A former American army intelligence analyst with a Secret Top Security Authorization was sentenced to seven years in prison on Wednesday for sold military information classified to a foreign national who was most likely linked to the Chinese government, said federal prosecutors.
The analyst, sgt. Korbein Schultz, 25, sent at least 92 documents sensitive to a conspirator, which was not appointed, in a period of less than two years, the authorities said. The equipment included technical textbooks for intercontinental ballistic missile systems and information on Chinese military tactics, they said.
Mr. Schultz, from Wills Point, Texas, received $ 42,000 in exchange for information, according to the Ministry of Justice.
He pleaded guilty last August to six criminal counts which included conspiracy to obtain and transmit data on national defense, the corruption of a public official and the export of technical defense data. The counts all together could have caused a sentence of up to 65 years in prison.
Mr. Schultz will also have to finish three years of supervised release in the context of his sentence, which was sent to the Federal Court in Nashville.
“The protection of classified information is essential for our national security, and this conviction reflects the ramifications when there is a violation of this confidence”, Brig. General Rhett R. Cox, the commanding general of the army’s counterintelligence, said on Wednesday in a statement. “The actions of this soldier endanger the staff of the army, placing an individual gain above personal honor.”
Mary Kathryn Harcombe, a federal public defender who represented Mr. Schultz, refused to comment on.
Mr. Schultz, who was assigned to the 506th Infantry Battalion, was arrested in March 2024 in Fort Campbell in Kentucky.
Prosecutors said that he had shared the operational order of his army unit with the conspirator before the deployment of the unit in Eastern Europe to support NATO operations. The conspirator contacted him shortly after receiving his Security Security authorization, they said.
He also provided the person details on American military exercises in South Korea and in the Philippines, in addition to the lessons learned by the US army of Ukrainian War which are applicable to the defense of Taiwan, the authorities said.
Military officials said that Mr. Schultz had contacted technical textbooks in China for the HH-60 helicopter and F-22A fighter planes, as well as a tactical gaming book on how to counter unmanned air systems in large-scale combat operations.
According to the indictment, Mr. Schultz tried without success to recruit another army intelligence officer to help him obtain more sensitive documents for the conspirator, who would have lived in Hong Kong and worked for a geopolitical consulting company abroad.
