The deep tire treads are still visible from the lawn where a federal armored truck rammed a hole into the Hillsboro, Oregon, house of a former U.S. Army soldier accused of selling military secrets to China.
The pre-dawn strike last month shook the tree-lined neighborhood as agents threw flash-bang grenades into the home and knocked out the front window.
FBI agents arrested Ruoyo Duan, who had been asleep inside with his wife and 5-year-old daughter. They then searched the house for nearly six hours, a neighbor said.
Duan’s attorney argued Friday for his release to a halfway house with strict conditions, decrying the “overzealous” government tactics and “sensational” spying allegations while describing Duan as “less spy and more unsophisticated dupe.”
Duan was “targeted by sophisticated Chinese intelligence officers, posing as private contractors or headhunters looking to hire American personnel as security consultants,” said defense lawyer Conor Huseby.
The information Duan passed along was unclassified, some of it even publicly available and often years out of date —“none of which pose a legitimate threat to public safety,” Huseby said.
He urged the court to remember that his client is innocent until proven guilty.
“It’s easy in a case like this … to lose sight of just how strong that presumption is,” he said. “It’s very important that our society continue to enforce that guarantee, that presumption of innocence, especially in times like this in which the government is sort of systematically dismantling civil rights, beginning with the civil rights of immigrants.”
But a federal prosecutor said Duan conscripted two friends on active duty at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state — Capt. Li Tian and Sgt. Jian Zhao — to steal national security information and then sell it to Chinese nationals. Duan joined the Army in 2014 and was medically discharged three years later after an on-duty injury and has been collecting Veterans Affairs disability benefits since.
Duan acted as a middleman, identifying those who had information of value, making introductions, brokering transactions between the soldiers and Chinese nationals and transferring money between active soldiers and Chinese conspirators, Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Barrow said.
“The charged offenses are undeniably serious,” Barrow said, adding that it doesn’t matter if any of the information shared was also publicly available. “Duan didn’t get it through the internet but through U.S. Army secured systems. What may or may not be on the internet, is not of import.”
Over several years, Duan and his helpers gathered material on Army vehicles and artillery systems and stole military computers and classified military hard drives that co-conspirators called “brigade level” and “very sensitive,” Barrow said.
Duan should stay in custody because he might have other military secrets hidden somewhere and could contact Chinese intelligence agents to help him leave the United States with a new passport, Barrow said.
“It is not at all far-fetched that that could happen,” he said.
Duan, 39, has pleaded not guilty to bribing a public official, receiving stolen government property and conspiring to gather, transmit and lose national defense information.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie F. Beckerman ordered Duan to remain in custody at the federal detention center in Sheridan pending trial, finding he remains a danger to the community and is a risk to flee.
In the age of encrypted communications and inexpensive electronic devices, it’s extremely difficult for pretrial officers to monitor a defendant’s communications, Beckerman said. She also noted that Duan has ties to China, including his parents and alleged unidentified conspirators, and at one point voiced a desire to move to Japan.
During the search of Duan’s home on March 6, investigators found numerous unsecured guns and the state Department of Human Services took his daughter into temporary custody. The girl was expected to be returned to her mother Friday afternoon after Duan’s wife removed the guns and gave them to a licensed firearms dealer to sell, according to Huseby.
Hours earlier in a courtroom next-door, the defense lawyer for Tian, one of Duan’s co-defendants, unsuccessfully urged U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut to release him.
Immergut also found prosecutors had shown that Tian, 42, is a danger to the community and poses a flight risk.
“The defendant allegedly showed a willingness to provide information to a foreign government that is hostile to the interests of the United States and to do so for money,” even if it was for the small amount of $500, Immergut said.
While no direct evidence exists that he shared classified information, Tian had access to confidential military material and took a camera into a secure area, putting national security at risk, Immergut said.
Defense lawyer Michelle Holman Kerin also argued that the government had overstated Tian’s danger and had mischaracterized Tian’s relationship with Duan.
She said Tian sent five emails from October 2022 to February 2023 to Duan with military information that could be publicly accessed elsewhere or was extremely outdated, including some material three decades old.
Tian was friends with Duan and believed Duan was writing an article on military issues and asked him for information to help that endeavor, Kerin said.
Tian also was approached by a friend of Duan’s, a Chinese national identified in the indictment as an unknown conspirator, who asked him for “less open source” material, but Tian refused, Kerin said.
“He shut it down,” she said.
“The idea that this defendant is so dangerous he cannot be released … is just simply not accurate,” Kerin said. “These are not documents that impaired national security.”
She said Tian, his wife and two children are U.S. citizens and Tian has no prior criminal record and could be monitored with an ankle bracelet. As she spoke of his family, Tian rubbed tears from his eyes.
Tian has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to obtain and transmit national defense information, bribery of a public official and theft of government property.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine A. Rykken said Tian was caught on surveillance video taking cellphone photos of a computer screen in a classified space at Lewis-McChord and “walking out with a secret document” that investigators haven’t yet found or know what it was.
Investigators found a computer folder called “Treasure Trove of Knowledge” in Duan’s home that contained 27 zip files Tian had sent to Duan, Rykken said. They included 153 files holding military “controlled unclassified information” and 83 files with warnings that the information was not for public release, she said.
Tian also participated in a podcast broadcast in China while wearing a mask and sunglasses and speaking in an altered voice, according to Rykken. He discussed a “Chinese missile project” and life as a U.S. Army soldier in Japan, she said.
When asked by FBI investigators after his arrest why he wore a disguise, Tian replied: To prevent “something like this,” according to Rykken.
The two judges’ rulings to keep Duan and Tian in custody pending trial were made despite recommendations from federal pretrial supervision officers that they each be released with conditions, including computer monitoring.
The third accused soldier, Zhao, 36, remains in federal custody in Seattle, accused of selling an encrypted military hard drive and 20 classified hard drives to people acting for Chinese interests, according to prosecutors.
He has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to obtain and transmit national defense information, bribery of a public official and theft of government property.
Zhao’s case is expected to be consolidated into the Oregon prosecution going forward, Rykken said.
Zhao and Tian, as active duty soldiers, continue to receive their salaries and are on leave from the military, according to Kerin. The Army could move to dishonorably discharge them through a court martial or wait to determine if they’re convicted of the federal charges, she said.
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