Unmasking of elderly U.S. spies shows there's no age limit on getting busted

The United States has busted some spies lately who are old enough to qualify for retirement benefits.

U.S. prosecutors recently announced a guilty plea from Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a septuagenarian former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who admitted to passing defence information to China.

That came a few months after Victor Manuel Rocha — a 73-year-old former U.S. ambassador — admitted to having acted as a long-term secret agent for Cuba.

Both cases involved elder baby boomers revealed to have done covert work for foreign powers years earlier.

Detecting hostile spies is a tricky business and can be a years-long process. But these cases — and others that came before them — demonstrate that in America, there's no age limit on being held accountable for spying.

"There's no statute of limitations for espionage," confirms Pete Lapp, a retired FBI agent whose book Queen of Cuba details the investigation into Ana Belén Montes, a defence analyst who spied for Havana for over 17 years.

Ma worked for the CIA during the 1980s, but it was his post-agency life that caught authorities' attention.

Prosecutors say that back in 2001, Ma and an older relative — a fellow former CIA employee who has since died — accepted $50,000 US in cash for passing classified defence information to Chinese intelligence contacts.

Ma later sought a job with the FBI to "give himself access to U.S. government information," according to the criminal complaint filed against him. But prosecutors say he was allowed to be hired there so he could be watched. For unstated reasons, he wasn't arrested until 2020.

Ma, who is in his early 70s and lives in Honolulu, appears set to serve a 10-year sentence under a proposed plea deal.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Hawaii didn't respond to an email inquiry about how age may factor into Ma's sentencing. But Justice Department officials previously signalled their determination to vigorously pursue any such cases, even if transgressions occurred long ago.

"Let it be known that anyone who violates a position of trust to betray the United States will face justice, no matter how many years it takes to bring their crimes to light," Alan E. Kohler Jr., a senior FBI counterintelligence official, said at the time of Ma's arrest.

Just three per cent of America's federal prison population is 65 or older, according to U.S. Federal Bureau of Prison statistics.

These include some caught-and-convicted spies, now among them being Rocha, who is starting a 15-year sentence.