A US federal court sentenced a Chinese woman to 18 months in prison on Friday for her role in an espionage case involving a former Pentagon employee who handed secret military documents to a Chinese spy, her attorney said.
Kang Yuxin had pleaded guilty in May to aiding an undeclared foreign government agent by serving as an intermediary between former Pentagon analyst Gregg William Bergersen and Taiwan-born businessman Kuo Tai-shen (郭台生), who worked for the Chinese government.
Her attorney, Michael Nachmanoff, said he was pleased with the decision as federal guidelines called for between 30 to 37 months in prison.
“The judge imposed the sentence of 18 months incarceration and she will receive credit for the time she’s already served which is six months,” Nachmanoff said.
“She was involved only because of her relationship with Mr Kuo,” Nachmanoff said.
“She recognized that that was an extremely dependant relationship and that Mr Kuo had exercised a lot of control over her for many years. She really was a victim of the circumstances of this relationship,” he said.
Bergersen was sentenced to more than five years in jail last month for handing secret military documents to Kuo, who has pleaded guilty to conspiring to divulge national defense information to China and is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.
Bergersen was a security and defense weapons systems analyst for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implements the Pentagon’s foreign military sales program, and regularly handled classified information regarding US arms sales abroad, including to Taiwan.
Kuo, who has US citizenship, faces a possible life sentence.
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