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He's cute, yes, but... Cagey. Very Cagey.By Rick Horowitz "Scoops!" the boss says. "Think scoops!" As if I don't wear out more shoe leather than anyone else in this whole sorry newsroom doing exactly that. As if a Z.Z. Zellwinger byline isn't the closest thing going to a guarantee that whatever you're reading, you won't find it anywhere else. This story I'm working on now, for instance. This one's gonna blow the roof off this sleepy little town I call "Washington, D.C." Hsing-Hsing is a spy. You heard right: Hsing-Hsing, panda pal and kiddies' delight at the National Zoo, is a Chinese spy. Ling-Ling, too, back when Ling-Ling was around. I'm still working out the details, but it all fits, every last roly-poly piece of it. Think Rosenbergs, only with more fur. I could just kick myself for not seeing it sooner -- I mean, it's only been staring me in the face practically forever! But it wasn't until all this latest stuff about how old and sick Hsing-Hsing is, and how this time he might not make it, plus all that other stuff about all that Chinese espionage, that I finally started paying attention, started making connections. And it all lines up. Take the timing, first of all. Timing is key in the spy trade, and the timing here is practically perfect. When did the pandas first get to Washington? In the early 1970s, as a "gift" from the Chinese government. (Some gift!) And when did the Chinese start stealing our nuclear secrets? In the late 1970s, according to the latest reports. Figure a couple of years for them to settle in at the zoo and establish their cover identities -- lovable, cuddly symbols of international friendship. After that, it was all business. And take location. These pandas couldn't have been in a better place to do their dirty work. (Other than Los Alamos, say, and that would have been hard to explain.) The zoo is in Northwest Washington, not far from all sorts of embassies. It's also sitting on some of the highest terrain in town, which makes microwave intercepts and transmissions a piece of cake. (I read something about that once.) Talk about "hiding in plain sight"! For years, those two pandas were right out there in public, visited by hundreds of thousands of people a year, any one of whom could have been some kind of secret contact passing vital information back and forth. Everyone always thought all that bamboo chewing was so cute -- but what if it was code? What if the bamboo scraps were really spelling out neutron bomb secrets? Not so cute, right? And the thousands and thousands of letters the pandas got every year. They were from "schoolchildren," the stories all said -- but how can we be sure? For all we know, somewhere in that innocent-looking pile were the latest instructions from Hsing-Hsing's "handlers." Did you know that the Chinese Foreign Ministry, and even the Chinese Cabinet, help decide which pandas go where? This isn't some little zoo-to-zoo thing we're talking about here; this comes right from the top, the way national security stuff does. Did you also know that at this very moment, pandas are in place not just in Washington, but also in Paris and Berlin and Tokyo? Major cities, every one of them, chock full of valuable information. Just a coincidence? Don't be so naive. Remember how Ling-Ling died "suddenly" back in 1992? "Heart failure," the stories said -- a perfectly innocent turn of events. In retrospect, who knows? Was she tired of the double life? Could she have been ready to defect, to spill her secrets? It might have been time for desperate measures to stop her. Was Hsing-Hsing ordered to do her in? And maybe now it's Hsing-Hsing's turn. Maybe somebody's been slipping extra "ingredients" into Hsing-Hsing's food; I need to get my hands on that menu. After all, the last thing the Chinese want, now that their spying's been exposed to the world, is to have all their agents rounded up for questioning. Interrogation is hard to resist, even for a crafty old operative like Hsing-Hsing. You put a panda under a bare light bulb, there's no telling what happens. I smell a Pulitzer. Posted
6/4/99. Come back again -- it'll bring out the animal in
you!
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