WASHINGTONA former CIA intelligence analyst was charged Saturday with selling U.S. secrets to China since 1952 for more than $140,000, including information on communist Chinese soldiers taken prisoner during the Korean War.

Larry WuTai Chin, 63, was paid by the Chinese for information he obtained over more than 30 years while working for the U.S. consulate in Hong Kongand CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service outside Washington, the FBI charged in a criminal complaint.

An FBI affidavit said Chin underwent indoctrination by Chinese communists while a civilian employee of the U.S. Army in China in 1942 and 1943, and was first paid for information regarding Chinese prisoners of war during the Korean War by the People’s Republic of China Intelligence Service in 1952.

The Chin case was the latest in a series of blows to U.S. intelligence services, and the third spying arrest in two days.

Chin, who retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1981, was arrested at his Alexandria, Va., home Friday night.

Chin appeared in federal court in Alexandria, where U.S. Magistrate W. Curtis Sewell ordered him held without bond on a charge of conspiring to commit espionage.

A tall man with black, slicked back, hair, Chin said only, “I do,” when asked whether he understood the charges against him. Chin carried a trench coat into the courtroom and during the five-minute hearing stood impassively with a slight stoop, clutching a pair of glasses in his left hand.

Sewell told Chin that if convicted he faced a maximum penalty of life in prison and a $250,000 fine. Chin was ordered to appear at 2:p.m. Wednesday for a detention hearing before Sewell.

He worked in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., where foreign government radio services are monitored and transcribed. Chin, who had “top secret” clearance as a CIA employee, “had access to various levels of classified information,” according to the FBI affidavit. The criminal complaint charged Chin had worked for the People’s Republic of China Intelligence Service beginning about 1952 until the present. In its affidavit, the FBI said it had been investigating Chin since December 1983.

Article extracted from this publication >>  November 29, 1985