[ISN] Spy Cases Raise Concern on China's Intentions

[InfoSec News]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10spy.html

By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
July 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - Gregg W. Bergersen was a Navy veteran who liked to gamble 
on occasion but spent far more time worrying about how to earn some 
serious money after he left his career as an analyst at the Defense 
Department.

At 51 and supporting a wife and a child in the Virginia suburbs, he 
wondered how he could get himself cast in that distinctly Washington 
role many Pentagon types dream of: a rewarding post-retirement perch at 
one of the hundreds of military-related companies that surround the 
capital and flourish off lucrative government contracts and contacts.

Mr. Bergersen believed he had found what he was seeking when he was 
introduced to Tai Shen Kuo, a native of Taiwan, who had lived in New 
Orleans for more than 30 years. Mr. Kuo, an entrepreneur who imported 
furniture from China, was active enough in civic affairs to have been 
named to a state advisory board on international trade. He told Mr. 
Bergersen that he was developing a defense consulting company.

Now, Mr. Bergersen and Mr. Kuo, along with a third accomplice, are 
awaiting sentencing in a federal court for their involvement in one of 
many cases brought in the last year involving the illegal transfer of 
information to China.

The cases have intensified the evaluation in intelligence and law 
enforcement circles about the breadth of the threat from Beijing. Many 
have been similar to the one involving Mr. Bergersen, in that 
prosecutors describe them as carefully planned intelligence operations 
run by the Chinese government intended to steal national security 
secrets. Other cases, however, are less clear in their nature; some seem 
to be closer to violations of commercial export laws, with the 
transferred information intended to provide Chinese companies a 
technological benefit.

According to court papers and interviews, Mr. Kuo and his Chinese 
handlers ran what intelligence professionals call a "false flag" 
operation on Mr. Bergersen, a weapons systems analyst, making him 
believe that the information he was providing was going to Taiwan, an 
American ally, not Beijing.

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