Inside “Rusty Thumbs”: How the FBI Tried to Recruit Fang Fang In Las Vegas

Axios broke the story of Fang Fang’s extensive political ties in California in 2020, publishing several of her social media posts as part of its report.

LAS VEGAS — In May 2013, an undercover FBI employee sat down in Las Vegas with a Chinese student who had already built an unusual network stretching from Chinese government circles into the political establishment of Northern California.

To Christine Fang, the encounter appeared to offer a business relationship.

To the FBI, she was Rusty Thumbs—a woman who was cagey about parts of her educational background and who, within several meetings, would claim personal connections to people she described as the PRC equivalent of “royalty,” including someone related to Mao Zedong.

This was not, in police language, a mere “fishing trip.”

An underlying FBI investigation had already identified Fang as having suspected ties to China’s Ministry of State Security, while both of her parents were classified internally as known MSS intelligence officers. At the same time, Fang was cultivating American politicians and claiming access to influential figures inside the Chinese government.

What followed, revealed in a newly declassified FBI counterintelligence file, was an unusually ambitious recruitment operation.

Rather than confront Fang over what investigators suspected, undercover agents constructed a commercial cover around her, studied her access and psychology, met her repeatedly over meals, and listened as she discussed American politicians, Chinese government contacts, her ambitions and her vulnerabilities. They wanted to determine whether her interest in money, status, employment and immigration security could help draw her into the American intelligence fold.

The FBI believed the very connections that made Fang a counterintelligence concern might also make her valuable as a source.

“Given RT’s apparent connections with MSS personnel and the PRC government,” one operational assessment said, coupled with her continuing contacts with American and local officials, Fang “may be able to report on MSS influence campaigns directed at the U.S. government.”

An undercover employee represented himself through a fictitious company that needed exactly what Fang seemed to offer: contacts in China, knowledge of the Chinese business and political environment, and connections to municipal governments around the San Francisco Bay Area.

The bureau was also trying to understand the woman herself.

Under the heading “Motivations,” an FBI assessment offered a stark judgment: Fang appeared to be driven by “money and power.”

She was socially adept, agents wrote, but displayed “egotistical/narcissistic traits” that could potentially affect her suitability as an intelligence source.

At a subsequent San Francisco dinner in June 2013, the undercover employee documented Fang carefully. She arrived punctually at about 6:30 p.m., dressed in what the report called an “almost-businesslike fashion,” and appeared more professional than she had during the Las Vegas meeting.

Then she ordered the most expensive item on the menu.