It was not until more than 12 years later, in fact--in April of this
year--that the source of the leak was finally arrested.
According to the FBI, she is Katrina Leung, a prominent
Chinese-American bookstore owner, business consultant, and Republican
fundraiser.
The FBI now says that Leung, in addition to her many other
accomplishments, was a top-drawer Chinese spy.
From US News, 11/10/03:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031110/usnews/10spy.htm
Cover Story 11/10/03
China Doll
Katrina Leung was a temptress, beguiled by the world of intrigue, but
was she an agent of influence for Beijing, as prosecutors now charge?
By Chitra Ragavan
When I. C. Smith and Bill Cleveland stepped off the plane in Beijing
on Nov. 30, 1990, nothing prepared them for the reception they were
about to receive.
The two FBI agents had been dispatched to assess security at the
American Embassy, a low-profile assignment.
But from the moment they arrived, Smith and Cleveland were placed
under heavy surveillance by the Ministry of State Security, China's
KGB.
"They were covering me," Smith recalls, "like a blanket."
It was as if the MSS knew who the agents were.
Smith finally understood why five months later, when Cleveland called
him from San Francisco. "I.C.," he said, "they knew we were coming,
even before we left."
Cleveland explained:
A Chinese-American woman working as an intelligence asset for an FBI
agent in Los Angeles had tipped off the MSS about their trip.
Smith was dumbfounded.
But he put the matter aside, assuming the FBI would can the woman for
the security breach:
"I assumed she would be closed as a source."
She wasn't.
It was not until more than 12 years later, in fact--in April of this
year--that the source of the leak was finally arrested.
According to the FBI, she is Katrina Leung, a prominent
Chinese-American bookstore owner, business consultant, and Republican
fundraiser.
The FBI now says that Leung, in addition to her many other
accomplishments, was a top-drawer Chinese spy.
A key source of the secrets Leung allegedly purveyed to her Chinese
handlers, prosecutors allege, was the Los Angeles FBI agent who
recruited Leung in 1982 and handled her until he retired in November
2000.
That would be James Smith, known to friends and colleagues as "J.J."
The FBI has arrested Smith, 59, a supervisory special agent on a
Chinese counterespionage squad in L.A., saying he had an intimate and
unauthorized relationship with Leung, 49, for more than 18 years.
For at least 12 of those years, according to court papers, Leung stole
classified intelligence information from Smith and passed it on to her
handlers in China.
Complicating matters further, the FBI alleges that Leung also
conducted at least a seven-year affair with Cleveland.
Now 60, Cleveland was a supervisory special agent who worked out of
the bureau's San Francisco field office, on another Chinese
counterespionage squad.
Cleveland has not been charged and is cooperating with the Leung
investigation.
After he retired in 1993, Cleveland became head of security at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
He resigned that job in April after the FBI notified the lab that
Cleveland was under investigation and the lab revoked his clearances.
Lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton says a "cursory" investigation shows
"no cause for concern" that Cleveland compromised nuclear secrets.
The FBI has made similar assurances to the lab.
As intelligence debacles go, they don't get much messier than this.
But even with its many salacious angles, the Leung case captured scant
public attention last spring as the war with Iraq loomed closer.
U.S. News has conducted an extensive review of the case since then,
examining hundreds of pages of court records and interviewing more
than a dozen current and former counterintelligence experts.
The review reveals a systemic failure of security procedures and a
stunningly free-and-easy pattern of access by Leung to some of the
nation's most highly secret intelligence operations.
The security breaches were also at least partly the result, sources
say, of the FBI's failure to commit anywhere near the same kinds of
resources to its China counterintelligence program as it did to its
Soviet, and then Russian, counterpart.
FBI managers compounded those problems, government officials say, by
failing to ensure that the bureau stopped using Leung as an asset in
April 1991, after it learned that she had tipped Chinese agents to the
Beijing visit by the two FBI agents.
________________________________________________________
For the rest of the story go to:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031110/usnews/10spy.htm
Right-wingers don't like this story so they continue to ignore it.
Typical.
Harry
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