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, according to court documents unsealed Monday. He told a law enforcement officer who was posing as a Chinese intelligence officer that he wanted to see the "motherland" succeed, prosecutors said. An FBI affidavit accuses Ma, who worked for the CIA from 1982 to 1989, of revealing government secrets to 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. He was charged in federal court in Honolulu with conspiring to gather and communicate national defence information for a foreign nation.

Source: CBC News August 17, 2020 21:29 UTC