Spy Sex Case Is Tale of Lust and Incaution

A former Taiwanese intelligence agent suspected of seducing a top American diplomat has broken her silence about the spy scandal that drove her from America and tarnished the career of a veteran State Department official.Isabelle Cheng left her post at Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington abruptly in 2004, soon after FBI agents confronted her over her contacts with a veteran State Department official, Donald Keyser.In a tearful interview Saturday, Ms. Cheng, 37, defended her alleged paramour. “He’s a very patriotic person and now his pension is all gone. The outside world has trouble understanding his situation and where he’s coming from,” Ms. Cheng told a Chinese-language newspaper, China Times.Keyser, who served as the deputy chief of the State Department’s East Asia bureau, pleaded guilty to three felony charges relating to storing thousands of classified documents at his home and making false statements to government officials about his relationship with Ms. Cheng. Prosecutors publicly discussed filing espionage charges in the case, but never did so. The ex-official was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison and is scheduled to be released in January.Prosecution filings in the case, first reported by The New York Sun last year, asserted that Keyser, now 64, became infatuated with Ms. Cheng and regularly exchanged sensitive intelligence information with her, such as accounts of a conversation with President Jiang of China in 2002. “By now you know that, as we say, ‘Your wish is my command,'” Keyser wrote to Ms. Cheng in an e-mail, according to prosecutors.FBI agents said they later observed the pair in a parked automobile in what appeared to be an intimate act. “The food was good. The wine was good. The champagne was good, and you were good,” Keyser told Ms. Cheng in a phone call wiretapped by American agents, prosecutors said.While Keyser acknowledged failing to report an unauthorized trip to Taiwan and some dealings with Ms. Cheng, he contended that all the information he shared was cleared for release to Taiwan.While Ms. Cheng claimed at least twice in the interview that Keyser was stripped of his pension, his plea agreement did not call for that.“So far as I know, he did not lose his pension,” Keyser’s attorney, Robert Litt, told the Sun yesterday.After Keyser’s arrest, Ms. Cheng began pursuing a doctorate and living in a city outside Taiwan, China Times reported. The newspaper did not name the city, but said the paper’s reporter tracked down the former agent as she visited Taipei to take an examination for those seeking government funding to pursue studies abroad. Cornered during a break in the test, the alleged seductress had no makeup on, was lugging a book bag, and carried an outdated mobile phone, the Times said.Ms. Cheng told the paper she was trying to start “a second life.” She declined to answer many questions about the alleged spy case, citing a confidentiality agreement she signed with her former employer, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, the Times said.Some in Taiwan have described Ms. Cheng’s story as a modern-day version of the plot to “Lust, Caution,” a recently released film about a young Chinese woman sent to seduce a man collaborating with the Japanese during World War II.Asked about the film, which received an NC–17 rating in America, Ms. Cheng told the Times: “I’ve seen it. Nowadays, nobody gathers intelligence like this.” She implied that whatever relationship she had with Keyser, it was not intended to elicit information.One notable difference between the film and the modern-day affair is that the woman in “Lust, Caution” was instructed to kill her quarry. Nothing of the sort enters into the story of Ms. Cheng’s relationship with Keyser.In the interview, Ms. Cheng, apparently eager to dispel the steamy speculation, referred to Keyser as “a really good old man who now is stuck in jail.”

Spy Sex Case Is Tale of Lust and Incaution

Spy Sex Case Is Tale of Lust and Incaution

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