Can a police officer accused of spying for China ever clear his name?

The hardest: How could he — a naturalised U.S. citizen, New York City police officer and Marine Corps veteran — have been jailed for months over what he said were misunderstood phone calls and classified evidence that not even his lawyer could see in full?

When federal authorities arrested Angwang in September 2020, they accused him of reporting on other Tibetans to a handler at the Chinese consulate in New York. They said he had lied on security forms and questioned whether his case for citizenship had been predicated on false claims.

New York Police Officer Baimadajie Angwang at his lawyer’s office in Garden City, N.Y. on Jan. 31, 2023. Angwang learned he was an object of suspicion only when federal agents raided his home.(Johnny Milano/The New York Times)

A federal judge dismissed the charges last month at the government’s request. Pressed for clarity, prosecutors told the court that they had made a “holistic” assessment of the evidence and that the charges should be dropped “in the interests of justice.”

But national security cases leave stubborn stains on a good name. Prosecutors sometimes drop them to avoid disclosing evidence to a jury or the defendant, or because of concerns that state secrets might spill in a courtroom.

That leaves Angwang, 36, living under a cloud of unresolvable doubt. He has been on paid administrative leave from the police department for two years and has not been allowed to rejoin.

New York Police Officer Baimadajie Angwang, left, and his defense attorney, John Carman, exit the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York after charges against Angling were dismissed, in Brooklyn on Jan. 19, 2023. Angwang learned he was an object of suspicion only when federal agents raided his home. (Bing Guan/The New York Times)

The case’s unraveling demonstrates the complexity of investigations based on classified intelligence, the broad powers of the federal government to sweep up communications and the challenges of prosecuting, let alone defending, those cases in court.

Angwang said he does not know why authorities began investigating him about five years ago. He believes that politics might be part of it: The Trump administration was on high alert for security risks from China, and the arrest of a New York police officer on spying charges made a splash.

He is rankled by the extreme secrecy with which the government held its classified evidence, describing it as an “abuse of power.”

His lawyer, John Carman, said that what little evidence he was allowed to review was condensed and redacted. He was not allowed to share it with his client.

“It creates a cloak of mystery,” Carman said. “You only have to assume that this guy did stuff that was bad for the country, which is an inference that’s easily drawn but in this case definitely should not have been drawn.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn did not comment.

In court filings as recently as March, prosecutors disputed Carman’s characterisation of the charges and evidence and said the case should be resolved by a jury.

Angwang did not know he was under investigation until shortly after 9 a.m. on Sept. 21, 2020. As he was getting ready to drive to work from his home in Williston Park, on Long Island, his 2-year-old daughter began to cry. She wasn’t usually fussy, so he held her. Don’t cry, he told her. Be good.

His wife stood with the toddler at the door as Angwang walked to his car. In an instant, at least four modified pickup trucks pulled up, and a half-dozen agents in tactical gear poured out. With rifles inches from his face, they pushed him against his car, handcuffed him and led him away.

It was hours before Angwang learned what he was being charged with, and at first, he was disoriented. English is his third language, and he sometimes falters. What did it mean to be an agent?

Angwang was born in 1986 in a village in Tibet, an autonomous region of southwest China. Many Tibetans say the region was illegally incorporated into China in 1951 and have pressed for independence. But Beijing considers Tibet part of its historic empire and sees the movement as a threat.

He traveled to the United States on a cultural exchange visa as a teenager. When he returned, he was detained and beaten by Chinese authorities, who were suspicious of his contact with an uncle who had fled the country, Carman wrote in a court filing. Angwang returned to the United States at 17, sought asylum and ultimately secured citizenship.
In 2009, he joined the Marines, later extending his commitment to serve seven months in Afghanistan. After an honourable discharge in 2014, he joined the Army Reserve, obtaining “secret” level security clearance.

He joined the New York Police Department in 2016, inspired, he said, by the sharp uniforms and the kindness of street cops he relied on when he first arrived. He married and settled in suburban Long Island, a short drive to his job as a patrol officer and, later, community affairs liaison in Queens’s 111th Precinct, where many Tibetans live.

But trying to secure a visa to visit Tibet, where his parents remain, was onerous.

Success depended on the goodwill of one consular official in New York. Angwang described him as an ethnic Tibetan who was the initial gatekeeper, a low-level official with outsize responsibility.

Prosecutors, however, said this man — identified only as PRC Official-2 in court filings — was Angwang’s handler, assigned to an agency responsible for neutralising potential opposition.

Court filings suggest authorities began monitoring Angwang around 2017; by June 2018, they had a warrant to intercept his phone calls. By March 2020, prosecutors said, Angwang and the official had exchanged at least 55 calls and texts — communications that formed the basis of the charges, filings show.

Prosecutors argued that Angwang reported on the activities of Tibetans, advising the consular official, for example, about a new community centre. They said he suggested ways to cultivate intelligence sources — “When the consulate extends a helping hand to them, they will feel the warmth of the motherland” — and invited consular officials to NYPD events where they might meet department leadership.

He also was accused of taking direction from the official and appeared to identify himself as an asset, saying, “You have extended your reach into the police.”

After his arrest, Carman sought to explain the calls in the context of the coveted visa: Angwang, he wrote to the judge, was “beholden” to the official, striking a “solicitous tone and accommodating posture.”

Days later, he wrote, “Mr. Angwang’s approach clearly included posing as a PRC sympathizer and offering to help increase China’s ‘soft power.’”

But Angwang was sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he would remain for five months.

For the first two weeks, he said, he had to borrow another inmate’s underwear. The facility was in disarray. He described nights without heat, COVID lockdowns, lack of medical care, staffing shortages. When Angwang got sick, guards denied him pain relief.

“This is America — America, I went to Afghanistan for,” he said with a laugh of disbelief. “I asked for Tylenol.”

Carman finally secured his release in February 2021 as the government began to disclose its evidence.

The case largely rested on the recorded phone calls, Carman said. Angwang said that the government misinterpreted the communications by selecting a few words without context and at times mistranslated them.

There were also interviews with people who knew Angwang. They included members of the Marine Corps, police department and the Army Reserve. His supervising officer at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey had updated the government on him for more than two years. Each time, the officer said that there was nothing amiss, Carman said.

Then there were the classified materials, which in criminal cases require a special choreography: First, the government must seek information from agencies like the CIA or the Department of Defense. Then prosecutors and the trial judge determine in sealed motions and meetings what defence lawyers can see and what can be used at trial.

The process can be burdensome for prosecutors and defence lawyers alike.

Prosecutors must weigh a potential conviction against the risk of exposing secrets. Sometimes, “the conviction is not worth the disclosure of the information,” said Sabrina Shroff, a federal public defender who has tried high-profile national security cases.
But Carman believes that is not what happened in this case. In August 2022, he went into a secure room at the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s office to review the single-page summary prosecutors made available. “What I saw was so powerful,” he said, “it caused me to write to the judge and ask, if that’s what they have, why hasn’t there been a motion to dismiss?”

Finally there was: One evening this January, Carman got a phone call from the prosecutor’s office. They were dropping the case.