chinese espionage operations and tactics

#Chinese espionage operations and tactics professional#

According to the Justice Department, he conspired to pass his handlers sensitive intelligence, and had created a document including “certain locations to which the CIA would assign officers with certain identified experience, as well as the particular location and timeframe of a sensitive CIA operation.” Lee also possessed an address book that “contained handwritten notes … related to his work as a CIA case officer prior to 2004. In 2010, Chinese intelligence operatives approached him, offering money for information. After leaving the CIA in 2007, Lee moved to Hong Kong and started a private business, but it never really took off, according to the indictment. The case of Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 54, a former CIA officer, is perhaps the most enigmatic. Among his requests were classified documents about national defense and “United States military readiness in a particular region,” according to the Justice Department. He was caught when he began asking a DIA case officer to pass him information. He told the FBI that in early 2015, Chinese intelligence officers offered him $300,000 a year “in exchange for providing ‘consulting services,’” according to the complaint. Hansen gave the Chinese sensitive intelligence information and, the FBI alleged in its criminal complaint, export-controlled encryption software. Ron Hansen, 59, is a former DIA officer fluent in both Mandarin and Russian, who had already received thousands of dollars from Chinese intelligence agents over several years by the time the FBI caught him last year, court documents show. intelligence community, which sees China in the same tier as Russia as America’s top espionage threat. intelligence officers pleaded guilty to espionage-related charges involving China.

But in the past year, two other former U.S. If Mallory’s story was unique, he’d just be a tragic example of a former intelligence officer gone astray. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in May his lawyers plan to appeal the conviction. Mallory’s attorneys alleged that he’d been trying to uncover Chinese spies, but a judge dismissed the idea that he was working as a double agent, a defense that other accused spies have tried to deploy. secrets to China and convicted by a jury last spring. “And my object is to be paid.” Mallory was charged under the Espionage Act with selling U.S. “Your object is to gain information,” Mallory told Yang in one of the texts on the device. Gone was the polite, careful language from their initial conversations. Mallory also had a special phone he’d received from Yang to send encrypted communications. The FBI eventually caught him with a digital memory card containing eight secret and top-secret documents that had details of a still-classified spying operation, according to NBC, which followed the case along with other major outlets. Mallory’s trip to China began an espionage relationship that saw him receive $25,000 over two months in exchange for handing over government secrets, the criminal complaint shows. He would later tell the FBI he suspected that Yang was not a think-tank employee, but a Chinese intelligence officer, which apparently was okay by him. Soon after, Mallory was on a plane to meet Yang in Shanghai. That February, according to a search warrant, Yang sent Mallory an email requesting “another short phone call with you to address several points.” Mallory replied, “So I can be prepared, will we be speaking via Skype or will you be calling my mobile device?”

#Chinese espionage operations and tactics professional#

According to the FBI, the initial conversations that would lead Mallory down a path of betrayal were conducted in the bland language of professional courtesy. The LinkedIn message led to a phone call with a man who called himself Michael Yang. The think tank, the recruiter said, was interested in Mallory’s foreign-policy expertise. The recruiter, according to the message, worked for a think tank in China, where Mallory, who spoke fluent Mandarin, had been based for part of his career.

It had come from a Chinese recruiter with whom Mallory had five mutual connections. Then, prosecutors said, he received a message on LinkedIn, where he had more than 500 connections. Though he had, like many veteran intelligence officials, ventured into the private sector, where the pay can be considerably better, things still weren’t going well his consulting business was floundering. After years of drawing a government salary as a member of the military and as a CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency officer, he was behind on his mortgage and $230,000 in debt. In early 2017, Kevin Mallory was struggling financially.