Former CIA officer arrested, charged with providing classified information to China

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Officer was arrested on August 14 and charged with spying for China, announced the US Justice Department. Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 67, allegedly conspired with a relative, who also was a former CIA officer, to communicate classified information to top intelligence officials of China.

Ma, a naturalized US citizen born in Hong Kong, began working for the CIA in 1982 and signed numerous non-disclosure agreements. acknowledging his responsibility and ongoing duty to protect US government secrets during his tenure at CIA. He left the CIA in 1989 and lived and worked in Shanghai, China before arriving in Hawaii in 2001.

Ma and his relative allegedly conspired with multiple Chinese intelligence officials to communicate classified national defence information over the course of a decade. According to court documents, the two former CIA officers provided information to the foreign intelligence service about the CIA’s personnel, operations, and methods of concealing communications during three-days meetings in Hong Kong in March 2001.

“Part of the meeting was captured on videotape, including a portion where Ma can be seen receiving and counting $50,000 in cash for the secrets they provided,” said the Justice Department in a statement.

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Regained access to classified information

The former CIA officer moved to Hawaii seeking employment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to allegedly gain access to classified US government information to provide to his handlers in China. He was hired by the FBI’s Honolulu Field Office as a contract linguist, tasked with reviewing and translating Chinese language documents.  

The department said that Ma regularly copied, photographed and stole documents that displayed US classification markings such as “SECRET”. He allegedly took some of the stolen documents and images with him on his frequent trips to China and often returned with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts.

“The trail of Chinese espionage is long and, sadly, strewn with former American intelligence officers who betrayed their colleagues, their country and its liberal democratic values to support an authoritarian communist regime,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said in a statement.

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