A former CIA analyst and prominent foreign affairs commentator in the US has been charged with acting as a foreign agent for South Korea, allegedly disclosing information to the country’s intelligence officers in exchange for luxury goods and high-end Manhattan dinners.
Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, was accused in an indictment unsealed on Tuesday of passing on handwritten notes from an off-record meeting about the government’s North Korea policy with US secretary of state Antony Blinken to her South Korean “handler” in 2022.
She was further accused of accepting a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat, a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag and a $2,950 Bottega Veneta handbag from her handlers, as well as several meals at Michelin-starred restaurants. Terry, a US citizen who was born in South Korea, was also provided with $37,000 in “covert funding” for a public policy programme on Korean affairs that she controlled, prosecutors alleged.