![]() During that time, Chinese officials murdered or jailed around 20 American assets and spies. China chose the last two options.Īccording to the New York Times, Beijing launched a major assault on America’s intelligence operations in China between 20. Those actions can include feeding them false information, using them to find out who they communicate with back in the US - or killing or imprisoning them. If a country the US spies on - say, China - finds out the identities of those people, it might choose to take action to neutralize them. The kind of classified information that the FBI alleges Lee held on to for years after leaving the CIA - such as the true identities of CIA covert operatives - are among the intelligence community’s most closely held secrets. The strange case of the disappearing spies Which brings us to the next mystery in the case. Why the FBI waited nearly half a decade to arrest him is unclear.Īlso unclear is what, if anything, he might have been doing with that classified information. That’s where Lee’s story ends - that is, until Monday, when he was finally arrested on charges of having unlawful access to classified information. But according to the court affidavit, he didn’t hand over those books of classified information in any of his meetings, nor did he mention having them in five separate interviews with FBI agents around May or June 2013. Prosecutors allege that Lee continued to meet with US government officials while he lived in northern Virginia from August 15, 2012, to June 6, 2013. Among those possessions were two books that contained classified information, including the phone numbers and real names of US assets, locations for covert meetings, and notes from those meetings. Federal investigators searched Lee’s belongings at both locations and took pictures of his possessions. That’s when federal investigators discovered that Lee had held on to a few pieces of highly classified information some five years after leaving the agency. On their trip back to the US, they stayed in hotels in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Fairfax, Virginia. In August 2012, Lee and his family decided to move back to the US from Hong Kong, where they had moved after Lee left the CIA. When he left the CIA in 2007, he was supposed to turn over all of that information - except it seems he didn’t. According to the FBI affidavit, Lee was given a top-secret security clearance and had access to “sensitive compartmented information access to various sensitive programs.” In other words, Lee had access to some of the most highly classified intel the CIA had. A case officer handles agents and spy networks. He served in the US Army from 1982 to 1986, and in 1994 he joined the CIA as a case officer. ![]() Lee, a 53-year-old naturalized American citizen who lives in Hong Kong, has a distinguished military and intelligence background, according to court documents. Lee was caught with classified info he wasn’t supposed to have ![]() What follows is a history of what we know about Lee, why some suspect he might have spied for China, and why we should be careful not to jump to conclusions just yet. The court documents don’t say anything about Lee being part of a broader plot. While that’s still a felony, it’s a much less severe charge than espionage, which can bring the death penalty. The FBI has only charged Lee with “unlawful retention of national defense information,” not espionage. If Lee is the culprit, it’s possible that his arrest ends the search for the person responsible for one of America’s worst intelligence failures in recent memory.īut that’s still not clear. Since at least 2011, the CIA and FBI have been investigating the possibility that a mole leaked privileged information about US spies to China. But that’s just the beginning: Unnamed sources who claim familiarity with the case tell the New York Times and NBC News that Lee is suspected of being part of a massive, years-long espionage operation by the Chinese government that led to the death or imprisonment of around 20 CIA informants. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The ex-spy, a 53-year-old Chinese-American man named Jerry Chun Shing Lee who worked for the CIA for more than a decade, has been charged with illegally holding on to extremely sensitive classified information - including the real names and phone numbers of covert CIA operatives - long after he’d left the CIA. Kennedy Airport and arrested a former CIA officer just minutes after his plane from Hong Kong had landed. ![]() It reads like a scene out of a Tom Clancy novel: On Monday night, federal authorities swooped into New York’s John F. ![]()
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