by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News October 7, 2024

Five Chinese nationals have been charged in absentia with covering up a midnight spying mission at a military base in Michigan.

The five individuals, who at the time were students at the University of Michigan, were confronted in August 2023 in the dark near Camp Grayling, a remote Michigan military site where thousands of personnel had gathered for summer drills.

According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court last week, the five men are accused of misleading investigators about the spy mission and conspiring to clear their phones of photos.

There was nothing in the file revealing the whereabouts of the five men.

“The defendants are not in custody. Should they come into contact with U.S. authorities, they will be arrested and face these charges,” said Gina Balaya, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.

The men were confronted after midnight near a lake by a sergeant major with the Utah National Guard. One of the men said, “We are media,” before they collected their belongings and agreed to leave the area, the FBI said.

The FBI learned that the men had booked a room at a nearby motel a week before they were spotted outside Camp Grayling, 200 miles north of Detroit.

Four months later, one of the men was interviewed by border officers at the Detroit airport before traveling to South Korea and China. He told investigators that he and others had taken a trip to northern Michigan “to see shooting stars,” the FBI said.

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A check of his external hard drive revealed two images of military vehicles taken on the same night of the encounter with the National Guard officer, the FBI said.

The other four men were interviewed last March after arriving in Chicago on a flight from Iceland. They acknowledged being in northern Michigan in August 2023, but they said it was to see a meteor shower, the FBI said.

They mentioned the National Guard officer but referred to him only as “the soldier,” a camper or “nice guy,” according to the criminal complaint.

The men last December communicated on WeChat about clearing photos from their cameras and phones, investigators said.

The FBI said all five men graduated last spring from the University of Michigan. They were part of a joint program between the university and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China.

The leader of the House China Committee, Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, has been warning of China’s growing operations within the U.S., and particularly Michigan, for months.

“All of our nation’s universities must shut down their joint institutes with Chinese universities and enact stricter guardrails on emerging technology research,” Moolenaar told DailyMail.com. “American universities must realize they are a target for espionage and protect the critical taxpayer-funded research they do.”

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  Chinese nationals charged with covering up midnight spying mission at Michigan military base, WorldTribune.com