One of the players in the case of Katrina Leung, a Republican who is accused of spying for the Chinese, has pleaded guilty to lesser charge and will receive a light sentence:
In a deal with the government, [former FBI agent] Denise K. Woo, 47, will be sentenced to a year of probation and a $1,000 fine. She had faced five felony counts, including revealing the identity of an FBI informant, telling a friend that he had been wiretapped and lying to the FBI about the leaks…
According to [her attorney, Michael] Camuñez, Woo was an FBI agent working in white-collar investigations when the bureau discovered in 1999 that she was a friend of a target of the Chinese counterintelligence squad.
Woo tried to tell supervisors that her friend, who has not been charged, was innocent, but her “substantial concerns” were ignored, her lawyers said. She told him about the informant only after she determined that he wasn’t really a spy, her lawyers said.
The FBI’s Chinese counterintelligence squad during these years was in disarray. Its lead agent, James J. Smith, retired in 2000.
Three years later, Smith was indicted after his longtime lover, an FBI informant named Katrina Leung, was accused of being a double agent for China.
If you have never heard of Katrina Leung, you may be scratching your head about now, wondering how this Chinese spy case flew under your radar.
The reason you haven’t seen the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Chris Matthews spewing spittle all over their anchor desks over this breach of security by the Red commies is simple: Leung was a Republican.
BuzzFlash published a great overview of the politics of the Leung spy case in 2003. (I’ll add the punchline at the bottom):
Poor Katrina Leung. If only she had given her FBI-earned money to Democrats, her bright smile would be appearing on newspaper front pages day after day, and Republicans would make sure every one in the country knew how to pronounce her name.
She wouldn’t be known as, simply, a “political fundraiser”; she’d have the more dignified title of “major Democratic Party donor and spy.” Republican attack dogs in Congress would already be conducting full-scale investigations. A special prosecutor would be called for. She would be vilified by Rush Limbaugh as a spy for the Democratic Party, which he would accuse of siding with the enemy. Bill O’Reilly would denounce her and the Democrats. Regnery Press would already have two books out railing about how she and the Democrats have committed treason against America. Ann Coulter would be calling for the chairman of the DNC to be put before a firing squad.
But Katrina Leung is unlucky in the celebrity category. She allegedly was a spy who loved the Republican Party too much. In news stories, Leung has been labeled as a “prominent Republican fundraiser” and “Republican activist.” So the Republican scandal attack machine is silent, because she is one of them, after all.
The accused Chinese double agent and her husband decided to give thousands — $27,000 in fact (by one account), since 1992 — to the GOP.
Here’s the punchline: Leung pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return and lying to the FBI in December 2005 and received a sentence of probation.
