A former CIA agent has pleaded guilty to spying for China for over a decade.
Ex-CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, pleaded guilty in a Honolulu federal court this week for providing intelligence officers in China with classified information.
A court filing from the DOJ revealed it had filed “a war chest of damning evidence” against Ma exchanging information with China’s Ministry of State Security dating back to 2001.
According to NBC News, among the classified information was “CIA sources and assets, international operations, secure communication practices, and operational tradecraft.”
“Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, has been in custody since his arrest in August 2020. The Justice Department said in a court filing it amassed “a war chest of damning evidence” against him, including an hourlong video of Ma and an older relative — also a former CIA officer — providing classified information to intelligence officers with China’s Ministry of State Security in 2001,” the outlet reported.
The video allegedly reveals Ma counting the $50,000 received from the Chinese agents for his service, prosecutors said.
“During a sting operation, he accepted thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for past espionage activities, and he told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer that he wanted to see the “motherland” succeed, prosecutors said,” NBC continued.
