A former CIA officer has been jailed for 10 years and must take polygraph tests for the rest of his life after spying for the Chinese government in exchange for cash, golf clubs and other expensive gifts.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, who also worked as a contract linguist for the FBI, was found guilty of conspiring to gather and deliver national defence information to Beijing.
He was arrested in August 2020 after admitting to an undercover FBI agent that he had helped provide classified information to intelligence officers from the Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB).
Mr Ma, a naturalised US citizen who was born in Hong Kong before he moved to Honolulu, worked for the CIA from 1982 to 1989. He also lived and worked in Shanghai before moving back to Hawaii in 2001.
According to court documents, he held a top secret security clearance that granted him access to highly sensitive CIA information.
At the request of Chinese intelligence officers, he introduced the SSSB to his late older brother who also served as a CIA case officer with the same high-level security clearance.
During a three-day meeting in a Hong Kong hotel room that year, Mr Ma’s brother provided the intelligence officers with a “large volume of classified and sensitive information,” AP reported. In return, the brothers were given $50,000.
Two years later, Mr Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist in the FBI’s Honolulu field office but the American authorities already knew of his links to Chinese intelligence. He was then hired as part of a surveillance and sting operation.
According to prosecutors, over the next six years, he regularly copied, photographed and stole classified documents before making trips to China and returning with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts, including a set of golf clubs.
He told one undercover FBI officer posing as a Chinese agent that he wanted to see the “motherland” succeed.
After his arrest, Mr Ma made a plea deal with prosecutors, who agreed to recommend a 10-year term in exchange for his admission of guilt.
Under the deal, he must cooperate with the US government by providing more details about his past activities and submit to polygraph tests for the rest of his life.
“I hope God and America will forgive me for what I have done,” he wrote in a letter to Honolulu’s chief district judge before his sentencing.
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