http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10spy.html



By NEIL A. LEWIS

The New York Times

July 10, 2008



WASHINGTON - Gregg W. Bergersen was a Navy veteran who liked to gamble 

on occasion but spent far more time worrying about how to earn some 

serious money after he left his career as an analyst at the Defense 

Department.



At 51 and supporting a wife and a child in the Virginia suburbs, he 

wondered how he could get himself cast in that distinctly Washington 

role many Pentagon types dream of: a rewarding post-retirement perch at 

one of the hundreds of military-related companies that surround the 

capital and flourish off lucrative government contracts and contacts.



Mr. Bergersen believed he had found what he was seeking when he was 

introduced to Tai Shen Kuo, a native of Taiwan, who had lived in New 

Orleans for more than 30 years. Mr. Kuo, an entrepreneur who imported 

furniture from China, was active enough in civic affairs to have been 

named to a state advisory board on international trade. He told Mr. 

Bergersen that he was developing a defense consulting company.



Now, Mr. Bergersen and Mr. Kuo, along with a third accomplice, are 

awaiting sentencing in a federal court for their involvement in one of 

many cases brought in the last year involving the illegal transfer of 

information to China.



The cases have intensified the evaluation in intelligence and law 

enforcement circles about the breadth of the threat from Beijing. Many 

have been similar to the one involving Mr. Bergersen, in that 

prosecutors describe them as carefully planned intelligence operations 

run by the Chinese government intended to steal national security 

secrets. Other cases, however, are less clear in their nature; some seem 

to be closer to violations of commercial export laws, with the 

transferred information intended to provide Chinese companies a 

technological benefit.



According to court papers and interviews, Mr. Kuo and his Chinese 

handlers ran what intelligence professionals call a "false flag" 

operation on Mr. Bergersen, a weapons systems analyst, making him 

believe that the information he was providing was going to Taiwan, an 

American ally, not Beijing.



[...]





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Received on Fri Jul 11 2008 - 02:36:04 PDT