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By David E. Hubler
Contributor, In Military
A former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) case officer was arrested Saturday on charges of attempted espionage, the Department of Justiceannounced.
Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, was arrested as he prepared to board a flight from Seattle to China, according to a report in The New York Times.
Among the items found in his luggage were tens of thousands of dollars in cash, documents listing locations of U.S. Cyber Command posts and a passcode-protected thumb drive hidden behind a sock in the toe of a shoe, The Times said.
Charges Include Providing National Defense Information to a Foreign Government and Smuggling
Hansen, who lives in Syracuse, Utah, was charged with attempting to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government. Other charges include acting as an unregistered foreign agent for China, bulk cash smuggling, structuring monetary transactions and smuggling goods from the United States, the BBC reported.
If convicted of attempted espionage, Hansen faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
DoJ Assistant Attorney General: Alleged Actions Are ‘a Betrayal of Our Nation’s Security’
“His alleged actions are a betrayal of our nation’s security and the American people and are an affront to his former intelligence community colleagues,” John C. Demers, the DoJ assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement posted on the DoJ website on Monday.
The former DIA case officer was fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Russian. He has flown to China numerous times since 1981 and has allegedly received at least $800,000 in “funds originating from China” since May 2013.
Hansen began working for the DIA as a civilian intelligence case officer in 2006, after serving in the Army for more than 20 years. The Justice Department said Hanson was a DIA case officer for several years while on active duty. He possessed top-secret security clearances “for many years” for both his civilian and active-duty work, the DoJ added.
Hansen once kept an apartment and office in Beijing. He repeatedly offered to be a double agent for the United States against China, the DoJ said in a 15-count complaint against him.
When he allegedly started working for the Chinese, Hansen had no known financial means beyond a military pension of $1,900 a month, according to the Justice Department.
Hansen’s LinkedIn profile says he made more than 175 trips to China and that he has an “extensive network” of government, business and military contacts there, according to The New York Times.
The FBI began investigating his activities in 2014, when Hanson allegedly made repeated attempts to regain access to classified information after he stopped working for the U.S. government.
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