Thursday 28 February 2013
Intrigue surrounds American"s death in Singapore
Documents on his computer hard drive included a plan to share with a Chinese company high-powered equipment that could boost military radar signals and jamming devices. Singapore’s probe is ongoing.
Shane Todd worried that his employers in Singapore were using him to help China get its hands on sensitive technologies that could harm U.S. national security.
He said so to many folks, and was elated to have found another job back home, said his mother, Mary Todd. But two days after his final day of work in June and a going-away party with colleagues, his girlfriend found him dead, hanging from his bathroom door.
“We believe he was murdered,” said Todd’s father, Rick, an airline pilot who once flew for the U.S. military.
The Todd family has been pressing the U.S. government to look into what they say is a case of espionage and faked suicide to cover up their son’s discovery that he may have been used to help China spy on his country. The circumstances of the death make no sense, they say, and the Singapore authorities have not been cooperative enough.
They have made little headway with U.S. authorities but on Friday the Todd family will meet Montana Democrat Sen. Max Baucus in Washington to make their case.
“We want a congressional investigation. We want to know how bad the damage is if” the technology his son was working with reached China, Rick Todd said.
Baucus said the U.S. government has not done enough to answer the Todds’ questions, and that he doesn’t know yet whether enough pressure has been put on authorities in Singapore to allow the FBI to assist in the investigation.
“I’m going make sure they do,” Baucus told USA TODAY. “I’m going to find out what happened.”
Shane Todd’s family lived in California and Florida before moving to Montana. His dad had been a Navy pilot before becoming a commercial airline pilot.
Shane Todd was a wrestling standout and adept in his science classes. He graduated in 2005 with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida, where he had many friends, his family said. He received his doctorate at the University of California-Santa Barbara. In 2010, he chose a job in Singapore because he was looking for adventure, he told his parents.
He went to work at the Institute of Microelectronics, a Singaporean government research institution, to work on cutting-edge technology involving powerful semiconductors. But an investigation by the Financial Times magazine found the technology has other applications desired by China, applications that can be used to disrupt enemy radar and communications.
Documents on a hard drive his parents found in his Singapore apartment included a draft agreement for IME to share what Todd was working on with Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, says Colin Humphreys, a pioneer in the emerging field of gallium nitride semiconductors. Huawei is known to U.S. intelligence agencies. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS’ 60 Minutes in October that the company has ties to China’s military and intelligence services and is “a serious threat” to U.S. national security.
Humphreys, director of the University of Cambridge Center for Gallium Nitride, analyzed documents retrieved from Todd’s hard drive at the request of the Financial Times. Speaking to USA TODAY, Humphreys said the documents show that Todd traveled for IME to the United States to be trained on equipment used to produce a powerful new class of semiconductors that outperform silicon and can be used to greatly boost the transmissions of cellphone towers, military radars and radar jamming devices.
Gallium nitride is most commonly used in LED lighting, to produce high-intensity light without much heat or energy use. The material is also used on wafers, similar to silicon chips in a computer, to power various electronic devices but with much greater efficiency and intensity. Todd was involved in cutting-edge research on using GaN wafers that were 8 inches in diameter and can be loaded with electronic devices. They are of the type used in the most advanced commercial and military land-based and airborne transmission equipment, Humphreys said.
The technology is “state of the art and developing and not many places in the world are at this point,” he said.
The New Jersey-based company, Veeco, also gave Todd recipes for creating gallium nitride wafers to certain specifications, and planned to ship equipment to IME so it could produce gallium nitride wafers in Singapore, Humphreys said. Singapore is not restricted from receiving such “dual-use” technology, but China is, according to the Financial Times.
Huawei has denied “any cooperation” with IME on gallium nitride, and IME issued a statement denying that Todd was involved in classified work or anything connected to Huawei.
Mary Todd, however, told USA TODAY that the company’s statement is at odds with what her son said to her in the months before his death. After returning to Singapore from his training with Veeco in early 2012, a new development caused him to become extremely anxious, she said.
“He told us he was meeting with a Chinese company that spoke in English to him and Madarin (Chinese) to the group,” Mary Todd said. “He said ‘I think I’m being asked to do things that compromise U.S. security and I’m very uncomfortable.’”
Mary Todd said from then on she and her son spoke every week. In conversations that lasted an hour or more, Shane’s unease seemed to increase, she said.
“He said he’d been threatened, but he was very nebulous about it,” Mary Todd said.
Todd was afraid he wouldn’t find another job if he left before his contract was up. When he gave 60 days’ notice, IME asked him to stay another 60 days to complete what he was working on. Todd agreed, his mother said.
“He said coming to Singapore was the worst mistake of his life,” Mary Todd said. “He said he was extremely naïve. This was every conversation we had with him preceding his death.”
Mary Todd asked her church to pray for her son, even though she thought it “sounded so far-fetched” that he was in real danger. “He was getting ready to come home. He had a ticket to come home.”
On his last day of work, Shane Todd went out with friends to celebrate. It was June 22. Two days later, Mary Todd got a phone call that shattered her life. Shane’s girlfriend called, hysterical, to say she found Shane dead. Police said it appeared Shane had killed himself.
Todd’s parents were stunned, but their shock turned to confusion and anger after they traveled to Singapore.
The scene of his death didn’t match the description police provided. Todd’s body bore marks that an independent medical examiner later said looked as if he’d been in a fight and died by a garroting, or strangling. And evidence on a computer hard drive found in his apartment shows the work he was doing may indeed have been an illegal transfer of military-grade technology to a Chinese company that is known to have ties to China’s military and intelligence services, the family said.
Despite the allegations, most U.S. government officials won’t talk about the case.
The State Department declined to comment. Staffers for Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., helped arrange a meeting between the Todds and the U.S. ambassador to Singapore, according to Tester’s spokesman, Dan Malessa.
Baucus has alerted top officials at the White House to the case and instructed staffers from the Senate Finance Committee, which he chairs, to raise the issue in face-to-face meetings with U.S. Embassy staffers and Singaporean officials, according to his office.
The family needs answers and there are national security concerns, Baucus told USA TODAY. “I will do everything in my power to help them get the answers they deserve,” Baucus said.
Mary Todd said the FBI met with her and her husband once, in Singapore, “and we never heard from them again.”
The FBI said it is talking to Singaporean authorities about assisting in the case.
The allegations of espionage and murder come as new developments arise over international spying. U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant issued a report in early February alleging widespread industrial espionage by the Chinese military against commercial entities across the United States. The Mandiant report is relevant to Shane Todd’s case because it shows that “there is no clear line in China between commercial entities and China’s military and government,” said China expert Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.
When Mary and Rick Todd arrived in Singapore on June 26, a police detective said their son hung himself with a wide strap from a computer bag, which he’d attached to a rope tied to the toilet and strung through a pulley he had bolted to the wall, Mary Todd said. The detective also read them an apologetic suicide note he said was found on Shane Todd’s computer. The note started out thanking IME for the opportunity it offered and continued with apologies to the company and his family. She recalled thinking of the distinct tone of the letter that “it was so Asian.”
“Then he gave this pathetic list of memories he had with our family that made no sense whatsoever,” Mary Todd said. She handed the letter back to the detective and said her son “may have killed himself, but he didn’t write this note.”
The Todds’ suspicions grew when they went to their son’s apartment. There was no pulley and no bolts and no bolt holes, as the police report claimed. The toilet was not where the detective said it would be. There were clothes in the washing machine and piled on the couch in preparation to be packed. Furniture was tagged as if for sale. The apartment looked like someone was getting ready for a move to a new life, not end it all.
Edward Adelstein, chief pathologist at the Harry S. Truman Veterans Hospital in Columbia, Mich., and deputy medical examiner for Michigan’s Boone and Callaway counties, disagreed with the preliminary official report that Shane Todd’s death was a suicide. Adelstein noted thin marks on Shane Todd’s throat, bruises on his forehead, neck and hands, and the normal weight of his lungs. Shane Todd died quickly and not without a struggle, Adelstein said.
Bruising on Todd’s hands, neck and forehead were signs of a struggle, he said.
“Perhaps the most important information is that the deceased did not have a history indicating that he was considering taking his life, while there is significant history that he felt his life was being threatened,” Adelstein wrote.
Rick Todd says he’s not surprised his son tried to fight back.
“Shane was a very tough individual,” he said. “He wrestled two years. He was extremely strong. He had a bruise on his forehead. He obviously was able to head-butt somebody.”
Intrigue surrounds American"s death in Singapore
STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-Index flat; SingTel falls to 1-month low
Singapore shares were little changed, but Southeast Asia’s
largest telco operator Singapore Telecommunications Ltd
(SingTel) fell to a one-month low.
The Straits Times Index was up 0.1 percent at
3,263.51 points, underperforming MSCI’s broadest index of
Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan which was 1.1
percent higher.
SingTel shares dipped as much as 2 percent to S$3.40, the
lowest since Jan. 24. Nearly 23 million shares were traded, 1.1
times the average full-day volume over the past 30 days.
This month, SingTel reported a weaker-than-expected
third-quarter net profit and reiterated its forecast for a fall
in revenues this year. There have also been some negative media
reports about the company’s business in India, although traders
said it is unclear if the news has had any significant impact on
the stock.
Shares of Global Logistic Properties extended
their fall after Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC cut its
stake in the warehouse operator.
GLP shares fell as much as 2.7 percent on Thursday. The
stock has declined more than 9 percent since reports of the
stake sale emerged.
1155 (0355 GMT)
STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-Index flat; SingTel falls to 1-month low
Hotel Insider: Wanderlust, Singapore
The welcome
Wanderlust describes itself as “a left-field and totally experimental boutique hotel set to draw madcap voyagers” and on arrival I am forced to admire the hotel’s candour. A different Singaporean creative team has designed each of Wanderlust’s four floors and the guiding principle for each would seem to have been a total lack of aesthetic inhibition. The ground floor, which houses the lobby, kitchen and a breakfast-cum-dining room, is a relatively demur exercise in industrial chic and recycled furniture that provides guests with a welcome respite from the street outside and the delirium of the interior design above. I am greeted by similarly industrial-looking staff – with razor-sharp haircuts, dog tags and monochrome outfits – but their no-nonsense welcome is friendly and efficient and I am handed a beautifully designed notebook full of maps and local facts that proves an invaluable source of information.
The neighbourhood
Wanderlust may sit at the very edge of Singapore’s “Little India” district, but taxis have to make a detour through the neighbourhood’s teeming heart before they can drop you outside. It’s a warren of traditional “shop houses” – colourful, century-old terraces that combine Tamil vegetarian restaurants, second-hand electronics shops and the occasional Hindu temple on the ground floor with chic offices, design studios and residential accommodation above.
The room
A “Creature Comfort”-themed room on the fourth floor is straight from the William S Burroughs school, with an interior design unsuited to the intrusion of daylight. At one end, a sofa with upholstery in the shape of typewriter keys sprouts a claw of oversized type bars that reach up and across the double height ceiling like some enormous metal spider. Mounted on a platform that sits above the built-in wardrobe, toilet and shower, my (very comfortable) bed is accessible only by stepladder, while an exposed bathtub sits in the middle of the room. Once I actually made it to bed, I slept soundly.
The service
Polite and courteous throughout my stay.
The food
Wanderlust’s French bistro Cocotte aims, through shared dishes and communal seating, to make eating here a social event. A three-course prix fixe menu costs 65 Singaporean dollars (Dh193) per person. At breakfast, nothing is unexpected, but the combination of the very best fresh produce and a lightness of touch make even a humble fresh fruit salad a delight, yet ultimately it pales into insignificance when compared with the delights of Singapore’s famous street food.
The scene
An international mixture of young couples, business people travelling alone and culture vultures of all ages. Cocotte’s reach extends beyond paying guests to a wider audience of local residents, families and tourists alike.
Loved
At the start of every taxi journey to the hotel, I am greeted with a look of barely suppressed scandal when my Singaporean drivers register the word “lust” in its name.
Hated
The metal staircase to my bed was mercilessly steep with uncomfortable treads, shallow enough to challenge an ibex.
The verdict
Wanderlust is not for the faint-hearted or those in search of luxury. What it offers is an unforgettable experience for the jaded, the solo traveller, or couples who want something different from the accommodation on their city break.
The bottom Line
A double room costs from 257 Singaporean dollars (Dh762) per night, including taxes. Wanderlust, 2 Dickson Road, Singapore (www.wanderlusthotel.com; 00 65 6396 3322).
Hotel Insider: Wanderlust, Singapore
Renovation Is Complete at Marriott"s Luxury Hotel in Singapore
SINGAPORE–(Marketwire – Feb 28, 2013) – The Singapore Marriott Hotel on Orchard Road underwent a significant overhaul, a SGD 35 million refurbishment, transforming the lobby into a warm, welcoming and open area as well as converting each guest room suited toward modern travellers’ needs. While this hotel is deemed a popular event venue in Singapore and home to numerous events and business meetings, each guest room has been redesigned with relaxation in mind, and well-equipped with luxury amenities such as the signature Marriott® Revive bedding, ergonomic furniture, enhanced entertainment facilities and refreshing rain shower.
The Singapore business hotel may have undergone a big transformation, but the superb location in the heart of Orchard Road and dedicated staff remains unchanged. The devoted event management team will ensure extraordinary and attentive service to carry out your next event. The hotel’s special offers and privileges will easily give your next meeting or event the upgrade you are looking for. This Singapore hotel deal includes:
- 10% attrition, valid for 10 to 30 guestrooms, 14 days prior to your event date.
- Complimentary usage of LCD projector
Also, book 10 to 20 guestrooms and enjoy two rewards, or receive three rewards for meetings with more than 20 guestrooms.
- One complimentary upgrade to Junior Suite
- One complimentary guestroom with every 30 confirmed guestrooms, maximum two guestrooms only.
- Internet usage for up to 10 delegates
- Double Marriott Rewards points
- One-time two-way limousine transfer
- Upgrade to Marriott Rewards Platinum status for one delegate
- Dining credit worth SGD 200 for your welcome dinner or cocktail event in any of the hotel’s restaurants or function rooms, valid with a minimum spend of SGD 1,000 on food bill.
This promotion is valid for meetings from now until 30 June 2013, applicable for new bookings with a minimum of 10 Singapore hotel rooms guaranteed only. For enquiries, please call 6831 4778 or email mhrs.sindt.sales@marriotthotels.com.
About Singapore Marriott Hotel
Singapore Marriott Hotel, best known for its iconic green pagoda roof at the corner of Scotts Road and Orchard Road has completed a SGD 35 million refurbishment, bringing a new level of luxury to one of the city’s best loved properties.
As the most extensive project of its kind in the Hotel’s 18-year history, all guest rooms have been overhauled to offer guests more efficient use of space with newly installed bathrooms and ergonomically optimized furniture. Most notably two new room categories have been introduced for the discerning business and leisure traveller: Premier Deluxe Rooms and Studio Rooms.
This latest renovation, undertaken by world renowned design team, Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA) gives the Hotel a new lease of life with décor that is classic yet contemporary using neutral colours and bold accent fabrics. Rooms have been fitted with state-of-the-art furnishings including two signature 1956 leather Eames Desk Chairs. Bathrooms now come with large walk-in rain showers as well as extended vanity areas and technology upgrades include a 46-inch Samsung Full-HD Smart TV in every room.
The once traditional hotel lobby has been converted into a warm and welcoming open plan zone while Marriott Cafe boasts a sophisticated new ambience, extended seating and open kitchen block. A brand new FB concept, Java+ completes the refurbishment.
Visit Marriott International, Inc. (NYSE: MAR) for company information. For more information or reservations, please visit our website at www.marriott.com, and for the latest company news, visit www.marriottnewscenter.com.
Renovation Is Complete at Marriott"s Luxury Hotel in Singapore