WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former Central Intelligence Agency officer was arrested at an U.S. airport on Monday night in connection with charges that he illegally retained highly classified information, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday. US authorities have arrested a former CIA agent, Hong Kong resident Jerry Chun Shing Lee, after discovering he had an unauthorised notebook that contained the identities of undercover US spies. In a complaint filed in a New York federal court, the justice department said that in 2012, FBI agents with court-ordered warrants secretly searched Lee’s luggage while he was travelling in the US and found he was carrying top secret materials he was not authorised to have. Specifically, agents found two small books containing handwritten notes that contained classified information, including but not limited to, true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.”

According to NBC News, the FBI lured Lee back to the United States in 2012 with a phony job offer and then searched his luggage and hotel rooms. On Tuesday, the former CIA employee was "charged with unlawful retention of national defense information" by the Eastern District Court of New York. Lee, who lives in Hong Kong, made a cameo appearance in federal court Tuesday and remained in custody as he was shipped off to Virginia to face charges of unlawful retention of national defense information. US federal authorities accuse Lee of violating the terms of his top secret clearance and conditions of non-disclosure agreements he had signed with the agency he worked for from 1994 to 2007. Court documents reveal that after settling in Hong Kong with his family after leaving the agency, the accused returned to the US in August 2012 to live in northern Virginia. The FBI said the searches uncovered Lee was in unauthorized possession of materials relating to the national defense, including classified information, secret information Top Secret information that “could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States”:

A review of photographs taken during the August 13, 2012, search in Hawaii and the August 15, 2012, search in Virginia revealed that, during his stay in both hotels, LEE possessed two small books (the “books”) best described as a datebook and an address book. Additionally, Lee was interviewed by FBI agents on five separate occasions in or about May and June 2013 and never suggested that he possessed these books.”

3. He met with former CIA colleagues and other government employees and remained in contact with those individuals while he was living in the U.S.

“Neither during these meetings nor other opportunities while in northern Virginia, did Lee ever

 surrender or return the books to appropriate U.S. Government officials, as required under the

 NDAs he signed,” the FBI said in court documents.
Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officer, is arrested at New York's Kennedy International Airport and held without bail by the Brooklyn federal court. He faces charges that, after he left his job, he kept notebooks filled with classified information about undercover agents and assets which he allegedly used to help China identify informants and dismantle a U.S. spying network.