A former CIA officer and FBI linguist accused of stealing classified information and giving it to China in exchange for money, travel reimbursements and a set of golf clubs was deemed competent to stand trial, a U.S. magistrate judge ruled Thursday.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma Opens in a new tab, 70, is charged with conspiracy to gather and communicate U.S. national defense information to a foreign nation for allegedly working with his brother in California, also a retired CIA officer, to funnel secrets to agents
of China’s Ministry of State Security.
He faces life in federal prison if convicted. His brother, 85 at the time of Ma’s arrest in 2020, has not been charged in the case due to “an advanced and debilitating cognitive disease,” according to federal court records.
Ma has a pretrial conference scheduled for March 8 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rom A. Trader. His trial is likely to start sometime in 2024 due to the complexity of the case, attorneys said in court Thursday.
Ma’s attorneys, federal public defender Salina M. Kanai, first assistant federal public defender Craig W. Jerome and assistant U.S. attorney Ken Sorenson, chief of the Criminal Division, who is prosecuting the case for the government, declined comment.
Ma is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Hong Kong before moving to Honolulu in 1968 where he attended the University of Hawaii, according to federal court records. He had a condominium in Hawaii Kai and a residence in China, where he also kept at least one bank account.
He joined the CIA in 1982 and was assigned overseas, including China postings, until he resigned in 1989. Upon returning to the U.S. in 2000, he allegedly told U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents that he had been living in China for at least the previous five years and had $9,000 in cash on him, according to court records, telling agents that he was an “importer and exporter.”
Ma’s brother, identified
in court records as “co-
conspirator 1,” was born in Shanghai and came to the U.S. in 1961.
Ma’s brother joined the CIA in 1967 and was assigned overseas from 1971 to 1982, including postings in China. He later resigned amid allegations that he was using his government position to help get Chinese citizens into the U.S., according to court records, and in 1998 was convicted of making false statements to a California bank on a loan application.
By early 2011 Alexander Ma was the subject of an FBI investigation into allegations that he was a “compromised asset” of China’s intelligence service.
From March 24-26, 2001, Ma and his brother allegedly met with five agents of China’s Ministry of State Security in a Hong Kong hotel to sell intelligence about the CIA for $50,000.
The pair allegedly disclosed “CIA international
operations, including the covers for CIA officers and activities; cryptographic
information used in classified and sensitive CIA communications and reports; the internal structure and organization of the CIA; the identities of CIA officers and human assets; CIA’s staffing practices and technical departments; and CIA’s operational trade craft, including secure communication practices,” according to an Aug. 18, 2019, motion to detain authored by Sorenson.
The FBI has audio and video recordings of the meeting at which Ma would detail aspects of the Hong Kong meeting to an undercover agent shortly before his arrest.
Over the next decade, Ma continued to provide information to the MSS “in response to taskings from his intelligence officer handlers,” according to the motion to detain.
After the meeting Ma kept in touch with the MSS, and on Dec. 26, 2002, he applied to be a special agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After learning he was too old to apply to work as an agent, he submitted an online application for the position “contract linguist/monitor/tester,” and on April 14, 2003, he applied at the FBI’s Honolulu field office to work as a Chinese
linguist.
A week later he told his MSS handlers about his efforts to gain FBI employment.
Between August 2004
and November 2010, Ma allegedly gathered classified information from a secure FBI workspace with the
intent to hand it over to China during his regular trips to the country.
On Feb. 23, 2006, Customs and Border Protection agents stopped Ma in Honolulu after he returned from Shanghai and found him in possession of $20,000 and a new set of golf clubs he didn’t have when he left
Hawaii, according to court records.
While working in Honolulu for the FBI, he allegedly routinely “photographed, copied, and removed documents containing U.S. classification markings from his secure FBI workspace” and continued to receive cash, gifts and reimbursement of travel expenses from the MSS in “exchange for his espionage activities.”
The FBI gathered evidence of Ma photographing documents he was asked to translate, burning images onto a CD-ROM disc, photocopying documents containing classification markings, and hooking up digital storage devices to his FBI computer, according to court records.
“Moreover, Ma himself has admitted to his lengthy efforts at committing espionage on behalf of the PRC. In two in-person meetings in Spring 2019, Ma told an undercover operative that he had provided valuable U.S. government information on multiple occasions to the MSS,” wrote Sorenson. “Ma told the undercover — whom he believed was an MSS officer — that he was willing to continue to help the MSS, and Ma accepted $2,000 cash as a purported gift of gratitude for the service he had provided the MSS.”
A week before his arrest, Ma allegedly told an undercover agent during a recorded meeting that he had “given U.S. information to the MSS,” and he again accepted $2,000 cash from someone he “believed was representing the MSS.”
When the undercover pressed him for more U.S.
intelligence, Ma allegedly
replied, “I already gave you guys everything.”
During that same meeting Ma expressed a desire to see “the motherland” succeed. He allegedly told the undercover agent that the MSS approached him while he was living in China to get to his brother, who they had issue with over his role in an anti-
Communist group.
