WASHINGTON – A former CIA staffer currently in US custody for allegedlykeeping highly classified data reportedly stayed off the radar as a HongKong resident, leaving essentially no digital footprint.
The fact that he almost never appeared online surfaced after his planetouched down at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on Monday night,international media reported.
The man known as Zhen Cheng Li has little contact with anyone in the cityand, separately, was a reluctant Internet user, if he went online at all.
Following a 2012 FBI inquiry, he was eventually detained and chargedwith unlawful retention of national defense information, according to theUS Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
There are suspicions that Lee might have played a key role in Beijing’sdisruption of the American spy network in China, NBC news reported citingsources close to the case.
“Apparently, he operated here in Hong Kong very discreetly and not manypeople knew him,” said former police superintendent Clement Lai Ka-chi, whohad a brief encounter with Jerry Chun Shing Lee in the past.
“I am not surprised,” was his comment on suspicions that Lee might haveleaked sensitive information to Beijing, South China Morning Postlink>reported.
The New York Times wrote that China was considered the US intelligence’sbiggest vulnerability, with Beijing having liquidated – killed orimprisoned — as many as 18 to 20 operatives over the past seven years.
Lee, a naturalized American citizen currently living in Hong Kong, becameengaged in spy work with the CIA in 1994. He was then “trained in methodsof covert communications, surveillance detection, recruitment of assets,operational security” and “documenting, handling and securing classifiedmaterial.” _Sputnik