A U.S. Army intelligence analyst has pleaded guilty to charges that accuse him of selling military secrets to China for a total of $42,000, according to the Department of Justice.
“The defendant abused his access to restricted government systems to sell sensitive military information to a person he knew to be a foreign national,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division said in a statement.
“By conspiring to transmit national defense information to a person living outside the United States, this defendant callously put our national security at risk to cash in on the trust our military placed in him.”
Schultz had held top secret/sensitive compartmented information security clearance in the Army.
He was recruited by an individual who lived in Hong Kong and was identified only as “Conspirator A,” whom he suspected of being “associated with the Chinese government,” according to the DOJ.
Schultz handed over dozens of sensitive and restricted, but unclassified, military documents, including information on the HH-60 helicopter, F-22A fighter aircraft, the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles, the B-52 aircraft, the high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS), and the terminal high altitude area defense system, according to the indictment.
Conspirator A also asked Schultz to provide information on hypersonic equipment, the indictment said, but it’s unclear if Schultz had successfully complied with the request.
HIMARS, a long-range precision strike system, made headlines after Ukraine used the U.S.-supplied rocket systems to destroy Russian ammunition depots.
Other documents supplied by Schultz included one discussing lessons learned by the U.S. Army from the Ukraine war that it would apply in a defense of Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China seeks to control.
Schultz also passed on several documents relating to military exercises and the U.S. military forces in South Korea and the Philippines, as well as a document related to U.S. military satellites.
‘Corrupt Other Members’
The indictment also mentioned another individual identified as “U.S. Person 1,” a fellow U.S. Army soldier, whom Schultz had recruited to provide information. Conspirator A asked that U.S. Person 1 provide information related to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), such as documents on the command’s studies of the Ukraine war and Taiwan.In November 2022, Conspirator A determined that a document titled “INDOPACOM Lessons Learned” provided by U.S. Person 1 was “too simple,” according to the indictment.
“This defendant sold national defense information to a foreign actor and conspired to corrupt other members of our military,” U.S. Attorney Henry Leventis for the Middle District of Tennessee said in a statement.
“In doing so, he violated his training and his oath as a member of the armed services and he compromised our national security. Today’s guilty plea to all of the charges in the indictment ensures that he will be held fully accountable for his crimes.”
Schultz is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 23 next year.
Schultz’s attorney Mary Kathryn Harcombe declined to comment when contacted by The Epoch Times.
