US Navy sailors arrested for spying
Accused were providing sensitive military information to China, officials said
SAN DIEGO — Two U.S. Navy sailors have been arrested and accused of providing sensitive military information to China — including details on wartime exercises, naval operations and critical technical material, federal officials said Thursday.
The two sailors, both based in California, were charged with similar moves to provide sensitive intelligence to the Chinese. But they were separate cases, and it wasn’t clear if the two were courted or paid by the same Chinese intelligence officer as part of a larger scheme. Federal officials at a news conference in San Diego declined to specify whether the sailors were aware of each other’s actions.
U.S. officials have for years expressed concern about the espionage threat they say the Chinese government poses, bringing criminal cases in recent years against Beijing intelligence operatives who have stolen sensitive government and commercial information, including through illegal hacking.
U.S. officials said the cases exemplify China’s brazenness in trying to obtain insight into U.S. military operations.
“Through the alleged crimes committed by these defendants, sensitive military information ended up in the hands of the People’s Republic of China,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman of the Southern District of California. He added that the charges demonstrate the Chinese government’s “determination to obtain information that is critical to our national defense by any means, so it could be used to their advantage.”
Jinchao Wei, a 22-year-old sailor assigned to the San Diego-based USS Essex, was arrested Wednesday on a charge related to espionage involving conspiracy to send national defense information to Chinese officials, according to the U.S. authorities.
Wei, who was born in China, was approached by a Chinese intelligence officer while he was applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, prosecutors said, and admitted to the officer that he knew the arrangement could affect his application. Still, prosecutors said, he continued to send sensitive U.S. military information multiple times over the course of a year and even was congratulated by the Chinese officer once Wei became a U.S. citizen, Grossman said. He added that Wei “chose to turn his back on his newly adopted country” for greed.
The Justice Department also charged sailor Wenheng Zhao, 26, based at Naval Base Ventura County, north of San Diego, with conspiring to collect bribes from a Chinese intelligence officer in exchange for U.S. naval exercise plans, operational orders and photos and videos of electrical systems at Navy facilities between August 2021 through at least this May.
The information included operational plans for a U.S. military exercise in the Indo-Pacific Region. Prosecutors say Zhao also surreptitiously recorded information that he handed over.