By Jennifer Doherty

Law360 (August 17, 2020, 8:30 PM EDT ) A retired Central Intelligence Agency official with top secret security clearance was arrested in Hawaii on Friday on charges that he conspired with another retiree to sell confidential national defense information to Chinese intelligence officers for almost a decade.

Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 67, stands accused of working with an unnamed relative, age 85, who was also a CIA field operative, to provide information about a range of classified subjects including the agency's organizational structure, cryptographic information and the identities of CIA agents and assets to China's Ministry of State Security, according to a complaint unsealed Monday.

"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," John C. Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.

Ma, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Hawaii, was a CIA agent from 1982 to 1989, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement announcing the arrest. His tenure at the agency overlapped with his relative's for just a year; in 1983, the older agent resigned after the CIA determined he was using his position inappropriately to help Chinese nationals enter the U.S., according to the complaint, based on an affidavit by FBI special agent Chris Jensen.

Ma and his relation's alleged crimes are said to have begun in March 2001, when they were filmed divulging a wide range of sensitive information to five Ministry of State Security officials over "three days of intensive questioning" at a Hong Kong hotel, according to Jensen's affidavit.

Following that episode, Ma allegedly applied to work as an FBI agent, but his application was declined based on his advanced age. He reapplied for a linguist role and was hired at the FBI's Honolulu field office in 2004, according to the complaint.

"One day before reporting to work with the FBI, Ma telephoned a suspected accomplice and stated that he would be working for 'the other side,'" the complaint says.

From then on, the complaint says, Ma transferred classified information through emails, photos and face-to-face meetings with his handlers during trips to China between 2004 and 2010 in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2019, the DOJ says, an undercover FBI employee posing as a Ministry of State Security operative coaxed Ma into discussing his work as a mole, including reviewing and discussing footage of that first meeting in Hong Kong.

Ma met with the undercover FBI employee again on Aug. 12, at which point the affidavit says Ma revealed that Ministry of State Security had approached him while he was living in China between his time working for the CIA and the FBI in an effort to get to his relative, who was involved in an anti-communist group.

"During the meeting, Ma also told the [FBI employee] that he was willing to continue to help the Chinese government ... but that he would prefer to discuss opportunities after the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided," the complaint says.

In his affidavit, Jensen said the government is not pursuing charges against Ma's relative and alleged co-conspirator because he has an advanced cognitive disease.

Counsel information for the government and Ma was not immediately available Monday.

The case is USA v. Alexander Ma, case number 1:20-mj-01016, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii.

--Editing by Stephen Berg.

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