HONOLULU – A a former CIA officer and an FBI contract linguist accused of espionage For China for at least a decade, he pleaded guilty Friday in a federal courtroom in Honolulu.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, has been in prison since his arrest in August 2020. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit claiming he had amassed a “war chest of damning evidence” against him, including an hour-long video of Ma and an older relative — also a former CIA officer — providing classified information to intelligence officers with China’s Ministry of State Security in 2001 he said it was.
According to prosecutors, the video shows Ma counting the $50,000 he received from Chinese agents for his services.
During one operation, he received thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for past espionage activities and told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese intelligence agent that he wanted to see “the motherland” succeed, prosecutors said.
Among the secrets he is accused of providing are information on CIA sources and assets, international operations, secure communications practices, and operational trade.
As part of a deal with prosecutors, Ma pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of conspiracy to collect or deliver national defense information to a foreign government. The plea deal calls for a 10-year sentence, but the judge will have the final say at Ma’s sentencing, which is scheduled for Sept. 11. Without a plea deal, he faced life in prison.
Ma was born in Hong Kong, moved to Honolulu in 1968, and became a US citizen in 1975. He joined the CIA in 1982, was posted abroad the following year, and resigned in 1989. documents.
Ma lived and worked in Shanghai, China before returning to Hawaii in 2001. He was hired as a contract linguist at the FBI’s Honolulu office in 2004, and over the next six years, prosecutors say, he regularly copied, photographed and stole classified documents. documents. He often took them on trips to China, returning with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts like new golf clubs, prosecutors said.
In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson revealed that Ma’s hiring as a part-time contract linguist was a “ploy” to control his contacts with Chinese intelligence.
In 2006, when Ma was living in Hawaii, Chinese intelligence agents sent him photographs of people whose identities they wanted to know, Sorenson and Ma contacted a relative of the conspirator and convinced him to reveal at least two identities.
Ma pleaded guilty, saying everything Sorenson described was true. Ma said he signed non-disclosure agreements that he knew would be in effect after he left the CIA and that he knew the information he gave to Chinese intelligence officials could harm the United States or help a foreign country.
In 2021, Ma’s former defense attorney told a judge that Ma was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and has difficulty remembering things.
A defense proposal noted that Ma’s older brother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 10 years ago and was completely disabled by the disease. Brother Ma is named as a co-conspirator in the indictment, but prosecutors have not charged him because of his incompetence due to Alzheimer’s disease.
The assassin is now dead, Sorenson said in court Friday.
Last year, a judge found Ma competent and not suffering from a major mental illness, disorder or defect.