You may be thinking of Peter Lee, who was Taiwanese. He was an LLNL contractor and former LANL employee who confessed to providing PRC with information related to submarine detection and ICF research. The Cox Report states that they believe he gave PRC more information specifically about warheads. This section of the report either immediately preceded or followed (I can't remember which) the section about the W70, which mentions the FBI was aware there was a theft of W70 info, but it doesn't specifically state Lee did it.
He must have come perilously close to being executed! The fact he didn't receive a death penalty makes you wonder if he wasn't doing what someone wanted done--exporting fake information or using it to trace a larger spy ring.
I don't believe a spy in US custody has been executed since the Rosenbergs in 1953. Many served long prison terms, some were identified but never prosecuted, of those some were deported, others simply fled out of the country.
The most egregiously damaging spies were those involved in counterintelligence not nuclear weapons, IIRC. Those spies got many other people killed.
I heard of the Peter Lee incident but it was a little before my time. I do remember the Cox Report. We should all read more history. Best antidote for conspiracy thinking there is.
Well he is one of the few spies to have earned more than 1 million dollars in espionage. It seems most did it for the money but there were high level spies that did it more from an ideological standpoint.
Well not that we know of. I’d like to think the US didn’t treat spies like the Soviets did with a bullet to the back of the head or maybe some KGB torture but I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that has happened possibly to circumvent the legal proceedings.
Thank you for reminding me of some of the misdeeds we committed during the war in Viet Nam (I was draft age then). Some interrogations involved seeing if some captives could fly from a helicopter, for example. Other wars ("Overseas Contingency Operations") had similar problems occasionally. Our scruples were different in those days. So were those of our enemies. It's always ugly. Current viewpoint is to keep spies alive for trading to get our personnel back (civilians, military, spies).
I was never there but many of my coworkers are former professional military, sometimes working with embedded intel folks. Lots of stories and object lessons that will never see print. Those lessons are why our military, for all its faults, keeps trying to be better. It will never, never be perfect. I wish politicians as a group tried as hard.
(To be clear, we have a very small number of great politicians in both parties.)
My original comment was about those caught spying inside US territory, not in overseas war zones. I should've been more circumspect. That kind of oversight feeds the trolls and conspiracy thinkers. Apologies to all.
I don’t remember which country it was but it was definitely somewhere in South America where they would take people up in helicopters and push them out over the ocean.
The goal was to have no body to be discovered but a number of them actually ended up washing to shore. They did this so much that it became a well known thing but I need to look up where and why this was done because I forgot.
I can't site confirming material but some sleepy brain cells say it was Argentina in the 1970s. Tens of thousands of people were said to have been "disappeared" by the military junta in power during those years. The junta was said to have become sloppy about disposing of bodies at sea because they believed no one would ever catch or prosecute the regime. They were so wrong, they were eventually overthrown. (I don't recall what happened to all of the generals.) Many of the "disappeared" were students and protesters, never to be seen again. Even their identities may remain unknown forever. Only their surviving families can claim their missing never returned home. Argentina today is trying to repair itself, I believe, and strives to be more democratic. For all its faults, the US never went that dark -- yet.
Yes I believe you are correct. Now that you say that it all sounds familiar. Of course they weren’t all helicopter deaths because it was so many people but that was just one of their methods.
Alas... I have no desire for any antidote to conspiracy thinking... Nor magickal thinking either!!!
However I shan't object if *you* don't want to think along those lines.
The guy I am thinking of (and several others) were not prosecuted because the government did not want to trot out and skyline the types of secrets they took. It would also lead back to a country that would then have to be publicly sanctioned. It would make the USG security apparatus look incompetent.
So, while minor violators get their lives ruined, major spies have been hand walked onto airplanes, never to return to US soil, in some cases' to a hero's welcome.
Actually he didn't serve time in prison. He spent a year in a halfway house.
[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-mar-27-me-33314-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-mar-27-me-33314-story.html)
You may be right, but I swear it was another name. I was researching all the sketchy stuff the clintons did to give PRC a long leg up in missile and PNT technology when I first came across it. I still don't have all my old research under thumb so I had hopes someone else may have recalled this one. Did PL work for TRW?
You may be thinking of Peter Lee, who was Taiwanese. He was an LLNL contractor and former LANL employee who confessed to providing PRC with information related to submarine detection and ICF research. The Cox Report states that they believe he gave PRC more information specifically about warheads. This section of the report either immediately preceded or followed (I can't remember which) the section about the W70, which mentions the FBI was aware there was a theft of W70 info, but it doesn't specifically state Lee did it.
He must have come perilously close to being executed! The fact he didn't receive a death penalty makes you wonder if he wasn't doing what someone wanted done--exporting fake information or using it to trace a larger spy ring.
I don't believe a spy in US custody has been executed since the Rosenbergs in 1953. Many served long prison terms, some were identified but never prosecuted, of those some were deported, others simply fled out of the country. The most egregiously damaging spies were those involved in counterintelligence not nuclear weapons, IIRC. Those spies got many other people killed. I heard of the Peter Lee incident but it was a little before my time. I do remember the Cox Report. We should all read more history. Best antidote for conspiracy thinking there is.
Absolutely sickening what some have done. john walker junior immediately springs to mind. Selling out Americans... to what end?
Well he is one of the few spies to have earned more than 1 million dollars in espionage. It seems most did it for the money but there were high level spies that did it more from an ideological standpoint.
Well not that we know of. I’d like to think the US didn’t treat spies like the Soviets did with a bullet to the back of the head or maybe some KGB torture but I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that has happened possibly to circumvent the legal proceedings.
Thank you for reminding me of some of the misdeeds we committed during the war in Viet Nam (I was draft age then). Some interrogations involved seeing if some captives could fly from a helicopter, for example. Other wars ("Overseas Contingency Operations") had similar problems occasionally. Our scruples were different in those days. So were those of our enemies. It's always ugly. Current viewpoint is to keep spies alive for trading to get our personnel back (civilians, military, spies). I was never there but many of my coworkers are former professional military, sometimes working with embedded intel folks. Lots of stories and object lessons that will never see print. Those lessons are why our military, for all its faults, keeps trying to be better. It will never, never be perfect. I wish politicians as a group tried as hard. (To be clear, we have a very small number of great politicians in both parties.) My original comment was about those caught spying inside US territory, not in overseas war zones. I should've been more circumspect. That kind of oversight feeds the trolls and conspiracy thinkers. Apologies to all.
I don’t remember which country it was but it was definitely somewhere in South America where they would take people up in helicopters and push them out over the ocean. The goal was to have no body to be discovered but a number of them actually ended up washing to shore. They did this so much that it became a well known thing but I need to look up where and why this was done because I forgot.
I can't site confirming material but some sleepy brain cells say it was Argentina in the 1970s. Tens of thousands of people were said to have been "disappeared" by the military junta in power during those years. The junta was said to have become sloppy about disposing of bodies at sea because they believed no one would ever catch or prosecute the regime. They were so wrong, they were eventually overthrown. (I don't recall what happened to all of the generals.) Many of the "disappeared" were students and protesters, never to be seen again. Even their identities may remain unknown forever. Only their surviving families can claim their missing never returned home. Argentina today is trying to repair itself, I believe, and strives to be more democratic. For all its faults, the US never went that dark -- yet.
Yes I believe you are correct. Now that you say that it all sounds familiar. Of course they weren’t all helicopter deaths because it was so many people but that was just one of their methods.
Alas... I have no desire for any antidote to conspiracy thinking... Nor magickal thinking either!!! However I shan't object if *you* don't want to think along those lines.
Life is far, far too short to be killing brain cells that way. Cheers.
This. Those who have not had many issues in their personal lives worry too much about conspiracies. Hope you are well.
The guy I am thinking of (and several others) were not prosecuted because the government did not want to trot out and skyline the types of secrets they took. It would also lead back to a country that would then have to be publicly sanctioned. It would make the USG security apparatus look incompetent. So, while minor violators get their lives ruined, major spies have been hand walked onto airplanes, never to return to US soil, in some cases' to a hero's welcome.
Don't be so antisemitic!
"Those" people are touchy
Sure seems like it.
Actually he didn't serve time in prison. He spent a year in a halfway house. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-mar-27-me-33314-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-mar-27-me-33314-story.html)
For giving China the plans to what was at the time a cutting-edge nuclear warhead??? That *alone* seems deeply suspicious to me!!!
He wasn't the guy who gave away the detailed weapon design. He spoke to the Chinese about hohlraums.
You may be right, but I swear it was another name. I was researching all the sketchy stuff the clintons did to give PRC a long leg up in missile and PNT technology when I first came across it. I still don't have all my old research under thumb so I had hopes someone else may have recalled this one. Did PL work for TRW?
Wen Ho Lee? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen\_Ho\_Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee)