A $230,000 debt and a LinkedIn message led an ex-CIA officer to spy for China

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Kevin Mallory's was a classic spy recruitment of someone whose career had floundered, leading to money troubles.

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.Kevin Mallory, a former CIA officer, was $230,000 in debt and months behind on his mortgage in early 2017, court records show, when he received a LinkedIn message from a Chinese headhunter.

When experts assess the top security threat facing the U.S., “I think it’s all China, all the time,” former CIA Director and retired Gen. David Petraeus said recently during a gathering of current and former intelligence officials in Sea Island, Georgia. He worked as a CIA case officer in the 1990s, meaning he was an undercover operative, tasked with handling agents and stealing foreign secrets. Fluent in Mandarin, he became a senior intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the early 2000s. He returned to the CIA as a contractor from 2010-2012, but he lost his top secret security clearance after improperly disclosing classified information, court records show.

In February 2017, Mallory responded to the LinkedIn message from Michael Yang, who passed himself off as a think tank representative looking for a foreign policy expert. The FBI says he was a Chinese intelligence officer. The spy agency launched an investigation with the FBI. Customs officers stopped Mallory at Chicago's O'Hare Airport as he returned from his second trip to China. Agents discovered $16,000 in cash and the phone."Your object is to gain information," Mallory told Yang, according to texts recovered from the phone,"and my object is to be paid for."

After they arrested him, the FBI searched his home and found a digital storage card with eight secret and top-secret documents.

 

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Life in prison is to good for this shitbag. He should be sent to a rock quarry with a hammer to make Little Rock’s from big ones

Well if convicted for spying it makes me wonder whatever happened to getting the death penalty for doing so? I seem to recall that used to be the punishment for doing that. But then I am old after-all and things may have changed since Benedict got hanged.

$10k more than Kavanaugh's credit card debt, just saying.

It probably wouldn't have taken that much. I'm not seeing alot of personal fortitude in our government employees lately...

Damn..

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