Posted on 04/26/2007 6:51:18 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Testimony in the case of a Chinese-born engineer accused of stealing U.S. defense secrets revolved Thursday around whether he needed government approval to export a document on a quiet submarine propulsion system to China.
Authorities believe Chi Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen, stole thousands of pages of defense documents from his defense contractor employer, Power Paragon, and gave them to his brother, who passed them along to Chinese authorities over a number of years.
He was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said they found three encrypted CDs in their luggage containing documents on the propulsion system, which would make U.S. submarines virtually undetectable underwater.
Mak, 66, has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to export defense material to China, failure to register as a foreign agent, attempted and actual export of defense articles and making false statements. His wife, brother and other relatives also have been indicted.
On Thursday, the first full day of the defense case, two employees from Power Paragon's parent company, L-3 Communications, testified that they were asked to review the propulsion document after Mak's arrest. They said they were asked to determine whether it needed government approval to be taken out of the country.
Nancy Hindman, L-3's internal special compliance official, said she reviewed the document - which Mak himself wrote and presented at a 2004 engineering conference - and determined that he didn't need a government license to export it.
She testified that initially there was some disagreement between L-3 and Power Paragon about whether the document contained sensitive information, but the companies eventually agreed it didn't.
"Would you personally have a problem delivering this to the People's Republic of China?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian asked Hindman on cross-examination.
"No," she replied.
A second defense witness, L-3 engineer Kenneth Shelly, testified that he also felt the document didn't contain any threats to American security. He said Mak's paper didn't contain anything that couldn't be found in graduate-level engineering textbooks.
"There's no specifications, there's no design parameters.... He talks about concepts," Shelly said. "There just wasn't enough there."
Outside the jury's presence, Missakian told U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney that the government disagreed with L-3's analysis and found that the document was export-controlled. He asked the judge to exclude Hindman and Shelly's testimony, but Carney declined.
Missakian questioned Hindman on her motivation for finding the documents harmless. He suggested that she was acting in L-3's interest because the company didn't want a multimillion-dollar fine for allowing the information to become public.
He also focused on the disagreement between L-3 and Power Paragon about the sensitivity of the information and said Hindman had ordered Power Paragon officials to go along with her views.
Investigators have said that during a search of Mak's home they found two torn-up notes from Chinese officials asking him to get documents on a number of sensitive U.S. naval projects involving torpedoes, electromagnetic artillery, missile-detection and nuclear defense.
They also seized documents on the DDX Destroyer, a next-generation, multimission warship as quiet as a submarine; electromagnetic launch systems for aircraft carriers; high-powered electromagnetic guns; and submarine-mounted kinetic energy projectiles, according to court papers. The government also suspects Mak has been feeding information about Aegis-class warships to China since the 1980s.
Mak could testify as early as Monday in his own defense, his attorney, Ronald Kaye, said.
The article is curiously silent as to the markings of the documents.
I bet they all said ITAR Restricted, FOUO, Proprietary, Competition Sensitive.
If the info is in graduate level textbooks, China can order them through amazon without relying on a mole and a mule.
Looks like Mr. Mak had two two co-conspiritors within the company, named Nancy Hindman and Kenneth Shelly. Fry ‘em all!
This NEVER should have been allowed, and I consider it the main reason he ought to have been impeached and sentenced to death for willful treason.
now now,, China wouldn’t want to do that,, would they? a reverse sting , naahhhhh..
Chi Mak was here for years , but as you offer, an interesting point, we do need to remember Clinton also signed off waivers on some pretty valuable missile guidance and control stuff too..
Yup, Ron Brown, and that woman found dead in a locked office, forget her name.
Then Hazel O’leary declassifying everything that wasn’t CNWDI (and some things that were).
But in this case I think the guy was smuggling out ITAR stuff. It would make little sense to be smuggling anything else (except SCI material). The lawyers are trying to make a case that it wasn’t that bad, just quiet sub designs, and DDX designs, and rail launch designs, the normal stuff an agrarian peaceful socialist country needs to grow rice and pork.
Indeed, and for the gubermint to counter the testimony, they must tell why they feel the information is sensitive. How informative for the chicoms.
The problem with Commerce vetting technology transfer is that they don’t always even think of the obvious uses that someone in DoD or State would immediately consider. ... for example, lightweight miniature airplane parts, or “5 degree of freedom” milling machines.
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