An official from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on Monday was charged with selling US secrets to China in exchange for at least US$800,000.
The US Department of Justice said Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, of Syracuse, Utah, was taken into custody on Saturday while on his way to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington state to board a flight to China, carrying classified information.
It was just the latest in a series of arrests of US officials on charges of spying for Beijing.
Hansen, the charges said, was retired from the US Army where he worked in signals intelligence.
Fluent in Mandarin and Russian, he was recruited in 2006 to work for the DIA as a case officer, someone who recruits and manages foreign intelligence assets.
Based out of a commercial office in Beijing, Hansen made contacts with Chinese intelligence, and over several years tried to pitch himself to the DIA and FBI as a double agent who would act ultimately for the US, the indictment said.
Investigators found that he had regular meetings with Chinese intelligence agents that he never reported, used telephones provided him by Chinese sources and retained classified information to which he was not supposed to have access.
They also discovered that Hansen was in deep financial trouble from 2013 to 2016, with debts of several hundred thousand US dollars.
During and after that time, he received more than US$800,000 in payments from China, often cash that he hand-carried to the US, that he could not explain.
By early this year, the FBI learned that Hansen was seeking from US colleagues information on the US position on North and South Korea, as well as its military operations plan against China, to be sold to his Chinese contacts.
“His alleged actions are a betrayal of our nation’s security and the American people, and are an affront to his former intelligence community colleagues,” US Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said.
In January, former CIA agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee (李春興) was arrested on charges that he sold information to China, reportedly providing information on the CIA’s network of informants that was brought down by China between 2010 and 2012.
Former CIA officer Kevin Mallory was arrested last year for spying for China and went on trial last week, while US Department of State employee Candace Marie Claiborne, was arrested last year for taking money from Chinese intelligence officials, though she was not directly accused of supplying information in exchange.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS