A federal magistrate entered a not-guilty plea on Tuesday on behalf of a Chinese-American engineer charged with stealing military and aerospace trade secrets for years on behalf of China.
An indictment unsealed last week charges Dongfan "Greg" Chung, 72, with economic espionage, conspiracy, acting as a foreign agent, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI.
Chung, who is free on bail, was arraigned before US Magistrate Marc Goldman in US District Court in Santa Ana. Goldman set a trial date of April 8.
Defense attorney Ken Miller had no comment outside court.
The government alleges Chung stole secrets on the space shuttle, C-17 military transport and the Delta IV rocket during his decades of employment at Rockwell International and Boeing.
"We believe we have a very strong case against the defendant," Assistant US Attorney Ivy Wang said outside court. "Some of the trade secrets that were stolen involved military projects."
The case against Chung grew out of a probe into another Chinese-American engineer who worked for a US naval contractor in Anaheim, California. That engineer, Chi Mak, was convicted last year of conspiring to export US defense technology to China and other crimes. He is awaiting sentencing.
Chung, a stress analyst with secret clearance, was employed at space shuttle-builder Rockwell International in Downey until it was bought by Boeing in 1996.
He stayed on at Boeing until he retired in 2002, but returned a year later as a contractor before retiring permanently in 2006.
Chung allegedly began receiving "tasking lists" from Chinese aviation officials as early as 1979 and sent three manuals dealing with space shuttle flight stress analysis to China by sea freight around that time, court documents said.
In 1985, Chung traveled to China without his employer's knowledge and lectured on aircraft and space technology at government-controlled universities and aircraft manufacturers, prosecutors said.
He then allegedly collected manuals on aircraft fatigue and design of the F-100 fighter, X-15 rocket plane and B-70 bomber.
Wang said the government believes those manuals reached China. She said investigators found a trove of other material allegedly stolen from Boeing in a crawl space under his home in Orange, California.
Court papers allege that during the 2006 search of his home, investigators found documents on the space shuttle's phased-array communications system, Boeing's heavy-lift Delta IV space booster and the C-17 Globemaster III, a troop and cargo carrier used by the US Air Force.
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