Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 18, 1993 TAG: 9309180254
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
"I am of the belief that you did it for pure greed," U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith told the defendant, 29-year-old Bin Wu.
The judge also sentenced two co-defendants, Jing Ping Li and Pinzhe "Peter" Zhang. Li, 41, was sentenced to six years. Zhang, 37, received a sentence of three years and five months. None of the men was fined.
The defendants were convicted by a jury in June of conspiracy involving the shipment of night-vision parts to China via Hong Kong. The parts, image intensifier tubes, are used in tank scopes and goggles.
Wu, the only one of the defendants to testify at the monthlong trial, said he was forced by China's Ministry of State Security to come to the United States as a spy after losing his job as a professor of Western philosophy during China's crackdown on its student democracy movement.
But Wu said he soon began providing information to the FBI, essentially becoming a double agent, because he wanted help in getting his family out of China.
Wu contended the image tubes were shipped under FBI directions because the agency wanted more information about Chinese intelligence operations.
But his FBI contact, Agent Blake Lewis, said he didn't know the tubes were restricted and that Wu assured him the shipments were licensed.
Attorneys for the defendants said it was hard to accept that the FBI, which admitted paying Wu $21,000 over 18 months for information, would take the word of a spy that the shipments were legal.
"It is not rationally possible to believe . . . that they did not know these items were classified," said Andrew Sebok, Zhang's attorney.
Wu again maintained his innocence at the sentencing hearing. "I have a clear conscience to your government and your people," he said.
But the judge said it was clear that, at some point, he stopped telling the FBI everything he was doing. According to the evidence, Wu sent about 140 tubes to China, paying about $1,500 for each of them and selling them for about $2,000 each.
Both Li and Zhang made lengthy statements blaming Wu for lying to them and denying Assistant U.S. Attorney James A. Metcalfe's contention that they, too, may have been spies for China.
Wu and Li were partners in an import-export business that ordered the tubes from a Texas manufacturer. Zhang, a student at Old Dominion University, was hired for his better command of English.
Metcalfe said the conspiracy was a threat to national security because the tubes give the United States an advantage over its enemies in conducting night combat operations.
by CNB