HONOLULU: A former US military contractor in Hawaii was sentenced on Wednesday to more than seven years in prison for passing national defence secrets to his Chinese girlfriend and illegally keeping numerous classified documents at his home.
Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 60, a retired Army lieutenant colonel assigned to the US Pacific Command on Oahu, admitted in March to the espionage offences and agreed to cooperate with investigators in a plea deal that staved off additional charges.
As an active-duty reservist stationed at the command headquarters and later as a civilian contractor employed there, Bishop had top-secret security clearance, authorities said.
He pleaded guilty to one count of communicating classified national defense information to an unauthorised person – in this case emailing secrets in 2012 about joint training and planning sessions between the United States and South
Korea.
The email recipient was a 27-year-old Chinese woman who was residing in the United States as a graduate student on a J1 visa while having a romantic relationship with Bishop that federal investigators said he kept hidden from the US government. — Reuters