A Taiwan-born naval flight officer with an extensive intelligence background was accused of espionage for allegedly sharing classified information to China.
According to the Washington Post, Navy officer Lt. Cmdr. Edward C. Lin faced preliminary investigations on Friday for accusations of two cases of espionage and three for attempted espionage as well as prostitution.
Citing "a heavily redacted charge sheet" from the Navy, the Washington Post reported that Lin allegedly shared secret information with China and Taiwan.
Who Is Lieutenant Commander Lin?
Lin's identity was initially not revealed by the service, something that is usually not done with other officers facing a preliminary "Article 32" hearing.
According to Navy spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, the identity of the officer in question cannot be disclosed at the time "out of consideration for the service member's privacy."
However, another officer who shared Lin's name with the condition of anonymity confirmed that the suspect was indeed Lt. Cmdr. Lin.
According to USNI, Lin was a signals intelligence specialist assigned to man the Lockheed Martin EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance aircraft.
According to the Washington Post, he had also been part of the Patrol and Reconnaissance Group located in Norfolk.
Apparently, the team he belongs to runs some of the Navy's patrol aircraft responsible for gathering intelligence, giving him access to so much information gathered via spyplanes such as the P-8A Poseidon and P-3C Orion as well as the MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone.
Lin is a Taiwanese who became a naturalized U.S. citizen after his family left Taiwan and migrated to the U.S. back when he was still 14 years old, per a 2008 Navy release on his naturalization ceremony.
"I always dreamt about coming to America, the 'promised land.' I grew up believing that all the roads in America lead to Disneyland," he said at the time of his naturalization.
Sources also told USNI that the accused Navy officer was fluent in Mandarin, a main language in China.
The Charges
According to the charges sheet from the Navy, the officer in question is accused of sharing highly sensitive information with China and Taiwan "with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the advantage of a foreign nation."
According to Reuters, U.S. officials revealed that the suspect is accused of communicating with the foreign country twice and attempted three more times to share confidential information.
Aside from that, he is believed to have been involved in hiring a prostitute, committing adultery, and lying about his whereabouts to the U.S. government when he actually traveled overseas.
While U.S. officials believe that Lin shared information with both China and Taiwan, they emphasized that the probe is still ongoing and nothing is certain yet.
Meanwhile, Taiwan told Reuters that they have no information about Lin's case and declined to make any statement about it, while China had not made any comments on the matter as of press time.