Republican Rep. Mark Alford says a former commander at Whiteman Air Force Base had no idea a trailer park adjacent to the base was tied to entities with links to China, and he’s pushing for stronger review of past property transactions. The base houses the nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber fleet, which makes any nearby foreign-linked investment a serious concern. Lawmakers and investigators are now tracing business filings and ownership transfers to figure out who bought the land and why it slipped past regulators.
“I just talked to the former commander of the base who retired two days before the Midnight Hammer strike, and he wasn’t aware that this existed. The problem is that CFIUS [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] needs to step up its game, and we’re going to help in doing that,” Alford told Vittert. “These are transactions that happened in the past. I think CFIUS is concentrated now on present transactions and those going forward. I think we need to take a look back at transactions maybe in the last 10 years.”
“We get CFIUS under the Treasury Department, and I’m on the Financial Services General Government Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees that, and we get them on the ball. I’m not blaming this on Secretary Bessent whatsoever. This goes back, I think, to the Biden administration. They did not even put Whiteman Air Force Base on their list of scrutiny,” Alford said.
Public filings show a network of limited partnerships and shell companies bought the roughly 25-acre RV and trailer park just north of the base, and those purchases have drawn fresh questions. One entity known as Property Solutions 3603 LP registered in Missouri in late August 2017 and completed a purchase days afterward, and that transaction stands out because of the park’s direct adjacency to military property. Officials and watchdogs are asking how such a purchase could pass without triggering deeper review given the strategic significance of the site.
Within weeks of the initial registration, control of the property shifted to a Georgia-registered firm tied to a Canadian couple, Esther Mei and Cheng Hu, who show up on business records across several states. Corporate filings in Missouri, Michigan and Utah list related companies that all operate from the same Michigan address, creating the kind of ownership web that typically prompts deeper scrutiny. That pattern has raised red flags to investigators who study how foreign-influenced entities use U.S. corporate structures to obscure beneficial ownership.
National security experts point out that proximity to a base hosting stealth, nuclear-capable aircraft should have set off immediate alarms, and lawmakers are pressing Treasury’s review unit to reopen old files. The concern is not only new purchases but transactions completed years ago that might have slipped through when scrutiny was weaker or focused only on forward-looking deals. Rep. Alford’s spot on the appropriations subcommittee gives him direct jurisdiction over oversight of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which he says needs to review past activity around sensitive locations.
WATCH:
Local officials in the nearby town of Knob Noster, which has a small population, are grappling with the implications of high-stakes property ownership so close to a major military installation. Residents and municipal leaders are now demanding clarity on who has operational control of the trailer park and whether any leases, utilities or access arrangements could pose a risk. At the same time, federal lawmakers are considering whether retroactive reviews will uncover additional purchases near other bases that also went unexamined.
