Posted on 03/29/2017 1:25:17 PM PDT by billorites
A State Department employee pleaded not guilty in court on Wednesday after being charged in an FBI investigation, the Department of Justice announced.
Candace Claiborne, who worked in the Caucasus Affairs office of the State Department, is being charged for two felony offenses.
Claiborne is being charged with “obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI, both felony offenses, for allegedly concealing numerous contacts that she had over a period of years with foreign intelligence agents,” a Department of Justice release said.
Claiborne, who has a Top Secret security clearance, failed to disclose her foreign contacts abroad despite being required to do so.
ADVERTISEMENT “Claiborne also is required to report any contacts with persons suspected of affiliation with a foreign intelligence agency,” the press release said.
“This case demonstrates that U.S. government employees will be held accountable for failing to honor the trust placed in them when they take on such sensitive assignments,” it added.
Claiborne is accused of repeatedly contacting two Chinese intelligence agents, who “provided tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits to Claiborne and her family over five years.”
The press release said the agents provided Claiborne with gifts, including “cash wired to Claiborne’s USAA account, an Apple iPhone and laptop computer, Chinese New Year’s gifts, meals, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment, and a monthly stipend.”
Claiborne also wrote in her journal that she could “Generate 20k in 1 year” if she continued working with one of the agents, an affidavit says.
Claiborne was arrested Tuesday and appeared in a D.C.-based District Court on Wednesday afternoon.
Claiborne has worked with the State Department in various posts since 1999, “including embassies and consulates in Baghdad, Iraq, Khartoum, Sudan, and Beijing and Shanghai, China.”
The FBI’s investigation of Claiborne included surveillance done under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Reuters said in a tweet, citing a federal prosecutor.
Are you sure?! How can an Amish person be working for the government in DC?
Of course not. That’s why they only charged her with lying to FBI. They don’t have to get into the primary crimes at the trial that way.
I have to imagine that law-savvy spies, when calculating the potential costs if caught and how they conduct their operations, consider that they’ll be free from prosecution for deeds that would require revealing sources and methods in open court. This really weakens the deterrent for certain types of espionage.
If she had simply refused to say anything to the FBI, perhaps she would have gotten off scot free, though her diplomatic career would have been kaput. She did have her Chinese fashion design training to fall back on.
I see you decline to defend your ridiculous, ignorant, statement.
To which of my rediclous, idiotic statements do you refer?
Have the co-conspirators mentioned also been arrested and charged?
If not why not? If yes who are they?
Unknown
Let’s just say she is a member of a group that might go to “church” to hear the (un)Reverend Wright.
Be well.
Throw the book at her and let her plea out for a slighter lesser charge in return for naming names.
You can bet she's not the only one in the thousand or more State Department employees who was on the take....or worse.
Leni
LA Times says she supplied the Chinese with information about a dissident living at a US embassy but she claims she gave them only unclassified information. Not sure if she means information that was never classified or information that had been declassified.
Trying to help “a younger relative” get into a fashion school in China.
This relative did something while in China [or was accused of doing something in order to set her up] and the Chinese agents did her a favor to “help the relative flee China.”
I suspect the dissident she gave the Chinese information on was Chen Guangcheng ... if so that was quite the strange case.
If it’s this guy he was pretty much screwed over because of all-important Iran and North Korea nuclear negotiations- they left the poor guy at a Chinese hospital after leading him to believe he would have 24 hr protection :
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/world/asia/chen-guangcheng-leaves-us-embassy-in-beijing-china.html
No, she’s not.
She’s since plead guilty in April 2019...
question is, why was a person attached to “Caucasus Affairs” in Shanghai and why were the Chinese interested...
Ukraine?
And why was there so much fake news posted about her including a misleading photo?
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia
And of course the region borders on Iran
She looks like she could be Obama’s daughter... funny thing is - even now- when you google her some droopy white woman pops up, I believe that’s just the official who read the charges. You have to wade through all the fake news to get to the real pic. Google has never gotten around to fixing that, I wonder why?
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