Congressional watchdogs want an explanation from the FBI and CIA about whether they bungled the case of a former CIA officer long suspected of betraying potentially dozens of U.S. spies in China.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senior members of Congress are asking why the FBI took more than five years to arrest former CIA China hand Jerry Chun Shing Lee after it first became suspicious of him.
Grassley, a frequent FBI critic, also wants to know whether possible unwarranted delays, missed warning signs or other counter-espionage lapses in Lee’s case helped Beijing to decimate America’s spy network on its soil in one of the worst known American intelligence debacles in a generation.
“We need answers from the FBI about why this wasn’t prevented,” Grassley told POLITICO in a statement.
And following at least two other similar cases in the last year, some lawmakers fear the Jan. 15 arrest of Lee — who is scheduled to appear in a Virginia federal court Monday — suggests larger problems in the U.S. effort to protect its secrets from Russia, China and other adversaries.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo wouldn’t respond directly to a question about Lee in a Jan. 23 talk at a Washington think tank but did express concern about “traitors,” saying he had taken his job a year ago “intent on improving our capacity to protect our own information.” The CIA is “working against our adversaries’ services in a way that prevents them from getting inside of our service,” he added.
[give_form id=”79809″] [contentcards url=”https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/05/china-cia-spy-congress-387133?cid=apn” target=”_blank”]