An ex-CIA officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday for spying for China in a case called part of an “alarming trend” in the US intelligence community.

Kevin Mallory, 62, was convicted under the Espionage Act for selling classified US “defence information” to a Chinese intelligence agent for $25,000 during trips to Shanghai in March and April 2017.

“Your object is to gain information, and my object is to be paid,” he told the Chinese agent in a 5 May 2017 message.

The fluent Mandarin speaker had served in the US army, then as a special agent for the security service of the state department, before becoming a covert case officer for the CIA.

Mallory is one of several US officials with high-level security clearances arrested and charged over unsanctioned dealings with Chinese intelligence.

The former defence intelligence agency official Ron Hansen faces 15 years in prison after pleading guilty in March to charges of attempting to sell classified information to China.

In April, a former diplomat Candace Marie Claiborne pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about money she received from Chinese intelligence agents in exchange for US documents.

And in the most significant case, on 1 May, the former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee pleaded guilty to spying for China.

Lee, 54, faces a possible life sentence. Arrested in January 2018, he was suspected of having provided Beijing the information it needed to bring down a CIA network of informants in China between 2010 and 2012.

“This case is one in an alarming trend of former US intelligence officers being targeted by China and betraying their country and colleagues,” assistant attorney general John Demers said of the Mallory case.

“This sentence, together with the recent guilty pleas of Ron Hansen in Utah and Jerry Lee in Virginia, deliver the stern message that our former intelligence officers have no business partnering with the Chinese, or any other adversarial foreign intelligence service.”

Mallory’s lawyers said they planned to appeal the conviction. </s> A former spy for the US Central Intelligence Agency was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison after being convicted on charges of conspiring to transmit US defence secrets to China, the Justice Department said.

Kevin Patrick Mallory, of Leesburg, Virginia, was found guilty by a federal jury in June 2018 of several counts of conspiring to provide national defence information to aid a foreign government and making false statements.

“This case is one in an alarming trend of former US intelligence officers being targeted by China and betraying their country and colleagues," Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in a statement.

The Justice Department said that Mallory, 62, held numerous sensitive jobs with government agencies and defence contractors. His career included working as a covert case officer for the CIA and as an intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He held a top secret security clearance.

Evidence at Mallory`s trial included surveillance video from a FedEx store in Leesburg, where Mallory could be seen scanning documents classified "Secret" and "Top Secret" onto a memory card, which

FBI investigators found during a search of Mallory`s home the day he was arrested.

Earlier this month, another former CIA officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, pleaded guilty to federal charges of spying for China. Ron Rockwell Hansen, a former DIA officer, pleaded guilty in March to espionage-related charges and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars while acting as an agent for Beijing. </s> Washington: A former spy for the US Central Intelligence Agency has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted on charges of conspiring to transmit defence secrets to China, the US Justice Department said.

Kevin Patrick Mallory, of Leesburg, Virginia, was found guilty by a federal jury in June 2018 of several counts of conspiring to provide national defence information to aid a foreign government and making false statements.

“This case is one in an alarming trend of former US intelligence officers being targeted by China and betraying their country and colleagues," Assistant Attorney-General John Demers said in a statement.

The Justice Department said that Mallory, 62, held numerous sensitive jobs with government agencies and defence contractors. His career included working as a covert case officer for the CIA and as an intelligence officer for the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). He held a top secret security clearance until he stopped working as a CIA contractor in 2012. He then launched his own consulting business. </s> A former official of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was on Friday sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment for spying for China.

The former official, Kevin Mallory, 62, of Leesburg, Virginia, is an Army veteran who also worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and had a top-secret security clearance until he stopped working as a CIA contractor in 2012. He then launched his own consulting business.

Mallory, 62, was found guilty by a federal jury in June 2018 of conspiracy to deliver, attempted delivery, delivery of national defence information to aid a foreign government and making material false statements.

Mallory had previously been accused of sharing classified information with a defence contractor in 2010 while trying to start his consulting business, and his security clearance was revoked.

Mallory is one of three former intelligence officers charged in recent years with helping China.
An American who formerly worked for the Central Intelligence Agency is arrested on charges of selling classified information to Chinese operatives in May 2017.