Ex-CIA agent jailed for 19 years for spying for China

WASHINGTON: The former CIA officer who may have devastated US intelligence collection in China by giving up its network of informants to Beijing agents was sentenced on Friday to 19 years in prison.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a naturalized US citizen who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1997 to 2004, was arrested in January 2018 for illegally possessing classified US defense information, which prosecutors alleged he turned over to Chinese intelligence agents.

His indictment said he moved to Hong Kong in 2010 and begun accepting payments from Chinese agents who asked him for sensitive information on the CIA.

But in May, Lee, 55, pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government, while insisting the government never proved he gave the Chinese any information or accepted $840,000 from the Chinese, as alleged.

“Lee betrayed his own country for greed and put his former colleagues at risk,” said Timothy Slater, assistant director in the FBI´s Washington field office.

“The seriousness of his betrayal and crime is demonstrated by today´s sentencing.”

The case has driven much speculation about what really lies beneath, because it took the government six years from first investigating Lee to arresting him.