CHIN'S MOTIVES DEBATED AT SPY TRIAL'S OPENING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504650026-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: February 5, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504650026-7
WASHINGTON POST
5 February 1986
Chin's Motives Debated
At Spy Trial's Opening
By Caryle Murphy
Washington Pan Staff Writer
'Retired CIA analyst Larry Wu-
Tai Chin gave classified information
to Chinese intelligence officers not
to hurt the United States but to
help bolster a faction of the Com-
munist government that wanted a
reconciliation with this country, his
lawyer told a crowded federal
courtroom in Alexandria yesterday.
A federal prosecutor, however,
said Chin's motivation was money
and that "for over 30 years Chin
lived a lie and a double life," passing
secret documents detailing what
the U.S. intelligence community
knew about China's military, polit-
ical and economic conditions.
These contrasting portraits of
Chin, who is accused of spying for
China since 1949 while working for
the Central Intelligence Agency,
emerged yesterday on the first day
of his trial in U.S. District Court on
charges of espionage, conspiracy
and violations of income tax and
financial reporting laws. If con-
victed, the 63-year-old naturalized
American could be sentenced to life
in prison.
Providing the first glimpse of
Chin's defense to the charges, ? his
attorney, Jacob A. Stein, disclosed
that Chin will take the witness
LARRY WU- I CHI
stand to describe how he gave only
information "which would put the
U.S. in the best light."
Stein told the jury of nine women
and three men that, while Chin was
working as an interpreter with the
Foreign Broadcast Information Ser-
vice, he observed a conflict going on
in China between factions led by
former premier Chou En-Lai and by
former Communist party leader
Mao Tse-Tung.
Chin "wanted Chou to prevail and
he wanted to play a part in that,"
Stein said. For example, Stein said,
at a critical juncture in President
Richard Nixon's then-secret efforts
to normalize relations with China,
Chin informed his Chinese contacts
of Washington's intentions. This
information "played a significant
part" in the subsequent warming of
relations between the two coun-
tries, he said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jo-
seph J. Aronica characterized Chiii
as a man of duplicity, aptly high-
lighted in July 1981. On July 1, Chin
was honored at CIA headquarters at
Langley with the Career Intelli-
gence Medal for his three decades
of service. Just two weeks later,
Aronica said, Chin met a top-level
Chinese intelligence official in Hong
Kong and was paid $40,000.
FBI Special Agent Mark R. John-
son, who interviewed Chin at his
Alexandria apartment Nov. 22, the
night he was arrested, testified that
he and two other agents confronted
Chin with evidence that the FBI
knew of his trips to Hong Kong,
Canada and China to meet'with his
Chinese contacts. Chin then said
that he had begun passing informa-
tion to the Chinese intelligence ser-
vice in 1949 and that he had re-
ceived about $140,000 over the
years for this service, Johnson tes-
tified.
The FBI agent also testified that
Chin said he had no contact with his
Chinese "handler," an intelligence
official named Ou miming, from
1967 to 1976 because Ou was in
prison in China. Those years in-
clude the period when Nixon's se-
cret Chinese diplomacy took olace.
Johnson said that on one trip to
Ilong Kong in 1983, Chin met with
On and suggested that another CIA
employe named Victoria Liu Mor-
ton, who would be traveling to
Hong Kong, might be susceptible to
recruitment as a spy. Ou rejected
approaching Morton as "impracti-
cal," Johnson testified.
Chin "was literally stunned by the
amount of detail we knew" of his
[long Kong and Peking travels,
speculating that Ou had told the
FBI the information, Johnson said of
the interview on the night of Chin's
arrest.
The whereabouts of Ou (pro-
nounced "0") is unknown to offi-
cials.
According to papers filed by pros-
ecutors, Chin, who had top secret
and later codeword security clear-
ances while at the CIA, told FBI
agents he had been given a poly-
graph test only once during his CIA
career and had passed the test be-
cause "the questions asked of him
had been vague and not in Chinese."
He would have had more difficul-
ty passing the test if the questions
had been "more pointed" and in his
native language, Chin told the
agents.
Johnson testified that Chin told
him that he decided what docu-
ments he would pass to the Chin-
ese, taking them in his briefcase or
coat pocket from his Rosslyn office.
Once home, Chin photographed the
documents with a Minolta camera
and then gave the undeveloped film
to a contact at a Toronto shopping
mall.
After his retirement from the
CIA in January 1981, Chin made up
"a cock and bull story" that he had
been hired by the National Security
Agency to maintain his contacts
with the Chinese, Johnson said Chin
told him. He passed a report to the
Chinese that he said came from
NSA documents, but was actually
based on the "Puzzle Palace," a book
about the NSA, Johnson testified.
Johnson said that during the six-
hour interview Chin told the three
FBI agents that "when I was 6 1
realized that if I learned English I
could get out of China and move to
the West and if I moved to the
West, I could earn some money."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504650026-7