Becomes A Chinese Spy: Former CIA Agent Sentenced To 10 Years In Prison, Lives A Lie Test

Illustration. (Pixabay/peterbwiberg)

JAKARTA - The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a former CIA agent was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday, after pleading guilty to being a spy for China.

Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, reached a defense agreement with prosecutors in May in exchange for his guilty confession of conspiracy to gather and provide national defense information to China, DOJ said in a statement.

DOJ menerangkan, Ma, yang bekerja untuk CIA dari tahun 1982 hingga 1989, berkonspirasi dengan seorang keluarga, yang kini sudah meninggal, yang juga bekerja di CIA.

The department said the two were contacted by Chinese intelligence officers in March 2001, handing over "a large amount" of classified defense information in exchange for $50,000.

Ma was arrested in August 2020, after admitting to an undercover FBI agent he sold US secrets to China, quoted by the BBC.

As part of an agreement with US authorities, he must undergo examinations by government agencies for the rest of his life, including undergoing a polygraph test or a lie test, as reported by AP.

Chinese intelligence officers who were in contact with Ma and his relatives are said to have been hired by the Shanghai State Security Bureau.

A meeting in Hong Kong was recorded in the video and showed Ma counting cash amounting to $50,000 for the secrets they gave, federal prosecutors said.

While living in Hawaii in 2004, he worked at the FBI office in Honolulu as a contract linguist.

The FBI, which already knows its espionage activities, "lays Ma as part of a trick to monitor and investigate its activities and contacts", prosecutors said.

"Make this a message to anyone who thinks of doing the same," FBI Special Agent Honolulu Steven Merrill said in a statement.

"No matter how long it takes, or how long it will take, you will be tried," he said.

In addition to cash, Ma is also said to have received rewards in the form of golf sticks and other expensive prizes.

"I hope God and America will forgive me for what I have done," wrote Ma, who has been detained since his 2020 arrest, in a letter to US District Chief Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Born in Hong Kong, Ma moved to Honolulu in 1968, before becoming a US citizen in 1975.

Joining the 1982 CIA, he was assigned abroad the following year, and resigned in 1989. He holds a high-level secret security clearance, according to court documents.

Ma lived and worked in Shanghai, China, before returning to Hawaii in 2001.

Two years later, Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist at the FBI's field office in Honolulu. At that time, the US knew Ma was working with Chinese intelligence officers. Ma was hired in 2004 so that his espionage activities could be monitored.

Over the next six years, he regularly copies, captures and steals classified documents, prosecutors said.

He often brought the documents on his way to China and returned with thousands of dollars in cash as well as expensive gifts, including a new set of golf clubs.

Once upon a time in 2006, its administrators at the Shanghai State Security Bureau asked Ma to ask his brother for help to identify the four people in the photo, and his brother managed to identify two of them.

"Because of my brother, I cannot report this crime," Ma said in his letter to the judge.

"He's like a father figure to me. On the one hand, I'm also happy he left this world, because it made me free to admit what I did," he added.