Alexander Yuk Ching Ma was a “compromised asset” for China, DOJ says.
The U.S. Department of Justice arrested and charged a former intelligence officer with the CIA and FBI for selling highly classified U.S. secrets to China, according to court records that were not sealed in Hawaii on Monday.
Federal prosecutors say Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a 67-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen living in Honolulu, worked as a CIA officer from 1982 to 1989 – and early in 2001 an FBI investigation found that he had “become a compromised possession.” of the Ministry of State Security of China.
Ma was apparently captured on both video and audio recordings of a series of meetings with at least five MSS officials in Hong Kong in 2001, where he “revealed a substantial amount of highly classified information on national defense. , “say court records.
The information included details about the CIA’s international operations, coverage used by CIA officers, identities of CIA officers and human assets, and other internal CIA intelligence.
Ma and a family member who were not named in the criminal complaint allegedly received $ 50,000 in the meeting, which was taken on tape.
After his meetings in Hong Kong, Ma apparently applied for a position with the FBI in 2002, and after a series of background checks and interviews, he began working as a contract linguist for the FBI’s Honolulu Field Bureau in 2004, all while communicating with his Chinese dealers. about his efforts.
The indictment does not make clear when Ma’s work for Name of China was first made public by federal investigators.
Between 2004 and 2010, Ma “regularly collects documents marked with U.S. classification marks” with the intention of “delivering them to his MSS dealers during regular trips he made to China,” prosecutors said.
In January 2019, an undercover agent with the FBI then met with Ma while posing as an MSS officer, Ma showed the video of his 2001 meeting with MSS officers and asked him to identify the individuals from the video.
But the undercover agent believed and agreed to identify the persons, not knowing that he was being recorded the entire time. Then, in a separate meeting, the undercover agent paid Ma $ 2,000 to provide the information.
But he is expected to make his first appearance before a federal judge on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Hawaii.
He is accused of conspiracy to communicate information on national defense to assist a foreign government. He faces life in prison as convicted, the DOJ said.
A public defender for Ma did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
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