Ex-CIA officer Alexander Yuk pleads guilty to spying for China
- Evidence against the Hong Kong-born US citizen included video showing him counting the US$50,000 he received from Chinese agents for his service
- During a sting operation, he told an undercover FBI agent that he wanted to see the ‘motherland’ succeed
A former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI accused of spying for China for at least a decade pleaded guilty on Friday in a federal courtroom in Honolulu.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, has been in custody since his arrest in August 2020. The US Justice Department said in a court filing it amassed “a war chest of damning evidence” against him, including an hour-long 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 video shows Ma counting the US$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.
The secrets he was accused of providing included information about CIA sources and assets, international operations, secure communication practices and operational tradecraft, charging documents said.
As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Ma pleaded guilty on Friday to a count of conspiracy to gather or deliver national defence information to a foreign government.