[Wash Free Beacon] China's Ministry of State Security successfully obtained State Department internal documents from an embassy office manager who was paid in cash and gifts, according to court documents in the case of Candace Claiborne, a spy for China since 2007.Claiborne, 62, a former State Department office manager posted to both Beijing and Shanghai, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a single conspiracy charge of defrauding the government by lying to federal agents about extensive contacts with two MSS intelligence officers.
"Candace Marie Claiborne traded her integrity and non-public information of the United States government in exchange for cash and other gifts from foreign agents she knew worked for the Chinese intelligence service," said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers. "She withheld information and lied repeatedly about these contacts."
The government did not charge Claiborne with espionage and she had claimed in interviews with the FBI that she only passed unclassified State Department information to the MSS.
New details of the spy case were outlined in a statement of facts submitted to federal court in the case as part of her plea bargain.
Claiborne had access to top-secret information and was recruited by the MSS in 2007 and continued to have contacts with one of two MSS handlers until at least 2016.
The case highlighted a decades-long failure on the part of the FBI to aggressively counter Chinese intelligence activities targeting Americans. At the time of her arrest in March 2017, Claiborne was the first American prosecuted for Chinese spying in nearly 10 years.
Since then, federal authorities have charged three other former intelligence officials with espionage-related offenses.