Ex-CIA agent’s arrest follows US spying debacle in China

WASHINGTON — The third arrest in one year of a US official suspected of helping Chinese spies has bared the tense battle between the two superpowers' intelligence agencies.

The arrest late Monday by US authorities of former Central Intelligence Agency agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee was reportedly linked to Beijing's brutal dismantling five years ago of the CIA's network of undercover operatives and informants inside China.

That followed the June 2017 arrest of a former State Department security officer, reportedly also an ex-CIA official, Kevin Mallory, on allegations that he handed over US secrets to Chinese agents for $25,000.

Three months before that, a China-based US diplomat, Candace Claiborne, was charged for taking tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts from Chinese intelligence.

According to The New York Times, US counter-intelligence has been working overtime since at least 2012 to uncover a possible proBeijing mole within the ranks of America's espionage services.

The Times reported last year that starting in 2010, to the end of 2012, the Chinese uncovered and killed "at least a dozen" sources the CIA had inside China and imprisoned six or more others. One of them was shot in front of his colleagues to send a message, the Times reported.

That debacle severely damaged the US government's ability to collect secret information on its Asian rival.