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A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer pleaded guilty today to conspiring to communicate, deliver and transmit national defense information to the People’s Republic of China. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger for the Eastern District of Virginia, Assistant Director for Counterintelligence John Brown of the FBI and Assistant Director in Charge Nancy McNamara of the FBI’s Washington Field Office made the announcement after Senior U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III accepted the plea.

CIA China Ops Wiped Out By 'Botched; Spy Contact System: Investigation results show indicted spy Jerry Chun Shing Lee was not the CIA's only security breach. Sloppy coding led to a back door hole in the messaging system, used by the Chinese to 'wipe out' our entire spy network. Suddenly, in late 2010, undercover agents in China were being rounded up and hauled off for interrogation. Under Barack Obama's administration, the Central Intelligence Agency suffered what intelligence officers are calling one of the worst disasters in decades. Suddenly, in late 2010, undercover agents in China were being rounded up and...

It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle. How were the Chinese able to roll up the network? Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the...

WASHINGTON — A former C.I.A. officer suspected of helping China unravel the agency’s spy network in that country was indicted on Tuesday on a charge of conspiring to commit espionage. The officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, was arrested by F.B.I. agents in January after federal prosecutors accused him of illegally possessing classified information. But the new charge reflected a willingness of prosecutors to disclose sensitive details they might have been reluctant to acknowledge publicly. According to prosecutors, two Chinese intelligence officers approached Mr. Lee in April 2010 and offered to pay him for information. The intelligence officers “provided Lee...

A former CIA officer was indicted Tuesday on charges that he planned to give confidential U.S. government documents to the Chinese government, according to U.S. Department of Justice. Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, of Hong Kong, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. He is charged with one count of conspiracy to cater or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government and two counts of unlawfully retaining documents related to the national defense. Mr. Lee, who is naturalized U.S. citizen, was found to be in possession of two notebooks containing the true...

A former C.I.A. officer suspected of helping China identify the agency’s informants in that country has been arrested, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. Many of the informants were killed in a systematic dismantling of the C.I.A.’s spy network in China starting in 2010 that was one of the American government’s worst intelligence failures in recent years, several former intelligence officials have said. The arrest of the former officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, capped an intense F.B.I. investigation that began around 2012 after the C.I.A. began losing its informants in China.... Mr. Lee, who left the C.I.A. in 2007...

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, also known as Zhen Cheng, was arrested after arriving at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. A naturalized U.S. citizen, he began working for the CIA as a case officer in 1994 and maintained a top-secret clearance, according to a Justice Department announcement. The department alleges that Mr. Lee and his family left Hong Kong to return to the U.S. While traveling back to the United States, Mr. Lee’s family stayed in hotels in Hawaii and Virginia, where FBI agents conducted court-authorized searches of Lee’s room and luggage, the Justice Department said.