max boot wife foreign agent Sue Mi Terry
© Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for ABAAsia policy expert Sue Mi Terry, pictured here in September 2023, has been charged with two felony counts of serving as an unregistered agent for a foreign power. |
A shocking indictment against a policy insider — and what it says about foreign influence in the Beltway.

As allegations of foreign meddling roiled the Donald Trump presidency, Washington Post columnist Max Boot blasted the 45th president as a Russian stooge — and urged the feds to get tough.

"Washington should ramp up enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and expand U.S. counterintelligence efforts against foreign influence, not just espionage," Boot wrote in a 2019 column. The government, he said, should "change its focus from encouraging compliance to punishing noncompliant parties."

Five years later, he might want to rethink that one.

In a delicious story twist that has lit up pro-Trump media, Boot's wife and occasional co-author, the former CIA analyst and longtime Asia policy expert Sue Mi Terry, has herself now been charged with two felony counts of serving as an unregistered agent for a foreign power.

max boot wife unregistered FARA foreign agent
Military historian and neocon Max Boot remains a contributor to Washington Post Opinion and retains a position at the Council on Foreign Relations, despite the FARA allegations against his wife.
According to a sweeping indictment unsealed last month, Terry spent more than a decade taking instructions from South Korea's intelligence agency before publishing articles in prestige media, organizing conferences at top think tanks and arranging networking events to give Korean operatives access to Washington players — and then allegedly accepted pricey Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta handbags, as well as money for her think tank programs, in exchange for her service. One of the columns in question was co-written with Boot in the Post.

As Boot demanded, it's about noncompliance, not espionage. Being paid to say nice things about a foreign government is perfectly legal. You just have to register under FARA.
max boot wife terry foreign agent south korea bribe
© United States District Court Southern District of New YorkTerry allegedly accepted pricey Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta handbags, as well as money for her think tank programs, in exchange for her service
Terry's attorney, Lee Wolosky, said Terry "strongly denies the government allegations" and would fight them in court. "Dr. Terry did not register under FARA because she was not working for the South Korean government," he told me. "She was an independent analyst who was often critical of South Korean foreign policy."

Terry was suspended from her senior fellow position at the Council on Foreign Relations, then resigned. If convicted, she faces 10 years in prison. She's out on a $500,000 bond. No trial date has been set. Boot has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

But on the right, no one's waiting for a jury's verdict to celebrate the ironic misfortunes of a guy who repeatedly called the former president a possible foreign cutout. "Trump's unwillingness to criticize Putin makes you wonder what hold the Kremlin has over him," Boot, a former Republican, wrote in 2018. "The Steele dossier looks more credible all the time." A year later, he wrote a column headlined "Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset."

christopher steele
© TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty ImagesEx-MI6 spy Christopher Steele
"Usually the loudest and most annoying critics like Max Boot are the ones that have the most to hide," Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump's presidential campaign, said by email. "Max Boot should be careful because the other shoe is about to drop." He declined to elaborate about what that meant.

For those who think the foreign policy blob is out to get them, it's a pretty compelling example of a Beltway double standard. Trump, who doesn't share the hostility toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, gets maligned as the Kremlin's Manchurian candidate. But a hawkish scholar allegedly supporting a traditional ally can literally be indicted as a foreign agent with little attention in establishment circles — let alone any collateral damage to her celebrated co-author/husband.

"This is the kind of foreign interference in our government, in our elections, that people like Max Boot and everyone else, including The Washington Post, have been warning of when it came to Donald Trump even though it wound up being false," thundered Glenn Greenwald on his Rumble show, where he called Boot "an absolute, fanatical sociopathic bloodthirsty neocon" for good measure. "You rarely see karmic justice so satisfying. ... How can Max Boot stay at The Washington Post?"

A Post spokesperson defended Boot: "Max Boot is a longstanding contributor to Washington Post Opinion. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing and will continue to publish with The Washington Post on a regular basis."

He also retains his own position at Council on Foreign Relations, the same august organization that parted ways with his wife. "The Council has confirmed that he is not a part of the government's investigation of Dr. Terry," spokesperson Iva Zorić said. "As a result, he remains a Council senior fellow."

Terry's writings in publications like Foreign Affairs and the Post, including the pieces co-written with Boot, have been appended with editor's notes about the charges and Terry's denials. But Boot's solo Post columns don't have a disclosure. His most recent Korea-related column, about the North Korea-Russia "alignment of evil," came June 20, several weeks before the indictment. He'll now recuse himself where appropriate from column topics connected to the case. Boot and Terry didn't respond to requests for comment.

In fact, it's not quite so easy to separate the couple's professional work. Consider the alleged provenance of one of their co-written columns. According to prosecutors, Terry received a call from a Korean government official a day before the column ran in the Post. She promptly texted the official to say that there were "already many articles written on this topic" and followed up with a series of questions that might take the column in a different direction. A day later, the joint Boot-Terry piece appeared in the Post, headlined "South Korea takes a brave step toward reconciliation with Japan."

"Ambassador and National Security Advisor were so happy for your column," Terry's contact later gushed, according to the indictment.

It's cringey stuff. And thanks to the shared byline, Boot is in the middle of it.
max boot wife terry indicted foreign agent
© United States District Court Southern District of New York
But is the cringiness actually out of the ordinary? In the indictment, the unnamed Korean "official" with whom Terry communicated about the column is clearly differentiated from the (also unnamed) "handlers" who allegedly steered gifts her way. In other words, maybe all that happened is she fielded a suggestion from an official — something writers do all the time — and then followed up by leveraging that suggestion to press for new details, another tried-and-true columnist's move. It's also pretty normal for a source to write afterward and say how pleased the VIPs were.

That's the problem with alleged entanglements: They make even anodyne things look sketchy.

A national security expert advocating a strong stand against North Korea isn't especially weird — until the feds release an indictment that includes photos of that expert shopping for luxury goods with an alleged South Korean intelligence operative. It's why media organizations don't let food critics take free meals or allow sports writers to cadge choice seats. At the very least, you're supposed to level with your readers if you're getting gifts from the folks you write about.

In the same way, the indictment could cause someone to look askance at pieces by Boot. In April, for instance, he wrote a solo column arguing it would be OK if South Korea acquired nuclear weapons. I'm willing to believe that, like many spouses, he wasn't paying too much attention to his wife's new handbags or to the contents of her workplace bank accounts. But in a polarized country, a lot of readers might not feel so reassured, which puts him in a tough spot.

Alas, the world of think tanks and research organizations — where both Boot and Terry, like much of the bipartisan foreign-affairs commentariat, have enjoyed plum positions — is considerably murkier when it comes to disclosure. And that may be the real reason the Terry case hasn't rocked Washington, let alone caused her husband to fall from grace: Even if all the charges are true, they're not so radically different from a status quo where foreign money and sponsor influence course legally through the system.

"A think-tanker with foreign entanglements doing stuff that would benefit that foreign power? That's not unusual," said Ben Freeman, a scholar at the anti-interventionist Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who has studied foreign government influence in the foreign policy expert ecosystem. "If she had just disclosed the funding she was getting and registered under FARA, this all would have been legal."


Comment: One sketchy outfit should probably refrain from commenting on another sketchy outfit, especially when it's backed by George Soros:

Terry, in fact, spent much of the period leading something called the Hyundai Motors-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy, housed at D.C.'s Wilson Center. There wasn't any secret about the program's overseas ties, nor any objection to them.

Some coverage of the case, noting Terry's CIA past, has called her an accused spy. Conjuring images of dead drops and James Bond capers, it seems off-base. Without commenting on specifics, an agency spokesperson confirmed that Terry, like all former employees, is subject to a rule requiring her to submit materials for pre-publication review. But the indictment contains no alleged violations of that policy; she hasn't had classified access at all since 2011. The actual allegations mainly boil down to doing undisclosed PR.

And the details of those PR efforts will seem a lot less exotic to anyone who has spent time in the foreign affairs expert ecosystem.

Consider the indictment's list of articles and events allegedly produced at Seoul's behest: a Foreign Affairs article on the advisability of reuniting Korea. Another Foreign Affairs article about the scariness of North Korea's nuclear program. A piece about the importance of the Korean president's U.S. visit that ran in a Korean journal. A Wilson Center event titled "70 Years of the US-ROK Alliance: The Past and the Future." Not exactly radical takes.

Or look at the interpersonal contacts the indictment accuses her of arranging. One of them was a happy hour for congressional staffers allegedly paid for by Korean intelligence but organized under the auspices of Terry's Wilson Center program. According to the indictment, Terry didn't tell invitees that Korean intelligence officers would be there, positioned to develop contacts. But everyone got gift bags, including Yeti-branded tumblers, that were festooned with the Korean Embassy logo, making the general affiliation pretty clear. The specifics may have drawn investigators' interest, but a regular guest might not have noticed much difference from other events on Washington's sponsor-friendly networking circuit.

blinken max boot wife terry off record brief FARA foreign agent
© Seth Wenig/APIn 2022, Terry was invited to an off-the-record briefing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The most spy-like allegation in the indictment also feels familiar on closer review: In 2022, Terry was invited to an off-the-record briefing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Immediately afterward, her handler allegedly picked her up in a Korean Embassy car, where she allowed him to photograph her two pages of notes on think tank stationery. The indictment says she disclosed "nonpublic U.S. government information." But journalists who've been invited to off-the-record bigwig sessions know there's a big gap between the contents of those briefings and actual state secrets. That's partly because so many people disregard their off-the-record commitments, as Terry allegedly did.

Even most of the goodies don't feel so bizarre in the Beltway context. Though the $10,000 in couture swag understandably got the most attention, the bulk of the alleged payments from Korea's spymasters — $37,000 over a decade — went to accounts connected with Terry's think tank program. In good Beltway form, the alleged money was better positioned to expand her professional footprint than buy the couple a luxury vacation.
max boot wife terry foreign agent south korea bribe
© United States District Court Southern District of New York
But just because they're humdrum and entirely different from the charges about Russian electoral interference doesn't mean the allegations are admirable, whether or not the government can prove they're criminal.

Allegedly violating an off-the-record promise is a lousy thing to do. Allegedly not telling your colleagues or your guests that you're connecting them to foreign intelligence operatives is a lousy thing to do. And allegedly not disclosing to your readers that you're doing business with someone you write about is a lousy thing to do.

If the Washington establishment isn't pulling its hair out over the Terry allegations, it's because the Beltway is inured to some pretty lousy stuff.