A Pentagon official with "top secret" security clearance has been charged with conspiracy to pass classified information to an agent of China, the US Justice Department said Wednesday. A criminal complaint said that retired air force Lieutenant Colonel James Wilbur Fondren, a deputy director of the US Pacific Command's Washington Liaison Office, "unlawfully and knowingly conspired" to communicate secrets.
"The allegations in this case are troubling - providing classified information to a foreign agent of the People's Republic of China is a real and serious threat to our national security," said Dana Boente, acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. The complaint said that Fondren, 62, start providing business consulting advice to a Taiwan-born friend called Tai Shen Kuo around February 1998, about two years after he retired from the US Air Force.
Fondren continued to provide consulting services to Kuo even after becoming a civilian employee of the Pacific Command in August 2001, where he held a "top secret" security clearance with a classified computer in his cubicle. Unbeknownst to Fondren, Kuo was working under the direction of an unidentified Chinese government official, the affidavit said. Kuo had introduced Fondren to the official in about March 1999, it said. The official instructed Kuo to mislead Fondren into believing that he was providing information to Kuo for Taiwanese military officials, it said.
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