Why Do Chinese Spies Keep Getting Sweetheart Deals?
Why is a CIA traitor caught on video getting a deal instead of life in prison?
Lately, there has been a rash of cases in which people in the military and intelligence community were caught spying for Communist China and handing over significant information to the enemy.
And then got slaps on the wrist.
A U.S. Navy service member was sentenced today to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for transmitting sensitive U.S. military information to an intelligence officer from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in exchange for bribery payments.
According to court documents, Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, aka Thomas Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiring with the intelligence officer and one count of receiving a bribe.
27 months in prison and a fine smaller than the bribes he got from China.
But in the past, there had been arguments that plea deals had to be cut because the evidence wasn’t airtight. But what happens when the evidence is right there on video?
A former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI accused of spying for China for at least a decade pleaded guilty Friday in a federal courtroom in Honolulu.
Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, has been in custody since his arrest in August 2020. The U.S. Justice Department said in a court filing it amassed “a war chest of damning evidence” against him, including an hourlong video of Ma and an older relative — also a former CIA officer — providing classified information to intelligence officers with China’s Ministry of State Security in 2001.
The video shows Ma counting the $50,000 received from the Chinese agents for his service, prosecutors said.
During a sting operation, he 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 said.
The secrets he was accused of providing included information about CIA sources and assets, international operations, secure communication practices and operational tradecraft, charging documents said.
As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Ma pleaded guilty Friday to a count of conspiracy to gather or deliver national defense information to a foreign government. The deal calls for a 10-year sentence, but a judge will have the final say at Ma’s sentencing scheduled for Sept. 11. Without the deal, he faced life in prison.
So why was there a deal?
There couldn’t possibly be any more evidence against him. Everything is there on video. What exactly did prosecutors need from Ma that required them to make a deal with him, and potentially cut his sentence from life in prison to 10 years (and that’s if the judge doesn’t decide to give him a pass anyway) that required this deal?
This is the equivalent of taping a serial killer at work and then discussing why he loves killing people, and then cutting a plea deal for 10 years.
It makes no sense. And I have to wonder if the Biden administration’s people don’t have a hand in this.
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