Ex-US intel officer admits to trying to give classified info to China

A former officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has admitted to trying to give U.S. defense information to China, federal prosecutors announced Friday.

Ron Hansen, 58, pleaded guilty in federal court in Utah to one count of attempting to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government. Hansen will serve 15 years in prison as part of a plea agreement, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The former official, who held a top-secret security clearance for many years and was hired by the DIA in 2006, began meeting with Chinese intelligence agents in 2014 after they targeted him for recruitment.

{mosads}Hansen received hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for sharing information with the Chinese agents, according to prosecutors.

In 2018, Hansen sought intelligence from a case officer at the DIA and agreed to sell it to China on the officer’s behalf. That officer reported Hansen to the agency and became a confidential source for the FBI.

In June 2018, Hansen received the classified documents from the DIA case officer, which were about U.S. military preparations in a “particular region,” according to the DOJ.

Hansen reviewed the documents, took notes about them, and told the officer that he would write up notes about them in a document that he would bring to China.

“Hansen intended to provide the information he received to the agents of the Chinese intelligence service with whom he had been meeting, and Hansen knew that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation,” the DOJ said in a press release.