Their Hidden Agenda: Life of a Chinese-American FBI Agent

By Robert Woo - December 2007

It is every child's dream to become an FBI agent, a career filled with adventures and excitement as shown on TV, but for Robert Woo, a former FBI Special Agent, there's something else to the package: betrayal. Their Hidden Agenda: The Story of a Chinese-American FBI Agent is a story about Woo's twenty-one year employment with the FBI and his struggle to start over after the Bureau terminated his employment over a suspicion about his father. It is also a story about a man's personal journey from loss to redemption.

The book traces Woo's ancestors in China and his father, Hu's arrival in the United States. Born in 1912 war-torn China, Hu came to the United States after he had lost contact with his brother during the Japanese invasion of Nanking, the city of his birthplace. Once in the United States, he decided to settle down in the new country after he found out that he could no longer return to his homeland due to the Japanese occupation. Hu then married his wife, had three sons and opened a Chinese restaurant near the White House.

Though an ocean away, Hu never severed his contacts with China. He provided support for his family in China through a friend from Hong Kong, who would then send the necessary supplies to China to keep Hu's family from starvation. Hoping to return to China and bring his family over to the United States, he kept frequent contacts with representatives of the Chinese Communist regime and visited the Chinese embassy numerous times. Known as "The Ambassador" in the Chinese Community in America, he had also assisted hundreds of Chinese immigrants move to the United States.

Hu's story reads like that of an ordinary immigrant story, but to the FBI, he was not an ordinary immigrant. Suspicious of his activities and considering him a potential threat to the nation, they established a dossier on him and employed Woo, Hu's son as one of their special agents.

The author, Woo grew up in a "typical, racially mixed neighborhood in Washington D.C." and had a "normal American upbringing." He attended the U.S. Naval Academy after he graduated from high school. He then served in Southeast Asia for five years with two deployments in Vietnam. Following the completion of his military service, he joined the FBI, not knowing that the Bureau's purpose for hiring him was to keep an eye on his father's activities through him.

Woo had been kept in the dark for nearly ten years before he became aware of his employers' unusual interest in his father. He suspected that since he was no longer useful to the Bureau, decisions might have already been made by his employers on how to deal with him. Uncertain what those decisions were, Woo waited and anticipated for the worst.

In 1994, Woo was charged with criminal offenses and placed on administrative leave for two years and twelve days. Woo was not convicted and the charges were cleared with him reinstated by the Department of Justice. However, things did not just end there. In 1997, a few months before he became eligible for retirement, Woo was permanently suspended from his job. What had originally began as an interest in his father had now extended to him. Woo realized that he had became nothing but, in his own words, "an unwitting pawn in a game of international politics".

He learned that everything he had worked for - his loyalty and contributions to his country -were worthless under the pretext of national security. He had lost everything- his job, his pension, his sense of self and reputation his reputation. This drove Woo almost onto the brink of despair, including compulsive gambling and suicidal thoughts.

Determined to clear his father's name, Woo recovered and traveled to China with his father. From his trip, he concluded that his family was not in any way related to the Chinese Communist regime, proving that the FBI's claim that they were a threat to the nation's security false . He also discovered the real reason for why he was targeted by the FBI, that is the FBI suspected him to be a "sleeper" planted by the Chinese regime in the US intelligence agency whom they could use later to betray his country.

In addition to his insights on why he was fired by the FBI, Woo also shares with the reader his thoughts on present-day events, and the problems facing the intelligence agency and within the government. His reason for writing the book, as he has stated in a correspondence, was to "shed light on how [his] family was mistreated and to ensure what happened to [him] would never happen to anyone else."

Woo now resides in Washington, DC. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in management from the U.S. Naval Academy, a Master's Degree in human relations from the University of Oklahoma, and a Master's Degree in public administration from Golden Gate University. Woo's first novel, Their Hidden Agenda: The Story of a Chinese-American FBI Agent is currently available at the Dorrance Publishing Company (www.dorrancepublishing.com).