Ex-U.S. defense analyst gets prison term in spy case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former U.S. Defense Department analyst was sentenced on Friday to nearly 5 years in prison for passing classified information about Taiwan to a Chinese government agent, the Justice Department said.

A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, handed down a 57-month prison term for Gregg Bergersen and required that he be placed on three years of supervised release after he served his sentence, the department said.

Bergersen, 51, pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to disclose national defense information to unauthorized persons. Much of the information involved U.S. military sales to China's rival, Taiwan, and communications security issues, according to court documents.

He had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Bergersen, a former weapons system policy analyst with a top-secret clearance, was arrested in February, along with Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, both of New Orleans.

Bergersen has admitted that he gave national defense information to Kuo several times and that Kuo had cultivated a friendship with him that included gifts, cash payments and gambling money for Las Vegas trips.

Bergersen cautioned Kuo, who had contacts with Taiwan's defense ministry, that the information was classified. But he was unaware that Kuo was passing the information along to a Chinese government official, according to court documents.

Both Kuo, a U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, and Kang, a Chinese citizen accused of acting as an intermediary between Kuo and a Chinese official, have also pleaded guilty.

In a conversation with Kuo that was recorded on tape, Bergersen expressed concerns over his fate if he was caught passing the documents. "If it ever fell into the wrong hands ... then I would be fired for sure. I'd go to jail," he said.

After the sentencing, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said in a statement, "Mr. Bergersen predicted he would go to jail if anyone discovered he was unlawfully providing classified information to a foreign government. We did. He is."

(Reporting by James Vicini and Randall Mikkelsen)