Selling out your country for money is pretty low. Selling secrets to the enemy, with the knowledge that you are sending someone to their death, is the worst kind of spy. Robert Hanssen was that type of spy. Hanssen, an FBI agent who, from 1979 to 2001, fed information to his Soviet handlers that netted him over $600,000 in cash and $50,000 worth of diamonds. The information that he sold costs lives. Spies in the Soviet Block were outed and subsequently executed. The CIA and the FBI knew there was a mole, but Hanssen escaped detection for years. At one point he typed in his name on the FBI mainframe computer to see if he was under suspicion. Apparently, that wasn’t suspicious.
Advertisement
Hanssen had dreams of getting out of the spy game, packing up his decoder rings, and relocating to Moscow so he could teach Soviet spies the techniques of spying. His “hero” was British-born spy, Kim Philby. Hanssen wanted to emulate Philby, perhaps because Philby successfully defected to the USSR. Maybe Hannsen didn’t research what really happened to Philby. Philby, like most “true believers,” found the reality of actual communism to be not the vision of worker utopia found on propaganda posters. Reality was, stifling. He was under virtual house arrest and guarded by KGB thugs, 24/7.
Over at Langly, a mousy-looking, 31-year veteran of the agency named Aldrich Ames was doing the same thing as Hanssen. Ames netted far more cash than Hanssen in his truncated spy career. Ames and Hanssen combined to compromise the identities of hundreds of human assets, most notably Gen. Dmitri Polyakov. Polyakov was the head of Soviet Intelligence. He was fingered by Hanssen and Ames. Polyakov was arrested and executed.
Most recently, we have seen an increase in spies, and spying for China. Fang Fang, Eric Swalwell’s alleged side-chick was (and still is?) a Chinese spy. He claims he didn’t know of her spying, and offered no information for her affections. Kathy Hochul, the nasally governor of New York, had a spy working under her nose.
Advertisement
Why do we allow China to import “students,” who end up being Chinese spies?
Former graduate student in Chicago, Ji Chaoqun, got eight years in prison for spying for the ChiComs. He gathered data on United States engineers and scientists.
Diane Feinstein had a spy who loved her. Her longtime driver was a longtime Chinese spy.
See a pattern?
On Wednesday, another Chinese spy was sentenced. The New York Times reported that:
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.
This clown took some low-level cash, and get this – golf clubs – as payment for the secret documents he was selling to the ChiComs. Ma was sentenced to 10 years in Federal prison and the some time on probation. After he’s released, Ma has to submit to a polygraph for the rest of his life. By the time Ma is released, he will be 81.
His now-dead brother was also a Chinese spy, but the FBI didn’t nab him before he died.
Ma said he was feeding info to the ChiComs and was doing it for the “Motherland.” Ma is sorry. He’s very sorry – he got caught. He told the sentencing judge he was talking “full responsibility” for selling out his adopted country. Oh, okay, thanks for that, Ma.
Advertisement
Remember – the FBI is out there, hunting down bad guys and spies. They likely have an agent with binoculars in the Rockies. He (or she) is looking for ChiCom balloons. Right after they solve the mystery of what “motivated” Crooks to shoot Trump, maybe they can explain what “motivated” the Nashville transgender to murder Christians. It’s a mystery.
Maybe FBI should offer some would-be “CS” some golf clubs? It worked for China.