A former CIA officer has been arrested on charges of unlawfully retaining highly-classified information about a US spy network in China, according to the Justice Department.
Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a naturalized US citizen living in Hong Kong, was taken into custody at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Monday night.
Lee reportedly remained in Hong Kong and only returned to the US in 2012. FBI agents searched his hotel rooms in Hawaii and Virginia and found two small notebooks with secret records.
The notebooks contain the real names and phone numbers of CIA assets and undercover agents, as well as the addresses of covert facilities and operational notes.
The case is believed to be connected to an FBI investigation into the dismantling of US spy operations inside China.
Reports said that investigators suspect the information was used by China to cripple the operations.
Lee, a 13-year veteran of the spy agency, left America in 2013 after being questioned by FBI agents.
It is unclear whether the former spy knew he was still under suspicion.
He made an initial court appearance in Brooklyn on Tuesday and did not enter a plea, the Justice Department said. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Lee had “a top secret security clearance” from 1994 through 2007, when he left the CIA, according to court documents.
The former CIA case officer has not been charged with espionage, which can carry the death penalty.
Reports say that the US government may not go that far over fears of revealing secret information in court.
In the two years before the FBI investigation began in 2012, some 20 informants had been killed or jailed in China.
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