A former Central Intelligence Agency officer, who was residing in Hong Kong, has been arrested by US authorities, with the New York Times reporting the 53-year-old was suspected of compromising informants of the intelligence agency in China.
Jerry Chun Shing Lee, also known as “Zhen Cheng Li,” was arrested on Monday after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, according to a statement by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which is prosecuting the case.
The statement says Lee was arrested on charges of “unlawful retention of national defense information,” and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if convicted.
The allegations relate to two small books found by FBI investigators during a search of Lee’s luggage during a trip to the US in 2012. The books contained handwritten notes detailing classified information.
The information included the “true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.”
According to the statement, Lee, a naturalized American citizen, began working as a case officer with the CIA in 1994, had top secret clearance and signed numerous non-disclosure agreements.
The NYT reported that Lee’s arrest capped an FBI investigation that started in 2012, two years after China began to dismantle the CIA’s network of spies in the country, of which more than a dozen were killed or imprisoned.
In the wake of the collapse, described as one of America’s worst intelligence failures in recent years, investigators from the FBI and CIA questioned whether they had a mole or whether China had hacked into the agency’s communications, the newspaper reported.
According to the NYT, Lee, who they reported had left the agency “disgruntled,” became a prime suspect in the case.
In August 2012, Lee and his family left Hong Kong to return to the US to live in Northern Virginia.
On route back to the US, while Lee and his family stayed at hotels in Hawaii and Virginia, his luggage and rooms were searched by FBI officers, who uncovered the books containing classified information.
The NYT reported Lee had been lured back to the US has part of a “ruse” that involved a possible contract with the CIA. He was interviewed several times in 2013, after which time he returned to Hong Kong.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Hammerstrom and Deputy Chief Elizabeth Cannon of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.
