Ex-Boeing engineer charged in spy case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former Boeing engineer wasarrested on Monday on charges of stealing trade secrets forChina related to several aerospace programs, including theSpace Shuttle, the U.S. Justice Department said.

It also announced a separate case in which a U.S. DefenseDepartment official and two others were arrested on Monday onespionage charges involving the passing of classified U.S.government documents to China.

Department officials said Dongfan "Greg" Chung, 72, ofOrange, California, who was employed by Rockwell Internationalfrom 1973 until its defence and space unit was acquired byBoeing in 1996, was arrested without incident at his residence.

He was accused of espionage involving economic secrets,conspiracy and other charges.

Chung, a China native who is a naturalized U.S. citizen,held a secret security clearance when he worked at Rockwell andBoeing on the Space Shuttle program, the officials said.

He retired from the company in 2002, but the next year hereturned to Boeing as a contractor, a position he held untilSeptember 2006.

According to the charges against him, Chung took andconcealed Boeing trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle,the C-17 military transport aircraft and the Delta IV rocket.

A Boeing spokesman, Dan Beck, said his company has beenworking with investigators.

"We do not comment on ongoing government criminalinvestigations and will not comment on the subject matter ofthe case," Beck said. "Boeing is not a target of theinvestigation and has been cooperating with the government."

The other case involved Gregg William Bergersen, a DefenseDepartment official, and Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, both ofNew Orleans.

Working under the direction of an individual identified incourt documents only as "PRC Official A," Kuo cultivatedfriendships with Bergersen and others in the U.S. governmentand obtained from them sensitive classified information forChina.

The criminal conduct spanned a two-year period from January2006 to February 2008, the documents said.

Kuo, a naturalized U.S. citizen and New Orleansbusinessman, gathered the information on behalf of China.Bergersen is a weapons systems policy analyst at the Arlington,Va.-based Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is part ofthe Defense Department.

(Reporting by James Vicini, editing by David Alexander)