The Chinese Spy Who Manipulated America's Top Counterintelligence Agents

May 31, 2026 - 09:51

How did a single Chinese spy manage to compromise America’s China counterintelligence system for nearly two decades? In this episode, we uncover the astonishing true story of Katrina Leung, the FBI informant codenamed “Parlor Maid” who allegedly became one of Beijing’s most successful intelligence assets inside the United States. Through secret affairs, stolen documents, political connections, and a web of deception that reached the highest levels of the FBI, Leung manipulated the very agents tasked with hunting Chinese spies. This is the story of one of the most embarrassing counterintelligence failures in modern American history—and a cautionary tale about how espionage often succeeds not through technology, but through human weakness.