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Topic summary

Posted by George W. Maschke
 - Jun 20, 2024, 12:17 PM
QuoteDid Alexander Ching Ma actually have access to real classified information during this eight-year sting?  Did they fake his security clearance, polygraph passing, and just give him menial unclassified work (disguised as classified?) during this time?

None of this is clear at present. All we have to go on are the scant details mentioned in the Memorandum of Plea Agreement.
Posted by toot
 - Jun 19, 2024, 11:17 PM
Did Alexander Ching Ma actually have access to real classified information during this eight-year sting?  Did they fake his security clearance, polygraph passing, and just give him menial unclassified work (disguised as classified?) during this time?
Posted by George W. Maschke
 - May 26, 2024, 10:40 AM
No, this is not normal procedure for the FBI. Indeed, I am not aware of any other case where any federal agency has hired a person known to have committed espionage against the United States.

This was an exceptionally long-term counterintelligence investigation. It's noteworthy that the FBI did not immediately arrest Ma upon the termination of his employment as a contract linguist, but instead orchestrated a sting operation against him years later.

I wonder whether the counterintelligence investigation of Alex Ma might in some way have a nexus with the investigation that led to the arrest of former CIA intelligence officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee.
Posted by toot
 - May 26, 2024, 08:55 AM
No worries, George.  Nobody knew this until recently when the info was made public.  So the FBI let this guy get work for them for eight years just to try to catch him spying?  Eight years is a long time to be under government surveillance.  Is this a normal procedure for the FBI?
Posted by George W. Maschke
 - May 25, 2024, 06:32 AM
I was wrong. Alexander Yuk Ching Ma did not beat the polygraph to penetrate the FBI. Rather, as mentioned in a plea agreement signed yesterday (24 May 2024), the FBI was already aware of Ma's espionage on behalf of China at the time it hired him as a contract linguist "for the purpose of monitoring and investigating the defendant's activities and contacts with [People's Republic of China intelligence officers]." See:

https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2024/05/25/confessed-spy-alexander-yuk-ching-ma-evidently-did-not-beat-the-polygraph/
Posted by cia snitch
 - Aug 27, 2020, 10:35 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/us/politics/china-spying-alexander-yuk-ching-ma.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/doj-charges-cia-fbi-official-selling-classified-us/story?id=72427876

Does anyone know how the FBI obtained the video tapes of Alexander Yuk Ching Ma meeting with MSS officers in Hong Kong in 2001?  It seems unusual that the Chinese would hand over footage of their meetings to the FBI, especially when they are getting good information from a traitor like Ma.  In all these cases of Americans caught spying for China, they are usually caught in the U.S. during an espionage act.  This is the first time I have heard of the U.S. government obtaining the video of the secrets meetings taking place in China or Hong Kong, though the U.S. government can roam a bit more freely in Hong Kong, at least up until China passed a new security law in Hong Kong this year.  I wonder how the FBI got those videos.  Could someone from the Chinese MSS be a double-agent working for the FBI? 

Hmmm......
Posted by George W. Maschke
 - Aug 27, 2020, 08:41 AM
Hong Kong tabloid Apple Daily suggests (with evidence) that the identify of Co-conspirator #1 in the Alexander Ma espionage case is David Ma of Los Angeles:

https://hk.appledaily.com/us/20200825/COTHSLBUWFD5HBENLVRSTSMTRI/

David Ma was the defendant in a 1998 federal criminal case in California and was sentenced to five months imprisonment followed by five years of supervised release:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/10848918/united-states-v-ma/

Posted by George W. Maschke
 - Aug 21, 2020, 01:56 AM
On 19 August 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion to Detain Defendant Without Bail in the Ma espionage case.

The Memorandum indicates that Ma fell under suspicion while still employed with the FBI, noting (at pp. 6-7):

Quote...Also, throughout Ma's time in the employment of the FBI, the FBI gathered evidence of Ma's ongoing attempts to access classified information that he could provide to the MSS, including among other things Ma photographing documents he was asked to translate, burning images onto a CD-ROM disc, photocopying documents containing classification markings, and inserting digital storage devices into his FBI computer.
Posted by George W. Maschke
 - Aug 18, 2020, 08:08 AM
The polygraph has failed yet again. As mentioned on the blog, former CIA and FBI employee Alexander Yuk Ching Ma of Honolulu necessarily passed an FBI pre-employment polygraph screening "test" when, acting on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, he sought and obtained employment as a contract linguist:

https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2020/08/18/accused-spy-alexander-yuk-ching-ma-evidently-beat-the-polygraph-to-penetrate-the-fbi/