*WASHINGTON: *An ex-CIA officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison Fridayfor spying for China in a case called part of an “alarming trend” in the USintelligence community.
Kevin Mallory, 62, was convicted under the Espionage Act for sellingclassified US “defense information” to a Chinese intelligence agent for$25,000 during trips to Shanghai in March and April 2017.
“Your object is to gain information, and my object is to be paid,” he toldthe Chinese agent in a May 5, 2017 message.
The fluent Mandarin speaker had served in the US army, then as a specialagent for the security service of the State Department, before becoming acovert case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mallory is one of several US officials with high-level security clearancesarrested and charged over unsanctioned dealings with Chinese intelligence.
In March, former Defense Intelligence Agency official Ron Hansen wassentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges ofattempting to sell classified information to the Chinese.
In April, a former diplomat, Candace MarieClaiborne, pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about money shereceived from Chinese intelligence agents in exchange for US documents.
And in the most significant case, on May 1, former CIA officer Jerry ChunShing Lee pleaded guilty to spying for China.
Lee, 54, faces a possible life sentence. Arrested in January 2018, he wassuspected of having provided Beijing the information it needed to bringdown a CIA network of informants in China between 2010 and 2012.
“This case is one in an alarming trend of former US intelligence officersbeing targeted by China and betraying their country and colleagues,”Assistant Attorney General John Demers said of the Mallory case.
“This sentence, together with the recent guilty pleas of Ron Hansen in Utahand Jerry Lee in Virginia, deliver the stern message that our formerintelligence officers have no business partnering with the Chinese, or anyother adversarial foreign intelligence service.” – APP/AFP