing.” Or this one: “China’s President Shows Up in the Panama Papers. Is This a Big Deal?”
Big deal for readers, big deal for the journalists reporting this stuff. Not a big deal for the intel community, which seems to have misplaced some files between then and now.
One newspaper wonders, logically, “why the intelligence analysts did not include more details available from these [very old] open sources?” ODNI could have fattened up its skinny report with much more low-value, outdated public information. Might have fooled Congress with the trusty old quantity-equals-quality ploy.
Anticipation
This report had been eagerly awaited.
“United States Senator Marco Rubio has inserted language into U.S. law which tasks the intelligence community of the United States to produce an unclassified—and thus publicly available—report on the wealth and corrupt activities of the leadership of the CCP.—Paul Berkowitz and Bradley Thayer, April 2024
“U.S. intelligence agencies are working on a report expected to reveal extensive corruption and hidden wealth held by Chinese Communist Party leaders, including President Xi Jinping, who also holds the post of party general secretary.”—Bill Gertz, April 2024
“Intelligence community’s report on wealth and corruption of China’s rulers is overdue. Americans need to know why.”—Paul Berkowitz and Bradley Thayer, October 2024
“Congress presses DNI for overdue report on corruption, hidden wealth of China’s leadership”—Bill Gertz, February 2025
Last year, the Congressional Research Service published its own white paper on this topic, also based on public reporting. Maybe they couldn’t wait any longer for ODNI. Maybe CRS thought its own paper was not upstaging anyone, since the intel establishment would, of course, deliver something much better than what CRS could produce from open sources.
Oh well.
This week, General He Weidong, one of two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, was reported missing, apparently purged for corruption.
Developments can’t wait for the ODNI. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
