A former CIA officer and FBI contract linguist who accepted cash, golf clubs and other expensive gifts in exchange for spying for China could face 10 years in prison if a U.S. court approves a plea deal on Wednesday.
Alexander Yuk Chin Ma, 71, made a deal with federal prosecutors in May, agreeing to a recommended 10-year prison sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to conspiracy to collect or provide defense information to a foreign government.
The agreement requires him to submit to polygraph testing at any time requested by the U.S. government for the rest of his life.
AP
“I hope God and America can forgive me for what I've done,” said Ma, who has been in custody since serving his prison sentence. 2020 Arrestshe said in a letter to Chief U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu ahead of the sentencing.
Without the agreement, Ma could have faced life in prison. If Watson rejects the 10-year sentence, Ma can back out of the agreement.
Born in Hong Kong, Ma moved to Honolulu in 1968 and became a U.S. citizen in 1975. He joined the CIA in 1982 and was posted overseas the following year before resigning in 1989.
He had top secret security clearance, according to court documents.
Before returning to Hawaii in 2001, Ma lived and worked in Shanghai, China, where, at the request of Chinese intelligence, he agreed to introduce officers from the Shanghai State Security Bureau to his brother, who was also a CIA case officer.
During a three-day meeting in a Hong Kong hotel room that year, Ma's brother, identified in the plea agreement as “Co-conspirator No. 1,” provided the operatives with “substantial amounts of classified and sensitive information,” according to the documents.
They were paid $50,000, and prosecutors said they have an hour-long video of the meeting that shows Ma counting the money.
Two years later, Mr. Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist with the FBI's Honolulu office. By that time, the US knew he was working with Chinese intelligence, and hired him in 2004 to monitor espionage activities.
Over the next six years, prosecutors say, he regularly copied, photographed and stole classified documents.
Prosecutors said he frequently took the defendants on trips to China and brought them back with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts, including a new set of golf clubs.
At one point in 2006, officials from the Shanghai State Security Bureau asked Ma to help his brother identify four people in the photograph, and his brother identified two of them.
Prosecutors say Ma accepted thousands of dollars in cash in a sting operation in return for past espionage activities and told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese spy that he wanted to see the “motherland” succeed.
The brother was not charged. Court documents say he suffered from debilitating symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and later died.
“My brother has prevented me from coming forward to report this crime,” Marr wrote in a letter to the judge. “He was like a father to me and in a way I am glad that he has passed away because it gives me the freedom to admit what I did.”
The plea agreement also required Ma to cooperate with the U.S. government by providing more detailed information about the case and submitting to lifetime polygraph tests.
Prosecutors said that since pleading guilty, Ma has already participated in five lengthy and sometimes grueling interrogations over the four weeks since, some lasting as long as six hours, during which he provided valuable information and tried to answer the government's questions to the best of his ability.
