CIA Officer Spying for China: On Friday, May 24, in a federal courthouse in Honolulu, Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a former CIA officer accused of spying for China, entered a guilty plea. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also employed Ma, who is 72, as a contract linguist. He has been charged with espionage for China for nearly ten years, according to CNN.
At a court hearing, the US Justice Department said they had “a war chest of damning evidence” against him. One piece of proof was an hour-long film from 2001 that showed Ma and an older relative who had also worked for the CIA giving secret information to Chinese Ministry of State Security agents.
According to the prosecution, the video showed Ma tallying the $50,000 the Chinese operatives paid him in exchange for his services. He has been detained for this offence since his arrest in August 2020.
A naturalised US citizen born in Hong Kong
Ma was born in Hong Kong and is an American citizen who has naturalized, according to the Justice Department. “According to court documents, Ma began working for the CIA in 1982, maintained a Top Secret clearance, and signed numerous non-disclosure agreements in which he acknowledged his responsibility and ongoing duty to protect U.S. government secrets during his tenure at CIA,” according to the department.
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“Ma left the CIA in 1989 and lived and worked in Shanghai, China, before arriving in Hawaii in 2001,” said the statement.
During a sting operation, according to the prosecution, the 72-year-old collected thousands of dollars in cash as payment for prior espionage acts and expressed his desire to see the “motherland” prosper to an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a Chinese intelligence officer.
September 11 is Ma’s scheduled sentencing date
Ma entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiring to obtain or provide foreign governments with information related to national defense as part of an arrangement with the prosecution. Although a judge will decide Ma’s September 11 sentencing, the agreement calls for a 10-year term.
He would have spent the rest of his life behind bars if not for the agreement.
