Navy Analyst Charged With Passing Secrets to S. Korea

In an unusual case of spying by a friendly country, a civilian U.S. naval intelligence official was charged in U.S. District Court on Wednesday with passing more than 50 top-secret, classified documents to the South Korean government.

Robert Chaegon Kim, 56, a Navy analyst who immigrated here from his native Seoul and became a citizen in 1974, has been under surveillance since May and allegedly was observed by federal agents copying and transmitting documents as part of an arrangement with a South Korean naval attache assigned here.

Kim was arrested Tuesday night while attending an Armed Forces Day military reception sponsored by the South Korean Embassy at a military base in the Washington area.

How much damage the case may have caused U.S. intelligence operations remains unclear. Authorities said that Kim had access to classified records going back to 1979 but officials did not say how long they believed Kim had passed documents to South Korea.

News of the case drew immediate reaction--some of it harsh--from Washington government leaders who found themselves suddenly dealing with the latest in a series of high-profile espionage cases that has rocked the U.S. intelligence community in recent years, most notably the scandal involving CIA operative Aldrich H. Ames and his wife, Rosario. They both pleaded guilty in 1994 to spying for the Soviet Union in a case considered the most damaging act of espionage in U.S. history.

Government officials said that senior South Korean diplomats in Washington were summoned to the State Department after Kim’s arrest and were warned that the United States “is very disturbed at this development.”

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who just before the arrest met in New York with South Korean Foreign Minister Gong Ro Myung, said he was “very disturbed by the reports that I have received of that arrest and the incident itself.”

But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said that the U.S.-South Korean alliance will persevere. The two countries, he said, “remain strong and of the nature that they can endure any alleged wrongdoing by an individual.”

Government sources said that Kim, who four years after becoming a U.S. citizen went to work for the Office of Naval Intelligence, apparently was not paid for turning over the secret records, many of which directly related to the two Koreas and other Asia-Pacific countries.

A 21-page affidavit filed with his arrest did not list any compensation or motivation that Kim may have had for allegedly helping the South Koreans.

But some intelligence community sources in Washington speculated that loyalty to one’s native country often can motivate spying and they noted that, while it is rare for a nation to be caught spying on a friendly country, it does happen.

The most famous recent case involving spying by a friendly country occurred when Jonathan Jay Pollard, a civilian Navy intelligence analyst, was caught passing state secrets to Israel. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Roy Godsen, a Georgetown University professor and president of the National Strategy Information Center, a Washington think tank on intelligence matters, said that spying incidents between allies occurs “when a state is embattled and surrounded by enemies,” as South Korea is in its position next to heavily armed North Korea.

He added that with tensions rising in recent years between the two Koreas, the South Korean government would be intensely interested in knowing, for example, just how committed the U.S. government is to keeping military troops at the peninsula’s demilitarized zone in defense of South Korea.

“They’d want to know under what situations we would actually use military force,” he said. “They would want to know about our battle plans, if we genuinely intend to do what we say we would. And they’d want to know about specific technology that could save them a lot of money.”

At the court hearing Wednesday in Alexandria, Va., Kim sat quietly as Magistrate W. Curtis Sewell ordered him held without bond pending a hearing on Monday. Robert C. Chesnut, an assistant U.S. attorney, said that Kim poses a “serious threat of flight” if freed--a notion Kim’s court-appointed lawyer denied.

“His wife is here. His son is here,” said defense attorney Jim Clark.

Kim, if convicted, could face up to 10 years in prison.

Sources at both the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency said that investigators are still searching through Kim’s home in suburban Sterling, Va.

The FBI began investigating Kim by videotaping him at work, eavesdropping on his telephone conversations and reading his mail. Agents said that the investigation was opened after the FBI searched his computer and found a letter Kim had written on Jan. 24 offering to spy for Baek Dong-Il, the Washington-based naval attache for the South Korean government. Officials did not disclose what prompted the computer check.

In the legal affidavit, the FBI said that it obtained court permission to search Kim’s work computer, noting that he had had access to secret information since 1979.

“Kim regularly searches the [computer] system to find classified documents relating to military, political and intelligence matters in the Asia-Pacific region,” the affidavit said.

“Kim copies and stores these documents in this work computer, removes classification markings, prints them on his office printer and transmits them to Baek Dong-Il.”

To emphasize the seriousness of the alleged breach in U.S. intelligence security, the affidavit stressed this point:

“Kim has had a ‘top secret’ security clearance, and access to ‘sensitive compartmented information’ since 1979. Kim’s work involves classified information to such an extent that he physically works within a ‘sensitive compartmented information facility.’ ”

Gloria Harbold, an FBI special agent who handles cases involving counterintelligence, said that she had planned to arrest Kim “within a mile of his home” after he left for work early Wednesday. Instead, he was taken into custody on Tuesday night, sources said, after word began to leak within government circles that the case was breaking.

At the reception at the Ft. Myer, Va., Army base, Kim was paged to step outside. One law enforcement source said that, when Kim walked out accompanied by Baek, “we slapped the handcuffs on” Kim.

Baek was not arrested. But the source said that the U.S. government is now pressuring South Korea to remove him from this country, where he has served at the embassy since 1994.

Kim was employed at the same Suitland, Md., intelligence center as Pollard.

Pollard pleaded guilty in 1986 and admitted selling Israel military intelligence records, satellite photographs and data on Arab military systems.

In another high-profile spying case, CIA translator Larry Wu-Tai Chin was convicted in 1986 of spying for China since 1952. Within days of his conviction, Chin killed himself.

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U.S. Spying Cases

These are some recent U.S. espionage cases:

* Aldrich H. Ames, a CIA counterintelligence official, and his wife, Rosario, pleaded guilty in 1994 to spying for Russia in the most damaging espionage case in U.S. history. Ames passed information to the Russians from 1985 to 1994, including the identities of U.S. agents. He is blamed for the deaths of at least nine U.S. agents in the former Soviet Union and for disclosing U.S. counterintelligence techniques.

* Foreign Service officer Felix S. Bloch was suspended in 1989 by the State Department after reportedly being monitored by a video camera passing a suitcase to a Soviet agent in Paris. Bloch, once charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, was not charged with espionage but was fired in 1990 on the grounds he lied to investigators.

* Jonathan Jay Pollard, a civilian Navy intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty in 1986 to spying for Israel. He is serving a life sentence and President Clinton has three times rejected requests for clemency.

* Former National Security Agency employee Ronald W. Pelton was convicted in 1986 of selling top-secret signals intelligence to the Soviet Union.

* CIA translator Larry Wu-Tai Chin was convicted in 1986 of spying for China since 1952. Within days of his conviction, Chin killed himself.

* Former CIA officer Edward Lee Howard fled the country in 1985 as the FBI investigated him for spying for the Soviet Union. Howard, accused of disclosing the identities of CIA agents in Moscow, still lives there.

* Retired Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr. pleaded guilty in 1985 along with his son, Navy Seaman Michael L. Walker, to charges of spying for the Soviet Union. John Walker admitted passing secrets while a shipboard communications officer, and after his retirement by recruiting his son, brother and a friend.

Walker’s brother, Arthur Walker, a retired Navy lieutenant commander, was convicted in 1985, and Jerry A. Whitworth, a Navy chief petty officer, was convicted in 1986.