A former CIA case officer pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to conspiring to commit espionage on behalf of China.
“I conspired to gather and send secret level information to PRC, the government of PRC,” Jerry Chun Shing Lee told Judge T.S. Ellis III as he pleaded guilty to the charges leveled against him in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The 54-year-old Lee served in the CIA for 13 years but left the spy agency in 2007 and moved to Hong Kong. He was approached in 2010 by two Chinese intelligence officers who offered to pay him $100,000 cash in exchange for national defense information Lee had acquired while at the CIA.
Over at least the next year, Lee received requests for information, known as “taskings,” from the Chinese information officers. The taskings asked Lee to reveal sensitive information on national defense. Just a month after being initially approached by the Chinese agents, more than $17,000 was deposited into Lee’s bank account. From May 2010 through December 2013, Lee made hundreds of thousands of dollars of deposits into his personal bank account.
Despite the findings that he received multiple taskings and Lee admitting that he had stored a sensitive document on a thumb drive discovered in 2012 by the FBI, he claims that he never relayed the information to the Chinese intelligence officers.
U.S. Attorney Zachary Terwilliger said in a Wednesday statement that Lee’s prosecution is a warning to others who might want to spy for foreign governments.
“Those Americans entrusted with our government’s most closely held secrets have a tremendous responsibility to safeguard that information,” Terwilliger said. “Instead of embracing that responsibility and honoring his commitment to not disclose national defense information, Lee sold out his country, conspired to become a spy for a foreign government, and then repeatedly lied to investigators about his conduct.”
Lee joins a number of former intelligence officers recently found to have spied for China. Last month, former State Department employee Candace Claiborne, 63, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. She was found to have received thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits from two Chinese intelligence handlers in exchange for information.
“This is the third case in less than a year in which a former U.S. intelligence officer has pled or been found guilty of conspiring with Chinese intelligence services to pass them national defense information,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. “Every one of these cases is a tragic betrayal of country and colleagues.”
Lee is scheduled to be sentenced in August and faces up to life in prison, although because he pleaded guilty and the information involved was “secret” and not “top secret,” his sentence will likely be lower.
