The Guardian-Former CIA officer sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying for China
September 12, 2024 4 min 672 words
西方媒体的这篇报道主要讲述了一名前CIA职员因为中国间谍而被判刑十年。这名前CIA职员，亚历山大尤克京马（Alexander Yuk Ching Ma），承认收取了来自中国的礼物，并泄露了美国的国防信息。马于2020年被捕，并在今年五月达成认罪协议，同意提供美国国防信息的计谋，以换取十年刑期。报道提到，马出生在香港，后移居美国，于1982年加入CIA，并于1989年辞职。他持有美国政府颁发的最高机密安全许可。根据认罪协议，马和他的兄弟在1985年向中国情报人员提供了大量机密信息，并获得了5万美元的报酬。后来，马在2004年被FBI聘为合同语言学家，在此期间，他抄袭拍摄并窃取了机密文件。 从报道来看，西方媒体的偏见主要体现在以下几个方面： 首先，报道强调马是中国间谍，为中国提供情报，但对马为何间谍活动，动机是什么，背景如何等问题一带而过，没有深入挖掘，这可能使读者单方面认为是中国方面主动招募马为间谍，而忽略了马的主观意愿和个人背景。 其次，报道提到马接受了现金高尔夫球杆和其他昂贵的礼物，但没有详细说明这些礼物的价值和具体情况，这可能使读者认为马是为了金钱和礼物而背叛美国，而忽略了可能存在其他因素的影响。 再次，报道提到马的兄弟也参与了间谍活动，但并没有详细说明兄弟之间的关系，以及兄弟是否也受到了美国的审判和处罚，这可能使读者认为马的兄弟也逃脱了美国的法律制裁。 综上所述，这篇报道虽然提供了马为中国间谍的基本事实，但可能存在一定的偏见，没有全面客观地呈现事件的全貌，读者需要注意报道中的信息缺失和可能的偏见影响。
A former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI who received cash, golf clubs and other expensive gifts in exchange for spying for China was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, made a deal in May with federal prosecutors, who agreed to recommend the 10-year term in exchange for his guilty plea to a count of conspiracy to gather or deliver national defense information to a foreign government. The deal also requires him to submit to polygraph tests, whenever requested by the US government, for the rest of his life.
A US judge approved the deal on Wednesday and handed down the agreed-upon sentence, according to court records.
“I hope God and America will forgive me for what I have done,” Ma, who has been in custody since his 2020 arrest, wrote in a letter to chief US district judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu before his sentencing.
Without the deal, Ma faced up to life in prison. He would have been allowed to withdraw from the agreement if Watson rejected the 10-year sentence.
Ma was born in Hong Kong, moved to Honolulu in 1968 and became a US citizen in 1975. He joined the CIA in 1982, was assigned overseas the next year and resigned in 1989. He held a top secret security clearance, according to court documents.
During a three-day meeting in a Hong Kong hotel room that year, Ma’s brother – identified in the plea agreement as “co-conspirator #1” – provided Chinese intelligence officers with a “large volume of classified and sensitive information”, according to the document. They were paid $50,000; prosecutors said they had an hourlong video from the meeting that showed Ma counting the money.
Two years later, Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist in the FBI’s Honolulu field office. By then, the Americans knew he was collaborating with Chinese intelligence officers, and they hired him in 2004 so they could keep an eye on his espionage activities.
Over the next six years, Ma regularly copied, photographed and stole classified documents, prosecutors said. He often took them on trips to China, returning with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts, including a new set of golf clubs, prosecutors said.
At one point in 2006, his handlers at the Shanghai state security bureau asked Ma to get his brother to help identify four people in photographs, and the brother did identify two of them.
During a sting operation, Ma accepted thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for past espionage activities, and he told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer that he wanted to see the “motherland” succeed, prosecutors have said.
“Let it be a message to anyone else thinking of doing the same,” FBI Honolulu special agent-in-charge Steven Merrill said in a statement after Ma was sentenced. “No matter how long it takes, or how much time passes, you will be brought to justice.”
The brother was never prosecuted. He suffered from debilitating symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and has since died, court documents say.
“Because of my brother, I could not bring myself to report this crime,” Ma said in his letter to the judge. “He was like a father figure to me. In a way, I am also glad that he left this world, as that made me free to admit what I did.”
The plea agreement also called for Ma to cooperate with the US government by providing more details about his case and submitting to polygraph tests for the rest of his life.
Prosecutors said that since pleading guilty, Ma has already taken part in five “lengthy, and sometimes grueling, sessions over the course of four weeks, some spanning as long as six hours, wherein he provided valuable information and endeavored to answer the government’s inquiries to the best of his ability”.