According to a March 18, 2013 story in the Washington Examiner, the FBI has arrested Bo Jiang, a Chinese national and former employee of a NASA contractor who worked at NASA’s Langley Research Center, as he was apparently trying to flee to China. Jiang worked for the National Institute of Aerospace, a position that gave him virtually unlimited access at the NASA facility and to classified data. Jiang was arrested at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. in possession of undeclared computer medium, including a laptop, a hard drive, and a Sim card. Jiang is under investigation for violations of the Arms Export Act.
Jiang has been the subject of an investigation by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA, chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA funding. According to an article in Aviation Week, numerous career NASA civil servants have complained to Wolf of lax security at space agency facilities such as Langley and the Ames Research Center in California. Wolf claims that Jiang has been allowed to take sensitive information with him back to China before that he was not authorized to remove from Langley.
Of particular concern is high tech imagining technology which Jiang was working on for the space agency that would be of benefit to the Chinese military. Wolf has previously complained that there may be as many as 200 Chinese nationals working at NASA facilities with access to sensitive or classified information.
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