Orange County man convicted in first-ever economic espionage trial

A Chinese-born engineer living in Orange County was convicted this morning in the first-ever trial under the Economic Espionage Act.

Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 73, of Orange, a former aerospace engineer at the Boeing plant in Huntington Beach, was immediately taken into custody. He had been free on bail since his arrest last year.

Investigators found some 300,000 documents in a search of his home — some of them stashed in the crawl space — that included plans for the fueling system of a Delta 4 rocket and an antenna system for the space shuttle.

Chung was also convicted of one count of acting as a foreign agent, one count of conspiring to violate the Economic Espionage Act, six counts of violating the act and one count of making a false statement to the FBI. He was found not guilty of obstruction of justice.

Chung's case was heard in federal court by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.

[Updated at 12:01 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to Dongfan “Greg” Chung as a Chinese citizen.]

-- Tami Abdollah in Santa Ana

Comments

[madmarv]

Traitor! ...'tis worse than murder -
William Shakespeare

In English law high treason was punishable by being hanged, drawn and quartered (men) or burnt at the stake (women), the only crime which attracted those penalties (until the Treason Act 1814)

[Anonymous]

Was he a US Citizen? Whatever happened to charges of Treason and execution for the same in this country?

[Sally Sullivan]

This is an example of political correctness gone a muck. Why would our nation allow a foreigner, born in a nation hostile to America, the same government that killed Americans in Korea, Vietnam, and recently downed an airplane, to have access to such secret information? Of course he spied, just as my dog would eat food left on a plate within his reach. Its in his nature.

While many Americans of Chinese decent are loyal, it is too hard to separate them from traitors such as Mr. Chung. He and others like him should never have access.

[Joe]

This country use to EXICUTE scoundrels found guilty of treason! These days with all the bleeding heart liberals, there is no fear of getting caught breaking the law. "Oh, give him a break, he can be reformed." Our counrty is in real trouble and the threat is real, from terrorist sleeper cells to spys from other governments! Stop the bull and crack the whip! There is nothing stopping these traitors! our laws are weak and they usually plea to lesser charges. Use the death penality and the message will be loud and clear!

[common_sense]

To Sally Sullivan...I'm glad you've decided you should decide who comes to this country or not. How did your ancestors come to America? Are you Native American? Way to go.Good thing you're just an internet keyboard warrior hiding behind a monitor. People who think like you scare me. Stormfront is calling.

[Robert Sarno]

Just because he was born in a foreign country doesn't make him more prone to espionage (i.e. Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanson). They were born here and did serious harm to our security. I do agree that we need better vetting process before we allow people access to secret information that can imperil American security.

I think some American of Chinese descent have a misplaced pride in their country of origin and the information they have access to. Let's remember what happened to Wen Ho Lee and how he was literally destroyed over false pretenses.

[dB]

In the United States Constitution, Art. III, Section 3, "treason " applies ONLY in times of declared war. That is why this was a case of espionage, NOT treason.

[True_Blue]

Before posting any more racist ignorant librul-bashing FOX-style--google "walker spy ring". A "real" (read white native born) American family spied for the Russians for 20 years during the height of the Cold War, and they did it for money. None of the Walker family members were executed. Then there's Jonathan Pollard, who also sits in prison. The last time a spy was executed in this country, their names were Rosenbergs, and that was in 1953.

[M. Scott]

Execution is the only just punishment.

[Alex]

From a foreign born Chinese American Citizen: Sally Sullivan, a true racist.

Execute Mr. Chung if you must. Lumping Chinese Americans as one and the same because they may commit a crime is racist and has no place in America.

[thetruth]

Sally, you kind of mentality is what had me resign from my aerospace career... even with my top secret clearance, the cloud of suspicions and distrusts resulting from the Wen Ho Lee spy case fallout was too much... Why? Probably because of my asian ethnicity resulting in me being group together as Chinese eventhough I am not Chinese... Believe me, I had much to offer to the company and would've make many positive contributions but the suspicions and distrusts by people like you created missed opportunities after missed opportunities for me to participate in anything that is relevance to cutting edge technology... To this day, I will never look to this industry as putting food on the table for my family... Although I will pick-up guns just to defend this country!!!!

[A non-bigot]

Sigh. It depresses me that this even needs to be written. Sally, you stated "Why would our nation allow a foreigner, born in a nation hostile to America, the same government that killed Americans in Korea, Vietnam, and recently downed an airplane, to have access to such secret information?"

For the same reason that the US allowed Hans Bethe (born in Strassburg, Germany) to be the head of the Theoretical Division developing the atomic bombs at Los Alamos that allowed the US to win WWII (you will recall that Germany was one of our enemies in WWII). And why Enrico Fermi was retained as a consultant in the Manhattan Project despite only becoming a US citizen that same year (born in Italy, which was also an enemy of the US in WWII). Guess we should have never let them apply their brilliant intellects to solving that problem—after all, according to you, they would probably have behaved just like your dog and stolen state secrets.

And for the same reason that the US allowed Werner Von Braun (a German, born in Germany, who had designed the V-2 ballistic rocket for the Nazis; the V-2 was used as a terror weapon against Allied targets in Britain) to head up the US rocketry program after WWII. In fact, Von Braun not only helped establish the US ICBM program, he later headed up NASA and spearheaded the successful effort to develop the Saturn V launch vehicle, which was the rocket that allowed the US to put a man on the moon. OK, so after WWII, the US became great friends with Germany. Except that the US started employing Von Braun before WWII was over and Von Braun was actually born in a part of Germany that is now Poland, so you could technically think of him as at least East German, if not Polish (East Germany and Poland were BOTH members of the Soviet Bloc). Either way, he would have been “a foreigner, born in a nation hostile to America”.

And why on God’s green earth would we allow a Hungarian—born in a country that was in the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War—anywhere close to our atomic program? That would be crazy, unless he were Edward Teller, who pretty much invented the Hydrogen Bomb for the United States.

Sally, your statement seems to indicate a basic lack of knowledge regarding the incredible leaps in technology that the US has benefited from precisely because the US gave access to its secrets to people born in countries hostile to the US. The reason that we do this is because being born in such a country really isn’t a good indicator of anything. Sure, if you’re born there, you might be sympathetic to that country—as this guy was. But you could also be a victim of persecution there and hate it—which motivated many of the Manhattan Project scientists. Or you could love your home country and people but hate the government and work to change it (witness the outpouring of protest against the recent Iranian election). Or you could just like your new, American home better.

Sally, you also stated “While many Americans of Chinese decent [sic] are loyal, it is too hard to separate them from traitors such as Mr. Chung. He and others like him should never have access.”

Aside from the fundamental Constitutional violations that this entails, I’m also curious why it is “too hard to separate” the “loyal” Chinese Americans from the traitorous ones. Is this because “all Chinese look alike”? For that matter, it seems like it is too hard to separate the “loyal” Americans of European descent from the traitorous ones, like Aldrich Ames (spied for Russia), Robert Hanssen (FBI agent, spied for Russia), Jonathan Pollard, and so on…after all, they’re all whites, descended from European stock. I guess we should just make sure that all Americans of European descent don’t have access to our state secrets as well since it’s too hard to tell the good ones from the bad ones.

[Jorge]

The goal of a judicial system is to administer justice, not to take revenge. This nation used to lynch blacks, intern American citizens of Japanese descent and commit many crimes without any repercursions. Even the guilty government parties that massacred so many children and women in Waco got promoted. In other words, treason, brutality is equally shared by friend and foe, that is why justice should be administered with the end of reforming the individual, not tormenting him/her to death. Even maximum security jails should not exist in a democracy, regardless of the crime, regardless of the criminal. Obviously, the death penalty is another crime, because the system, by being handle by humans is prone to mistakes and no crime deserves that an innocent person should be killed for other's crimes and we have killed too many innocents to maintain the death penalty. If the system was 100% error free, maybe, but we are far from being error free.

[A Scanner Darkly]

How is it economic when it has to with fueling and attenna systems?. This is wrong, unless this is cyrptic and "fuel" is "money" and "antenna" is a blast transmitter. Apparently, this type of money laudering is common among opposing sides in the unceasing war concerning secret abductees tormented by clandestine subterranean lab facilities utilizing synthetic telepathy/neuro-impulse weapons technology right here in many U.S. cities. And the whole insanity is disguised in the parallel world of so-called "abortion" by the Mexico City Policy or 'Global Rag Rule". Nothing frightens the U.S. government more than the uncovering of "secret radiation captivities". Albeit the sad and pathetic reality is told in metaphoric demensions with tools such as anagrams, our minds become silly putty by the powers that be cowering away from the most militant ideological evil the world has ever known.

[kristin]

Just because someone is born in a foreign country doesn't mean they are disloyal Americans. For example, Werner von Braun and his team of scientists worked for the Nazis but became integral parts of the US Space program. Most traitors are actually white Americans: Aldrich Ames, Robert Hansen, Jonathan Pollard, etc. Then there's the American Taliban, John Lindh.

I wouldn't care if he was a foreign national, because I expect them to spy on us. But Chung is a U.S. citizen. He should be tried as a traitor for betraying his fellow citizens--Americans.

[steve rodriguez]

Give him the same sentence he would receive in China!!!!

[An honest Americal]

I have known Greg Chung and his family for 36 years and I am devastated by the disinformation the media is guilty of in reporting this trial and decision. First of all, this is not espionage...no secret information was ilnvovled. This is about propietatry information owned by Boeing that anyone taking engineering courses related to stress analysis would have knowledge of. Did Boeing sue Greg Chung for giving proprietary information to the Chinese government. Of course not. Greg committed no crime. He gave two lectures in China at his own expense. The FBI attacked him when he refused to give testimony against a fellow engineer. This case is the tail end of Geoge W's state department attack on Chinese Americans living and working in the U. S. The Chung family is a proud American family and have contributed to our county as immigrants for over 40 years. We should be honoring Chinese families and their contributions, not attacking them. I know this family, they love America and Greg Chung is entierly innocent.

[Jack Dempsey]

Boeing is promoting institutional racism again.

They went after a Chinese American engineer. They claimed that they found sensitive documents in his home. But, those document where actually 'public' knowledge. I could even get some of that stuff from the internet.

If MLK were alive today, he would fight this.