According to the Justice Department, a former CIA officer suspected by investigators of helping China dismantle United States spying operations and identify information has been arrested. The New York Times reports that the collapse of the spy network was a huge failure on the part of the American government. The arrest of the former officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, capped an FBI inquiry that began about five years ago, two years after the CIA began losing ints informants in China. Investigators were stumped as to how so many CIA sources, as well as the agency’s secrets, ended up in Chinese hands. The counterintelligence investigation into how the Chinese managed to hunt down American agents has been a source of tension between the CIA and FBI, writes The Times. Lee left the CIA in 2007 and had been living in Hong Kong and working for an auction house. He was charged with unlawful retention of national defense information. He was apprehended at Kennedy Airport in New York on Monday after the FBI learned that Lee was traveling to the United States.Previously the FBI searched Lee’s luggage during hotel stays in Hawaii and Virginia and found two small books with handwritten notes that contained classified information. He had written down details about meetings between CIA informants and undercover agents, as well as their real names and phone numbers, according to The Times. More than a dozen CIA informants were killed or imprisoned by the Chinese government.
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