WASHINGTON, Dec 13: A former US State Department official pleaded guilty on Monday to removing top secret government documents while conducting a ‘personal relationship’ with a Taiwanese spy, the Justice Department said.

Donald Keyser, a former principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, also pleaded guilty to making false statements over his ‘undisclosed personal relationship’ with a Taiwanese intelligence agent named as Isabelle Cheng, the department said.

The career US diplomat, 62, will be sentenced on Feb 24 over the single count of removing thousands of documents over a 12-year period, and two of making false statements to investigators.

A State Department spokesman said Mr Keyser, who joined the diplomatic corps in 1972, had left the government on Sept 30 last year, but declined to comment further.

The Justice Department said in a statement that Mr Keyser could face a maximum sentence of eight years in prison. Each count carries a maximum fine of 250,000 dollars.

“Between 1992 and Sept 4, 2004, Keyser removed numerous classified documents from the State Department and transported them to his home in Fairfax, Virginia.

“In all, Keyser had over 3,600 documents in either hard copy or electronic form,” the statement said.

US authorities said Mr Keyser had conducted an ‘undisclosed’ relationship with Ms Cheng from 2002 to September last year, saying she was employed by ‘the foreign intelligence agency of the government of Taiwan’.

Ms Cheng, also known as Nain-Tzu Cheng, arrived in Washington in 2001 and she worked out of an office at The Taipei Economic Cultural and Representative Office, which represents the Taiwanese authorities in Washington.

“Keyser ... regularly communicated with her by telephone and e-mail, met with her privately on numerous occasions, and occasionally travelled with her,” the statement said.

In one late 2003 trip to China and Japan on official State Department business, Mr Keyser also made a secret trip to Taiwan to meet Ms Cheng without disclosing his additional stopover to the US government or even his family.

Under State Department rules, he should have disclosed his stopover and secret meeting with Ms Cheng in Taipei.

He is one of the most senior US diplomats to admit to taking secret documents.

Mr Keyser had served at US embassies abroad in posts overseeing US foreign policy for East Asia and the Pacific regions, including stints at the US missions in Tokyo and Beijing.—AFP