US drops case against ex-CIA analyst accused of working for South Korea in exchange for luxury gifts

The US Justice Department has agreed to drop criminal charges against former CIA analyst Sue Mi Terry, who was accused of secretly working for South Korea’s government in exchange for luxury goods and other gifts.Under an agreement filed in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, prosecutors will suspend the case for 12 months. If Terry follows the conditions set out in the deal, the charges against her will be dropped at the end of that period.The agreement comes weeks before the case was due to go to trial, according to The New York Times. It means Terry will not face an immediate criminal conviction or prison sentence.Terry, a former White House National Security Council official, was indicted in July 2024. Prosecutors accused her of accepting gifts from South Korean officials in return for promoting Seoul’s policy positions, sharing information that was not publicly available and helping South Korean officials gain access to their American counterparts.The allegations relate to activities that prosecutors said began in 2013, two years after Terry left US government service, and continued for about a decade. During that period, she worked as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she focused on East Asia and the Korean Peninsula.The indictment accused Terry of failing to register as a foreign agent under US law and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people carrying out certain political activities on behalf of foreign governments to disclose that work.The Justice Department did not explain why it had agreed to suspend the case. The four-page notice said prosecutors had determined that “the interests of the United States and your own interest will be best served by deferring prosecution”.Under the deal, Terry must follow several conditions, including restrictions on her travel and contact with the South Korean government. She has not admitted to wrongdoing as part of the agreement, although she acknowledged helping South Korean intelligence officers in several ways.One example involved notes she had prepared for a 2022 meeting between senior US State Department officials and experts on Korean policy. Under the agreement, she acknowledged sharing those notes with South Korean intelligence officers.Terry has denied the allegations. Her lawyer, Lee Wolosky, previously argued that she was being prosecuted for work carried out as an independent academic and news analyst. He also said she had been a strong critic of the South Korean government.“We have consistently maintained that her interactions with South Korean officials were conducted in furtherance of US interests and her work as a leading American specialist on North Korea and East Asia,” Wolosky said in a statement about the agreement, as quoted by The New York Times.Terry was placed on unpaid leave by the Council on Foreign Relations after her indictment.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.