There was a complete dearth of any news coverage on Montaperto's case last time I looked.
Updated:2006-09-08 15:44:21
Jail for Va. Man Who Gave China Secrets
Associated PressALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A former Pentagon intelligence analyst who disclosed classified information to Chinese spies was sentenced Friday to three months in jail.
Ronald N. Montaperto, 67, pleaded guilty earlier this year in federal court to unlawful retention of classified documents. He admitted that he had contacts with two intelligence officers from China as early as 1983 and as recently as 2001.
At his sentencing, Montaperto said he had wanted to boost his status in the intelligence community and obtain useful intelligence for the United States. "I never meant to hurt my country in any way," he said.
Montaperto's lawyer, Stephen Anthony, said Montaperto was an academic and was untrained in dealing with Chinese spies, and that they essentially wheedled him into making illegal disclosures.
In rejecting prosecutors' request for a term of about two years, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said that there was no evidence that Montaperto sought to profit financially from his disclosures, and that the government would not have had a case had he not admitted his misconduct.
He probably wouldn't have admitted it if there weren't a lie-detector test associated with it.