CIA penetrating Chna's "soft under-belly"

China has warned the U.S. that it will not tolerate continued spy flights of U.S. reconnaissance aircraft near its airspace. The Obama administration has countered that spy flights, like the U-2 flight recently intercepted by Chinese Sukhoi-27 fighters in the Straits of Taiwan, will continue.

The Obama administration appears intent on ratcheting up tensions with China. With Indian government acquiescence. Washington recently hosted a conference of leading Tibetan religious and political figures, including the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa, and the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, which is based in Dharamsala, India. President Obama angered the Chinese further by meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also adopted a confrontatonal approach with China concerning competing claims by China and Southeast Asian nations over disputed islands in the South China Sea.

The CIA has been authorized by the Obama White House to increase its penetration of tribal groups in Southeast Asia, along the Chinese southern border, in what could be described as China's "soft under-belly." Increased U.S. military cooperation with Vietnam also poses a threat to China's southern border with the CIA seeking intelligence-gathering facilities in northern Vietnam, near the Chinese border. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has similar facilities in Mongolia, near the northern border of China.

WMR's Southeast Asian sources have reported that the CIA is increasing its influence operations among various tribal groups in northern Thailand and Burma that have historical ties to their fellow tribal members across the border in China's southern provinces of Guangxi and Yunnan.

The CIA, mostly through financial aid funneled through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is providing support, including that which has been described by those on the ground in northern Thailand, as "military" in nature, to various tribal groups, including the Akha, Tai Lue, N'tin, Hmong, and Khamu tribes in Nan province along the Thai border with Laos, as well as Doi Wawi Chinese, Karen, Lahu, Yao, Hmong, in the Wawi Valley District and Burmese Kachin and Karen tribal members who are refugees living in camps close to the border with Burma. The  CIA influence operations in around the Golden Triangle border intersection of Burma, Thailand, and Laos, according to our sources, are being carried out through the aegis of Baptist missionaries in northern Thailand and in the Mekong River region. At least one Baptist missionary active with tribes in northern Burma, was identified as CIA by the Burmese government and expelled.

USAID funds are being funneled to non-governmental organization (NGO) entities in northern Thailand, including the Mekong Minority Foundation, which receives USAID funding, according to our sources, from the Christian Tearfund charitable group, which is also active in east Africa, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Sudan. USAID funds are also being pumped into tribal groups in China's Yunnan province through Bless China International (BCI).

The CIA has had an off-and-on relationship with two professions that have been historically exempted from intelligence activities: missionaries and journalists. However, since 9/11, the CIA has renewed its use of both professions to carry out its covert activities, an activity that places bona fide missionaries and journalists in jeopardy abroad.

The Obama administration has adopted a much more hostile military and intelligence posture toward China than existed with the previous Bush administration.