May 17, 1999
Web posted at: 4:00 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT)

In this story: Sting details RELATED STORIES, SITES

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- An Australian who had access to U.S. military secrets during the six months he worked for his country's intelligence service was charged Monday with trying to sell classified U.S. information.

The Justice Department said Jean-Philippe Wispelaere obtained $120,000 from undercover FBI agents in exchange for hundreds of classified U.S. documents.

Wispelaere, 28, worked for the Australian Defense Intelligence Organization from July 1998 to January 1999.

He was arrested Saturday near Washington and made an initial appearance on Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan in suburban Alexandria.

Wispelaere was advised of the charges and penalties and was held without bond for a detention hearing on Thursday in the same court. He requested that a lawyer be appointed to represent him, according to a spokeswoman for Helen Fahey, U.S. attorney in Alexandria.

If convicted of attempted espionage, Wispelaere could face life in prison, or the death penalty if his case meets certain legal requirements. He also could be fined up to $250,000.

Sting details

As an employee of Australian intelligence, Wispelaere was cleared to see and work with top-secret U.S. information. Australian intelligence received the classified documents under U.S.-Australian defense treaties.

The Justice Department gave this account of the case:

• In January, Wispelaere walked into the embassy of a country, which U.S. officials would not name, in Bangkok, Thailand, and offered to sell classified U.S. documents to that country.

• He identified himself as a U.S. citizen named Jeff Baker, an employee of the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

• Wispelaere showed a secret U.S. document to an official of the unidentified embassy and offered to sell more than 700 documents for $500,000.

• The country involved alerted the United States.

• The FBI had an undercover counterintelligence agent pose as a spy for the country Wispelaere had contacted. Wispelaere corresponded via e-mail with the agent.

• In April, Wispelaere met at a Bangkok hotel with the man he believed to be a spy and, in exchange for $70,000, turned over 127 typed documents covering a period between 1991 and 1998 that U.S. officials said "could cause serious and exceptionally grave damage to U.S. national security."

• Earlier this month, Wispelaere mailed from England another batch of more than 200 classified documents in exchange for $50,000. The documents were sent to the undercover FBI agent at a post office box in Ashburn, Virginia.

• On Saturday, Wispelaere flew from London to Dulles International Airport outside Washington for what he believed was to be a meeting with the spy, but instead he was arrested by FBI agents.

Wispelaere, who was born in Montreal, holds passports from Australia, Canada, and France.

CNN's Terry Friedan contributed to this report.

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