The US Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps on Monday arrested former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who served Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, at his home in Silicon Valley, California, owing to allegations that Chu sold nuclear secrets to Chinese government representatives during his tenure.
Chu, 78, is a Chinese American physicist and Nobel laureate. After earning a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkley, in 1976, Chu joined Bell Labs, where he and co-workers developed a revolutionary laser-cooling system, for which he won a Nobel Prize. In 1987, he left Bell Labs to teach physics at Stanford, and served as the chair of its physics department from 1990 to 1993 and from 1999 to 2001. In 2009, Obama nominated, and the Senate unanimously confirmed, Chu as the 12th Secretary of Energy of the United States.
His position carried innumerable responsibilities, including oversight of the nation’s 3,800 viable nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy is solely responsible for the design, construction, maintenance, and disposal of nuclear ordnance. This arrangement is intended to maintain full civilian control over strategic weapons, except as directed by the president for specific military uses. Thus, Chu had unrestricted access to and knowledge of the nuclear triad.
According to a JAG source, Chu is guilty of egregious crimes that had gone unnoticed for 16 years.
Allegedly, he met with Dr. Xiang Shan of the Chinese Atomic Energy Agency on February 12, 2010, and slipped him a thumb drive while they dined at a D.C. restaurant. The drive purportedly held classified maintenance and upgrade schedules for Minuteman III ICBMs in North Dakota and Wyoming. Additionally, it contained top-secret details on how the government transports nuclear weapons between locations. A monumental security breach and national security threat. An act of treason and a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.
How JAG obtained the drive and authority to deal with Chu is a circuitous ordeal.
Per our source, an unknown person left a sealed envelope with Chu’s name printed on the flap at the US Embassy in Beijing, on or about March 3. It’s unclear how many hands touched the envelope before, still sealed, it reached the desk of US Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China David Perdue, and he reportedly unsealed it upon conferring with the State Department. Besides the drive, within the envelope was a letter, written in English, naming Chu as the drive’s source and the recipient of approximately $1.5 m in diamonds.
At that point, our source said, no one at State had the slightest idea who Chu was; a bygone relic of Obama’s presidential line of succession, a historical footnote who had never raised red flags. From there, Chu’s file went to the Justice Department, which, despite confirmation of the drive’s contents, declined to take the case because there was no evidence linking it to Chu. Any one of a dozen people, Justice argued, including Barack Obama, could’ve siphoned classified data and sold or given it to China. As it turned out, Chu’s alleged Chinese contact, Dr. Xiang Shan, died suddenly in 2016—a fatal car wreck. Furthermore, as Chu was supposedly paid in diamonds, there was no money trail to follow.
“Justice did a lot of the legwork,” our JAG source said. “They subpoenaed his financials but didn’t find any funny business—no foreign financial entanglements. No proof of clandestine meetings. No nothing, really. And, you know, Justice had a lot of turmoil going on, with Bondi and all, and no shade at them, but they—well, let’s just say President Trump deferred to us.”
Staff Judge Advocate Major General David Bligh, he added, asked Trump for authorization to use “any means necessary” to expose the truth.
“You’re telling me this guy sold out our nukes to the communists? Do what you have to do. Just get the truth,” POTUS told Gen. Bligh.
At 11:00 p.m. Monday, four JAG agents in a nondescript tan van arrived at Chu’s home with search and arrest warrants. Chu, unwilling to open his front door, cracked open a window and told JAG that Obama had granted him absolute immunity against prosecution for any crimes he may or may not have committed while employed by the United States government.
“Innocent people don’t need immunity. Come out, or we’re coming in,” the lead JAG agent told him.
“You leave. I call a lawyer,” Chu retorted.
Chu had raised the window just high enough to poke his head through, and when he did, two agents grabbed him by the neck and shoulders and yanked him outside and onto the pavement. Once subdued and zip-tied, Chu was thrown into the van’s rear and must have noticed the six five-gallon plastic water bottles beside him.
“Come clean, you Chink bastard, your loyalty has always been to China, hasn’t it? We know what you did?” one of the JAG agents said, as another slipped a porous sack over his head.
“This America. You can’t do this,” Chu screamed.
“We can do whatever we want to enemy combatants,” an agent said, while his partner hoisted a water bottle and began soaking the permeable mask covering Chu’s head.
“Stop, stop!” Chu protested, his head thrashing wildly from side to side. “I tell whatever you want to know.”
He had no stomach for torture. He admitted to selling secrets. The diamonds, he confessed, were still in a safety deposit box at a Virginia bank. It was to be his offspring’s inheritance, he told the agents.
“We recovered the diamonds—proof of guilt. Anyone who says torture’s an unreliable method of obtaining info doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Chu will have a military tribunal at GITMO,” our source said.