Ex-Boeing engineer guilty in space shuttle spy case

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former Boeing engineer was convicted on Thursday of passing space shuttle secrets to the Chinese government in the United States' first economic espionage trial.

A federal judge who heard the 10-day trial in Santa Ana, California, without a jury convicted 73-year-old Dongfan "Greg" Chung of economic espionage and of acting as an agent for the People's Republic of China.

"Mr. Chung has been an agent of the People's Republic of China for over 30 years," U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney said in a 31-page written verdict.

"The trust Boeing placed in Mr. Chung to safeguard its proprietary and trade secret information obviously meant very little to Mr. Chung," Carney wrote. "He cast it aside to serve the PRC, which he proudly proclaimed to be his 'motherland.' The court must now hold Mr. Chung accountable for his crimes."

Chung, a Chinese-born naturalised U.S. citizen who was free on $250,000 (152,105 pounds) bail during the trial, was jailed after the verdict and faces a maximum penalty of 90 years in prison when he is sentenced on November 9.

Chung is the first defendant convicted at trial since the Economic Espionage Act became law in 1996, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department said. Five other cases have either been settled in plea bargains or are still pending.

AGENTS SEIZE 300,000 PAGES

Chung was arrested on September 11, 2006, after federal agents searching his home found more than 300,000 pages of sensitive documents relating to the space shuttle, Delta IV rocket, F-15 fighter, B-52 bomber, CH-46/47 Chinook helicopter and other aerospace and military technologies.