Katrina Leung

Leung emigrated to the United States in 1970 using a fake Republic of China passport stating that she was born on May 1, 1954, in Guangzhou.

Leung enrolled at Washington Irving High School in New York City, New York and graduated in June 1972.

She became a permanent resident alien on August 7, 1972.

Leung attended and earned an undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1976.

She then went on to earn a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago.

It was somewhere during this time as a student that Leung was contacted by the FBI for information on some of her acquaintances.

She was appointed by philanthropist Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson as President of the Los Angeles-Guangzhou Sister City Committee and raised funds for the Republican Party.

In 1980, Leung moved to Los Angeles and occupied an apartment building which contained numerous tenants that were subjects of other FBI investigations.

She developed a close relationship with a pro-PRC activist who was under FBI investigation for illegally transferring technology from the U.S. to the PRC.

Leung became the general manager of an import-export company which in late 1980 had become the subject of an FBI investigation dealing with the illegal transfer of technology from the U.S. to the PRC.

On February 10, 1981, the FBI launched an investigation into Leung, believing that she was engaging in clandestine intelligence-gathering on behalf of the PRC.

Leung eventually left her job at the import-export company, closing the FBI investigation on her.

The PRC activist was arrested in China, closing that investigation as well.

In 1982, FBI Special Agent James J. Smith re-opened the FBI investigation into Leung hoping that she could provide him with additional information on the PRC activist as well as other miscellaneous information.

Smith was so impressed with the information Leung provided that he converted her into an FBI asset codename "Parlor Maid" in December of the same year.

On March 16, 1984, Leung became a U.S. citizen with the help of Smith.

The FBI had developed a plan for her to be recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security as an asset working as a double agent for the United States.

In June 1984, Leung was recruited by the MSS believing that she was a low-level source of information at the FBI's Los Angeles office.

Leung began receiving money from the FBI to pay for her expenses (the majority going towards flights to and from China).

She passed two polygraph examinations: one in September 1984 and one in June 1986.

Between 1985 and 1990, Leung's profile within the West Coast Chinese community and the FBI had risen significantly.

Her connections within the community became so extensive that she entertained Chinese diplomatic officials and organized high-profile banquets for visiting PRC officials from the mainland.

During this time, she met and charmed President of China Yang Shangkun who eventually became her patron.

In June 1990, the FBI learned that Leung had revealed to MSS officials the existence and location of a classified operation as well as classified details of the FBI's counterintelligence program.

The FBI headquarters chief questioned Leung's handler Smith, who denied the allegations and successfully convinced his superior that she would never do such a thing without his authorization.

Smith privately confronted Leung on May 31, 1991, about the unauthorized disclosure of information.

In response, she told him that her Chinese handler "Mao" had discovered her double-agent identity and had coerced her into giving additional information.

In April 1991, the FBI obtained an audio recording of a conversation between a woman identifying herself as "Luo" and a known PRC intelligence official identifying himself as "Mao".

Special Agent William Cleveland, Jr. was brought in to listen to the tape and immediately recognized the woman's voice as Leung's. Leung had, among other things, detailed without authorization the itinerary of a recent trip that Cleveland had taken with the State Department to the PRC.

Cleveland immediately notified Smith of the breach and in May of the same year, the two traveled to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. for a high-level meeting concerning herself.

In addition to the analysts recommendations, Smith defended the suspicious activities of Leung and managed to convince his superiors that terminating her as an asset was not the best course of action.

The FBI accepted his recommendation based on his extensive experience handling Leung, as well as his experience in the FBI and the analyst's recommendation.

Federal prosecutors alleged Leung engaged in a 20-year extra-marital affair with Smith.

As a sign of her growing influence in the PRC, she advised the Chinese government in 1998 on a new location for their Los Angeles consulate.

Up to this point, Leung's reports were well received by the Central Intelligence Agency, and much of her reporting during this time had also been verified by a Chinese defector.

A sign of her growing influence within the FBI could be seen when she was sent to China shortly after the Tiananmen Square Massacre to report on the country's political climate during a time when the country's information flow had virtually ceased.

Katrina Leung (born 1954) is a former high value Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant and Ministry of State Security (MSS) agent who, on April 9, 2003, was indicted by the United States Department of Justice for "Unauthorized copying of national defense information with intent to injure or benefit a foreign nation".

Her case was later dismissed on January 6, 2005, because of prosecutorial misconduct, but an appeal by the U.S. Attorney resulted in a plea bargain of guilty to lesser charges on December 16, 2005.

She was alleged by the United States government to have contaminated twenty years of intelligence relating to the People's Republic of China, as well as critically compromising the FBI's Chinese counterintelligence program.

She was known by a variety of aliases, including Chan Man Ying, Chen Wen Ying, Luo Zhongshan, Parlor Maid.