Former US intelligence agent arrested on suspicion of spying for Chinese

A FORMER officer with a US intelligence agency was arrested over the weekend for allegedly trying to spy on America for China, the justice department said yesterday.

The FBI took Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, into custody on Saturday while he was on his way to the Seattle-tacoma International Airport to get a connecting flight to China.

The department said he has been accused of trying to transmit national defence information to China and receiving “hundreds of thousands of dollars” while acting illegally as an agent for the Chinese government. Hua Chunying, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, speaking in Beijing, said she did not have information on the case.

“But certainly of late there have been some issues between China and the US. We think China and the US are two major countries and both sides should do more things that strengthen cooperation and mutual trust,” she told reporters.

Prosecutors said that Mr Hansen speaks fluent Mandarin-chinese and Russian. He served as a case officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency while on active military duty from 20002006, and later continued that line of work as a civilian employee and a contractor. He also held a top-secret security clearance for years.

The government said that between 2013 and 2017, he travelled between the two countries attending conferences and provided China’s intelligence service with information he had learnt while being paid via wire transfers, cash and credit cards.