WASHINGTON (AFP) – A US defence official, an ex-Boeing engineer and two others were charged Monday with spying for China involving sensitive military and aerospace secrets, including on the space shuttle. The four were linked to two espionage conspiracies, which the US Justice Department said posed a “grave danger” to national security. Pentagon official Gregg William Bergersen, Chinese citizen Yu Xin Kang and Taiwan-born US citizen Tai Shen Kuo were accused of passing classified information to China, mostly pertaining to US military sales to Taiwan, according to Justice Department officials.
Bergersen, 51, is a weapons systems policy analyst at the Pentagon’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency, which implement the US Defence Department’s foreign military sales program. In another case, former Boeing engineer Dongfan “Greg” Chung, a China-born US citizen, was charged with stealing and turning over trade secrets also to Beijing, including the space shuttle used for US human space flight missions. Aside from the shuttle, Chung, 72, was charged with economic espionage involving the C-17 military transport plane and the Delta IV rocket — designed to launch manned space vehicles — while he worked at Boeing and, before that, at US defense contractor Rockwell International. Both FBI-probed cases had a common objective: “to get a hold of our nation’s military secrets,” Assistant US Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein told reporters. “Such espionage networks pose a grave danger to our national security and to our economic position in the world,” he said. They were complete with traditional elements of spy tradecraft, including foreign handlers, payoffs, cut-out couriers, intelligence taskings to an aerospace engineer and a “compromised government employee,” he said. China’s foreign secret service is among the “most aggressive” in trying to steal sensitive US military technology and information, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell charged recently. Chinese and Russian spies, he said, were stalking the United States at levels close to those seen during the tense covert espionage duels of the Cold War. The four were arrested Monday and, according to Justice Department officials, at least Bergersen and Kuo had made initial court appearances in Alexandria, Virginia, south of Washington. Their attorneys were not immediately available for comment. Kuo, 58, is accused of having worked under the direction of an unnamed Chinese official to obtain classified US defense information from Bergersen, who maintains a “top secret security clearance” at the Pentagon. Kang, 33, who is a US permanent resident, was named as a “conduit of information” between Kuo and the Chinese official. Ko and Kang, both of New Orleans, Louisiana, face up to life in prison if convicted for the charge of criminal conspiracy to disclose national defense information to a foreign government. Bergersen, who resides in Alexandria, Virginia, was charged with disclosing national defence information to unauthorized persons, which could bring up to 10 years in prison. Chung, 72, who lives in Orange, California, was charged with economic espionage, having allegedly received directives since as early as 1979 from China’s aviation industry telling him to collect specific information. Chung was charged with eight counts of economic espionage — each of which carries a maximum possible 15 year prison sentence and 500,000 dollar fine — and six other related charges. The Justice Department said the Chung case is linked to its investigation into California resident and Chinese-born engineer Chi Mak and members of his family, who were convicted last year for providing US defence articles to China. Chi Mak, 66, who had worked for a US company with several Navy contracts, is scheduled to be sentenced on March 24. “Mr. Chung is accused of stealing restricted technology that had been developed over many years by engineers who were sworn to protect their work product because it represented trade secrets,” said US Attorney Thomas O’Brien. “Disclosure of this information to outside entities like the PRC would compromise our national security,” he said.