Edward Lin espionage case steep fall for Navy lieutenant

The Washington Post

When Edward C. Lin was a Navy lieutenant, he was selected to speak to a group of people who were about to be naturalized as U.S. citizens along with him at a ceremony in Honolulu. He and his family left Taiwan when he was 14, he recalled, and when he arrived in the United States he needed a translator to help him register for school.

“I always dreamt about coming to America, the ‘promised land,’ ” Lin said, according to a Navy account of the December 2008 ceremony. “I grew up believing that all the roads in America lead to Disneyland.”

More than seven years later, Lin faces charges of espionage, attempted espionage and patronizing a prostitute in a rare spying case involving an active duty member of the U.S. military.

It’s a steep fall for a lieutenant commander who has served on some of the Navy’s most advanced maritime surveillance aircraft. An espionage conviction can carry the death penalty, although no American has been executed for spying since 1953, when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death for passing military secrets to the Soviet Union about the atomic bomb program.

A layer of secrecy shrouds Lin’s case: The Navy examined charges against him Friday in a preliminary hearing in Norfolk, Virginia, but provided little advance notice about it. The proceeding, known as an “Article 32” hearing, examines the facts of the case and is open to the public, but Navy officials have declined to comment on it or identify Lin, citing concerns about his privacy, said Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a service spokesman.

A U.S. official confirmed Lin’s identity to The Washington Post on condition of anonymity. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the FBI are investigating whether Lin passed classified information to both China and Taiwan, the official said.

A heavily redacted three-page charge sheet released by the Navy states that the officer faces two specifications of espionage and three of attempted espionage. He is accused of communicating secret information “with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the advantage of a foreign nation,” committing adultery by having sex with a woman who was not his wife, and falsifying federal records about where he traveled abroad.