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.
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