{"id":295037,"date":"2010-02-08T18:34:38","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T23:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a877893c970b"},"modified":"2010-02-08T18:32:25","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T23:32:25","slug":"former-engineer-sentenced-to-15-years-for-stealing-aerospace-secrets-for-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/295037","title":{"rendered":"Former engineer sentenced to 15 years for stealing aerospace secrets for China"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Chinese-born aerospace engineer who had access to sensitive material while working with a pair of major defense contractors in Southern California was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for acquiring secret space shuttle information<\/a> and other documents for China.<\/p>\n

\nU.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney in Santa Ana imposed a 188-month prison term on Dongfan \u201cGreg\u201d Chung, 73, a naturalized U.S. citizen who resides in Orange.<\/p>\n

\nAt Monday\u2019s sentencing, Carney declared that he could not \u201cput a price tag\u201d on national security and sought to send a signal to China to \u201cstop sending your spies here,\u201d according to the U.S. attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\nChung, who worked at Boeing\u2019s Huntington Beach plant, denied being a spy and said he was gathering documents for a book, not for espionage. His attorneys argued that much of the material was already available on the public record.<\/p>\n

\nAt his sentencing, Chung professed his love for the United States, even as prosecutors depicted him as a spy who would compromise U.S. national security.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\u201cGiving China advanced rocket technology is not in the United States\u2019 national interest,\u201d said Asst. U.S. Atty. Greg Staples. \u201cThere is a voracious appetite for U.S. technology in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nWhether loyalty to his homeland or financial gain was Chung\u2019s motive remained unclear.
\nThe case is one of a number of prosecutions that have shed light on alleged Chinese efforts to gain access to U.S. technology and research through espionage.<\/p>\n

\nChung was the first suspect tried with attempting to help a foreign nation under the terms of the 1996 Economic Espionage Act, passed to help prevent pilfering of sensitive economic information.<\/p>\n

\nWhen Chung was convicted last year<\/a>, Carney said the case revealed Chung\u2019s \u201csecret life\u201d as a \u201cspy\u201d for China.
\n The case against him arose from an investigation into another engineer, Chi Mak, who worked in the United States and obtained sensitive military information for China.<\/p>\n

Mak and several relatives were convicted of providing defense information to China, the U.S. attorney\u2019s office said. Carney sentenced Mak to more than 24 years in prison in 2008.<\/p>\n

Chung was convicted last year on charges of economic espionage and acting as an agent for more than three decades while employed by Rockwell International and Boeing Co.<\/p>\n

Federal authorities said Chung stole restricted technology and trade secrets, including data related to the space shuttle and the Delta IV rocket, designed to launch military payloads into orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case demonstrates our resolve to protect the secrets that help protect the United States, as well as the important technology advancements developed by scientists working for companies that provide crucial support to our national security programs,\u201d acting U.S. Atty. George S. Cardona said Monday in a statement.<\/p>\n

\nChung held a \u201csecret\u201d security clearance when he worked at Rockwell and Boeing on the space shuttle program, authorities said. He retired in 2002 but the next year returned to Boeing as a contractor, a position he held until September 2006, the U.S. attorney\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n

\n Between 1985 and 2003, Chung made multiple trips to China to deliver lectures on technology involving the space shuttle and other programs, the government said. During those trips, Chung met with Chinese government officials, including military agents, U.S. authorities said.<\/p>\n

— Patrick J. McDonnell
<\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Chinese-born aerospace engineer who had access to sensitive material while working with a pair of major defense contractors in Southern California was sentenced Monday to more than 15 years in prison for acquiring secret space shuttle information and other documents for China. U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney in Santa Ana imposed a 188-month […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}