Posted on 03/29/2007 7:00:06 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
A defense company engineer accused of conspiring to send technical military information to China was never given permission to share sensitive documents on a future Navy warship with his brother, a security official for the company testified Thursday.
Fred Witham, who oversees security for Power Paragon Inc., was questioned about defendant Chi Mak's access to a so-called DDX document. The government claims the document was found on a computer belonging to Mak's brother, who is also charged in the case.
Mak, a Chinese-born naturalized U.S. citizen, went on trial this week in U.S. District Court.
Prosecutors also asked Witham whether Mak had ever asked for approval to send the DDX document and two other documents to China.
Witham said no but that responsibility for that would have fallen to another Power Paragon official who oversees export controls.
Power Paragon founder Arleigh Dotson testified Wednesday that Mak was bright, reliable and successful on the job.
"He was one of our better engineers," Dotson said.
Mak, 66, was a member of an elite unit of engineers at the Anaheim-based defense contractor, Dotson said, and as such had access to or worked on sensitive projects including the Navy's Aegis system, the survivability of Navy vessels and electromagnetic aircraft launch system.
Mak has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to export U.S. defense secrets to China, attempted and actual export of defense articles, making false statements and failure to register as a foreign agent. If convicted, he could get more than 50 years in prison.
His wife, brother, sister-in-law and nephew also were charged. Counts against some or all include conspiracy, failing to register as a foreign agent, possession of property in aid of a foreign government, and making false statements.
The Chinese government denies it took military secrets.
"We have reiterated many times that allegations that China stole U.S. military secrets are groundless and made out of ulterior motives," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a news conference Thursday in Beijing.
In the government's opening statement Wednesday in Santa Ana, Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Staples painted Mak as a longtime agent who had been sending sensitive material to China since 1983, two years before he became a U.S. citizen. Federal agents asked Mak why he did it, the prosecutor said.
"The answer was very simple. The defendant said, 'I wanted to help China,'" Staples said.
Defense attorney Marilyn Bednarski vehemently denied that her client confessed, calling him a devoted American who never forwarded material he thought was restricted. One of the documents in question had even been presented at a public conference and was available on the Internet, she told jurors.
"This is a case, folks, where everything he copied, he believed was sendable," Bednarski said.
Staples told the jury about a CD-ROM that investigators seized from Mak's brother and the brother's wife as they were about to take a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Hong Kong.
The CD was found in an English book for Chinese speakers and on it, Staples said, were Chinese folk songs, homework from Mak's nephew, and an encrypted file containing defense technology information.
The prosecutor asserted that despite extensive training on handling sensitive technology information, Mak violated export controls.
"We are confident you will find him guilty of being an agent of the People's Republic of China without notifying the United States," Staples told the jury.
Court documents say that investigators searching Mak's home found restricted documents on the advanced technology warship known as the DDX Destroyer and lists in Chinese asking him for information about torpedoes, electromagnetic artillery systems and technology used to detect incoming missiles.
Bednarski contended that the encryption program was meant to hide the information from Chinese authorities.
Hang em' high.
So how many times did he sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom in the '90s?
With stakes this high, guilty until proven innocent.
According to the 42-page affidavit, agents combing through the trash at Chi's residence found a number of documents torn into small pieces.
One document was machine-printed in China and instructed Chi to "join more [professional] associations and participate in more seminars with special subject matters" and then compile the special conference material on a disk. The document also lists the military technologies that were being sought including:
* Space-based electromagnetic intercept system
* Space-launched magnetic levitational platform
* Electromagnetic artillery system
* Submarine torpedoes
* Electromagnetic launch system
* Aircraft carrier electronic systems
A second document, hand-printed in Chinese, contained another list of technologies sought:
* Water jet propulsion
* Ship submarine propulsion technology, non-air reliant
* Power system configuration technology, weapons standardization, modularization
* Early warning technologies, command and control systems technology, defense against nuclear attack technology
* Permanent electromagnetic motor, overall solution for shipboard power system
* Shipboard internal and external communications systems
* Establishment of high frequency, self-linking, satellite communications
* Submarine HF transient launch technology
* DDX (next generation destroyer)
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