Lin was a Navy lieutenant, he was selected to speak to a group of people who were about to be naturalized as USA citizens along with him at a ceremony in Honolulu.
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Heavily redacted documents accuse Lin with five counts of espionage and attempted espionage, three counts of making false official statements and five counts of communicating defense information to a person not entitled to receive said information. Following his arrest eight months ago, he’s been held at the Navy brig in Chesapeake, Virginia.
The charge sheet alleges that the accused officer passed along the information “with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the advantage of a foreign nation”.
US defense officials first became suspicious of Lin when the Navy commander took personal leave and lied about where he said he was going, which under military law is considered absence without official leave, a defense official told The Daily Beast. The officials were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and requested anonymity.
Lin’s case is now in the hands of U.S. Fleet Forces commander Adm. Phil Davidson, according to USNI News, who will decide if it will proceed to a court martial (a military trial). He and his family left Taiwan for the United States when he was 14, he recalled, and he needed a translator to help him register for school when he arrived.If convicted of the most serious charges, Lin could face the death penalty, according to reports.”I was barely able to spell ‘ABC.’ The only name that I knew back then as an American name was Eddy”, Lin said at the time.
The case became public when Mr Lin faced a preliminary hearing, known as an Article 32 hearing, which began on Friday.
The former US defense official told USNI News that if Taiwan had indeed cultivated Lin as a source of classified information the revelation could damage the relationship between Taipei and Washington.
The list of charges, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press, cites two counts of espionage and three of attempted espionage.
The partly declassified documents detail that Lin was allegedly transporting intelligence data to a foreign power while traveling overseas, afterwards lying about his activities.
Mr Lin enlisted in the Navy in 1999 and was commissioned as a flight officer three years later, according to military records.
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“I always dreamt about coming to America, the “promised land”, he said. His last duty station before being arrested was with Special Projects Patrol Squadron 2 in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, from February 2014 to March 2016. “I grew up believing that all the roads in America lead to Disneyland”.
