Chinese woman headed to Va. to face espionage charge

(AP) – A woman accused of passing U.S. military secrets to the Chinese government is heading to Virginia to be arraigned on spying charges.

Chinese national Yu Xin Kang, 33, made a brief appearance Wednesday in a New Orleans courtroom, where a federal magistrate ordered her transferred to Virginia “as soon as possible.”

Kang was arrested Monday on a charge that she served as a conduit for classified defense information that New Orleans businessman Tai Kuo, a 58-year-old native of Taiwan and former restaurant owner in Houma, forwarded to the People’s Republic of China.

A naturalized U.S. citizen, Kuo attended Nicholls State University on a tennis scholarship in the 1970s. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided his home on Wellington Drive in Houma and his Uptown New Orleans residence last week, taking away boxes of suspected evidence.

Kuo is a former owner of Tee Tai’s restaurant at the Southland Mall and the KST restaurant off Louisiana Highway 311.

Prosecutors also accused a Defense Department analyst – Gregg W. Bergersen, 51, of Virginia – of selling Kuo data outlining every planned U.S. sale of weapons or other military technology to Taiwan for the next five years.

Kang waived her right to be represented by an attorney during Wednesday’s hearing before U.S. Magistrate Louis Moore Jr. Through an interpreter, she told Moore she will ask to be represented by a public defender in Virginia.

Virginia Schlueter, a federal public defender in New Orleans, offered to help Kang contact a consul for the People’s Republic of China and to make a telephone call to relatives living abroad. Moore did not object to that arrangement.

“That seems to be the humanitarian thing to do,” he said.

As she was led out of court in handcuffs, Kang waved to a man who later identified himself as Kang’s roommate in New Orleans. He declined to be interviewed.

Kang and Kuo were charged with conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government. Both face maximum sentences of life in prison, if convicted.

Kuo and Bergersen, who worked at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Arlington, Va., made their initial court appearances Monday in Alexandria. Bergersen, who faces up to 10 years in prison, was charged with conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it.

The Tri-Parish Times staff contributed to portions of this story.