FBI Is Accused of Protecting Its Own in Spy Case

Attorneys for an alleged Chinese double agent released a statement accusing the FBI of engaging in a cover-up that focuses on the foreign-born woman while minimizing the misdeeds of its own agents.

Katrina M. Leung, a Chinese American businesswoman from San Marino, and former FBI counterintelligence agent James Smith were arrested earlier this month. Leung has been accused of taking classified documents and passing them to the Chinese, and Smith has been accused of gross negligence for giving Leung access to the documents.

Matthew McLaughlin, a Los Angeles FBI spokesman, declined to comment on the document but did dispute a passage in the statement that said Leung’s home was searched multiple times, but Smith’s Westlake home was not.

“We did search his house after we arrested him,” McLaughlin said.

The seven-paragraph statement by “family and friends” of Leung, 49, portrays her as a patriot who made numerous trips to China at the request of the FBI, only to be used as a scapegoat by an agency that was “embarrassed” after discovering that Smith, 59, and another former agent, William Cleveland Jr., were having affairs with Leung.

“The FBI is doing what they have done in other cases of FBI bungling,” the statement says. “They blame the non-agent and the foreign born, especially the Asian, especially the woman.”

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said he would not respond to statements or allegations made by Leung, her lawyers or her supporters outside of court.

“She will be given an opportunity to defend herself in court,” Mrozek said.

Justice Department sources said that an investigation of Smith has been underway for almost three years, since before his retirement from the FBI’s counterintelligence squad in Los Angeles in November of 2000.

FBI officials have said Leung, an informant of Smith’s for more than 20 years, had unauthorized contacts with Chinese intelligence agencies that were discussed in a counterintelligence meeting in 1991, but it is unclear whether that meeting triggered the investigation of Smith.

Smith’s attorney, Brian A. Sun, denied that his client has been treated preferentially. “He was arrested in front of his family and neighbors,” Sun said. “He has seen his reputation irreparably harmed by the government’s decision to charge him.”

McLaughlin referred to Robert P. Hanssen, an FBI agent convicted two years ago of spying for Russia, prompting the FBI to launch a review of every intelligence source.

“Nobody wants to know what happened here more than the FBI,” he said. “We want to know exactly what occurred so we can determine if improvements in our security after the Hanssen case have been successful.”