A former CIA officer has been arrested in Virginia and is accused of spying for China. Federal prosecutors said in court in Alexandria that Kevin Mallory had notes in his home that could have gotten clandestine sources killed.
While Mallory is not accused of handing those documents over to Chinese intelligence agents, he was also accused of being paid $25,000 by the Chinese and lied about the amount when returning back to the United States. Prosecutors also mentioned his access to sensitive material to underscore the seriousness of potential damages to US interests and to argue that he should remain jailed pending trial on espionage charges. A federal judge agreed and reversed an earlier ruling granting him a bond for just $10,000.
On a phone that Mallory admitted was given to him by someone he thought worked for Chinese intelligence, eight documents were found, authorities said. Six were classified CIA documents and one was a classified Defense Intelligence Agency document, FBI agent Stephen Green testified Friday. The last is a mix of typed and handwritten pages that are still being reviewed.
At least two of the documents were transmitted to the Chinese earlier this year, according to prosecutors.
A magistrate judge last week ordered Mallory’s release on a $10,000 bond. But U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis overturned that decision Friday, in part based on the new details revealed regarding Mallory’s CIA career and the documents found in his possession.
Prosecutors confirmed in court Friday that Mallory worked for both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA’s counterpart in the Defense Department.
According to court documents, Mallory was a covert CIA case officer from 1990 to 1996 and a CIA contractor from 2010 to 2012. It was not clear when he worked for the DIA.
Antoinette Shiner, an information review officer for the CIA, confirmed in a declaration filed in court Friday that Mallory’s documents contained sensitive CIA intelligence, analysis of that intelligence and, in some instances, the actual human or technical sources of the intelligence.
One of the documents he is alleged to have passed on to the Chinese “reveals the breadth and depth” of the CIA’s understanding of “a specific hostile foreign intelligence service,” according to Shiner, including details on that foreign service’s approach to counterintelligence.
Handwritten notes found in Mallory’s house, she said, concern sensitive human sources and “could reasonably be expected to cause the loss of critical intelligence and possibly result in the lengthy incarceration or death of clandestine human sources.”
Mallory is considered a flight risk and prosecutors worried that the Chinese will attempt to take and glean any other information that he may have and also to keep him from talking about the link to their government.
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Photo courtesy CIA
