Why Do Chinese Spies Keep Getting Sweetheart Deals?

Why is a CIA traitor caught on video getting a deal instead of life in prison?

By Daniel Greenfield

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.