Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a former CIA officer, admitted on Friday that he conspired to collect and transmit national defense information to the People’s Republic of China.
According to the Department of Justice, a 71-year-old person named Ma from Honolulu worked together with one of their relatives to give important information to the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2001, he and an unnamed relative were given “tens of thousands of dollars” to give a lot of secret U.S. national defense information to Chinese intelligence agents.
Ma and his relative are both U.S. citizens who were born in Hong Kong and Shanghai, China.
According to the DOJ, Ma worked for the CIA from 1982 to 1989, while his relative worked with the agency from 1967 to 1983.
Both men had high-level security clearances that allowed them to access sensitive and classified information from the CIA. In March 2001, a member of the Shanghai State Security Bureau asked Ma to recruit his relative and meet with the bureau’s officers in a hotel room in Hong Kong.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that the meeting lasted for three days. During this time, Ma and one of his relatives provided classified defense information in exchange for $50,000.
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In March 2003, Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist in the FBI’s Honolulu office. However, instead of being placed there, the agency assigned him to an off-site office to keep an eye on his actions and interactions with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as part of an investigation.
Ma worked for the FBI from August 2004 to October 2012.
In February 2006, while working for the FBI, Ma asked his relative to identify at least two people in some photographs given to him by the SSSB.
The names of those people were and still are considered confidential U.S. national defense information.
Ma admitted that he knew the identities of the individuals and the information he and his relative gave to the SSSB in March 2001 could be harmful to the United States and beneficial to China.
The Department of Justice said that Ma and his relative intentionally participated in espionage, even though they were aware that their actions would harm the nation.
If the U.S. District Court of Hawaii accepts Ma’s plea deal, he will be sentenced to 10 years in prison. The hearing where he will enter his plea is scheduled for September 11th.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) did not give any details about Ma’s unidentified family member or any agreement he may have reached as part of a plea deal.
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