When US prosecutors charged an Apple Inc engineer in January with stealing trade secrets for a Chinese start-up, a search of his home turned up something else, they said: a classified file from the Patriot missile program that belonged to his former employer, Raytheon Co.
The discovery has added a striking national security wrinkle to an otherwise routine corporate espionage case, and the government says it merits keeping Chen Jizhong (陳紀中) under close scrutiny.
The Patriot document was discovered among numerous electronic devices and paper files from Chen’s former employers including General Electric Co — some of which were stamped “confidential,” prosecutors said.
Chen, a US citizen who was arrested on his way to catch a flight to China, is awaiting trial on charges that he collected photographs, schematics and manuals from his work on Apple’s tightly guarded self-driving vehicle project as he prepared to take a job with an unidentified rival.
He has pleaded not guilty and remains free on US$500,000 bail, but prosecutors argue the stash of sensitive data found in Maryland justifies subjecting him to location monitoring with an electronic device so that he does not disappear before his trial.
Lawyers representing Chen and a second former Apple engineer facing similar charges — who is also fighting prosecutors over the need for location monitoring — say that the government is exaggerating the risk that they will try to flee.
The 2011 document relating to one of Raytheon’s best-known weapons was so secret that it “was not (and is not) permitted to be maintained outside of Department of Defense secured locations,” prosecutors said in an Oct. 29 filing that has not previously been reported on by the media.
Chen “has, for over eight years, illegally possessed classified national security materials taken from a former employer,” they said.
How a classified document ended up at an engineer’s home raises provocative questions, but they were unlikely be answered in open court at a hearing set for yesterday.
A prosecutor and an attorney for Chen both declined to comment ahead of the hearing.
A Raytheon spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
After prosecutors first raised concerns about the evidence they found in Maryland, a magistrate judge agreed in March to extend an electronic monitoring requirement to give the government time to investigate.
She finally ordered an end to the monitoring in October — and prosecutors are now asking a district judge to overrule her.
Lawyers for Chen say that prosecutors have had enough time to present further evidence of criminal conduct.
They also say that the federal office that supervises defendants on probation has concluded monitoring is no longer necessary, because Chen has complied with all the conditions of his release and found full-time employment.
Daniel Olmos represents Chen and Zhang Xiaolang (張曉郎), who also worked on Apple’s autonomous driving project before he was arrested in July last year and accused of trying to take the company’s trade secrets to China-based XMotors.
The lawyer makes an argument that goes to the heart of the cases against both men: There is no evidence that Apple’s intellectual property was shared with a third party.
That is significant because possession of the information alone is not necessarily a crime.
Olmos also contends that each of the engineers has strong ties in the US and the trips they were about to take to China when they were arrested were planned for the purpose of visiting relatives, not escaping prosecution.
“The government’s argument that Mr Zhang poses a flight risk because he is a Chinese citizen is insufficient to warrant GPS monitoring,” Olmos said in a filing. “Mr Zhang has full-time employment, a new family, and no travel documents.”
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