US Navy officer faces rare espionage charge, suspected of spying for Taiwan, Beijing, or both

When Edward C. Lin was a US Navy lieutenant, he was selected to speak to a group of people who were about to be naturalised as U.S. citizens along with him at a ceremony in Honolulu. He and his family left Taiwan for the United States when he was 14, he recalled, and he needed a translator to help him register for school when he arrived.

“I always dreamt about coming to America, the ‘promised land’,” Lin said, according to a Navy account of the December 2008 ceremony. “I grew up believing that all the roads in America lead to Disneyland.”

More than seven years later, Lin faces charges of espionage, attempted espionage and patronising a prostitute in a rare spying case involving an active-duty member of the US military.

Suspected of passing secrets to Baijing, Taiwan or both, it’s a steep fall for a lieutenant commander who has served on some of the Navy’s most advanced maritime surveillance aircraft. An espionage conviction can carry the death penalty, although no American has been executed for spying since 1953, when the married couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death for passing military secrets to the Soviet Union about the atomic bomb program.

A layer of secrecy shrouds Lin’s case: The Navy examined charges against him Friday in a preliminary hearing in Norfolk, Virginia, but provided little advance notice about it - aside from notice on a docket temporarily posted on a Navy website. The proceeding, known as an “Article 32″ hearing, examines the facts of the case and is open to the public, but Navy officials have declined to comment on the case or identify Lin before or afterward, citing concerns about his privacy, said Lt Cmdr Timothy Hawkins, a service spokesman.

A heavily redacted three-page charge sheet released by the Navy states that the officer faces two specifications of espionage and three specifications of attempted espionage. He is accused of communicating secret information “with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the advantage of a foreign nation,” hiring a prostitute for sex, committing adultery by having sex with a woman who was not his wife, and falsifying federal records about where he travelled abroad.

A US official confirmed Lin’s identity on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the case. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI are investigating whether Lin passed classified information to both China and Taiwan, the official said. Lin’s identity was first reported Sunday by USNI News, a website overseen by the US Naval Institute. His legal representation was not disclosed on charging documents.