CIA Veteran Charged With Selling U.S. Secrets to China
SPYING ON A SPY
An FBI agent went undercover, posing as a Chinese government operative, to get Alexander Yuk Ching Ma to admit he had been spying for China, prosecutors said.
A CIA veteran has been charged with selling U.S. secrets to China on Monday after unintentionally admitting his actions to the FBI, the Justice Department said Monday. Prosecutors say Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, who served in the CIA from 1967 to 1989, worked with at least five officers from the Chinese Ministry of State Security 12 years after his retirement, meeting with the group in a hotel room in Hong Kong and sharing “a substantial amount of highly classified national defense information.” Ma took a job with the FBI after leaving the CIA, and allegedly used his post to obtain classified documents regarding missiles and other weapons to share with the Chinese government. An undercover FBI agent trapped Ma into admitting his activities by posing undercover as a Chinese government representative and claiming he was investigating “how Ma had been treated, including the amount he had been compensated,” prosecutors said.
