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According Brad Williams' book Japanese Foreign Intelligence, which also has a chapter (#2) on CIA's activities in spying on Japan, the CIA tried their hand at economic & tech spying on Japan in the mid-1980s, by setting up a ring of agents under non-diplomatic cover, as business people. However the PSIA is said to quickly have uncovered this in part due to poor spycraft by the Americans (including unsecured comms), and so the CIA agents were apparently withdrawn.

Williams doesn't say anything about whether the Japanese made public any of this at the time. (He does cover a lot more the 1982 IBM case, in which the FBI set up a sting operation on two Japanese corporations trying to acquire some IBM trade secrets, and which was widely covered in the US and Japanese press at the time.) Williams source for the info on CIA's attempts at economic spying in Japan is a book in Japanese (alas) Sato Masaru and Koh Young Choul, Kokka Joho Senryaku, Tokyo: Kodanash, 2007--which even if I'd manage to get my hands on, I'd not be able to read myself. So, did the Japanese press mention any of this at the time, i.e. that PSIA uncovered CIA's attempts to do some economic spying on Japan? Or was it essentially kept under wraps, for the sake of good relations (despite the publicity in the IBM case)?

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    So, it seems this all goes back to one source you can't verify. Do you have anything else to support whether this actually happened?
    – Spencer
    Feb 15 at 11:28
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    I don’t know if this is the same Sato Masaru as in the book, but if it is, I'd take these claims with a grain of salt: fpif.org/ideas_identity_and_ideology_in_contemporary_japan
    – Spencer
    Feb 15 at 11:30
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    @Spencer: lol, didn't occur to me the author would be so... famous. Give his ultra-nationalism I'm inclined to think the story is invented. Stil Williams is otherwise a well-respected academic, who's published in academic journals on this (before the book). I'm surprised he wasn't more skeptical of that source/story.
    – Fizz
    Feb 15 at 12:23
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    BTW, most of that chapter Williams sources from declassified CIA archives, but those declassifications (regarding Japan) stop around the 60's.
    – Fizz
    Feb 15 at 12:29
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    These individuals were likely classifies as NOCs. See related article at MotherJones for more background.
    – justCal
    Feb 15 at 17:40

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