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U.S. Space Secrets Sold to China

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 February 2008, 00:00 CST

A retired Boeing Co. engineer who was allegedly part of a 25- year scheme to steal classified secrets about the U.S. space shuttle program and send them to China was arrested Monday at his Southern California home.

The engineer, Dongfan "Greg" Chung, 72, worked for Rockwell International before it was taken over by Boeing in 1996 and worked as a Boeing contractor as recently as 2006. He was indicted on 15 counts of economic espionage, conspiracy, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice and faces more than 100 years in prison if convicted of the charges.

A native of China but a naturalized U.S. citizen, Chung held a top-secret security clearance. His case was one of two espionage cases involving China made public by the government Monday.

In the second case, a Defense Department analyst was accused of helping to deliver military secrets to the Chinese government, the Justice Department said.

Also, two immigrants from China and Taiwan accused of working with the defense analyst were arrested after an FBI raid Monday on a New Orleans home where one of them lived.

Prosecutors said weapons systems policy analyst Gregg W. Bergersen, 51, of Alexandria, sold classified defense information to a New Orleans furniture salesman. In return, the salesman, a Taiwan native identified as Tai Kuo, 58, a naturalized U.S. citizen, forwarded the information to the Chinese government.

The data outlined every planned U.S. sale of weapons or other military technology to Taiwan for the next five years, prosecutors said.

It's not clear how much money Bergersen received for the classified information, or if he was even aware it was intended for the Chinese government.

A third alleged conspirator in the case, Chinese national Yu Xin Kang, 33, served as the go-between for Kuo and the People's Republic of China, prosecutors say.

Kuo and Bergersen, who worked at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in Arlington, made an initial appearance before Magistrate Judge John Anderson at the federal courthouse there.

Bergersen was charged with conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

In the Chung indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that he began taking orders from Beijing as early as 1979, sending classified information back to China about aerospace programs and the space shuttle, the C-17 military transport aircraft and the Delta IV rocket. At times, he sent the information through the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.

Chung retired from Boeing in 2002 but worked as a contractor until 2006. At that point, the Justice Department alleged, he still had documents containing protected aerospace industry trade secrets in his home in Orange, Calif.

His investigation was related to that of another engineer, Chi Mak, who worked for a U.S. defense contractor and who was convicted last year of providing sensitive technical information to China.

Chung joined Rockwell in 1973 and worked at its Downey, Calif., facility until Rockwell was acquired by Boeing, when he then moved to Huntington Beach. There, he worked as a stress analyst on the forward fuselage section of the space shuttle.

According to the indictment, in 1979 he began receiving letters from officials in the Chinese aerospace community and responded to their detailed requests for information.

One 1979 letter written from a professor Chen Lung Ku said to Chung: "Your spirit is an encouragement and driving force to us. We'd like to join our hands together with the overseas compatriots in the endeavor for the construction of our great socialist motherland."

Chung appeared in federal court in Santa Ana, Calif., on Monday afternoon, where bond was set at $250,000. A spokesman for the prosecutor's office there said Chung likely would post bail and be released. He will be required to enter a plea next week.

Source: Virginian - Pilot

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