The counterespionage operation was authorized by the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. FBI agents snapped photos of one suspected spy with cameras they had hidden in his house and mounted on light poles across the street and in his company's parking lot.
In fall 2005, authorities dismantled what they said was a family spy ring that had been sending U.S. military secrets to China for two decades. Two alleged spies were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport before they could board a midnight flight to Guangzhou with encrypted information about U.S. warships.
The arrests were followed by media reports fueled by government leaks that billed the investigation as a major espionage case.
But what began as a spy thriller has morphed into a mundane prosecution of violations of federal export control laws.
At the center of the spy ring, said the FBI, was Chi Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen and electrical engineer at Anaheim-based Power Paragon Inc., a firm that works mostly on Navy contracts. The FBI monitored him for about 18 months with cameras, wiretaps and microphones hidden in his car and work cubicle.
Mak is charged with conspiracy to violate export laws, exporting or attempting to export military information, acting as an agent of the Chinese government and lying to the FBI. He is the first defendant to be tried. After six weeks of testimony in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, the case was sent to the jury Monday.
Mak's wife, his brother and sister-in-law and their son are still facing charges.
Mak was arrested with great fanfare Oct. 28, 2005.
In early press accounts, anonymous security and intelligence officials said the damage allegedly inflicted to national security by Mak and his relatives could equal the harm done by John A. Walker Jr. and his family of spies, who supplied Navy communication codes to the Soviet Union for 17 years until they were stopped in 1985.
Some counterintelligence officials privately suggested that his access to classified programs could severely compromise the Navy's strategic advantages.
However, when a federal grand jury indicted Mak and two co-defendants in November 2005, they were not charged with spying but only with failing to register as agents of the Chinese government.
It was a bewildering turnaround in a case officials had said would shine a spotlight on two decades of Chinese spying.
