In a fitting end to an unsettling saga, a former CIA officer who gladly betrayed the United States for a pittance will likely spend the rest of his life suffering the consequences.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, originally pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to gather and deliver national defense information to the People’s Republic of China, a major American adversary.
The turncoat was born in Hong Kong, but eventually settled in Honolulu, Hawaii.
According to the Department of Justice, Ma worked for the CIA from 1982 until 1989. Ma and a relative, named as a co-conspirator by the DOJ, both held top secret clearances and had access to sensitive information.
The betrayal began in 2001 as Ma and the co-conspirator met with officers from the Shanghai State Security Bureau in a Hong Kong hotel room.
Ma and his traitorous relative handed over a “large volume” of classified defense information to the Chinese officers over the course of three days. The foreign agents gave the pair $50,000 and secured their future loyalty.
In 2003, Ma applied to work for the FBI Honolulu Field Office. Intelligence officers aware of Ma’s connection to foreign security services were prepared to counter the subterfuge, however.
In a true cloak-and-dagger move, the FBI hired Ma as part of an investigation into the espionage work of the People’s Republic of China. He worked for the bureau from 2004 to 2012.
Ma was placed in an off-site location, where his activity was closely monitored by agents. They soon made a disturbing discovery the proved Ma was not only willing to throw national security secrets to an adversary, he was willing to sell out the individual men and women who accepted and trusted him.
Is this potential punishment too lenient?
“Ma further admitted that in February 2006, during this monitored employment by the FBI in Honolulu, Ma convinced [the co-conspirator] to provide the identities of at least two individuals depicted in photographs that were provided to Ma by SSSB intelligence officers,” the DOJ’s release states. “The individuals’ identities were and remain classified U.S. national defense information.
“Ma confessed that he knew that this information, and the information communicated in March 2001, would be used to injure the United States or to benefit the PRC, and he deliberately engaged in the criminal conspiracy with [the co-conspirator] and the SSSB anyway.”
The spy was arrested in August 2020 after an undercover FBI employee convinced Ma that he was a Chinese agent.
According to the DOJ’s announcement at the time, Ma accepted $2,000 cash from the undercover agent and expressed his desire to continue working for China, saying he wanted “the motherland” to win.
Unfortunately for Ma, he can no longer help the country he pledges allegiance to.
The Associated Press reports the plea deal Ma agreed to recommends a ten-year sentence for his crime and requires him to be submit to U.S. government polygraph tests for life.
“I hope God and America will forgive me for what I have done,” Ma wrote in a letter to Chief U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson.
Ma is set to be sentenced on Wednesday.
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