www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/12/1050069122800.html
As a portrait of the suspected Chinese double agent emerged, the people who knew her and had worked beside her for two decades expressed shock. How could the bubbly, 49-year-old, politically connected wife and mother from posh San Marino have had such a secret life - one complete with aliases such as "Parlour Maid", clandestine meetings with FBI agents, secret copying of classified documents and of scandalous sexual liaisons? He also ran into her in Beijing during LA mayor James Hahn's trade and tourism mission last November. Leung was arrested on Wednesday, as was former FBI special agent James J. Smith, and charged with copying national security documents with the intention of harming the US. Smith, charged with letting Leung get away with it, was released on a $US250,000 ($413,000) bond. Court documents allege that Smith recruited Leung as an informant 20 years ago and soon began an affair with her. When Smith visited the posh San Marino home that Leung shared with her husband, Kam, she would allegedly sneak documents out of his briefcase and turn over copies to a Chinese agent. Smith supposedly learned of her duplicity a decade ago, tipped off by another special agent with whom Leung had an affair. Prosecutors said they found FBI documents at Leung's home, including phone directories and a secret 1997 memorandum about Chinese fugitives that contained "national defence information". Authorities suspect that the latest spy trip occurred in November, when she was hooked up with a 10-day Asia junket by Mr Hahn. A covert search of her luggage at Los Angeles International Airport on November 11 revealed six photographs of current and former FBI agents. When she returned on November 25 the photographs weren't in her luggage, court documents say. It's not clear how she used the money or if it is connected with the thousands of dollars that she and her husband contributed over the years to local, state and federal politicians. The Leungs are listed as major donors with the Californian Government. Last year they gave about $US25,000 to state candidates. The description of Leung as a modern-day Mata Hari seems incongruous against the image of the upstanding, civic-minded woman who worked publicly to improve Chinese-US relations through her work as president of the Guangzhou Sister City Association. Leung's lawyers, Janet Levine and John Vandevelde, say she is an innocent woman who endangered her life to help the US. Mr Hahn's staff said Leung had asked to be included in the November trade delegation, which included local business leaders. They refused, but Leung still showed up at events on the Beijing leg of the trip, either uninvited or as a guest of the Chinese officials who feted Mr Hahn's group. When Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji visited Los Angeles in 1999 during an eight-day tour of the US, Leung organised meetings between Chinese and local officials. It is likely that the ties to the People's Republic of China made Leung appear good recruit material to Smith, who worked out of the FBI's Los Angeles office, where he focused on Chinese counterintelligence. There was no sign yesterday of the FBI veteran or his family at their two-storey home in Guildhall Court, in the well-to-do suburb of Westlake Village. Smith, reached by phone, referred all inquiries to his lawyer. Mr Murphy described his client as a patriotic American and a Vietnam War veteran who was duped by Leung.
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