Threats within: Filipino spies in denial

2026-03-05 - 09:05

Through its “Insider Threat Program,” the Philippines begins checking on possible vulnerabilities among government personnel. The program is “designed to protect each individual member of the [military and government] from cooptation, coercion, and compromise.” It has identified individuals who were recruited by foreign nationals to extract sensitive security and defense information. They were from the Department of National Defense, the Philippine Coast Guard, and the military itself. Security officials say outdated espionage and foreign agent laws in the Philippines make the job of securing the country’s top secrets harder. SECOND OF THREE PARTS Lawrence* always wanted a better life for himself and his family. With parents who held jobs that barely made ends meet, he always aspired for a brilliance within him. (*Names in this report have been changed to protect identities.) So when he landed work at the Department of National Defense (DND) as a researcher in 2023, he was ecstatic. The pay was not huge, but it was a start. However, as bills for therapy and his maintenance medicine grew and an inevitable lifestyle upgrade beckoned, Lawrence started looking for additional sources of income. That’s when Harley*, a longtime friend and one-time mentor, entered the picture. She asked him to write thought pieces for what she claimed was a major consultancy firm. Despite his initial hesitation, Lawrence accepted the offer. Who their clients were was a mystery. Lawrence recalled that he admittedly found it already dubious when Harley, herself in government, said he was going to be part of a group of other government workers writing analyses. Slowly, and then in rapid succession, Lawrence was pressured or enticed into sending sensitive defense and security documents, as well as sharing insights into the dynamics of the country’s security agencies. Three years later, Lawrence is still trying to make sense of what he did, and what it means for his future. Lawrence is one of several government personnel whom authorities discovered to be vulnerable to enticements by unauthorized foreign persons. The likes of him had access to sensitive information and ran the risk of handling that information improperly. He and several others have been silently dealing with the consequences of their compromises — years of mental anguish and guilt over possibly causing harm to the Philippines, followed by months of uncertainty after being caught. “I wasn’t blinded, but I chose to blur my point of view and I tried to justify to myself that, since I was just being asked to write [an opinion piece], it was okay. That’s why I feel so much shame. A lot of people trusted me — my family, and my work,” he told Rappler in an hours-long interview in December 2025. When he was finally confronted by security officials, Lawrence did not resist or even offer an excuse. “That was my reckoning,” he recalled with a sad smile. Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, the Navy’s spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, said the efforts of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) — the “Insider Threat Program” — had led to the “[flagging of certain individuals] for disclosing information to unauthorized recipients.” He said both the AFP and the DND leadership are aware of the program and its progress in the military and beyond. “Concerned individuals have undergone appropriate processing, are now under the control of the AFP and their cases are now considered closed,” said Trinidad. He declined to disclose “operational details” when asked if the military had further mapped out the networks these individuals belonged to. “There are measures that have been instituted as a result of these recent developments apart from the security protocols that are continually being evaluated,” he added. In a statement issued after the release of the first part of this investigative series, the National Security Council (NSC) said the “operations of these individuals acting on the behest of Chinese Intelligence have been addressed and terminated.” “We assure the public that safeguards are in place and working, and our security agencies remain proactive and vigilant leading to the success of Philippine counter- intelligence operations,” said NSC spokesperson, Assistant Director General Cornelio H. Valencia Jr. What the work entailed Lawrence’s first assignment was easy. He wrote about his work and was paid P5,000. Soon, things fell into a rhythm. Twice a month, Lawrence wrote about the DND’s position on different issues. Communication always flowed through Harley. “It came to the point where...I couldn’t write anything anymore because, frankly, I did not know,” said Lawrence. The information they wanted went beyond the scope of his work in the DND, like how the department viewed international issues and the Philippines’ bilateral ties. Harley dismissed Lawrence’s concerns. Lawrence began sending portions of sensitive files — accessed because of his work — alongside his analyses. Eventually, he would send the files themselves. It was taxing — the demands and the way he had to work even harder to get the insight they demanded. Lawrence told Harley he couldn’t do it anymore. Then, in July 2024, Lawrence was offered a civilian job in the Philippine Navy. He told Harley, who said this made the bosses overjoyed. They had been trying to convince him to switch jobs so he would have access to more information about the military and Navy’s defense ties with other countries. It was during these months of being convinced to move that Lawrence spotted another red flag that, strangely, comforted him — Harley’s bosses and Harley herself seemed to be familiar with the inner workings of the DND. “She mentioned that there were several of us who were doing the same thing. That eased my mind a bit, because at least it’s not just me,” he said. For getting and accepting the job in the Navy, Lawrence got a P50,000 bonus through Harley. And because he was now with the Navy, Lawrence also got a job upgrade — he’d be liaising directly with Scott Chan, who introduced himself as Harley’s boss. It also meant a pay bump — from P5,000 to P7,000 per submission, Lawrence started getting more than twice that amount. Part of him wondered if Harley had been getting a cut from his previous payouts. Remote lockers, food deliveries When the payments increased in value, the payment process also became more sophisticated. Under Harley, it was all digital, through online bank transfers or digital wallets. Under Scott, payments were made in cash. Communication with Scott was solely through messages or voice calls. Scott, or his team, would leave money in one of the many free-to-use lockers in a furniture store in Pasay City. Hours later, Lawrence would retrieve the cash through a code Scott would specify through a messaging app. But as work in the Navy piled up, his output for his side hustle diminished, and so did Scott’s support. The once-generous and encouraging Scott turned cold and mean. “That’s when I felt some sort of hatred towards me. [Scott] was screaming at me: ‘You have no respect for me. You aren’t replying,’” Lawrence recalled. Scott started wanting more information: Is it true President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was stepping down, and what does the Navy think? How does the flag-officer-in-command view issues? How about the chief-of-staff of the AFP? He also wanted to know more about rotation and resupply (RORE) missions. Once, Matt asked Lawrence to get the names and numbers of Naval Special Operations Command (NAVSOCOM, now called the Naval Special Warfare Force) personnel assigned to RORE missions. Lawrence did not know where to begin finding answers. It was the specificity of Scott’s assignments that led to Lawrence eventually losing favor. Then Scott asked for information about a Navy unit that handles RORE missions to the West Philippine Sea. Lawrence had no idea what Scott was talking about, so he embellished his report. “Right away he called me. He said, ‘You wrote this wrong.’ So I feigned ignorance and said I misheard the unit he was referring to. He meant the unit that handles RORE,” recalled Lawrence. After Lawrence was caught presenting wrong information, their relationship further deteriorated and the boss started cross-checking his work. “The last time he called me, he said he was very disappointed because I didn’t have as much output this year,” said Lawrence. Since being taken under the direct supervision of the military, Lawrence has spent hours poring over his conversations with Harley and Scott, and what led him to give information to a foreign national who, he has surmised by now, did not have the Philippines’ interests in mind. Rappler’s security sources, as well as the NSC through its March 4 statement, have confirmed that these nationals were Chinese. But he wasn’t alone. While Lawrence was agonizing over increased pressure from Scott and the guilt he was already starting to feel, Alison* was also sending a foreign boss information — although, in her case, the guilt was a little less felt. Strangers on social media Alison’s ties to Jason* started with a private message on LinkedIn from Ken*, who introduced himself as a recruiter from an international consulting firm. His opening pitch to Alison sounded enticing; he was on a hunt for “young talent,” and that she was sure to be of value to his team. From LinkedIn, they moved to the messaging app Viber, where he asked about her background and what she did at work. Alison, then a low-ranked assistant in the DND, answered all of Ken’s questions. Then she was introduced to Jason*, her “research manager.” Weeks deep into speaking to these recruiters, Alison only had surface-level knowledge of what they actually wanted from her. “They said it had to do with advising or something...something related to defense,” was all she could recall. That “something related,” Jason promised her, would net her P5,000 for her “consultation fee” for any output she produced. She was also promised up to P60,000 as a bonus, “depending on her performance.” Alison’s salary grade then meant she was grossing well under P30,000 a month at the DND. Alison’s first few submissions were basic: the Philippines-US military alliance and AFP modernization. Everything Alison cited, at first, was open-source. Within three days to a week, she would get a deposit of a few thousand pesos in her GCash account. Sometimes she would get more because, Jason explained, her submission was worth more. Alison said she does not know — and did not bother to ask — how Jason gauges what’s worth more, or why some documents were worth less. Then Jason started asking for more. “Sabi niya, hindi niya gusto ’yung internal security.... Gusto nila ’yung mga international partnership ng Philippines, ’yung modernization, then specific sila sa ano, sa RORE missions,” she said. (He told me he didn’t care about internal security. He wanted to know about the international partnerships of the Philippines, AFP modernization, and he was very specific about the RORE missions.) RORE missions refer to the rotation and resupply missions of the military to its various outposts in the West Philippines Sea. Details of RORE missions — when they take place, how many personnel are involved, and what exactly is being brought into various features in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone — are classified information. “Sabi nila, mas okay daw, mas valuable ’yung file. Mas maganda sa performance [evaluation ko]. Nag-request sila ng official files...’yung sign talaga na may ‘official,’” she said. (They told me files are more valuable. It would be better for my performance evaluation. So they requested for official files, literally files with the word “official.”) To improve her “performance evaluation,” Alison quickly progressed from sending documents that were not sensitive but meant primarily for internal consumption, to “internal documents.” In December 2023, or a few months after she was first recruited as a “young talent,” Alison got a five-digit bonus via GCash. By the end of December 2023, without Jason’s prompting, she sent him another file concerning defense strategy. Initially, Jason had promised another bonus for the file — only to tell Alison that because there was now a new version of the document, the one she sent had become irrelevant. For her “efforts,” Jason sent her a couple of thousands of pesos. It was at that point where Alison surmised that to be of “value,” documents had to be both recent and classified. Alison had no access to top secret documents, so fortunately for the Philippines’ defense secrets, that was out of the question. Initially, Lawrence and Alison were unaware of each other’s side hustles, even if they were apparently operating under the same rules: They were not allowed to talk about their work with their foreign bosses, and were not allowed to tell their family or friends about how much they were making. Incentives were also similar: new gadgets that never came, or trips to Hong Kong that were never actually booked. But things would slip from time to time in the course of casual conversation and their interactions — talk of some researchers in the DND had freelance gigs on the side, although Lawrence isn’t sure if those gigs were exactly the same as his. Alison was a little more chatty and eventually, Lawrence figured she was doing the same thing he did. It didn’t help that she kept treating everyone to lunch or merienda. Whatever envy he once harbored or joy he felt then whenever a payout was delivered are long-forgotten. Lawrence, despite himself, often lingers on regret. “I’m smart, I’m capable, but I still chose to do this. It’s shameful, to be honest. Sometimes it’s hard for me to imagine that I did this,” he told Rappler during an hours-long interview. – Rappler.com PART 1 | Chinese operation taps Filipinos to access top security info PART 3 | The price of stealing Philippines’ top security secrets Illustration by Nico Villarete