Former CIA officer to plead guilty of spying for China

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a Hong Kong native and naturalized US citizen, was charged last year with spying for the Chinese government is expected to change his plea to guilty when he is facing the judge on Wednesday, NBC News and CNN reported Tuesday.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia announced that a change of plea hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

Lee will appear in the federal court over one count of conspiracy to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government.

“Lee, a former CIA case officer, allegedly conspired to provide information to the Chinese government about the national defense of the United States," assistant Attorney General John Demers said last year. "Lee’s alleged actions betrayed the American people and his former colleagues at the CIA. We will not tolerate such threats to our country or its national security."

Following several years of living in Hong Kong, the veteran of the US Army was arrested in 2012 upon returning to the United States.

“We were wiped out in Russia, and something very similar happened in our China operations,” James M. Olson, a professor at the Bush School at Texas A&M University and former CIA counterintelligence chief, told the New York Times.

At the US Central Intelligence Agency, Lee worked as a case officer mostly focusing on recruiting “clandestine human intelligence sources” in China, according to the indictment.