During the Trump administration, Washington Post columnist Max Boot called for "ramp[ed] up enforcement" of foreign agent laws to curb "foreign influence" in American politics. The federal government has indeed beefed up enforcement of those statutes, but it may have hit closer to home than Boot expected.
Boot’s wife, former CIA analyst Sue Mi Terry, was indicted on charges this week for acting as an unregistered foreign agent of South Korea. Terry, an Asia expert at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, is accused of working covertly for South Korea’s intelligence service for more than a decade. She allegedly helped her South Korean handlers gain access to congressional staffers and other powerful Washington, D.C., figures. In 2022, she met with Secretary of State Tony Blinken and allowed her South Korean handler to photograph notes from the meeting, prosecutors allege. In exchange for her service, Terry received a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat, a $2,950 Bottega Veneta handbag, a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag, and $37,000 in cash for an "unrestricted" account she controlled at a think tank where she worked.
According to the Terry indictment, the FBI uncovered those items and a cell phone during a search of the Terry-Boot home on June 5, 2023.
It’s an ironic twist for Boot, a prominent critic of Donald Trump who has accused a number of Trump allies of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the law his wife is now accused of breaking. In 2020, Boot raised questions about whether Trump national intelligence director Richard Grenell had violated FARA by working on behalf of the Hungarian government.
Boot, a 2019 Free Beacon "Man of the Year," called on Washington that same year to "ramp up enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act" and to "expand U.S. counterintelligence efforts against foreign influence, not just espionage." Boot, who was mostly concerned with Russia’s malign activities, argued the federal government should focus not on forcing foreign agents to comply with FARA, but instead on "punishing noncompliant parties."
Boot was a leading proponent of the since-debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. At the height of Russiagate, Boot asserted the Steele dossier, a salacious 35-page document that claimed Russia blackmailed Trump, was "credible" and had been largely "corroborated." Since then, the dossier has been almost entirely debunked, and its primary source indicted for lying to the FBI.
Boot has not been accused of breaking the law, but it remains to be seen if he violated journalistic ethics. The Post said it is "reviewing the indictment" and remains "committed to publishing independent journalism."
Boot wrote a number of Post columns with his wife, who prosecutors say coordinated with Korean officials on at least one of those articles. The piece, published on March 7, 2023, praised South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol as a "profile in courage" for "taking a brave step toward resolving a long-festering, historical dispute with Japan."
According to prosecutors, Terry wrote "hope you liked the article" to her Korean government contact. "Thank you so much for your zeal and endeavors! Of course we do. Actually, Ambassador and National Security Advisor were so happy for your column," the official replied, according to prosecutors.
Boot and Terry wrote several other articles at the Post, with their latest collaboration coming on May 27, in a dispatch from Seoul, that asserted "one bright spot" in international affairs "is the nascent trilateral relationship among the United States, Japan and South Korea."
Terry admitted to the FBI that she was a "source" for her South Korean handler, according to prosecutors. In a voluntary interview on June 5, 2023, she resigned from the CIA "in lieu of termination" because the agency had "problems" with her relationship with Korean intelligence officers.