A former CIA official has been accused of leaking secrets to China over the course of a decade in a case that describes a Justice Department official as coming straight from a ‘spy novel’.
The former CIA officer, who was also an FBI linguist, Alexander Yuk Chung Ma, a 67-year-old resident of Hawaii, was arrested in Hawaii on Friday and charged with conspiracy to communicate information on national defense to a foreigner. government to help, the Justice Department said. He looks to life in prison as convicted.
An FBI investigation alleges an 85-year-old Los Angeles man, a family member of Ma’s and a former CIA officer, acted as a conspirator but was not charged with suffering from a “debilitating cognitive illness.”
“This case proves the persistence of Chinese espionage tensions,” said John Demers, the Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s National Security Department. ‘It shows the willingness to betray the adopted country and colleagues. … And it reads like a spy novel. ”
Ma, who was being held pending a hearing in federal court, could not be reached for comment.
The arrest is the latest in a series of criminal cases brought by the Department of Justice against current and former U.S. government officials accused of leaking secrets to the Chinese government. At least four U.S. government officials have been jailed in the past two years for providing sensitive information to the Chinese government.
Court papers reveal a years-long attempt by Ma to reveal secrets to the Chinese government. Born in Hong Kong in 1952, the confirmation says, Ma came to the US in 1968 and eventually became a naturalized citizen. He joined the CIA in 1982 and became a case officer stationed abroad. He left the agency in 1989.
Ma’s espionage began in 2001, according to the FBI investigation, when he and his relative in Los Angeles met in a hotel room in Hong Kong with Chinese operatives and “provided a substantial amount of highly classified information on national defense,” including details on CIA operations and resources.
The FBI confirmation said the bureau had a videotape of the meeting. The video captured Ma paying $ 50,000 in payment to Chinese operatives while his family member continued to provide classification information, the confirmation said. The FBI has not released how it got the video.
Ma kept in touch with his Chinese dealers and asked to be an FBI agent in hopes of providing more information, the confirmation claims. But he was told he was too old to be an agent, so Ma changed plans and applied to become a contract linguist for the Hawaii bureau. A day before he started the FBI job in 2004, he called a suspected accomplice and said he would work for ‘the other side’, the confirmation claims.
Over the next six years, he has been downloading, swiping and photographing sensitive information, the confirmation claims. The handlers also sent him a photo from five sources who wanted to identify it. Ma sent the photo to his relative, who identified two of the sources, the FBI all along.
But left the FBI in 2010. It is not clear why the FBI waited until January 2019 to carry out its stabbing operation. But the confirmation suggested that the FBI had been following Ma’s activities for years, probably while he was still at the office.
In January of last year, an undercover FBI agent met with Ma. The agent posed as a Chinese operative who carried out a check on how his government treated the former CIA officer and how he was compensated. To prove his bonafides, the affidavit said, the agent played a videotape of the 2001 Hong Kong meeting. had continued to work for her.
They met again two months later, with the undercover agent giving Ma $ 2,000 “to recognize his work on behalf of China.” Ma confirmed “he had provided multiple items of valuable U.S. government information” to Chinese operatives when he worked for the agency, the confirmation said.
At a meeting Aug. 12, the confirmation claims, undercover agent Ma gave another $ 2,000. But counted the money before they put it in their pants pocket. He told the undercover agent that he wanted to “succeed ‘the’ motherland ‘,’ said the confirmed, and would be willing to continue working for the Chinese government, ‘perhaps as an adviser.’
