FBI Arrests NASA Contractor Employee Fleeing to China

A Chinese national Bo Jiang, who has worked as a research at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., was arrested by the FBI Saturday night on a plane bound for China at the Dulles International Airport.

The FBI charges against Jiang states, "he was leaving the United States abruptly to return to China on a one way ticket," reports CBS News. He was caught carrying flash drives, hard drives, a new computer, memory stick and a cellphone. On being questioned by the federal agents on the electronic devices, Jiang failed to disclose any.

It hasn't been disclosed whether the materials retrieved from Jiang contained any confidential information. Jiang is connected to a Chinese Institution that is listed by the White House as an entity of concern, reports Fox News.

He was again charged for lying to the federal investigators and made his first appearance in the federal court in Norfolk on Monday. According to reports, Jiang will remain in custody until a detention hearing Thursday, reports CBS news.

Jiang is being accused of being a 'Chinese Spy' by representative Frank Wolf, the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee charged with NASA's funding.

In a press meet, Wolf addressed this issue as a major issue of cyber espionage and other types of data theft that are carried on by other countries, especially China, reports Nature World News.

Jiang has worked on programs that involved source code for high technology imaging and Wolf suspects that this information would have been passed to the other side and is being used by the Chinese military.

Wolf states that over the last two years, NASA has spent more than $200,000 on Jiang's contract.

The question remains that will China remain guilty of stealing confidential information from NASA?