Category: Crime

The Justice Department announced yesterday that they had arrested Jerry Chun Lee, a former CIA agent for “retaining classified information”. He had been a CIA agent from 1994 to 2007. Three years later, the Chinese began dismantling US intelligence-gathering networks by killing or tossing at least 20 agents in prison. The CIA suspected that there was a mole;

According to court documents, in August 2012, Lee and his family left Hong Kong to return to the United States to live in northern Virginia. While traveling back to the United States, Lee and his family had hotel stays in Hawaii and Virginia. During each of the hotel stays, FBI agents conducted court-authorized searches of Lee’s room and luggage, and found that Lee was in unauthorized possession of materials relating to the national defense. Specifically, agents found two small books containing handwritten notes that contained classified information, including but not limited to, true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.

From Business Insider;

Lee left the CIA in 2007 and Beijing began cracking down on the CIA’s network in 2010, The New York Times reported last year. Between 2010-2012, at least 12 CIA sources were killed by Chinese government officials.

The intelligence community couldn’t figure out who had betrayed the agency and the United States, if anyone — some were convinced there was a mole, while others believed that the Chinese had hacked the system by which the agency communicates with its foreign sources, according to The Times.

Lee is now believed to have been that mole. But there are other factors — including basic “sloppy tradecraft,” the Times’ report said — that could have contributed to the massive breach.

According to Heavy, Lee was a naturalized US citizen and that he had served in the Army from 1982-1986.

NBC News wrote about how the FBI suspected Lee years ago;

CIA and FBI officials were mystified and mortified as one after another of their best agents in China were jailed or executed.

It was considered the worst intelligence catastrophe since the 1990s, when Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the CIA and the FBI, provided secrets to Moscow for years that led to the deaths of multiple agents. Both men are serving life terms in federal prison.

The Times story described a debate over a suspected mole, a former CIA case officer now living in an Asian country.

An FBI task force launched an investigation and began to focus on Lee, sources tell NBC News. It’s unclear how the FBI lured Lee back to the U.S. but officials say there have been several undercover attempts to incriminate him, and at least one confrontational interview during which he denied being a spy.

NBC News says that investigators think that the Chinese hacked communications between the CIA and their operatives, but they’re also sure that Lee was passing intelligence to the Chinese, but they don’t intend to charge Lee with espionage.

Thanks to Bobo for the tip.

Mick sends us a link to Fox News which reports that Aaron Goldstein, a candidate for Attorney General of Illinois was robbed during a campaign photo shoot;

The Chicago Tribune reported that Aaron Goldstein, 42, and members of his campaign team were approached by three men in their early 20s. One of the men had a handgun and demanded Goldstein and the campaign aides turn over the camera equipment and other personal belongings, including their cell phones, which they did.

According to the Tribune, law enforcement sources confirmed that they had no one in custody and did not release a description of the suspects.

Goldstein’s campaign manager Robert Murphy, who was not with the candidate at the time, explained that he was taking promotional campaign photos with an “in-the-neighborhood kind of” message, according to the Tribune. The incident took place in Albany Park.

I guess no one is immune to crime in Chicago.

According to CNN, Matthew Riehl, a University of Wyoming law school graduate, murdered Zackari Parrish, a Colorado deputy sheriff from inside Riehl’s barricaded bedroom in his apartment. The deputy was responding to a noise complaint for the second time Sunday;

The second call was dispatched as a domestic disturbance, and by 5:35 a.m. the four deputies had arrived at the scene.

The sheriff’s office said the roommate returned to the scene, gave deputies a key and said they could enter the residence. The roommate then left, police said.
Not long after the deputies found the suspect barricaded in his room, Riehl opened fire, Spurlock said.

“There were well over 100 rounds fired,” Spurlock said, adding that the deputies “all went down within almost seconds of each other, so it was more of an ambush type of attack on our officers.”

The wounded deputies crawled to safety as other law enforcement agencies responded to the shots fired call.

The suspect was killed about 90 minutes later during a shootout when a tactical team went into the apartment, the sheriff’s office said.

According to various news sources, Riehl was known to law enforcement although he had no arrests. Fox 31 says he’d had problems in 2008 with law enforcement;

In 2008, the then-law school student had his only run-in with campus police.

“He was a suspect in a harassment case,” University of Wyoming police chief Mike Samp said.

Samp said no charges were recommended at the time. Nearly 10 years later, Riehl again had the attention of university police after writing vulgar online messages about law school faculty and staff.

“There was enough alarm that we felt that we needed to notify our campus,” Samp said.

That notification, including a picture of Riehl and his car, urged anyone who might see him to call police. Officers also added patrols at the law school after the posts were published online.

“It was pretty apparent early on that there was very likely some mental health concerns with Matthew Riehl,” Samp said.

From Time;

Wyoming College of Law students had been warned about Riehl, a former student, because of social media posts critical of professors at the school in Laramie, reported KTWO-AM in Casper, Wyoming.

A Nov. 6 email from Assistant College of Law Dean Lindsay Hoyt told students to notify campus police if they spotted Riehl or his car near campus. In addition, security on campus was increased for several days.

Campus officers called police in Lone Tree, Colorado, in mid-November to warn them about Riehl, suggesting his rants were indicative of mental illness, UW Police Chief Mike Samp told The Denver Post.

Oh, by the way, this is just incidental information, but Riehl was also a National Guardsman who deployed to Iraq with the 300th Field Artillery Regiment for a year in 2009. He was discharged honorably in 2012 as a Specialist (E-4) after nine years of service in the Reserves and the Wyoming National Guard.

Obviously, this incident has more to do with Riehl’s law school studies than with his military service during a deployment since his erratic behavior began before his deployment to Iraq and this year, eight years after his graduation, the law school faculty had to warn students about the danger of Riehl’s presence on campus.

Regardless, the media finds it necessary to headline their articles about the murderer with the fact that he was an Iraq War veteran, because, you know, that’s easier to understand for their low information headline reading consumers.

Less newsworthy: Thousands of Iraq War veterans celebrated the New Year without injuring anyone this last weekend.