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The Spy Who Came In From Abroad

Then-Lt. Edward Lin, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, is shown in 2008 telling newly-sworn citizens how he became an American. Now suspected of espionage, Lin may personify one of the hazards of over-romanticizing immigration. (AP)

National Security: A Taiwanese-born naval officer may become one of the most serious security breaches for the U.S. in many years. With new surveillance technologies threatening the privacy of the innocent, is there any excuse?

You have to go back to the climactic years of the Cold War in the 1980s to find a case as disturbing as what 39-year-old U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin may have done. Suspected of spying for both his native Taiwan and for Communist mainland China, Lin, arrested last year, was with the Navy's Patrol and Reconnaissance Group and in charge of managing the collection of foreign radio transmissions and electronic signals of spy planes, including those of our Beijing adversaries. He was also apparently well-versed in the highly-secret area of U.S. submarine-tracking technologies.

What's more, having worked as a congressional liaison, Lin likely knew through members of Congress and their staffs about the Navy's most technologically-advanced, most highly-classified "black" operations. And there is speculation that he may have provided such secret and damaging information in exchange for sexual favors, as military officials told one news source. Prostitution charges are also in the mix for the active-duty naval officer.

Lin, who enlisted in 1999, was 14 when he departed Taiwan for America. And in a 2008 ceremony for newly-naturalized Americans, Lin waxed romantic about having "always dreamed about coming to America, the 'promised land,' ... I grew up believing that all the roads in America lead to Disneyland."

Although it is over six decades since the U.S. government executed a spy, capital punishment could be brought against an American convicted of espionage.

The Navy did not disclose details, but Lin apparently faces two separate espionage charges, plus three attempts to spy. He is accused of providing secrets "with intent or reason to believe it would be used to the advantage of a foreign nation," plus sexually-oriented offenses and the falsification of government travel documents.

Having served in a naval staff job in Washington in recent years, and studying at Newport, R.I.'s Naval War College about five years ago, suggests that the military trusted Lin, and might even have been grooming him for the highest echelons of rank. After the John Walker affair, in which Navy spies gave the Soviet Union secrets in the 1980s, and the far more recent Bradley Manning incident, providing U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks, why do there remain such big holes in our safeguards to secure sensitive military information?

We have a strange duality going on: Technology allows information to travel faster and to more eyes and ears around the world than ever before. The nation's former secretary of state, who may well be our next president, was apparently criminally careless with secrets that may have ended up in the possession of China, Russia or another potential enemy. Hillary Clinton was found in one email directing an aide to email classified material to her personal account simply because the secure fax was having difficulties.

Law enforcement recently demanded that the privacy features of a personal phone be cracked open in pursuit of justice against Islamist terrorists, provoking worries that the federal government could gain access to information, belonging to innocent citizens, to which it has no right. And surveillance video cameras are in more places today than ever.

Yet we can still have a blockbuster spy case like that of Lin emerge.

Perhaps the bread-and-butter background checks have suffered as the science of surveillance has advanced. Or maybe Lin is a case of political correctness merging with wishful thinking, as perhaps some in the Pentagon thought this Asian immigrant could be fast-tracked to the admiralty.

As these questions are gradually answered, another will arise: How could it happen again?