Ex-Boeing engineer charged in China spying case

[Jolie Rouge]

Ex-Boeing engineer charged in China spying case
By James Vicini
Mon Feb 11, 3:56 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former Boeing engineer was arrested on Monday on charges of stealing trade secrets for China about several aerospace programs, including the Space Shuttle, the U.S. Justice Department said.

It also announced a separate case in which a U.S. Defense Department official and two others from New Orleans were arrested on Monday on espionage charges involving the passing of classified U.S. government documents to China.

"We take every one of these cases very seriously," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein told a news conference.

"The threat is very simple. It's a threat to our national security and to our economic position in the world, a threat that is posed by the relentless efforts of foreign intelligence services to penetrate our security systems and steal our most sensitive military technology and information," he said.

Department officials said Dongfan "Greg" Chung, 72, of Orange, California, who was employed by Rockwell International from 1973 until its defense and space unit was acquired by Boeing Co in 1996, was arrested without incident at his residence.

He was accused in federal court in California of espionage involving economic secrets, conspiracy and other charges. If convicted, he faces a potential sentence of more than 100 years in prison, the officials said.

Chung, a China native who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, held a secret security clearance when he worked at Rockwell and Boeing on the Space Shuttle program, the officials said.

He retired from the company in 2002, but the next year he returned to Boeing as a contractor, a position he held until September 2006.

According to the charges against him, Chung took and concealed Boeing trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport aircraft and the Delta IV rocket.

DESIRE TO HELP 'MOTHERLAND'

Individuals in the Chinese aviation industry began sending Chung letters asking for specific information as early as 1979, the officials said. Chung responded in a letter with a desire to help the "motherland."

Between 1985 and 2003, Chung made multiple trips to China to give lectures on technology involving the Space Shuttle and other programs, and met with Chinese officials during those trips, the officials said. He also sent to China 24 manuals about the B-1 Bomber.

A Boeing spokesman, Dan Beck, said his company has been working with investigators.

"We do not comment on ongoing government criminal investigations and will not comment on the subject matter of the case," Beck said. "Boeing is not a target of the investigation and has been cooperating with the government."

The other case involved Gregg William Bergersen, a Defense Department official who had a top-secret security clearance, and Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, both of New Orleans.

Working under the direction of an individual identified in court documents only as "PRC Official A," Kuo cultivated friendships with Bergersen and others in the U.S. government and obtained from them sensitive classified information for China.

The officials said much of the information involved the U.S. sale of military equipment to Taiwan.

The criminal conduct spanned a two-year period from January 2006 to February 2008, said the documents filed in federal court in Virginia.

Kuo, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had a furniture business in New Orleans, gathered the secret information, the officials said. Kang, a Chinese citizen and a legal permanent U.S. resident, took the secrets from Kuo and gave them to the unidentified Chinese official.

Bergersen is a weapons systems policy analyst at the Arlington, Virginia-based Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is part of the Defense Department. He received an undetermined amount of cash from Kuo for the secrets, the officials said.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Pentagon official, three others charged with spying for China
by P. Parameswaran
1 hour, 43 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US defense official, an ex-Boeing engineer and two others were charged Monday with spying for China involving sensitive military and aerospace secrets, including on the space shuttle.

The four were linked to two espionage conspiracies, which the US Justice Department said posed a "grave danger" to national security.

Pentagon official Gregg William Bergersen, Chinese citizen Yu Xin Kang and Taiwan-born US citizen Tai Shen Kuo were accused of passing classified information to China, mostly pertaining to US military sales to Taiwan, according to Justice Department officials.

Bergersen, 51, is a weapons systems policy analyst at the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implement the US Defense Department's foreign military sales program.

In another case, former Boeing engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung, a China-born US citizen, was charged with stealing and turning over trade secrets also to Beijing, including the space shuttle used for US human space flight missions.

Aside from the shuttle, Chung, 72, was charged with economic espionage involving the C-17 military transport plane and the Delta IV rocket -- designed to launch manned space vehicles -- while he worked at Boeing and, before that, at US defense contractor Rockwell International.

Both FBI-probed cases had a common objective: "to get a hold of our nation's military secrets," Assistant US Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein told reporters.

"Such espionage networks pose a grave danger to our national security and to our economic position in the world," he said.

They were complete with traditional elements of spy tradecraft, including foreign handlers, payoffs, cut-out couriers, intelligence taskings to an aerospace engineer and a "compromised government employee," he said.

China's foreign secret service is among the "most aggressive" in trying to steal sensitive US military technology and information, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell charged recently.

Chinese and Russian spies, he said, were stalking the United States at levels close to those seen during the tense covert espionage duels of the Cold War.

The four were arrested Monday and, according to Justice Department officials, at least Bergersen and Kuo had made initial court appearances in Alexandria, Virginia, south of Washington.

Their attorneys were not immediately available for comment.

Kuo, 58, is accused of having worked under the direction of an unnamed Chinese official to obtain classified US defense information from Bergersen, who maintains a "top secret security clearance" at the Pentagon.

Kang, 33, who is a US permanent resident, was named as a "conduit of information" between Kuo and the Chinese official.

Kuo and Kang, both of New Orleans, Louisiana, face up to life in prison if convicted for the charge of criminal conspiracy to disclose national defense information to a foreign government.

Bergersen, who resides in Alexandria, Virginia, was charged with disclosing national defense information to unauthorized persons, which could bring up to 10 years in prison.

Chung, 72, who lives in Orange, California, was charged with economic espionage, having allegedly received directives since as early as 1979 from China's aviation industry telling him to collect specific information.

Chung was charged with eight counts of economic espionage -- each of which carries a maximum possible 15 year prison sentence and 500,000 dollar fine -- and six other related charges.

The Justice Department said the Chung case is linked to its investigation into California resident and Chinese-born engineer Chi Mak and members of his family, who were convicted last year for providing US defense articles to China.

Chi Mak, 66, who had worked for a US company with several Navy contracts, is scheduled to be sentenced on March 24.

"Mr. Chung is accused of stealing restricted technology that had been developed over many years by engineers who were sworn to protect their work product because it represented trade secrets," said US Attorney Thomas O'Brien.

"Disclosure of this information to outside entities like the PRC would compromise our national security," he said.

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