HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – A former Central Intelligence Officer was sentenced Wednesday to federal prison for conspiring to gather and deliver national defense information for China.

Chief U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson sentenced 71-year-old Alexander Yuk Ching Ma — who had pleaded guilty in May — to 10 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

Ma worked for the CIA from 1982 until 1989.

He was arrested in 2020 on charges of spying and selling state secrets to China.

Ma admitted that in 2001, over a decade after he resigned from the CIA, he and a relative met with Chinese intelligence officers in a Hong Kong hotel room to provide them with “a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information.”

In exchange, they were handed $50,000 in cash.

He subsequently served as a linguist for the FBI in Honolulu. The FBI was aware of Ma’s ties to Chinese intelligence officers and hired him as part of an investigation, monitoring his activities and contacts.

“This sentence demonstrates the dedication of the United States to protect itself from this type of betrayal and violation of trust,” said FBI Honolulu Special Agent in Charge Steven Merrill. “Let it be a message to anyone else thinking of doing the same. No matter how long it takes, or how much time passes, you will be brought to justice.”

The government said Ma’s role involved facilitating classified CIA information — obtained from 1967 to 1983 — between his relative and Chinese intelligence officers.

“Despite his sworn oath to protect U.S. classified secrets from illegal disclosure, Alexander Ma chose to betray his oath for money while aiding the People’s Republic of China,” said U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors.

“Bringing Alexander Ma to justice, even after the passage of many years, affirms our commitment to holding accountable those who violate our nation’s trust and security.”

Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Donna Longboy, a registered nurse and manager for Kapiolani’s pediatric ambulatory unit and apheresis program, tells us about pediatric oncology services at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children.

Some of those services include clinical trials for pediatric cancer patients and Car-T cell therapy treatment.

Longboy also shares more information about Kapiolani’s bone marrow transplant program and recent prestigious accreditation.

For more health and wellness tips and information, visit HealthierHawaii.org.

Copyright 2021 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

Hawaii has some of the best food-growing conditions on the planet, yet it’s well known that we import more than 80% of what we eat.

Importing jacks up prices, contributes to climate change and puts everyone at risk if there’s a disruption to the supply chain.

It qualifies as one definition of insanity that a place as abundant as Hawaii imports so much food at higher costs and greater harm and risk to ourselves and the planet.

We can continue to lament how we fell into such a precarious place or we can find ways to feed ourselves in ways that are healthy, affordable and delicious. Hawaii can become the breadbasket of the Pacific.

It’s a challenge to wean ourselves off of imported food. But it’s doable.

Keala Kahuanui is up for that challenge. 

In 2007, when she was a young crew member on Makali’i’s voyage to the far-western reaches of Micronesia, the leadership of the double-hulled sailing canoe designated her to be the cook. 

Makali’i, slightly smaller than the Oahu-based Hokule’a, was stocked with canned goods from Costco and supplies from food banks. This was an important and symbolic voyage. Makali’i was to travel to the home island of Mau Piailug, the Micronesian navigator from Satawal who taught Hawaiians the lost skills of long-distance voyaging.

Every six hours, Kahuanui would prepare for the crew shift changes. This was when everyone aboard would eat together. She was responsible for nourishing her crewmates. 

When a crew member didn’t care for another meal of Spam and decided to pass on eating and chose to sleep, Kahuanui understood that as the cook, she needed to up her game. Crewmates skipping meals meant that they’d go 12 hours without food and that could impair their abilities to effectively carry out their tasks and jeopardize the safety of the voyage. 

Using what was available, she made a mixed vegetable stir fry with Spam and shoyu sugar and her crewmate was nourished.

She fed her crew for 27 days, however one part of the voyage to Satawal was incredibly painful for her. Every other day, when she had the stamina, she’d take a 5-gallon bucket of empty cans and opala and she’d throw the trash in the water and hope that the refuse would quickly sink. 

When she emptied the bucket, she worried about the dolphins, malolo and squid she saw swimming alongside the canoe.

“It was so eha (painful),” she said. The alternative was worse: bringing their trash to a tiny Pacific atoll with no refuse station.

Kahuanui resolved to do better next time.

And she has.

This is why voyaging is so important to Hawaii. We are saltwater people and being on the ocean helps us more clearly understand who we are and what our roles and responsibilities are.

Kahuanui and the Makali’i crew, which sails under the umbrella of the Hawaii island nonprofit organization Na Kalai Wa’a, took up the challenge of its renowned navigator, Chadd Paishon.

Five years ago, before a voyage to Mokumanamana, an island 500 miles northwest of Makali’i’s home harbor of Kawaihae, Paishon asked: Could Makali’i be provisioned for a long-distance voyage solely with food grown and gathered on Hawaii island?

Kahuanui, and the island community, stepped up to the challenge.

As food raised on the island arrived, she studied various food preservation techniques.

“I get on YouTube and I listen and learn,” she said. And then she came across warnings of deadly bacteria.

“I need a kumu, I need somebody real to teach us this,” she said. “I can’t be learning this on YouTube. We could kill people.”

With the help of food preservationists, Kahuanui not only learned how to can meals like luau stew, but she has also learned to freeze dry foods grown on Hawaii island. With a little hot water, she can feed a crew with foods that are both nutritionally and spiritually nourishing.

She says it gives her chicken skin to think about what her work represents.

“It’s hope in a jar,” she said. “We would not get the same effect with a can of Spam. These jars (of locally grown food) are the confirmations that I want for our people — this is what they need.”

Kahuanui has become so skilled in provisioning that she will be traveling to Turin, Italy, at the end of September to speak at the Slow Food Terra Madre Conference.

“Slow food” was a movement started in Europe to counteract fast food. It’s dedicated to creating a culinary situation that is beneficial to both the food provider and the consumer. 

Before she shares her manao with the Italians and the rest of the world, she will present at the Council of Native Hawaiian Advancement conference, in Waikoloa, Sept. 17-19.

Kahuanui already shared her knowledge with other canoe families from across the Pacific at this summer’s FestPAC in Honolulu. Na Kalai Wa’a’s canoe, Mauloa, was the centerpiece of the exhibition at the convention center.

The canoe was there to embody a proverb, an olelo noeau: The canoe is an island and the island is a canoe.

What has happened on the canoe now needs to happen on the island. 

Kahuanui responded to a vision and made something significant happen. She fed a canoe crew with food exclusively raised on Hawaii island. Now, the island needs to feed itself.

A new vision is for Hawaii island in the coming decade is to make true strides toward not only feeding itself, but being able to share its abundance with the rest of its oceanic neighbors. 

For those who live above us in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the season of harvest, so I’m going to spend the rest of this month writing about the steps needed to make our island home the breadbasket of the Pacific.