Ex-CIA officer sentenced to 19 years in prison for conspiring to spy for
China
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[November 23, 2019]
By Sarah N. Lynch
(Reuters) - A former CIA case officer was
sentenced by a federal judge in Virginia on Friday to serve 19 years in
prison, after he pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to become a spy for
China, federal prosecutors announced.
Jerry Chuan Shing Lee, 55, left the CIA in 2007 and moved to Hong Kong.
A few years later, in 2010, he was approached by two Chinese
intelligence officers who offered to pay him $100,000 and to take care
of him “for life” for information he had acquired as a CIA officer.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were subsequently paid into Lee’s
personal bank account between 2010 and 2013, in exchange for his
services.
"Instead of embracing that responsibility and honoring his commitment to
not disclose national defense information, Lee sold out his country,
conspired to become a spy for a foreign government, and then repeatedly
lied to investigators about his conduct," Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S.
Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.
According to the Justice Department, the FBI conducted a search of Lee's
hotel room in Hawaii in August 2012 and discovered he had an address
book and day planner containing handwritten notes he had made during his
time as a CIA case officer prior to 2004.
The notes included highly sensitive intelligence, such as the names of
CIA assets, operational meeting locations, phone numbers and details on
covert facilities.
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He later lied to the FBI when he was confronted.
He pleaded guilty in May with conspiring to deliver national
security defense information to aid a foreign government.
Lee is one of three former U.S. intelligence officers to receive a
lengthy prison sentence in recent months on charges relating to
Chinese espionage.
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In May, another former CIA case officer, Kevin Mallory, was
sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted on charges of
conspiring to transmit U.S. defense secrets to China.
In September, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officer, Ron
Rockwell Hansen, was sentenced to 10 years for attempting to
transmit classified information to China and receiving hundreds of
thousands of dollars while acting as an agent for Beijing.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jan Wolfe; Editing by David
Gregorio and Alistair Bell)
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