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Operation:Weasel was begun as an effort to flush out Nauru government officials who were involved in the underground sale of Nauru passports and the skimming of profits from those sales, primarily through Trans-Pacific Development Corporation (TPDC). After the first meeting between covert operatives from the United States and New Zealand with the US representatives of TPDC and representatives of the government of Nauru at the University Club in Washington, DC, the US and Kiwi covert operatives found that there was a deeper issue than they had originally suspected. There was a long history of money laundering through Nauru offshore banks. The combination of money laundering and the sale of citizenships & identification documents was an open door to terrorists and criminal elements. The meeting took place shortly after the Bali bombing in October 2002, so there was high interest in both tracking terrorist money sources and shutting them down. The naming of "Operation:Weasel" was a play on words, since the two operatives were attempting to "ferret" out information leaks between the TPDC owners and selected Nauru government officials. The US and New Zealand covert operatives created Operation:Weasel after speaking to investigators at the US Department of the Treasury, the Department of Justice and the State Department, including investigators at the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency's China Desk. The Chinese connection was important to the operation because the majority of Nauru citizenships were being sold to Chinese citizens who then used the documents to travel to Macau and Hong Kong for the purpose of moving hard currency out of the country and buy properties outside of the People's Republic of China. In one case, it was witnessed that the daughter of a senior Chinese Immigration official was given a Nauru passport, in return for political favors. These Nauru passports and citizenship documents were being sold at their peak for $50,000 USD, with none of the profits being sent to the Nauru treasury. After an Australian newspaper reporter got wind of the operation, the two intelligence operatives manipulated media reports and other reporters in order to throw the corrupt Nauru officials offtrack from the actual nature of the investigation. All company officers of TPDC were American citizens, and as it turned out, were operating this international document ring right across the street from the Washington Post in a law office belonging to one of the TPDC board members. Operation:Weasel was eventually used as a smokescreen to divert attention away from a real effort by other countries to smuggle North Korean scientists and high ranking officials out of asia throgh China, using diplomatic vehicles and the safety of the embassy compounds. The Nauru embassy in Beijing was operated at the expense of the New Zealand operative and was only established to draw attention away from the actual embassies used for the repatriation of the North Koreans. The articles in The Australian, Reuters news service and other media were planted by the US operative, and picked up by other media.