Convicted Chinese spy to get espionage sentence

SANTA ANA, Calif. – An aged Chinese-born architect bedevilled of bread-and-butter espionage for accession acute abstracts that included amplitude shuttle capacity faces sentencing Monday, and prosecutors are gluttonous a 20-year term.

A adjudicator begin Dongfan "Greg" Chung, 74, accusable in July of six federal counts of bread-and-butter espionage and added accuse for befitting 300,000 pages of acute affidavit in his home. The abstracts additionally included advice about the fueling arrangement for a booster rocket.

Despite Chung's age, prosecutors accept requested a 20-year sentence, in allotment to accelerate a bulletin to added ambitious spies.

Assistant U.S. Advocate Greg Staples acclaimed in sentencing affidavit that Chung accumulated a claimed abundance of added than $3 actor while betraying his adopted country.

"The (People's Republic of China) is angled on burglary acute advice from the United States and shows no assurance of relenting," Staples wrote. "Only able sentences action any achievement of black others from allowance the PRC get that technology."

Chung's attorney, Thomas Bienert Jr., did not acknowledgment a alarm for comment. He has said his applicant will appeal.

Defense attorneys additionally filed a motion aftermost anniversary accusing prosecutors of denial a address about an FBI account with a Chinese assistant with whom Chung corresponded.

The attorneys requested an evidentiary audition for Monday on the matter.

It was cryptic if U.S. District Adjudicator Cormac J. Carney would admission the motion.

The government accused Chung, a accent analyst with high-level clearance, of application his 30-year career at Boeing Co. and Rockwell International to abduct the documents. They said board begin affidavit ample throughout Chung's abode that included acute advice about the booster rocket — abstracts that advisers were ordered to lock abroad at the end of anniversary day. They said Boeing invested $50 actor in the technology over a five-year period.

During the non-jury trial, Chung's attorneys argued that he may accept abandoned Boeing action by bringing the affidavit home, but he didn't breach any laws by accomplishing so, and the U.S. government couldn't prove he had accustomed abstruse advice to China.

In his ruling, Carney wrote that the angle that Chung was alone a backpack rat was "ludicrous" and said the affirmation showed that he had been casual advice to Chinese admiral as a spy.

The government believes Chung began spying for the Chinese in the backward 1970s, a few years afterwards he became a aborigine U.S. aborigine and was assassin by Rockwell International.

Chung formed for Rockwell until it was bought by Boeing in 1996. He backward with the aggregation until he was laid off in 2002 but brought aback a year after as a consultant. He was accursed back the FBI began its analysis in 2006.

When agents searched Chung's abode that year, they apparent added than 225,000 pages of abstracts on Boeing-developed aerospace and aegis technologies, according to balloon briefs.

The technologies dealt with a phased-array antenna actuality developed for alarm and communications on the U.S. amplitude shuttle and a $16 actor fueling apparatus for the Delta IV booster rocket, acclimated to barrage manned amplitude vehicles.

Agents additionally begin abstracts on the C-17 Globemaster troop carriage acclimated by the U.S. Air Force as able-bodied as militaries in Britain, Australia and Canada — but the government after alone accuse accompanying to those finds.

Prosecutors apparent Chung's activities while investigating addition doubtable Chinese spy active and alive in Southern California.

That man, Chi Mak, was bedevilled in 2007 of cabal to consign U.S. aegis technology to China and bedevilled to 24 years in prison.

 

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