A BYU graduate will take center stage on Sunday's edition of the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” but it won't be the kind of exposure anyone at the Provo school will be touting.
U.S. national security and counterintelligence officials tell CNN anchor/”60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper how they caught Kevin Mallory in the act of betraying his country to the Chinese.
The report includes footage caught by a FedEx store security camera of Mallory handing classified material to a clerk to be scanned onto an SD card so he could transmit the information to the Chinese in return for payment.
“This is what espionage looks like,” Cooper says.
“So this is that rare moment, right, in an investigation and in an espionage case where we actually have video footage of the individual preparing the classified material for transmission to the foreign intelligence service,” says FBI supervisory special agent Ryan Gaynor.
The report airs Sunday at 6 p.m. on CBS/Channel 2.
Mallory, who graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree political science in 1981, is an Army veteran and worked as a special agent for the Diplomatic Security Service at the U.S. State Department from 1987 to 1990. From 1990-2012, he worked for a variety of government agencies and defense contractors, and held Top Secret security clearance until he left government service in 2012.
Mallory, who living in Virginia when he was arrested, was convicted in June of spying for China and is awaiting sentencing.
Cooper also interviews John Demers, who leads the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and Bill Evanina, the country’s top counterintelligence official, about China’s spying efforts in the United States, which they describe as vast.
DOJ prosecutor Jennifer Gellie talks about the Mallory case for the first time outside of court, according to CBS, and shows Cooper how Mallory was caught on tape and then lied about it to the CIA and FBI. She and Gaynor say that Mallory sent national security secrets — including information that could have revealed the identity of American operatives in China — to a Chinese spy on a covert communication device.
“These were documents that specifically talked about human beings whose lives could be in danger,” says Gellie.
The Mallory case is part of a larger report on Chinese spying in the United States.
“When it comes to espionage against the United States, China is the greatest threat, and it’s not even close compared to Russia or Iran,” Evanina tells Cooper.
