On a Wednesday afternoon in mid-December, a Chinese woman entered the grounds of President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida through a service entrance and snapped photos on her cell phone. “Who is Mar-a-Lago?” she said in court following her arrest.
Eight days later, a Chinese student walked around a perimeter fence at a U.S. Naval base in Key West, taking pictures of government buildings. Stopped by police, he said he was trying to capture images of the sunrise.
And nine days after that, two more Chinese students drove past a guard at the same Naval base. When stopped by security 30 minutes later, they voluntarily displayed the videos and photos they took of the base.
Were the incidents isolated cases of tourists mistakenly taking photos in sensitive locations? Or could some or all of the individuals be part of a spy operation run out of Beijing?
Naval Air Station Key West’s Truman Harbor in Florida on Aug. 3, 2019.Danette Baso Silvers / U.S. Navy file
In total, four Chinese men have been arrested for trespassing and taking photos at the Naval Air Station in Key West since Sept. 2018, and two Chinese women have been arrested for trespassing at Mar-a-Lago since March 2019.
“Coincidences take a lot of planning,” said Frank Figliuzzi, the former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.
“These types of brazen and repeated attempts to breach security at two separate facilities in the same region are highly unusual and worthy of serious inquiry by our intelligence community,” said Figliuzzi, who is an NBC News analyst.