By Brad Friedman on 12/14/2004, 1:59pm PT  

· Man Referred to in Curtis Affidavit, Testimony Admits Guilt in Plea Deal on Single Count!
· Sent Such Parts out of Country 'ten to twenty times' in Past Year!
· COURT DOCS: Hai Lin "Henry" Nee Free To Go After Sentencing of 3-Year Probation, $100 Fine!

Court Documents obtained exclusively last Friday by The BRAD BLOG from the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, Orland0 Division, show that the Tiawanese born national referred to in the Clint Curtis' affidavit released exclusively here last Monday, and again in Curtis' sworn testimony before House Judiciary Committee members yesterday, was charged by a grand jury with three counts related to the illegal exportation of computer chips made by a Lockheed-Martin subsidiary and intended for delivery to the People's Republic of China.

As mentioned in Curtis' affidavit, and reported by the Orlando Sentinel in March of this year (link now archived, requires $ to view), Hai Lin Nee (a/k/a Henry Nee), an employee with whom Curtis claims to have worked at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), was taken into custody last March by the U.S. International and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency for attempting to ship "Missile Components to China". The "low-frequency amplifier" chips are said in the article --- and confirmed by a statement on the the official ICE website --- to be used for "radar-frequency guidance systems for fourth-generation Hellfire anti-tank missiles".

According the official indictment which The BRAD BLOG has reviewed after receiving it from the Circuit Court in Orlando, Nee was charged in the case of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. TING-IH HSU, HAI LIN NEE a/k/a Henry Nee on March 10, 2004 on three counts. The official case number is: 6:04-cr-38-Orl-31DAB.

Nee plead guilty, according to a plea agreement signed on July 15, 2004 and obtained by The BRAD BLOG and was then sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presenell on October 7, 2004 on Count Three of the indictment concerning False Statements made to Customs Officials and on official documents.

The Nee sentencing documents [3 pages total] are available online here, as generously hosted by RAW STORY. (The indictment and plea agreement docs total about 23 pages, so we are not yet posting those until we are able to secure sufficient bandwidth. Those documents, however, are public records available from the U.S. Circuit Court in Orlando).

The first two charges related to "export[ing] protected electronic components to the Peoples Republic of China without...Authorization" were subsequently dropped as part of the Nee plea agreement.

According to that agreement:

Count Three carries a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, a term of supervised release of not more than 3 years, and a special assessment of $100 per felony count thereafter.

The official sentencing documents, however, reveal that Judge Presnell sentenced Nee to be released under a 3-year supervised probation and a $100 fine to be paid immediately. Case closed.

The plea agreement also quotes Nee as admitting "that business has been slow in the last year and that he had only sent parts out of the country ten to twenty times..." [emphasis added]

The Sentinel's Henry Pierson Curtis reported on March 17, 2004 that "A 4-year-old sting operation over a shipment of Hellfire missle parts to China finally will face its day in court."

That report goes on to explain that...

The chips are part of a radar-frequency guidance system for fourth-generation Hellfire anti-tank missiles aboard U.S. Army Apache attack and Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopters, according to the missiles' published specifications.

The radar guidance system works in bad weather conditions better than an earlier laser-guided version, according to an evaluation by the FAS Military Analysis Network.

The story of the arrest was also reported by The Associated Press at the time.

A page at the official ICE website (Ed Note: Page was archived off of the ICE site, here is a version of the page we saved before it was removed) confirms the reports from the Sentinel and AP.

Here's the current ICE description of this case as copied today (12/14/04) from their official website:

[Ed. Note: The U.S. Immigration and Customs website was “reorganized” in April 2006, and all ICE information has been moved to its own dedicated website. Fortunately, we saved a copy of the page before it was removed. The ICE press release on this incident can still be found here at their website]

The chips in question, according to court documents, are "Lockheed-Martin-Sanders Model SGLN-07004-CC Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuit chips".

Curtis has accused YEI of knowingly employing Nee as an illegal-alien and that Nee and YEI CEO Mrs. Li Woan Yang, his employer at YEI, had conspired in other questionable activities, including the insertion of "wiretapping modules" into sofware code and written by YEI for contractors such as NASA and the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) where Curtis later worked.

The BRAD BLOG has reviewed correspondence (both Email and snail mail) between Curtis and at least three different NASA agents and inspectors dating as far back as February of 2002. The correspondence discusses the specifics of these matters concerning YEI and Nee in great detail.

As well, Curtis met last week in D.C. with Senator Bill Nelson's office to discuss the NASA information. Nelson oversees NASA operations on Capitol Hill.

According to Curtis' affidavit:

13. Hai Lin Nee, the Quality Control manager at YEI, also worked with a company called Azure Systems of Orlando. While at YEI, Mrs. Yang provided Mr. Nee with many gigabytes of downloaded information from NASA projects that YEI was working on, including the Maximo facilities repair maintenance database, which he then took from the premises of YEI. This happened on several occasions. Also, I saw Mrs. Yang send a great deal of internal information to her brother in Communist China, who, she had informed me, had been deported for spying. Wayne Leaders, an investigator for NASA, later confirmed this deportation of Mrs. Yang's brother. Mr. Leaders was responding to one of my multiple attempts to contact NASA on the YEI matter. I had also made a report to Mr. Leaders regarding a program that I had written for FDOT that allowed for outside contractors to submit documents to FDOT. Between the time I wrote the program and the phase of Mr. Nee's quality assurance, I discovered that Mr. Nee had inserted a wiretapping module into the software which copied all the information bound to FDOT and sent it via the Internet to YEI. I have reason to believe that he also did this with a similar program I had written for NASA.

14. In late 2003 or early 2004, I provided information to Detective Rob Pace at the Leon County Terrorist Task Force concerning Hai Lin Nee...

While we are aware that there have been some who have charged that Nee never actually worked for YEI during the period specified by Curtis, The BRAD BLOG has obtained numerous copies of weekly time reports submitted by YEI to the FDOT noting the work done by Nee for "EDMS Custom Code Development".

The weekly time reports with YEI logo are signed by "Henry Nee" and the signatures would seem to match the one for "Hai Lin Nee" on the plea agreement obtained from the U.S. District Court in Orlando.

As well, Curtis has supplied The BRAD BLOG with a number of email notes apparently from several different YEI employees which seem to confirm that Nee was in fact working for YEI and at least one of the employees expressed the he believed Nee to be an illegal alien. Curtis has told The BRAD BLOG that he believes Nee was likely being "paid under the table" for his work at YEI.

...AND STILL DEVELOPING...

[Originally published at BRAD BLOG TOO while The BRAD BLOG server was down.
Comments left by readers on the original article can be read at the above link.]
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Article Categories: Tom Feeney, Clint Curtis