Another leaker has been tracked down. A Virginia man sold top secret documents to the Chinese. The man is Kevin Mallary, a 60-year-old Army veteran. He was also a former State Department diplomatic security agent. On Thursday he appeared in court to faces charges of gathering or delivery defense information to aid a foreign government and making material false statements.
Mallory left government in 2012 and has been working as a self-employed consultant since. If convicted he faces up to a life in prison sentence. The AP has reported that he could face the death penalty "if certain conditions are met."
Mallory is currently living in Leesburg, VA. The documents he was accused of selling were classified as "secret" and "top secret" levels. He was selling them to Chinese spies for $25,000. According to federal prosecutors, he also lied to FBI agents about the scheme.
Per Fox News:
According to the affidavit, Mallory traveled to Shanghai in April, and was interviewed by Customs agents at O'Hare Airport in Chicago after he failed to declare $16,500 in cash found in two carry-on bags.
The FBI interviewed him the next month, and he admitted that he met with two people from a Chinese think tank that he now suspected were Chinese intelligence agents. He said they had given him a special communications device for transmitting documents.
According to the affidavit, Mallory told the FBI agents that the only documents he transferred were two unclassified "white papers" he had written on U.S. policy matters.
But FBI agents searched the device and found other documents and messages that Mallory thought had been deleted, according to the affidavit. In one message, Mallory wrote to the suspected Chinese agent, "your object is to gain information, and my object is to be paid."
The agent responded, "my current object is to make sure your security and to try to reimburse you."
The Virginia man was pretty up front with what he was doing and it seems it would be pretty difficult for him to not get convicted. It doesn't even seem like he cares. At his initial appearance in court, he was wearing Army athletic shorts and a tank top. He requested a court-appointed lawyer at this appearance.
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