Former CIA officer arrested for leaking classified information to Chinese spy

Washington, January 17: A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested on Monday night at a New York airport on charges of unlawful retention of national defence information.

 

Notably, former Central Intelligence Agency officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee was accused of keeping notebooks filled with detailed information about undercover agents and assets after he left his job. Lee was arrested after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York.

Lee has been a suspect in a long-running probe to determine if a mole inside the US intelligence community had led to the deaths of a number of CIA assets in China, according to people with knowledge of the probe. However, he has not been charged with any crimes in connection with those deaths.

Lee is a naturalized US citizen, currently residing in Hong Kong, China. According to court documents, Lee began working for the CIA as a case officer in 1994, maintained a Top Secret clearance and signed numerous non-disclosure agreements during his tenure at CIA.

According to court documents, in August 2012, Lee and his family left Hong Kong to return to the United States to live in northern Virginia. While traveling back to the United States, Lee and his family had hotel stays in Hawaii and Virginia.

During each of the hotel stays, FBI agents conducted court-authorized searches of Lee’s room and luggage and found that Lee was in unauthorized possession of materials relating to the national defense. Specifically, agents found two small books containing handwritten notes that contained classified information, including but not limited to, true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.

Lee made his initial appearance this afternoon in the Eastern District of New York. He is charged with unlawful retention of national defense information and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if convicted. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes.

If convicted of any offense, the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court after considering the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

Importantly, Lee served in the US Army from 1982 to 1986. After that, he went to Hawaii Pacific University, where he graduated in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in international business management and in 1993 got a master's degree in human resource management.