Ex-C.I.A. Officer Who Spied for China Is Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

A former C.I.A. officer and contract translator for the F.B.I. who accepted thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts, such as a new set of golf clubs, in return for providing classified information to the Chinese government was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.

The security breach included confirming the identity of several people that Chinese intelligence officials were interested in and providing what federal authorities said was a large amount of information related to national defense.

The former officer, Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, of Honolulu, was arrested and charged in August 2020 after he admitted to an undercover F.BI. employee, who had hired him as part of a ruse to investigate him, that he had used his security clearance to help get the protected information to the Shanghai State Security Bureau of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement on Wednesday.

Mr. Ma admitted his involvement as part of an agreement with prosecutors under which he pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to gather and deliver national defense information.

“I take full responsibility for my crime,” he wrote in a letter to the judge ahead of his sentencing. “No matter what made me do it. It was wrong for me to have done it.”

According to court documents, Mr. Ma, who held a “top secret” security clearance and had access to classified national defense information, worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1982 until 1989.