Larry Wu-tai Chin

Early life Born as Chin Wu-tai in Peking, Republic of China, in 1922, he attended Yenching University.

Chin was recruited by the Chinese Communist intelligence apparatus (then called the Central Social Affairs Department, or SAD) in 1944, during World War II. He was specifically directed to find employment in an American government agency (at the time, the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek was working closely with the Americans against Japan). Chin, who spoke English well, was hired by the United States Army, and was appointed to work as a translator of Chinese language at the U.S. Army Liaison Office in the city of Fuzhou.

As an FBIS analyst and one of the CIA's few fluent Chinese linguists, Chin was able to pass along such information as Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs) on China and East Asia, biographical profiles and assessments of fellow CIA employees, and the names and identities of the Agency's covert agents. He was also in a position to provide information about recruited deep-cover agents in China. Due to the CIA's policy of internal compartmentalization, Chin did not know their real names or identities; however, based on the intelligence they provided, he could infer such things as their locations, employers, and levels of access. Chinese counterintelligence could then attempt to identify them by determining who had access to what information. Once the agents were identified, they would routinely be arrested and executed, or, alternatively, fed false information to be communicated to the CIA. On November 23, 1985, Chin was arrested. He was held at the Prince William County, Virginia, jail, as the United States Marshal's Service typically places espionage suspects in Washington, DC-area county jails. An autopsy concluded that Chin had committed suicide in his cell. Shortly prior to his suicide, the Chinese consul made an authorized visit and informed him that the Chinese government would provide for the needs of his family if he died without revealing his secrets. His body was buried in Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California.

A cenotaph believed to be for Chin was found in Fragrant Hills in Beijing by a visitor passing by in 2017.

Impact Chin was one of China's most important foreign intelligence assets of the Cold War era. Due to his services, the Chinese government was able to extract the maximum political concessions from Richard Nixon in return for a tactical alliance against the Soviet Union. The majority of CIA agents in China were compromised and executed, or fed false information to be reported back to the Agency, and the Chinese leadership could have determined how accurate were U.S. intelligence assessments concerning the PRC's intelligence, political, economic, and military infrastructures.