A former CIA agent reportedly believed to be behind the unmasking of an espionage network in China, including more than 12 spies who were killed or imprisoned by the Chinese authorities, has been arrested in New York.
Hong Kong resident Jerry Chun Shing Lee was seized at JFK airport on Monday, six years after FBI agents discovered he was travelling with notebooks containing the identities of undercover US agents.
Lee, a naturalised US citizen also known as Zhen Cheng Li, made an initial appearance in a New York federal court on Tuesday charged with the unlawful retention of national defence information. He is due to appear at another court in Northern Virginia, where the CIA is located.
Lee is suspected of leaking the names of US agents to the Chinese authorities, in one of the deadliest intelligence setbacks for the CIA since the cold war. Between 2010 and 2012, the Chinese killed or imprisoned more than a dozen US sources in China, the New York Times reported last year.
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