Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times, host of the show “American Thought Leaders” and co-host of “FALLOUT” with Dr. Robert Malone and “Kash’s Corner” with Kash Patel. Jan’s career has spanned academia, international human rights work, and now for almost two decades, media. He has interviewed nearly a thousand thought leaders on camera, and specializes in long-form discussions challenging the grand narratives of our time. He’s also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producing “The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told,” “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns,” and “Finding Manny.”

Jan Jekielek

NTD Plus

Shows

At a time when our nation is becoming increasingly polarized, media often ignore viewpoints and stories that are worthy of attention. American Thought Leaders, hosted by The Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek and his reporting team, features in-depth discussions with important thought leaders on key issues facing America—and Canada, the world—today.

American Thought Leaders

The CCP’s Greatest Insecurity—and America’s Greatest Weapon | Sam Brownback

Homeopathy Cured Her Disease, Now She’s Fighting for More Access | Paola Brown

Mollie Hemingway: The Untold Story of How One Man ‘Reshaped the Supreme Court’

Why a Taiwan Invasion Would Trigger Trillions in Global Losses | Amb. Alexander Yui

Inside ‘Trump 2.0’ and the Media’s Role in Political Violence | Sean Spicer

Over 1,000 CCP-Linked Groups in America: Exposing United Front Operations | Peter Mattis

Sen. Ron Johnson: Here’s What We Found in 11 Million Pages of COVID Records

Here’s What Darwinian Evolution Can’t Explain About the Origins of Species | Stephen Meyer

Why 28- and 29-Year-Olds Are Disappearing From China’s Uyghur Concentration Camps | Ethan Gutmann

The Failures of Multiculturalism in the United Kingdom | Peter McIlvenna

NTD Newsroom comprises teams of reporters, editors, and producers assigned to cover breaking news and other stories.


NTD Newsroom

News

Fast, compelling, first-hand news from China. China in Focus airs Monday–Friday at 8 p.m. ET.

China in Focus

China Sends Warships to Pacific Drill as Tensions With Japan Rise

Reuters is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages.

Reuters

We present news that is truthful and based on facts, outside of the political fog. Instead of focusing on the negative things happening around us, our mission is to give our viewers a good morning with empathetic and uplifting stories. Our aim is to provide an antidote to negativity by shining a light on the best side of people. We speak to inspiring people who positively impact communities, pursue topics that represent our common human values, and will never miss an opportunity to bring you heartwarming stories.

NTD Good Morning

2 US Embassy Personnel Assigned to Cartel Case Killed in Car Accident

The Associated Press is an American not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. 

The Associated Press

US News

Gunman Kills 8 Children, Including 7 of His Own, in Louisiana Mass Shooting

Flora Hua is a reporter based at NTD's global headquarters in New York City, where she covers China news, U.S.-China relations, and human rights issues. Flora primarily contributes to NTD's "China in Focus."  

Flora Hua

Trump: Seized Iranian Ship May Have ‘A Gift From China’

Joseph Lord is a congressional reporter for The Epoch Times.


Joseph Lord

Aldgra Fredly is a freelance writer covering U.S. and Asia Pacific news for The Epoch Times.

Aldgra Fredly

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani Hospitalized in Critical Condition: Spokesman

Wildfires Across Georgia and Florida Have Destroyed Nearly 50 Homes and Are Forcing Evacuations

News you can trust from the U.S. and around the world. Critical information and insight. We cover the stories that others don’t. NTD News Today airs Monday–Friday at 11 a.m. ET.

NTD News Today

US Warns of China Hacks via Routers, Smart Devices

Juliet Song is an international correspondent exclusively covering China news for NTD. She primarily contributes to NTD's "China in Focus," covering U.S.-China relations, the Chinese regime's human rights abuses, and domestic unrest inside China.

Juliet Song

2 Americans Among Suspected Communist Rebels Killed in Clashes With Troops, Philippine Officials Say

Ryan Morgan is a reporter for The Epoch Times focusing on military and foreign affairs. He was previously a news writer for NTD. 


Ryan Morgan

Mari Otsu is NTD's White House correspondent based in Washington. 

Mari Otsu

World News

Middle East

Iran

3 US Warships Fend Off Iranian Attacks, Trump Says Ceasefire Still Holds

Health News

3 Dead in Suspected Hantavirus Outbreak on Cruise Ship in Atlantic Ocean: WHO

Texas AG Ken Paxton Breaks Down Wave of Lawsuits Targeting CCP Surveillance

The Many Hidden Fronts of CCP Unrestricted Warfare | Casey Fleming

Has Xi Jinping Unified His Own Enemies? | Robert Suettinger

How the CCP Dehumanizes Christians in China | Pastor Bob Fu

Why the Iran War Is All About China | Zineb Riboua

From Iran to Venezuela—How Trump Is Neutralizing Beijing’s Allies | Gordon Chang

From AI Girlfriends to Brain Implants, How the AI Revolution Is Radically Reshaping Our World | Wynton Hall

Most Americans Agree: You Can’t Change Your Sex | Jonathan Butcher

The Woke Movement Has Peaked. What’s Next? | Andrew Doyle

Rob Schneider: Here’s What’s Wrong With Our Culture Today

Why These 9 Institutions Must Be Reformed Post-COVID | Jeffrey Tucker

Canning, Compost, and Chickens: How to Stop Relying on Others for Food | Special Episode

Charles Murray: I Thought Religion Was Irrelevant to Me. I Was Wrong.

‘We’re at an Inflection Point’: What’s Next for America? | Robert George

Smartphones Are Rewiring Our Brains—Here’s How Parents Can Say No | Clare Morell

Robert Kiyosaki: Why America’s Middle Class Keeps Getting Poorer

The CCP’s Gloves Are Off in Trade War—What’s Next? | Lee Smith

How Tariffs Once Paid America’s Bills–And Why They Could Again | John Gardner

Jeffrey Tucker: Everything You Need to Know About the Fed

Impact of Trump’s Trade, Tax, Energy Policies | Mark Skousen

How Clay Clark Helped Small Businesses Survive—and Thrive—During the Pandemic and Beyond

Eric Trump: How America Can Outcompete China in Manufacturing

EJ Antoni Decodes the Trump Economy and the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Controversy

How ‘Brain Rot’ and the Escapist Virtual World Are Harming Our Youth | Adnan Alkhalili

Treating the Root, Not Just the Symptoms: The Power of Integrative Medicine | Dr. Daniel Monti

Exclusive: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on How the NIH Is Rethinking Autism, DEI, China Ties, and Gain-of-Function

The False Promise of Antidepressants | Dr. Joanna Moncrieff

Why Steak Is at the Top of the New Food Pyramid | Dr. Shawn Baker

A New Approach to Alzheimer’s? | Lou Reese

Dr. Mehmet Oz: Up to $4 Billion in Health Care Fraud in California

The Evidence of Harm: What the Data Really Show About Pediatric Transgender Procedures | Leor Sapir

An Exclusive, Inside Look at Shen Yun Performing Arts | Special Episode

Epoch Cinema

Cinema

A Little Sketchy TV

Breast Milk, McDonald’s, & Garbage | A Little Sketchy

3-Headed Hydra, NSA, & Cringe | A Little Sketchy

Special

Jubilee Celebrations, Valentines Day, & Selling to China | A Little Sketchy

Freedom Convoy, Ukraine, & Winter Olympics | A Little Sketchy TV

He Ran the World’s Biggest Payment Processor; Now He’s Taking on Social Security | Frank Bisignano

Devin Nunes on Ending the Politicization of America’s Intelligence Agencies

Exclusive: Inside SBA’s Crack Down on Loan Fraud Nationwide | Administrator Kelly Loeffler

Exclusive: Kash Patel Talks China Fentanyl, Violent Networks, ‘Burn Bags,’ and More

Andy Ngo: I Was Nearly Killed by Antifa. This is What I Learned.

Eric Trump Opens Up About How Relentless Attacks Impacted Him and His Family

Why Charlie Kirk’s Approach Matters Now More Than Ever | Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer

The Battle Over Alligator Alcatraz, the US Census, and CCP Surveillance | Florida AG James Uthmeier

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] A 33-year-old researcher and her 34-year-old boyfriend, both Chinese nationals, were recently charged with allegedly smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, a potential bioterrorism weapon.

This recent case is just the tip of the iceberg, says investigative reporter Sam Cooper.

He played a key part in uncovering a similar case in Winnipeg, Canada.

“A married couple from China had been allegedly—according to the documents we now have access to—working with the highest levels of the Chinese military’s bioweapons program in Ebola research,” Cooper says. “They were running, clandestinely, materials from China and connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology into the Winnipeg lab.”

For years, Cooper has been at the forefront of exposing Chinese Communist Party infiltration in the West.

He is the founder of The Bureau and author of “Wilful Blindness: How a Criminal Network of Narcos, Tycoons, and Chinese Communist Party Agents Infiltrated the West.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NTD.  

RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Sam Cooper, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Mr. Jekielek:
Sam, you’ve been doing some unbelievable work. I’m just going to read your newest headline because it speaks to something on both sides of our border. Exclusive analysis, Chinese couple smuggled agro-terrorism weapon fungus into US. We’ve heard about that, echoing the Winnipeg lab Ebola espionage case. So why don’t we start by just giving me a picture of what this agro-terrorism weapon side thing was, and why does this reminisce of that Winnipeg case some years back?

Mr. Cooper:
Jan, as you know, I’ve been following China’s deep infiltration of North
America for years. So when a new case pops up from the FBI, I’m able to compare it to my findings that have come out in Canada. The case in Michigan and Texas, we’re still getting our heads around it, but I think people are rightly stunned that a young 33-year-old university student from China, a Communist Party member with her boyfriend, was discovered by FBI counterintelligence to be coordinated in smuggling a potential agroterror weapon into the United States and lying about it.

The record shows they were evidently working on this material in these two schools in Texas and Michigan. And they had previously been working on this at the same university in China. What really struck me from the findings found on the young woman’s phone was her pledge of loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, which included ties to her research grant funding.

Other stunning information, of course, as you know, Jan, we’re in a cold war that appears to be getting pretty hot between Beijing and Washington. Chinese students with connectivity to Chinese research grants, which evidence shows from previous cases from the FBI is part of China’s Thousand Talents dual-use plan. These types of, let’s just call them potential agents of the Chinese military are using North American research facilities to potentially work on bioweapons.

There’s a lot more to that case, but I can jump into my, where I think I’m adding world-level reporter value is the cases in Canada that speak to those findings. So the Winnipeg lab case, evidence has trickled out very, I would say, unwillingly out of Ottawa for years now that a married couple from China had allegedly, according to the documents, now had access to working with the highest levels of the Chinese military’s bioweapon program in Ebola research. Of course, from the Chinese side, this is about defensive technology.

But CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] records that have come out in Ottawa, due in part to my digging, show that these two scientists in the Winnipeg lab were covertly running Chinese military-connected research students. They’re research students undercover, but they were being run into Canada with visa fraud. They were clandestinely running materials from China and connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology into the Winnipeg lab.

There’s a lot going on there, but my top-level findings are we have a Chinese couple who have pledged loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Evidence shows they have been working, at least the woman, Dr. Qiu in Winnipeg, working with the highest levels of the People’s Liberation Army bioweapon program. Documents show that Dr. Qiu in Canada was clandestinely working on two projects for the Wuhan lab, Ebola, gain of function using Canada’s facilities and the bat filovirus projects,
which others have shown also involved controversial US-based researchers.

We could talk for a few hours about this case alone, but those are findings of visa fraud, and potential bioweapon research using North American facilities clandestinely, and it looks like sending that biotechnology back to China and posing a threat, I believe, to our lives in North America, if not already during the pandemic. Those are my top level comparative findings.

Mr. Jekielek:
I was looking at some of the email correspondence between some top US government officials in the sciences and also the Wuhan Institute people. And just the character of the communication, it’s this sort of chummy, like we’re in this together. There’s no apparent awareness of the fact that this is obviously a dual-use facility in Wuhan, right? That it’s not just research, it’s a military operation. If indeed there is even a non-military sort of element to it. Of course, everything in communist China functions in this dual-user hybrid way. What lesson can the FBI right now glean from the reporting you’ve done on the Winnipeg lab?

Mr. Cooper:
I think there are a lot of lessons. And the first one is unfortunate to say as a Canadian, the FBI should be very wary of the government in Ottawa and their lack of capacity to investigate insider threats. This is what has come out of the disclosures in Ottawa’s parliament, which by the way,
opposition parties had the parliamentary authority to request documents back in 2021 to ask, what was going on in that Winnipeg lab when news broke that the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] reportedly was investigating this husband and wife team? And the government then through a law case refused to disclose that information.

Like you, I was struck by the emails that came out through Freedom of Information, including my investigations, that Dr. Qiu in the Winnipeg lab appeared to be bullying in her tone to Canada’s government. She seemed, in my judgment, to be under such pressure to deliver unknown quantities, unknown materials in some cases. But what we do know, the engineered Ebola products that she had sent to the Wuhan lab, as well as other highly dangerous pathogens. I remember in one memorable email, she emailed a superior and said, essentially, what’s the holdup? The crown doesn’t regulate the crown. Essentially saying, in my view, she was saying, this department in Ottawa can’t tell Health Canada, who already has authorization, that we can’t ship these materials to Wuhan.

I saw the same bullying and pushing tone from scientists in the Wuhan lab. Their identities are redacted, but I believe that I could see the tradecraft of the Chinese Communist Party apparently pushing the Canadian scientists around. The lessons for the FBI of Kash Patel, the lessons for the CIA, the lessons for all Americans, including military intelligence, I believe that came out of what we know, what we’re able to know from the Winnipeg lab is that the case goes very deep.

Dr. Qiu added her scientific capacity under a high level Thousand Talents Program to the bat filovirus project. And as we say, to gain a function for Ebola, there is no evidence that Dr. Qiu sent any materials from the Winnipeg lab related to the bat filovirus. We do know, according to the CSIS records that have come out, that she was hired by Wuhan to give them at least the appearance of having the high-level safety standards of the West.

I’ll boil down my top-line answer to you. Washington needs to be concerned that this case in Winnipeg has shown that Ottawa has not responded to its intelligence warnings on insider threats. And when news did break, there was a big concern in Winnipeg. The parliament of prior Prime Minister Justin Trudeau covered the case up, and they even pointed to the opposition MPs asking for answers and suggested this was anti-Chinese and racist to suggest that anything untoward with regards to China’s use of the Winnipeg lab had happened in Canada.

Mr. Jekielek:
This is just absolutely astonishing, right? I mean, Sam, you’ve been on the cutting edge of understanding how deep some of this infiltration goes, whether it’s through what I think is called the unholy trinity, right, with the business tycoons and the triads, and then, of course, the CCP itself, the state security, all working together to facilitate outcomes for the CCP. You’ve kind of documented this in multiple extensive ways, along with numerous other people. But I want to go for a moment to your book, A Willful Blindness, which I love the title, right, because I think what you seem to have been talking about right now is willful blindness.

Mr. Cooper:
Absolutely. Since you mentioned my book, the top line thesis, which is essentially now confirmed in U.S. congressional hearings, is that elite Chinese communist party members, very unfortunately, are involved in dark alliances with global Chinese triad actors, including in Mexico City, very strongly set up in Toronto, Markham, Ontario, Vancouver, Richmond, British Columbia. The CCP is involved in fentanyl trafficking. The US government now says this in 2024, 2025.

My book was indicating that it was in 2021, because I had a very elite Canadian actor in Markham, Ontario, who was being investigated for the Chinese police station activity. My information strongly indicates involvement at the highest levels of trade and organized crime activity with connectivity at the highest levels of the United Front, to the point where this individual can be shown shaking hands with Xi Jinping at one of these state-level, presidential-level United Front work department meetings in Beijing. This is all on video.

Here’s the point. This individual is pictured at a Thousand Talents station in Markham, Ontario, in Alex Joske’s research, standing beside him, Canada’s former ambassador to China, John McCallum. So that just, I think in a nutshell, in a case study, that brings together the Winnipeg lab story. I believe it should bring in the Michigan and Texas threat network story, at least in the big picture, that the thousand talents and dual use is being used to run agents into North America disguised as students or leveraged as students by United Front actors, who I’m asserting with 100% confidence, are also involved at elite levels of CCP police station and organized crime activity.

Sometimes when I step back at my findings, I almost have to give my head a shake and go back and check my sources, whether they be at senior levels in the State Department, DEA, RCMP, Canadian intelligence. There are all these connections. They say, 100% of what you’re reporting, Sam, we know a lot of it’s classified. That’s why we can’t always come out and say it.

But I do believe in comments we’ve recently heard from Kash Patel on Fox News. I know you saw them. He said, look, Canada has a problem, especially in Vancouver with the Chinese Communist Party Party, interconnecting with Mexican cartels and Iranian threat actors. And so that’s what I pointed to in Willful Blindness.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s do a couple of definitions along the way, just for the benefit of our audience, for people who might not know the terminology. Very quickly, the Thousand Talents Program, what is that?

Mr. Cooper:
This is a research program that the FBI in recent years has publicly said. China at the highest levels is running essentially a Chinese military funded program to reach out to, in many cases, Chinese ethnic migrant researchers who are working in the West and to offer them while they maintain their jobs at Western universities. So getting one paycheck, having access to our high intellectual property labs that are taxpayer funded, as you know.

These people are offered secondary grants to at the same time be working for Chinese universities. And if we can picture it visually, according to the FBI, Alex Joske and the experts, this is a dual use clandestine tunnel of sucking out, to use a vernacular word, vacuuming out Western intellectual property under the cover of academic research, but sending it directly to the capacity of the People’s Liberation Army.

So this would be applicable to, I believe, Huawei’s growth. I believe it would be applicable to what I have reported, you know, based on Western intelligence, Huawei’s clandestine takedown of Nortel, Canada’s former leading 5G crown jewel. So high tech should be bioweapon research. Thousand Talents would apply to the Winnipeg lab and it would apply in general to that alleged or potential agro-terror research case
with the news breaking this week.

Mr. Jekielek:
And just very quickly, we hear about Chinese police stations. What’s the situation in Canada with Chinese police stations?

Mr. Cooper:
The situation in terms of functionality is very similar to the situation in the United States, where we have indictments in New York City of, it has turned out, alleged proxies for the Chinese state working with the Ministry of Public Security to collect information on residents in New York City. And it turns out that the actors are from Fujian province. So they’re called Fuso compatriot societies. And the difference in Canada is these very same networks are active in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, consistent of purportedly hometown from across China, but working within Beijing’s funded foreign influence arm, the United Front Work Department.

These hometown associations are tasked clandestinely by Ministry of Public Security officers to maintain law and order, right? These aren’t legal by the Vienna Convention, illegal clandestine consulates on Canadian and American soil. But what I wanted to add, though, is that the RCMP has announced investigations and subsequent charges. Mind you, that only came out after safeguard defenders informed the world of how these so-called 110, which relates to the Ministry of Public Security stations, are running around the world. The RCMP hasn’t charged anyone.

And Jan, I think this concerns some of the experts I talk to because the individuals that my sourcing indicates are under investigation are frequently pictured with elite Canadian politicians. And as I’ve said, associated with the Thousand Talents Program. So I think it raises the fair question that we have charges in New York City. Of course, the same things are going on. We have, quote unquote, community leaders from Fujian now living in New York, Boston, many areas in the United States pictured with American politicians. It raises concern, but we have some charges in the U.S. We don’t have charges that we can report in Canada.

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned the United Front because both of these types of operations fit into the overall rubric of the United Front. This is something many years ago, I can’t remember. I remember when we first discovered this United Front and started reporting on the fact that it existed and was functioning in North America, nobody wanted to believe us.

Mr. Cooper:
Yes, it literally is a conspiracy. Conspiracies are hard to report and they’re hard to believe. Rightfully, you don’t want people believing every wild, you know, story that comes out. But the evidence behind the United Front and how it’s always been there since Chairman Mao and his first spymaster, Zhou Enlai. We can read Alex Joske’s report about how Zhou Enlai said the United Front shall be used to conceal the illegal within the legal. And that’s exactly what the United Front Work Department does. Its first victim is the Chinese people.

There’s only so many Chinese Communist Party members sitting on top of a population of 1.4 billion. The United Front is the core entity
used to maintain control from the highest levels over all that population who are not CCP members, it’s now being rolled out as researchers like Alex Joske have proven through documents across the world and ramped up massively under Xi Jinping in 2012. So I agree with you.

It’s hard to believe that the CCP has such an active functioning party involved in our democratic systems. But that’s what the United Front is. It’s there to surround our politicians, our business leaders, our police officers with clandestine operatives from Beijing, under the cover of purported community associations. So again, remember, I hit this home all the time when I’m trying to explain the United Front, blending the illegal with the legal, or using the legal to conceal the illegal.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, that’s fascinating. I love that particular characterization. And of course, we see it in the entities like the Confucius Institutes even, which are ostensibly educational institutions, but all sort of factors of influence or elements of this overall influence strategy. There’s also this other dimension, and this is something that’s really on my mind lately since the CCP escalated actions against us, the Epoch Times, and various Falun Gong-related entities like Shen Yun and practitioners in general.

There’s been this escalation of focus in the foreign sphere, perhaps ostensibly because of the success. There’s been intelligence that tells us that it’s because of the success of these institutions. The thing that strikes me most here is that it’s going to be local people, foreign people that the
CCP believes are under their jurisdiction, which are essentially anyone coming out of communist China, Han Chinese, or various ethnic groups that are within China, but also people like yourself and people like me
fit into that, either through influence or coercion. And you’ve actually done some reporting on this. Maybe you can give me a picture.

Mr. Cooper:
Yes, I can give you a picture based on documentation, and I can relate it to what you say about perceiving an intensification of attacks on Falun Gong from the United Front. There is a police report I have read about a United Front work department leader, the same individual I referred to earlier in this interview that is seen shaking hands with Xi Jinping in 2019, who I am asserting is involved in Canada’s election interference networks, which my reporting revealed, who is involved in RCMP investigations of CCP police stations, not charged by the way, this individual allegedly brazenly threatened Falun Gong members who were protesting a gout about the inclusion of a Confucius Institute in Toronto in 2014.

Furthermore, my evidence that intelligence sources who accurately sourced my Canada federal election interference stories provided me the view on documents that said one of these United Front groups in Toronto, who I am saying is led by the individual I’m pointing to, received $1 million to run $1 million from the Toronto Chinese consulate to run fake counter
protests against, you know, those who were speaking out against Confucius Institutes. So all of this evidence is speaking towards the high-level actors.

My way of research has always been, you can see the high-level actors in Canada that are involved at the highest levels in casino crime, at the highest levels, I believe, of global money laundering that is moving money around the world for Mexican cartels dealing fentanyl. Unfortunately, in Canada, my photo evidence shows these same actors meeting with senior Canadian elected officials, whether it’s in Vancouver, Toronto, or Ottawa.

Transnational repression, I believe, is flowing down, again from the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security, the People’s Liberation Army, the United Front Work Department that we’ve been speaking about. And these senior on the surface, legit businessmen in North American cities that are really I’m saying, at the elite level of global gangsters, because they are facilitated and enabled by Chinese intelligence networks, they are the ones thuggish in the community, whether it’s New York, Boston, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, they are the ones that the the diaspora knows are dangerous.

They are what Canadian intelligence documents call high harm proxies. That means I believe they could be responsible for transnational repression that would go up to bodily harm, potentially to the highest levels, forced repatriations, perhaps even kidnapping in some countries. That’s how bad transnational repression gets. And people in the community have been telling me about this for a journalist, as a journalist for a long time. The threats are real.

Joseph Tay in the recent federal election in Canada, running in a very key riding, was the subject of such repression, both on a cyber level from Beijing, and I believe at a physical level where he was trying to campaign that as I reported, later confirmed by the New York Times, Mr. Tay was warned by the RCMP. They thought it wasn’t safe for him to go knock on doors.

The thought that raises in myself and members of the community that I’ve spoken to, including Frances Hui, who herself is a community leader from Hong Kong, also sanctioned by Beijing’s national security law and now living in the Massachusetts, Boston area, these people say, why did the RCMP not provide protection to Joseph Tay so that he could run a fair campaign and knock on doors? Why have they not acted on these transnational repression networks? Jan, that’s a case that I’m still working on, both on the American side and the Canadian side, and it deeply troubles me. And I’ll finish my answer.

My knowledge of repression, unfortunately, is direct. I myself, as a reporter in Canada at the leading edge of exposing these networks and now North America, I was asked to testify in Canada’s parliament in 2023 about how Beijing is threatening Canadian politicians. This is before the Joseph Tay case. Two days after I testified, an RCMP national security unit knocked on my door and said they had legal authorization to warn me that they had learned about a credible threat against myself as a journalist. I’m not stepping forward to share this sensitive information with you today as a victim. I’m saying that I have the capacity and connections to protect and to expose.

But people in the community perhaps have been living for a long time under the same and serious threats and Canada’s government hasn’t acted and still isn’t acting. We still lack a foreign agent registry in Canada, even though Canada’s parliament in 2024, after my investigative reports tabled and voted unanimously for a foreign agent registry, it’s still not implemented, almost shockingly.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, and of course, Frances Hui, you know, very well-known dissident from Hong Kong, a million Hong Kong dollar bounty on her head remains. I mean, it’s almost hard to believe. You know, this is someone who, as a teenager, was fighting for freedom in the most peaceful way imaginable.

Mr. Cooper:
It saddens me. It stuns me. Jan, I’m still working on the story about Frances Hui and the community’s reaction to the fact that a jury didn’t move forward with a conviction against the man that allegedly was involved in stalking Francis in 2019. You remember, there were so many cases across the world of these young, brilliant, brave, in many cases, very young Hong Kong democracy activists in cities around the world, Australia, United States, Canada, protesting for freedom in Hong Kong, protesting against the takeover of the Chinese police state.

And in so many cities, Boston, Toronto, Vancouver, we saw thugs, you know, many of them associated to high-end cars, threatening people like Frances Hui, threatening people, you know, from Joe Tay’s community in Toronto and Vancouver to the point where there’s WeChat evidence of these thugs that are tasked by Beijing, tasked by these criminals living in Toronto, Vancouver, and other cities. We saw messages shared among them with pictures of weapons saying that in Frances’s case, they said, you know, shoot her in the face.

So deeply saddening the results in Boston. I’ll be looking into that. But I’ll say this, at least a case went forward. Joseph Tay, my latest reporting, along with others, indicated his family members in Hong Kong were brought in for questioning. Again, to just continue producing the tentacles, rather the thuggish fists almost put pressure on these brave people like Joseph Tay around the world. And we still don’t have an adequate response from Ottawa.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk about that a little bit. This is a pretty standard tactic. Many people unfortunately working at Epoch Times, especially on the Chinese side of Epoch Times, have experienced exactly this. You come up with a good article, you have a prominent video interview, you say something that’s particularly sensitive to the regime. Next thing you know, you’re getting a phone call from your elderly father, saying, I’ve just been paid a visit. They’re here. And I’ve been asked to convey a message to you. And often it’s not even explicit. It’s not explicit. It’s just that, hey we’re here.

Mr. Cooper:
Absolutely, and this is one of the this is one of those things that it’s hard to believe again the average person around the world if they read a story like this hard to believe but we’ve seen the cases there was a case in australia where a brave young woman shared you know the video evidence of one of her family members sitting with the Ministry of Public Security in China. I forget the exact words. For anyone shaking their head and saying, this isn’t going on in the West, it’s happening, and the videos show it. And again, this is the linkage.

The Ministry of Public Security in China, applying those veiled or sometimes not veiled threats to family members. Get your relatives in New York, Toronto, or Melbourne to be quiet or else. And then the other end of the Ministry of Public Security using proxies in these illegal Chinese police stations on our Western soil to enforce that threat into the community on the ground. And as I say, using the most feared organized crime thugs in the communities and enriching them in their criminality. That’s the trade-off there.

Mr. Jekielek:
I want to go back to this unholy trinity idea because it’s hard for people to imagine often that it’s really the Chinese state security, the CCP working hand in hand with the criminals, with the triads, with the gangs, and with the wealthy businessmen all together. This is quite notable, for example, in real estate, causing the real estate market in Vancouver to explode in ways that are even, you know, difficult to imagine in some of the richest communities in the world.

Mr. Cooper:
Yes, it really is tremendously sophisticated and I’m not ashamed to say tremendously evil because there’s lots of governments around the world that in one way or another, you know, they may interact with a little bit of organized crime. But as I know, and as my elite experts in North America and the West say, no one is like the Chinese Communist Party in terms of the inseparable integration with transnational organized crime.

It works through my recent reporting at the Bureau has shown that the United Front Work Department and its leaders are literally architecting underground banking and money laundering systems. They are architecting drug collection brokerage houses, cash laundering brokerage systems for the Mexican cartels that are on the front end, brutally, of dealing fentanyl that is, of course, ultimately sourced from precursors in China, and the latest evidence from the U.S. congressional hearings in the past year show that.

For example, the U.S. government knows that Chinese Communist Party members have so-called golden shares of fentanyl precursor production factories. Chinese Communist Party members, I believe, at governor level and the people surrounding them have direct business relationships with these global triad leaders that happen to be set up very strongly in Canada, as I reported in Willful Blindness and continue to report.

The level of interconnectivity between China being behind the global narcotics trade, as the U.S. experts I talked to say, China is upstream. The cartels are below them and they’re working together. The money laundering is controlled by Beijing’s United Front Work Department in many ways. And it interweaves with the Belt and Road development projects that we hear about around the world, sort of debt trap diplomacy, corruptive development projects, often in not wealthy countries where Beijing wants influence.

As my most recent reporting shows, the global drug bosses working with China and enriched and protected by Chinese security are using, you know, drug cash around the world to fund these Belt and Road projects and to send those profits back to enrich the communist regime. So that’s how deep and integrated and sophisticated that connectivity of organized crime, drug cash, and Beijing is. It goes right to the top and it can’t be separated.

Mr. Jekielek:
You’ve been covering the fentanyl trade on the Canada side, Canada and the Canada-US border for some time. I saw that you recently noticed that there seems to be an increase in lab activity, cartel activity on the Canadian side. We’re talking about Mexican cartels here? What are we talking about?

Mr. Cooper:
Yes, this is a very little known factor until recently. Canada, like every nation, has and has always had organized crime. In Canada, it was often groups related to traditional Italian mafia and outlaw biker gangs that were understood to be very strong in Canada. But as my expert source reporting has shown, since roughly the early 2000s in Canadian cities, especially Vancouver and Toronto, also Quebec, Montreal, Mexican cartels with ultraviolence have moved in and have been involved in taking over the highest levels of organized crime in Canada. So that is using Canadian cities, using corporate structures, law offices, transportation networks.

As the book Willful Blindness showed, even higher, as I’m indicating, the Chinese Communist Party and their United Front networks and these tycoons and triad leaders that are empowered by Beijing working together in providing precursors for fentanyl labs set up on Canadian soil.
Iranian Middle Eastern threat networks are also very strongly involved. And I had been reporting this for a long time, since 2021. And I think that’s why people were shocked when Kash Patel came out and pointed to those exact networks in Canada in his Fox News interview.

But as I know, we can just call it a takeover of organized crime in Canada that has been happening at a deep level, especially if we’re focusing on the cartels for 10 to 15 years now. And the story that I broke recently is that major investigations in Canada have raised the concerns that Mexican cartels, along with Chinese triads, are using indigenous First Nations land in Canada. And the key point here is that they are using this land for production. We know of illegal tobacco, for example. I believe also the worst of synthetic narcotics, weapons trafficking, is involved on these indigenous lands.

And the key thing here is, as in America, indigenous bands, due to very well known historic harms have won, for good reasons, jurisdiction in many ways over these lands. But what has happened is, if we’re talking about Mexican cartels, Chinese triads, who I’m saying are integrated with state networks and empowered by state networks, they are coming in onto these First Nation lands in Canada as a stronger authority almost, as a government level, as I’m saying, a criminal government, and using this land often in Ontario and Quebec right along the American border and spread out in some cases. We call it Six Indigenous Nations in Ontario and Quebec, and they have cross-border access between Canada and the United States.

In my view, I think this will be what Washington at an intelligence level is very concerned with. These land corridors in Ontario and Quebec being used and being used easily and clandestinely by, I believe it’s 170 criminal groups that have access to those First Nation lands and are using it to cross the border with drugs, weapons and human trafficking. This should involve the terror suspects that Kash Patel is concerned about, and that my reporting in previous months and years has also raised concerns about.

Mr. Jekielek:
I saw very recently a Washington Post headline about the reduced movement of fentanyl and drugs across the southern border. The headline suggested that the reasons are complex and difficult to figure out why that
might be. My guess is it might have to do with the fact that the movement of people across the border has been dramatically restricted. But that’s just my, I guess, correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. But has there been a change on the northern border in response to those changes on the southern border?

Mr. Cooper:
I believe so. And this has been very controversial in Canada with President Trump pointing to Canada and saying, along with more recently Kash Patel, that Canada is increasingly responsible for the flow of fentanyl into the United States. There’s not always, you know, fulsome data to back that up. But in conjunction, I had to smile when you raised that Washington Post headline. Look, there are Mexican cartel operatives that have said, President Trump, in some ways, we respect that he has come out and said he’s going to protect his people. And there have been numerous cartel bosses now extradited from Mexico to the United States. And we know that the U.S. military is now set up on the southern border.

I don’t think we need to be necessarily a high-level detective to discover that even the Mexican cartels are saying that Trump crackdown and the crackdown on the flow of people at the southern border would be what is responsible for that sealing of the southern border. But in the past months, I have been reporting, you know, based on some sometimes senior level sources from U.S. agencies that can’t be named, they said, what we are concerned about is that we have sealed up the Mexican border. America, since 2004, I believe, really started to crack down on labs, whether they were methamphetamine at that time. And that’s when the labs set up strongly in Mexico, from 2005 onwards, there’s some major cases that show that.

But what my US experts said was Canada increasingly is where the super labs are set up because you have weaker laws and your government, no one wants to point fingers too much. They don’t want to increase the tension and rhetoric, but our government in Ottawa hasn’t been responsive. And as I reported in Willful Blindness, this has been going on. The scaling up of labs, I pointed to in 2021.

My book has a picture of Vancouver with an artistic representation of blue fentanyl pills exploding out of that port. Why did the book have that? Why did I suggest Vancouver was such a problem for the world with fentanyl? Because we could already see labs spreading out across what we call the lower mainland. So that’s the Vancouver area. And now they’re on, as I say, more rural areas in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. This is a growing concern.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, and we’re going to be doing some more reporting in this vein on our end as well at Epoch Times. We have some things in the works, so to speak. When it comes to Canada, there is a new government. Mark Carney is the new prime minister. It seems like an opportunity to change the approach to all these things.

Mr. Cooper:
Absolutely. Prime Minister Carney, his rhetoric has been a little bit hard to decipher at times. His party, the former government, and himself during the campaign were openly dismissive to the Canadian public of Washington’s concerns that Canada is increasingly a vulnerability for fentanyl production and trafficking and across the borders. And yet, as we now know, privately with President Trump and after being elected in a very public White House meeting, Prime Minister Carney said he thanked President Trump for his attention to the fentanyl crisis. So there’s absolutely an opportunity now that Prime Minister Carney has won.

As we both know, Jan, politics is a tough game and sometimes the truth can get lost or buried during campaigns. Prime Minister Carney has an opportunity to implement very strong measures to crack down on fentanyl and to work with the American government. As you know, Mexican cartels have now been designated as terror organizations. So what does that mean?

As I’ve reported for the Bureau, David Asher, a very former senior State Department Trump official investigator said, with that designation, we can not only go after cartels where they are, on the soil, in these super labs, which, by the way, will have incredible high-powered weapons, grenades, laced with bombs. These are warlike facilities in terms of the cartels’ brutality, their firepower. Mr. Asher said in one of the stories that I produced, we can not only go after those cartels because they’re obviously terrorists. We can go after their financial facilitators, including the Chinese triads.And if you want to be blunt, the United Front Work Department, I’m saying, should be part of that because the cartels cannot send out that killing fentanyl without the precursors from China.

I’ll add to that. What if a big bank from North America or a big shipping company, a logistics company, or a postal company is found to not be taking adequate measures to crack down on the shipment of fentanyl, methamphetamine, or the complex laundering of the proceeds. They too could be hit with very powerful laws under these terror designations. So look, Prime Minister Carney, he could stand up in Parliament and promise the North American citizens that he is going to use that law and he’s going to use it like a hammer. As the Canadian government, you know, used very powerful financial laws during the pandemic against certain groups, the Canadian government could do the same against fentanyl facilitators.

Now, I’ll add this. I believe I can say without false humbleness that Willful Blindness in 2021 said Canada needs an anti-racketeering law that has been incredibly lacking in Canada, you know, forever in terms of what the U.S. government uses to crack down on the highest levels of corruptive transnational crime is that RICO law. Canada lacks one.

Again, Prime Minister Mark Carney has the opportunity to stand up in Parliament and say, here’s a new law that will align us with our allies in Washington, more strongly with our allies in Australia, in London, because transnational crime working with China, Iran, and Russia, as Kash Patel said, is involved in hybrid warfare against our people. That’s the reality.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, and of course, when it comes to the fentanyl, we’re not just talking about precursors, we’re talking about the pill presses, we’re talking about the manufacturing facilities, we’re talking about the money laundering operations. The CCP is so deeply involved in all aspects here, even as some of the legwork is being done by cartels and associated organized crime.

Mr. Cooper:
You’re right. And the way I described it in my book, and I continue to describe it from US sources as new DEA cases, pop-up indictments, China has spread its decentralized drug production facilities around the world. So you’re right. If you’re a business person that imports a pill press, whether it’s in Mexico, you know, upper New York state, Vancouver, where I know
there are many, you could be, you could, you should be hit with facilitating China’s offshore production.

And again, my point here is that China has strategically spread and decentralized its synthetic narcotics production facilities around the world. Why? Because recent administrations, starting with Trump, followed through with Biden, said, hey, you can’t be sending those pills or precursors from your state regulated factories into our cities. And so what does China do? They respond by sort of claiming some deniability and spread the factory pieces out around the world where they’re reintegrated by the very same actors that are working. I believe the US government evidence is now with elite Chinese Communist Party officials.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, and there’s always this sort of quasi-plausible deniability. And I say quasi because I think in many cases, it’s not even plausible anymore. And that’s again where this brilliant term willful blindness comes in. It’s just much more convenient often to just not have to deal with it. But what happens is it metastasizes over time.

Mr. Cooper:
Yes, this is a theme of or a thread of reporting that I’m digging deeper into right now. The complexity that allows Beijing to claim deniability is directly related to Beijing giving the provincial governors or the provincial CCP systems and even the provincial security bureaus sort of free reign to fulfill very secret and high-level objectives that come from the top in Beijing. And they can allow those regional governors to go out and get GDP for China any way you can, bring it in through the Belt and Road, and the insulation will be there because Beijing doesn’t necessarily want to know or certainly wants to avoid the evidence that they know that those projects are being sourced by the drug cash, which comes from the precursors,
you know, emanating from Chinese factories. And that deniability, you know, I can report with great confidence.

Stories I’m working on are that, look, U.S. officials have for years been visiting the Ministry of Public Security at the highest level and telling them that, hey, in the U.S. government, we understand this very sophisticated underground banking system that’s going on involving triads. Can we tell you about it? And it almost brings a smile to my mind because I hear about the reports back that, oh, the Ministry of Public Security was very interested in our evidence. So they said, tell us more, tell us more. And I think, well, I can say with confidence, they know it. They know it all already. And it’s part of their economy, inseparable.

Mr. Jekielek:
The person running the show, the state governor, everybody understands that he’s pocketing quite a bit of that himself along the way. So it functions very much like a mafia, doesn’t it?

Mr. Cooper:
That’s a term I can agree with wholeheartedly and 100%. And as I always like to do, I have a document that supports a strong statement. And so in my case, I was provided documents from a Canadian patriot named Brian McAdam. He’s no longer with us. A big source of my book. He was there in Hong Kong in the 1990s, looking, discovering at how Canada’s immigration system was being infiltrated by CCP agents and triads. One of his immigration reports that I have a full finished product of says, our Canadian intelligence with US Homeland Security has reported that the governor of Fujian province in the early 1990s, their wife was allegedly involved with the Hong Kong Sun-Yat-Sen triad in business relationships.

Stunningly, the Canadian government and, of course, the U.S. government knew in the 90s that these high-level CCP families and officials in certain regions had direct relationships with triads. And this involved human smuggling. This is why I reported last year for the Bureau. if you’re looking at the southern border and all those people, and stunningly, mostly Chinese migrants coming across the Mexico border into the United States, I reported, it makes sense because we’ve known and I’ve reported that governor in Fujian province working in human smuggling with Chinese triads that use stolen passports and use Latin American states in corruptive ways. So the picture adds up and it’s undeniable. Is that a mafia state? I say, yes.

Mr. Jekielek:
Then if you think about how crazy it is that, you know, we really knew about the sort of the proto-status of where we are today already as early as the 90s. And it’s just been allowed to basically grow and metastasize into something quite terrible and difficult to deal with.

Mr. Cooper:
I agree. Again, with Brian McAdam, I hope people can look up the stories I’ve sourced to him. Again, a great, great North American patriot. I believe the American government would really appreciate him. His report called Passports of Convenience that I have disclosed in my stories at the Bureau shows that McAdam predicted that. He said, if we don’t crack down
on these Chinese triads that through corruptive ways are working with Latin American corrupt governments, are allied with the Ministry of Public Security, are allied with CCP actors to infiltrate American cities, they’re using heroin now, and this will harm our population if we don’t act now. The situation, just to paraphrase, the situation is going to get worse.
And how prescient and how heartbreaking that this is documented. He told the Canadian government, please act on this. And they didn’t. They didn’t.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, unfortunately, too common a tale, what you’re describing, you know, sort of people heroically, you know, trying to disclose some of these things. Or the Sidewinder report from years ago. We’re going to finish up in a moment. I’ll encourage our viewers to look up Sidewinder and find out what that was. But we know a lot of what was going on years ago. But often these reports were mothballed or people demoted and so forth. We do have to finish up. A final thought, Sam?

Mr. Cooper:
Final thoughts. I’m a Canadian patriot. I can equally say I love the United States and I love the leadership they’re providing in the world. Sometimes tough work leads to controversies around the world, but North America really is a fortress that should be protected and equally. The role of countries like Canada and the United States in trying to provide freedom and support to the people of China that are living under a brutal regime. I believe that that is the mission of our time.

And as you say, it’s sad that patriots of the past have been ignored often through willful blindness that I believe leads to corruption in the West. And that has to be overcome because what is on my mind almost every day, especially after being invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taiwan to visit that wonderful democracy in 2023 and learn how they have withstood a brutal attack from the United Front for decades, but now are increasingly
endangered. Really, the citizens of the United States and Canada and other Western powers cannot ignore what China is doing on our soil and other nations around the world. We need to stand together.

Mr. Jekielek:
Sam, I’m going to ask you one final question. This is the real one because I can’t help but do it. You mentioned legislation that needs to be passed in Canada, something of the equivalent of RICO laws. But what in your mind
would be the top way in which Canada and the US could cooperate to bring some of this to heel.

Mr. Cooper:
It really is about alignment. And for Canada, I don’t like to be tough on my compatriots, but very clearly, whether it’s cartels and triads using First Nations reserves or the lack of implementing a RICO law or tougher money laundering laws, this has been negligent of Canada’s government for 20 years or more. We can go into parliamentary records and hear about debates on the very issues that I’m talking about today. So look, we need Canada to implement reasonable modern laws like a RICO Act, or a hostile state activity act to give a hammer-like power that is able to surgically crack down on agents of foreign states and dangerous gangsters that are essentially killing our people.

From Smuggled Fungus to Bioweapons Research: How the CCP Infiltrates the West | Sam Cooper