DOJ charges former CIA, FBI official with selling classified US secrets to China
The United States 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 unsealed in Hawaii on Monday.
Federal prosecutors said 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 starting as early as 2001, an FBI investigation found
he had "become a compromised asset" of China's Ministry of State
Security.
Ma was allegedly captured on both video and audio recordings
holding a series of meetings with at least five MSS officials in 2001 in Hong
Kong where he "disclosed a substantial amount of highly classified
national defense information," court records say.
The information included details about the CIA's
international operations, cover used by CIA officers, identities of CIA
officers and human assets and other internal CIA intelligence.
Ma and a relative not named in the criminal complaint
allegedly received $50,000 in the meeting, which was captured on tape.
Following his meetings in Hong Kong, Ma in 2002 allegedly
applied for a position with the FBI and after a series of background checks and
interviews started his employment as a contract linguist for the FBI's Honolulu
field office in 2004, all while maintaining communication with his Chinese
handlers about his efforts.
The indictment doesn't make clear when Ma's work on China's
behalf first became known to federal investigators.
Between 2004 and 2010 Ma "regularly gathered documents
marked with U.S. classification markings" with the "intent to provide
them to his MSS handlers 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, showing Ma the video of his 2001
meeting with MSS officers and asking him to identify the individuals from the
video.
Ma believed the undercover agent and agreed to identify the
individuals, not knowing he was being recorded the entire time. Then, in a
separate meeting, the undercover agent paid Ma $2,000 for providing the
information.
Ma is expected to make his initial appearance before a
federal judge on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Hawaii.
He has been charged with conspiracy to communicate national
defense information to aid a foreign government. He faces life in prison if
convicted, the DOJ said.
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