Legal News

DOJ: Chinese Espionage Marks Return to Cold War Threats

By Dan Slater

There’s nothing like an espionage story to help heat up this freezing Tuesday morning. And today’s top news story has all the elements: sleeper agents, stolen aerospace secrets and Cold War intimations.

Yesterday, the Justice Department unveiled charges against alleged Chinese spies in California and Virginia. The WSJ, NYT, and LAT all have stories.

According to the reports, in a news conference yesterday Kenneth Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, cited a U.S. intelligence report that asserts China is “among the most aggressive in collecting information against sensitive and protected U.S. systems, facilities and development projects, and their efforts are approaching Cold War levels.” Wainstein said that in 2006, American defense firms reported a 43% increase in suspicious foreign contacts.

In the Virginia case, the authorities charged 51 year-old Gregg Bergersen with conspiracy to disclose national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. According to the document filed by prosecutors with the federal court in Alexandria, Bergersen received payments for providing information about the projected sales of weapons and military equipment to Taiwan. Bergersen is a weapons-system analyst at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is part of the Defense Department and coordinates weapons sales. Mr. Bergersen faces a 10-year sentence if convicted.

In the California case, Chinese-native, Dongfan Chung, 72, spent more than 30 years as an aerospace engineer at Rockwell International and Boeing, according to Thomas P. O’Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. The 25-page indictment against Chung cited letters, memos and other messages — some dating to 1979 — between Chung and his alleged handlers inside the People’s Republic of China. They allegedly show that he sent classified manuals and other data to China and made personal presentations to Chinese aerospace workers. If convicted, Chung faces a maximum punishment of “well over 100 years in federal prison.”

Law Blog YouTube Video of the Day: No one understood espionage of the heart like Daryl Hall and John Oates. Click here for the video for 1981’s classic hit, “Private Eyes.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 12, 2008 (boomark / email).