Kevin Mallory, Ex-State Department Official, Charged With Spying For China

A former state department employee and a defense contractor was arrested Thursday under the federal Espionage Act for allegedly transmitting Top Secret and Secret documents to an agent of the People’s Republic of China. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Kevin Patrick Mallory, 60, has been charged with "gathering or delivering defense information to aid a foreign government, and making a material false statement", said the Justice Department. “The conduct alleged in the complaint is serious and it could send a message to anyone who considers violating the public’s trust and compromising our national security by disclosing classified information,” Dana J.Boente, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said in the official statement.

Mallory, a fluent Mandarin speaker, is a self - employed consultant with GlobalEx LLC. He lives in Leesburg, Virginia, according to an affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1981 with a B.A. degree in Political Science. After graduation, he worked full time in an active duty military position until 1986. As he left active duty, Mallory continued his military service as an Army reservist. From 1987 through 1990, Mallory worked as a Special Agent for the State Department Diplomatic Security Service. As required for his different government positions, he was entrusted with Top Secret Security Clearance which terminated in Oct. 2012.

“He had access to classified information, which he allegedly shared and planned to continue sharing with representatives of a foreign government,” Andrew W. Vale, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office said.

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He traveled to Shanghai in March and April and met an individual who he believed was working for the People’s Republic of China Intelligence Service (PRCIS). The individual represented himself as working for a People’s Republic of China think tank, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS). Since at least 2014, the FBI has assessed that Chinese intelligence officers have used SASS affiliation as cover identities.

In April, Mallory failed to declare $16,5000 in cash when he was interviewed by a customs agent at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, the affidavit mentioned. During an interview conducted by FBI the following month, he admitted to meeting two people from Chinese think tank. He told the FBI agents that he later suspected the men were Chinese intelligence agents. The former diplomat said he was given a special communications device for transmitting document; however, he claimed he transferred only two unclassified "white papers" on U.S. policy matters that were written by him. As FBI agents searched the device, other documents and messages that Mallory reportedly assumed were deleted were found on the device.

In one of the messages, the accused wrote to the suspected Chinese agent, "Your object is to gain information, and my object is to be paid." While the agent responded, saying "my current objective is to make sure your security and to try to reimburse you." The investigators found four classified documents on the device, including three with a Top Secret classification.

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This is not the first time that Beijing accused of stealing U.S. military information and classified information. In May, six technology experts were charged with stealing trade secrets from a Houston firm and slipping them to a Chinese manufacturer, the Houston Chronicle reported. The investigators labeled it as an effort by the Chinese government to become a world marine power. In another incident, a California woman was charged in the same month on federal charges of conspiring to smuggle space technology to China, according to multiple reports.

A Chinese businessman Su Bin was convicted in May 2016 of conspiring to hack into the systems of U.S. defense contractors to steal data on military projects. Another incident that raised concerns about Chinese espionage was when a U.S. Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Edward Lin, was accused of allegedly handling military secrets to Taiwan and China, Reuters reported.

The U.S. Naval Institute pointed out earlier that China’s military is built with cloned weapons. “The copycat business is no longer restricted to outlying lawless regions. It has entered the mainstream and been embraced by government officials who seem content to allow other nations to develop products and technology which they can then acquire legitimately through licensing or illegitimately through counterfeiting and espionage,” the USNI noted.