A former CIA officer has been arrested for unlawfully possessing top secret information, amid fears he helped China dismantle the US spying network by unveiling the identities of undercover agents.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a US citizen, was apprehended on Monday after flying into New York from his home in Hong King.

His arrest is the culmination of a long investigation that began in 2012 when Mr Lee was found in possession of notebooks that contained the real names of undercover CIA agents and covert facilities - the agency's most closely guarded secret.

Mr Lee, 53, was charged on a single count of unlawfully possessing national defence information, but he is suspected of feeding information to China that caused the deaths or imprisonment of around 20 American agents in what the New York Times described as one of the worst intelligence failures in decades.

The paper reported last year that CIA and FBI officials were mystified and mortified as one after another of their best agents in China were jailed or executed.

It's unclear how the FBI lured Mr Lee, who left the CIA in 2007, back to the US but officials say there have been several undercover attempts to incriminate him, according to NBC News.

It is unlikely that Lee will be charged with espionage, which carries the death penalty, officials have said.