Kevin Patrick Mallory, a 60-year-old U.S citizen working as a self-employed consultant at GlobalEx LLC , appeared in court on Thursday this week and was charged with sending top secret documents to one of his agent who worked for the Chinese intelligence service. The U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security stated that the crimes he committed were severe and that his arrest should send a message to anyone who violates the public trust and compromises the security of the country by disclosing highly classified information. The man, fluent in Mandarin, held many positions in defense contractors and various government agencies.
How the accused aided China to spy on the US
Kevin Patrick Mallory had access to classified information and was entrusted with it. He shared and conspired to continue sharing the top secret information he had with an individual working for the Chinese Government. He also lied to investigators about his illegal spying acts.
Since 2014, Intelligence officers from China masqueraded as representatives from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences which is a Chinese think tank. During an interrogation by the FBI on May 24th this year, Kelvin confessed that he traveled to Shanghai in the months of March and April this year to meet with Chinese spy agents. The FBI retrieved information from one of the devices he used to communicate with the Chinese officials where he told one of the agents that he has blacked out security classification markings on the documents.
A total of eight records were found to have been sent using the device. One of the documents was top secret while two were classified as secret.
Chinese espionage against the United States
The Chinese mainly spy on the U.S so that they can acquire military technology, trade secret and other classified information for commercial and military use.
Most of the information is collected through cyber spying. The Chinese have also used contractors working for the U.S government to obtain classified information. In January 2010, intellectual property was stolen from Google though cyber attacks of Gmail accounts by Chinese spies. The attacks targeted 34 companies such as Yahoo, Adobe, and Dow Chemicals.
There are several Americans who have been convicted of spying for China, they include, Gregg Bergersen, a former U.S defense systems analyst. In 2008, Gregg sold a five-year U.S weapon and military technology sales plan between the U.S government and the Taiwanese government. He sold the information to the Chinese government. Another spy that was arrested and convicted was Glenn Duffie Shriver; he was detained in June 2010 in Detroit for conspiring to collect national defense information for the Chinese government. He was sentenced to four years in January 21st, 2011.
