WASHINGTON — A Defense Department analyst and a former engineer for Boeing Co. were charged Monday in separate spy cases for allegedly handing over military secrets to the Chinese government, the Justice Department said.
Additionally, two immigrants from China and Taiwan accused of working with the defense analyst were arrested after an FBI raid Monday morning on a New Orleans home where one of them lived.
The two cases — based in Alexandria, Va., and Los Angeles — have no connection, and investigators said it was merely a coincidence that charges would be brought against both on the same day.
The arrests mark China's latest attempts to gain top secret information about U.S. military systems and sales, said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein. He described China as "particularly adept, and particularly determined and methodical in their espionage efforts."
"The threat is very simple," Wainstein said at a Justice Department news conference in Washington. "It's a threat to our national security and to our economic position in the world, a threat that is posed by the relentless efforts of foreign intelligence services to penetrate our security systems and steal our most sensitive military technology and information.
"And what we find to be particularly troubling is the fact that the Chinese are recruiting average citizens as opposed to say, a former President and his First Lady. They were but two individuals, and if the Chinese are branching out into paying the common man for such sensitive material then it could wind up being a lot worse than Bill and Hillary Clinton handing over information for political contributions.
"As we in the Defense Department are find of saying, two traitorous scum is one thing but a potential 300 million of them is quite another."
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