A US Army soldier has been arrested on accusations of selling sensitive information related to US military capabilities, including documents detailing potential US actions regarding Taiwan, US Department of Justice officials said on Thursday.
Sergeant Korbein Schultz, who is also an intelligence analyst, was accused in a six-count indictment of charges including conspiring to obtain and disclose military defense information and bribery of a public official.
The 24-year-old was arrested at Fort Campbell, which straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky border, shortly after the indictment was released.
Photo: AFP
“The men and women of the United States Armed Forces dedicate their lives to maintain our national security,” US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry Leventis said. “Our laws protecting national defense information are critical to that mission and they must be enforced. Illegal dissemination of national defense information puts our country, our fellow citizens, members of our military and our allies at risk.”
The indictment alleges that Schultz — who had a top-secret security clearance — conspired with an individual identified only as “Conspirator A” to disclose documents, photographs and other national defense materials since June 2022.
The indictment says that Schultz was recruited by the individual not only due to his security clearance, but also because he was tasked with gathering sensitive US military information.
Some of the information that Schultz supposedly gave to the individual included information related to the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, hypersonic equipment, studies on future developments of US military forces, and studies on military drills and operations in major nations such as China.
The indictment said that Schultz was initially asked to provide documents detailing lessons that could be learned from Russia’s war with Ukraine and how those lessons could be applied to the US helping Taiwan in the event of an attack by China.
Schultz was paid US$200 for that information, which then prompted Conspirator A to ask for a “long-term partnership.”
Conspirator A, who was described in the indictment as a foreign national purporting to reside in Hong Kong, later said that Schultz could earn more money if he handed over “internal only” material rather than unclassified documents.
In total, Shultz received at least 14 payments totaling US$42,000.
“The defendant and his co-conspirator also discussed recruiting another member of the US military to join their conspiracy and to provide additional national defense information in order to conceal their illegal conduct,” Leventis said.
Army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Ruth Castro in a statement said that Schultz has been in the army since November 2018 and his hometown is Wills Point, Texas.
Schultz was previously assigned to Fort Cavazos, Texas, and was deployed once to eastern Europe, said Lieutenant Colonel Tony Hoefler, a spokesman for Fort Campbell.
SECURITY: As China is ‘reshaping’ Hong Kong’s population, Taiwan must raise the eligibility threshold for applications from Hong Kongers, Chiu Chui-cheng said When Hong Kong and Macau citizens apply for residency in Taiwan, it would be under a new category that includes a “national security observation period,” Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. President William Lai (賴清德) on March 13 announced 17 strategies to counter China’s aggression toward Taiwan, including incorporating national security considerations into the review process for residency applications from Hong Kong and Macau citizens. The situation in Hong Kong is constantly changing, Chiu said to media yesterday on the sidelines of the Taipei Technology Run hosted by the Taipei Neihu Technology Park Development Association. With
A US Marine Corps regiment equipped with Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) is set to participate in the upcoming Balikatan 25 exercise in the Luzon Strait, marking the system’s first-ever deployment in the Philippines. US and Philippine officials have separately confirmed that the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) — the mobile launch platform for the Naval Strike Missile — would take part in the joint exercise. The missiles are being deployed to “a strategic first island chain chokepoint” in the waters between Taiwan proper and the Philippines, US-based Naval News reported. “The Luzon Strait and Bashi Channel represent a critical access
‘FORM OF PROTEST’: The German Institute Taipei said it was ‘shocked’ to see Nazi symbolism used in connection with political aims as it condemned the incident Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 yesterday amid an outcry over a Nazi armband he wore to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case on Tuesday night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and apparently covering the book with a coat. This is a serious international scandal and Chinese
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE TRAINING: The ministry said 87.5 percent of the apprehended Chinese agents were reported by service members they tried to lure into becoming spies Taiwanese organized crime, illegal money lenders, temples and civic groups are complicit in Beijing’s infiltration of the armed forces, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a report yesterday. Retired service members who had been turned to Beijing’s cause mainly relied on those channels to infiltrate the Taiwanese military, according to the report to be submitted to lawmakers ahead of tomorrow’s hearing on Chinese espionage in the military. Chinese intelligence typically used blackmail, Internet-based communications, bribery or debts to loan sharks to leverage active service personnel to do its bidding, it said. China’s main goals are to collect intelligence, and develop a
RSS