Espionage

In a move the government called a warning to disgruntled aerospace workers tempted to peddle U.S. defense secrets, a former Lockheed engineer was indicted Thursday on charges of attempted espionage for allegedly trying to sell secret plans concerning the Sea Shadow, a Navy stealth project. John Douglas Charlton, 62, allegedly tried to sell the plans concerning the ship and other projects to an FBI agent posing as an official of an unnamed Western European government, according to prosecutors.

BEIJING - For a 25-year-old computer whiz enlisted in a People's Liberation Army hacking unit, life was all about low pay, drudgery and social isolation. Nothing at all like the unkempt hackers of popular imagination, the young man wore a military uniform at work in Shanghai. He lived in a dorm where meals often consisted of instant ramen noodles. The workday ran from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., although hackers were often required to work late into the evening. With no money and little free time, he found solace on the Internet.

Finally released after spending half of his life in prison, and still he had to wait. So Christopher Boyce hung around the prison parking lot, rubbernecking, taking in the fresh air around Sheridan, Ore., unsure what to make of freedom. A half hour went by before the big Suburban at last came lumbering up the driveway, carrying his father, a former FBI agent, and his mother, once a Catholic nun.

WASHINGTON - A clandestine Chinese military unit has conducted sophisticated cyber espionage operations against dozens of American and Canadian companies, according to a private report that provides unusual new details about China's involvement in cyber theft of economic and trade secrets. The report by computer security firm Mandiant Corp. in Alexandria, Va., breaks new ground by attributing attacks against 141 companies to a specific 12-story office building in the financial center of Shanghai.

In movies, the CIA has so many prolifically lethal assassins roaming the world that the main problem often seems to be reining them in. But details that spilled out this week about a real CIA assassination program indicate that when the plotting is being done by spies instead of screenwriters, the obstacles are not so easy to surmount. According to current and former U.S.

North Korea's intelligence agency has arrested some of the country's own citizens and a foreigner for spying, the official Korean Central News Agency said. An unnamed foreign spy agency allegedly hired North Koreans who frequently travel abroad to carry out espionage on major military facilities and strategic locations in North Korea, the agency said.

The case of a Chinese businessman charged with illegally shipping missile guidance technology to China's military has intensified concerns about espionage in the Silicon Valley. Qing Chang Jiang is at least the fourth Chinese native indicted since October on charges involving the shipment of equipment or trade secrets to China from this region.

A 23-year-old Marine corporal stationed in Yuma, Ariz., has been arrested on suspicion of attempted espionage, Navy officials said Thursday. The incident involved national defense matters unrelated to the Persian Gulf War, the officials said. Charles Lee Francis Anzalone, a field telephone wire specialist assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, was arrested Feb. 13 by Naval Investigative Service agents after a four-month joint investigation with the FBI.

Georgian authorities detained four Russian military officers on spying charges, and security forces surrounded Russia's military headquarters in Tbilisi to demand that a fifth suspect be handed over, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said. The Russian Foreign Ministry demanded the officers' immediate release and said the allegations were unfounded.

A 43-year-old Dutch woman was sentenced to two years in jail Friday for making copies of secret papers about North Atlantic Treaty Organization tank armor to pass to East Germany. Ellen Tunnissen, a member of a communist fringe party, admitted making the photocopies in the patent office where she worked. She said she wanted to maintain the military balance between East and West. Tunnissen copied about 100 pages of secret Dutch and West German papers over a period of four months.

Sweet Tooth A Novel Ian McEwan Nan A. Talese: 320 pp., $26.95 Ian McEwan's storytelling at its best is a slow burn with a deliciously unexpected grand conflagration - taking the quiet life of a somewhat-flawed protagonist and throwing it into violent disarray with a few bad decisions and sadistic twists. The subject of "Sweet Tooth," McEwan's latest novel, would seem at first to be the perfect vehicle for this kind of storytelling. It is, after all, a '70s-era British spy novel in the mode of John le Carré, a cigarette-hazed world of secret backrooms and Cold War intrigue.

Mixing awkward dating humor, starry-eyed sentiment and James Bond-ian set pieces, "Ek Tha Tiger" is a relentlessly superficial - nigh, ridiculous - entertainment, but manages to protect its story twists the old-fashioned way, through star power, picturesque locations (Ireland, Cuba, Turkey) and pleasurably choreographed action. The lavishly produced Bollywood action love story starts from an admittedly unusual point in the spy-vanquisher genre: career fatigue and romantic longing.

"There was never just one. " That advertising tag line for "The Bourne Legacy"has an almost apologetic ring to it, as if making a Bourne film without Matt Damon - the star of the first three and the epitome of the empathetic killing machine that is Jason Bourne - was a brash and risky move. As it turns out, no one needed to worry, because few films have less to apologize for than this one. Complex, unexpected and dazzling, alternating relentless tension with resonant emotional moments, this is an exemplary espionage thriller that has a strong sense of what it wants to accomplish and how best to get there.

Robert J. Kelleher, who helped lead tennis into the modern open era while serving as president of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn. and who later became a U.S. District Court judge based in Los Angeles, has died. He was 99. Kelleher, who was also captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team in 1962 and 1963, died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home after a long illness, said his lifelong friend, former Mayor Richard Riordan. Before 1968, only players classified as amateurs were allowed to enter the major international tennis tournaments.

MOSCOW - Computer virus experts at Kaspersky Lab, acting with the blessing of the United Nations, were searching for a villain dubbed the Wiper when they came across a much more menacing suspect requiring a new moniker: Flame. The malicious program left experts all but certain that a government sponsor intent on cyber warfare and intelligence gathering was behind some suspicious activity, in part because of the likely cost of such a sophisticated endeavor. "We entered a dark room in search of something and came out with something else in our hands, something different, something huge and sinister," Vitaly Kamlyuk, a senior antivirus expert at Kaspersky Lab, said in an interview Wednesday.

WASHINGTON - Concerned about possible cyber spying, U.S. national security officials are debating whether to take the unprecedented step of recommending that a Chinese government-owned mobile phone giant be denied a license to offer international service to American customers. China Mobile, the world's largest mobile provider, applied in October for a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide service between China and the United States and to build facilities on American soil.

An anti-espionage poster by the West German counterintelligence service that depicts a pretty blonde smiling seductively over her shoulder has sparked complaints of sexual discrimination. The public service union said it demanded the withdrawal of the poster after receiving a complaint from a female customs officer who was offended by the depiction of woman as seductress.

A Navy petty officer was sentenced to 12 years in prison for stealing a military laptop and peddling its contents to a foreign government. Petty Officer 3rd Class Ariel J. Weinmann, 22, admitted guilt to espionage, desertion, larceny and destruction of government property before a military judge at Norfolk Naval Station this week. Officials had accused Weinmann of passing classified information to representatives of undisclosed foreign governments in Austria and in Mexico.

The question at the heart of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is simplicity itself: Is there a Soviet secret agent at the very highest echelons of British intelligence? Getting to the answer, however, couldn't be more deliciously, thrillingly, brilliantly complex. Starring a surprising Gary Oldman and masterfully directed by Tomas Alfredson, "Tinker Tailor" comes by that complexity honestly, courtesy of the subtle, allusive 1974 John le Carré novel set in a merciless espionage world where trust is an illusion and nothing is remotely what it seems.

There's some grim diversion in watching Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro kill, kill, kill often while avoiding being killed, killed, killed in the fact-based but heavily hog-washed espionage thriller "Killer Elite. " But the script is a mess. It's an object lesson in taking a nonfiction book ("The Feather Men," about a cadre of ex-British Special Air Service operatives) and making a hash of it. The higher the body count, the lower the human stakes. When Statham utters "I'm done with killing," that patented Statham just getting started, mate glare suggests otherwise.