Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Commit Espionage

[EndtheMadnessNow]

The FBI ran a Truman Show on this Chinese spy for 8 years...

According to court documents, Ma and a blood relative of his (identified as co-conspirator #1 or CC #1) were naturalized U.S. citizens who were born in Hong Kong and Shanghai, respectively. Both Ma and CC #1 worked for the CIA ­­­­— CC #1 from 1967 until 1983, Ma from 1982 until 1989. As CIA officers, both men held top secret security clearances that granted them access to sensitive and classified CIA information, and signed non-disclosure agreements that required them to maintain the secrecy of that information.

As Ma admitted in the plea agreement, in March 2001, when he no longer worked for the CIA, at the request of intelligence officers employed by the PRC’s Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB), Ma convinced CC #1 to meet with SSSB intelligence officers in a Hong Kong hotel room. Over the course of three days, Ma and CC #1 provided the SSSB with a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information. At the conclusion of the third day, the SSSB intelligence officers provided CC #1 with $50,000 in cash, which Ma counted. Ma and CC #1 also agreed at that time to continue to assist the SSSB.

As detailed in the plea agreement, in March 2003, while living in Hawaii, Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist in the FBI Honolulu Field Office. The FBI, aware of Ma’s ties to PRC intelligence, hired Ma, as part of an investigative plan, to work at an off-site location where his activities could be monitored and his contacts with the PRC investigated. Ma worked for the FBI from August 2004 until October 2012.

Ma further admitted that in February 2006, during this monitored employment by the FBI in Honolulu, Ma convinced CC #1 to provide the identities of at least two individuals depicted in photographs that were provided to Ma by SSSB intelligence officers. The individuals’ identities were and remain classified U.S. national defense information. Ma confessed that he knew that this information, and the information communicated in March 2001, would be used to injure the United States or to benefit the PRC, and he deliberately engaged in the criminal conspiracy with CC #1 and the SSSB anyway.

Under the terms of the parties’ plea agreement, Ma must cooperate with the United States, including by submitting to debriefings by U.S. government agencies. The plea agreement, if accepted by the Court, calls for an agreed-upon sentence of 10 years in prison. Sentencing is set for Sept. 11.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors for the District of Hawaii, Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Kevin Vorndran of the FBI, and Special Agent in Charge Steven Merrill of the FBI Honolulu Field Office made the announcement after Chief U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson conducted the change of the plea hearing.

The FBI Honolulu and Los Angeles Field Offices investigated the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ken Sorenson and Craig Nolan for the District of Hawaii, and Trial Attorneys Scott Claffee and Leslie Esbrook of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.

Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Commit Espionage

Some people are calling this a wild story. I call it standard spycraft, as in business as usual since time immemorial of intelligence agencies.

[727Sky]

CCP/Chinese spies are like Roaches... where there is one there are many..

[SomeJackleg]

is it just me, or does anyone else think it's a good idea to let a naturalized immigrant that came from a nation who is not shy about the contempt they have for the U.S. join or have any thing to do with intelligence gathering or access to it in any agency or branch of the federal government.

maybe their the decedents three or four generations later could or can if they were born here, but being born there and then moving here , nah.

[Ninurta]

is it just me, or does anyone else think it's a good idea to let a naturalized immigrant that came from a nation who is not shy about the contempt they have for the U.S. join or have any thing to do with intelligence gathering or access to it in any agency or branch of the federal government.

maybe their the decedents three or four generations later could or can if they were born here, but being born there and then moving here , nah.

CIA hires foreign nationals all the time. That's where the bulk of their HUMINT comes from. There's probably more foreigners on the CIA payrolls than there are Americans, just not commonly at the higher levels - those seem to be reserved for treasonous bastards. Well, maybe "treasonous" is too strong of a word. Remember, as a US government agency, CIA does NOT work on behalf of American citizens, they work instead on behalf of the American government, and those two are decidedly different things, often at odds with one another. "They" are not "us", at all.

Think about it - if you want inside intel, or if you want a foreign document or conversation translated, there is no better person to enlist than a native or a native speaker.

But seriously - "CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to commit Espionage"? That headline is hilarious - what the hell do they think the CIA DOES? Espionage, that's what they do! The moment you sign on the dotted line, you are "conspiring to commit espionage"!

I know for a fact that, during Cold War I, CIA agents would meet with KGB agents in places like Germany and have dinner meetings, trading State Secrets in both directions over bowls of borscht and drinking cognac.

It's just the spy way of doing business.

.

[SomeJackleg]

i understand the need for people/ informants of what ever nationality the Fed agency is working in/ on, and getting information that maybe be needed from that area.

but to let said people/ informants actually work in a office that has real intel on the who, what, when, and where, and maybe still loyal to their home country no matter how vetted they were, and that they maybe smart enough to get some past the security measures and investigators is about asinine imo. 

then you have to think about the ones they don't know about, like they did with these two guys. how much damaging intelligence has been passed to who and how badly or what damages it caused.

the risk outweighs the benefits to me.