WASHINGTON  — A former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI 
has been charged with spying for China, including by disclosing secret 
tradecraft and information on sources to intelligence officers who had 
co-opted him, according to court documents unsealed Monday. 6park.com
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma was arrested last week after an undercover 
operation in which prosecutors say he accepted an envelope with $2,000 
in exchange for his past espionage activities. He told a law enforcement
 officer who was posing as a Chinese intelligence officer that he wanted
 to see the “motherland” succeed, prosecutors said. 6park.com

“The trail of Chinese espionage is long and, sadly, strewn with 
former American intelligence officers who betrayed their colleagues, 
their country and its liberal democratic values to support an 
authoritarian communist regime,” Assistant Attorney John Demers, the 
Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a 
statement. 6park.com
An FBI affidavit accuses Ma, who worked for the CIA from 1982 to 
1989, of revealing government secrets to at five Chinese intelligence 
officers in a Hong Kong hotel room over a three-day period in March 
2001. Those secrets included information about CIA sources, 
international operations, staffing practices and operational tradecraft. 6park.com
Prosecutors say Ma’s meeting with the Chinese officers also included a
 fellow CIA employee who was not identified in court documents and who 
is not being charged because, officials say, the 85-year-old suffers 
from advanced and debilitating cognitive diseases. 6park.com

Ma, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Hong Kong, was charged in 
federal court in Honolulu with conspiring to gather and communicate 
national defense information for a foreign nation. He faces up to life 
in prison if convicted, and is due to make his first court appearance 
Tuesday. 6park.com
No defense lawyer was listed on court records for him. 6park.com
Ma remained in touch with the Chinese intelligence officers after he 
joined the FBI as a contract linguist in 2004, at which point he used 
his work computer to copy images of documents related to missiles and 
weapon system technology research. 6park.com
The case was first reported by NBC News.