"The hardest thing to understand is that the word 'integrity' comes to mind when I think of Don Keyser," said Chas Freeman, who worked alongside Keyser at the embassy in Beijing. "There is a long history of Taiwanese espionage against the United States, that is not in doubt. What is most peculiar and hard to believe is that Don Keyser would have been recruitable."
Shambaugh said Keyser typically works long days, often 15 hours, and has little time for hobbies.
"The man is in at 6:30 every morning and does not leave until 10 at night," he said. "He will not leave the building until [Secretary of State] Colin Powell leaves the building."
Bader spoke of Keyser's ability to write trenchant, analytical cables from memory. In 1982, when Bader was a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing working under Keyser, the ruling Chinese Communist Party held a party congress. Typically, four or five political officers would have been assigned to analyze it, he said. But most were on leave.
"Don said he would cover [it] by himself," Bader recalled. "He churned out an endless series of perfectly composed analyses over the course of the party congress. In the pre-word processing era, I saw him sit down and type flawless 25-paragraph cables in perfect sentences, without notes, completely from memory. He was the awe of everyone."
Now, diplomats and academics accustomed to deciphering the arcana of foreign countries are wondering whether they missed something close to home.
"We're all just collectively stunned and asking each other what to make of this," Shambaugh said.
Staff writers Lena H. Sun, Glenn Kessler, Walter Pincus and Peter Whoriskey and researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
