The DOJ has charged a 15-year veteran of the CIA with selling US secrets to China – after he accidentally revealed his spying to the FBI, according to NBC News – which notes that “The method prosecutors said they used to get him to reveal the nature of his espionage was worthy of a spy novel itself.”
Court documents said 67-year-old Alexander Yuk Ching Ma of Honolulu was charged with violating U.S. espionage laws. Prosecutors said he joined the CIA in 1967 then served as a CIA officer until he retired from the agency in 1989. For part of that time he was assigned to work overseas in the East-Asia and Pacific region.
Twelve years after he retired, prosecutors said Monday that Ma met with at least five officers of China’s Ministry of State Security in a Hong Kong hotel room, where he “disclosed a substantial amount of highly classified national defense information,” including facts about the CIA’s internal organization, methods for communicating covertly, and the identities of CIA officers and human assets. –NBC News
Following his departure from the agency, Ma became a Chinese linguist in the FBI’s Honolulu field office, where he allegedly used his access to highly classified information to copy or photograph sensitive documents concerning the United States’ guided missile and weapons systems, as well as other sensitive information he passed along to his Chinese handlers, according to the charging document…
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