US sentenced Pantagon's Spy only 3 years

[HongKanSeng]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100122/wl_asia_afp/uschinaspysentence_20100122185454

Ex-Pentagon official sentenced to 3 years in China spy case

Fri Jan 22, 1:46 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States Friday sentenced a former Pentagon official who had a "top secret" security clearance to three years in prison on charges of spying for China, the Justice Department said.

The 36-month sentence for retired air force lieutenant colonel James Wilbur Fondren will be followed by two years of supervised release, the department said.

According to prosecutors, Fondren, 62, provided "certain classified Defence Department documents and other information" to a naturalized US citizen from Taiwan, Tai Shen Kuo, from around November 2004 to February 2008.

"Fondren was aware that Kuo had maintained a close relationship with an official of the People's Republic of China (PRC)," officials said.

Upon investigation, Fondren was found to have "provided classified information through Kuo, under the guise of consulting services."

He was introduced by Kuo to the official during a trip the two took to the PRC in March 1999, the department said.

Fondren, 62, who had been a deputy director of the US Pacific Command's Washington Liaison Office, was arrested in mid-May and charged with conspiracy to pass classified information to an agent of China.

In September, Fondren was convicted of unlawful communication of classified information by a government employee and two counts of making false statements.

"Fondren and the PRC official exchanged more than 40 email messages between March 1999 and November 2000," officials said.

When Federal Bureau of Investigations agents interviewed Fondren, according to the original indictment, the retired colonel "falsely represented" that the opinion papers he provided as part of the consulting firm were based on media report and from his experience.

Fondren also falsely said he had never taken any classified information home and denied that he had given Kuo a draft copy of an unclassified document on military strategy, officials said.

The US government accuses China of mounting an aggressive operation to prise open its secrets, and President Barack Obama is weighing an overhaul of cyber-security after several reports of computer hacking originating in China.

Fondren continued meeting with Kuo even after becoming a civilian employee of the Pacific Command in August 2001, where he held a "top secret" clearance with a classified computer in his cubicle.

The FBI said that no matter where Fondren thought the information was ending up after he handed it to Kao, it was clear that he broke US law by "knowingly" handing secrets to "an agent or representative of a foreign government."

The original 17-page affidavit against him said that in just over three years, Fondren included classified information in eight analytical reports that he sold to Kuo for between 350 and 800 dollars apiece.

The documents included a State Department cable, details about a Chinese military official's US visit, information about a joint Sino-US naval exercise, and information on US-China military meetings.

Kuo was arrested in February 2008 along with another Pentagon contact, Gregg William Bergersen, and a Chinese accomplice in New Orleans, Yu Xin Kang. When he was arrested, Kuo was staying in Fondren's Virginia home.

In May 2008, Kuo pled guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to more than 15 years in jail. Bergersen and Kang are also serving prison time.

 

[HongKanSeng]

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2010/01/24/2003464290

Former Pentagon official sentenced in China case
SECOND OFFICIAL: Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel James Fondren, 62, received a three year sentence, the second Pentagon official to be convicted in the spy case

AP, ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Sunday, Jan 24, 2010, Page 3

“I should not have helped my friend [Kuo] in his business.”

— James Fondren, former Pentagon official

A former Pentagon official was sentenced on Friday to three years in prison for espionage after being convicted of giving classified information to a Chinese spy masquerading as an agent for Taiwan.

The sentence imposed on James Fondren, 62, of Annandale, Virginia, was significantly less than the six-and-a-half years sought by prosecutors.

US District Judge Claude Hilton said a lighter sentence was warranted because the information disclosed by Fondren caused little or no harm to US national security.

A jury last year convicted Fondren, who retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in 1996 and later worked at the Pentagon as a civilian, on three of eight counts, including an espionage count.

Over a period of years, Fondren prepared several dozen “opinion papers” for a friend, Louisiana businessman Kuo Tai-shen (郭台生), who paid Fondren anywhere from US$300 to US$1,500 per paper.

Kuo, a naturalized US citizen from Taiwan, turned out to be a spy for China. He pleaded guilty to espionage and was sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison. He was the key prosecution witness at Fondren’s trial.

Fondren is the second Pentagon official to be convicted in the Kuo case. Former Defense Department employee Gregg Bergersen pleaded guilty to providing secrets to Kuo and was sentenced to nearly five years in prison.

Prosecutors said Fondren thought that Kuo was aligned with Taiwan. However, Fondren had reason to suspect that Kuo was working for Beijing — Fondren and Kuo once took a joint trip to China and met Kuo’s handler, a government official named Lin Hong.

Fondren, for his part, testified that he never intended to disclose classified information, and he thought everything in his opinion papers came from publicly available information. He is appealing his conviction.

In a brief statement to the judge before he was sentenced, Fondren said: “I should not have helped my friend [Kuo] in his business.”

The sole espionage count on which Fondren was convicted centered on a classified document from November 2007 on talks between the US military and China’s People’s Liberation Army.

Prosecutor Neil Hammerstrom said that Fondren’s claims that he was unaware of Kuo’s links to foreign governments are belied by the evidence in the case, including recorded conversations in which Fondren tells Kuo to tell his handlers the information they are seeking from him is too difficult to obtain.

Hammerstrom told the judge: “He knowingly committed espionage. He passed information to a spy for the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”
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