A US Army intelligence analyst on Wednesday was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for providing sensitive defense information to China, including documents about the US’ potential defense of Taiwan, weapons systems, and military tactics and strategy.
Sergeant Korbein Schultz, who held a top-secret security clearance, was arrested in March last year at Fort Campbell, a military base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
Schultz was sentenced after he pleaded guilty in August last year to sharing at least 92 sensitive US military documents, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
He admitted to charges of conspiring to obtain and disclose national defense information, exporting technical data related to defense articles without a license, conspiracy to export defense articles without a license and bribery of a public official.
“This sentencing is a stark warning to those who betray our country: You will pay a steep price for it,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.
According to the charging documents, Schultz provided dozens of sensitive US military documents to an individual living in Hong Kong who he believed to be associated with the Chinese government.
He was paid US$42,000 for the information, the justice department said.
Among the documents handed over by Schultz was one discussing the lessons learned by the US Army from the Ukraine-Russia war that it would apply in a defense of Taiwan.
Other documents discussed Chinese military tactics and preparedness, and US military exercises and forces in South Korea and the Philippines.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday said that the justice department “remains vigilant against China’s efforts to target our military and will ensure that those who leak military secrets spend years behind bars.”
Schultz’s arrest came less than a year after the arrests of two US Navy sailors in California on charges of spying for China.
One of them, petty officer Zhao Wenheng (趙文恆), was sentenced to 27 months in prison in January last year after pleading guilty to charges of conspiring with a foreign intelligence officer and accepting a bribe.
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