Army Intel Soldier Charged With Selling Secrets About US Weapons, Ops

An active duty US Army intelligence analyst was arrested on Thursday for sending secret military documents to an unidentified foreign national over a nearly 2-year period. The charges include the unlawful export of defense information to China, but the indictment doesn’t indicate if the foreign national was working for a government. 

Sergeant Korbein Schultz was arrested at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he’s assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and holds a Top Secret clearance. According to the 25-page indictment, Schultz provided someone identified only as “Conspirator A” — who claimed to reside in Hong Kong — with “information regarding the operability of sensitive U.S. military systems and their capabilities.” Those systems included F-22A fighters, the HH-60W helicopter, intercontinental ballistic missiles, B-52 bombers, air defense systems, HIMARS rocket launchers and hypersonic weapons. 

Sergeant Korbein Schultz raked in more than $42,000 for betraying his fellow soldiers, prosecutors say 

Schultz, a native of Dallas exurb Wills Point, received 14 payments that totaled some $42,000. It’s not clear if this Sergeant Schultz will plead “I know nothing!” 

In addition to weapon-specific information, prosecutors say Schultz also shared big-picture documents, including US research on foreign countries such as China, studies on the future development of US military forces, and recaps of American military drills and operations. The files included documents, maps, manuals and photographs. 

Conspirator A’s identity was revealed to the grand jury that indicted him, but, for now, it’s a secret to the rest of us. The indictment only describes the individual as “a foreign national purporting to reside in Hong Kong” who claimed to work for a “geopolitical consulting firm based overseas.” The word “purported” would seem to suggest that investigators either don’t know if Conspirator A lived in Hong Kong, or they know that he or she doesn’t. The indictment doesn’t say if Conspirator A was working for a government.

There’s something of a disconnect between the indictment — which includes multiple charges of Unlawful Export of Defense Articles to China — and the Department of Justice press release, which doesn’t mention the China aspect. However, the Export Control Act charges imply that investigators are confident the recipient was in China. 

Schultz allegedly shared information about the US HIMARS platform, among many other weapon systems (Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images via Newsweek)

Conspirator A sent a variety of specific requests to Schultz. At the outset of the illicit arrangement, Schultz was requested to share lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, and “with those lessons, what the United States could and should do to help defend Taiwan from an attack,” reads the indictment.

After fulfilling that request in the summer of 2022 and receiving a whopping $200, Schultz is said to have proposed a long-term relationship. Prosecutors say it kept going until his recent arrest. In August 2022, he told Conspirator A that he wished he could be Jason Bourne. Then there’s this amusing anecdote: 

On or about May 20, 2023, Conspirator A told KORBEIN SCHULTZ that Conspirator A would like to meet him at a Formula 1 race overseas and make him a “senior partner” with a “big signing bonus.” KORBEIN SCHULTZ responded, “Oh snap!”

“The conduct alleged in today’s indictment represents a grave betrayal of the oath sworn to defend our country,” said FBI Executive Assistant Director Larissa Knapp. “Instead of safeguarding national defense information, the defendant conspired with a foreign national to sell it, potentially endangering our national security.”

The arrest of Sergeant Schultz comes just days after a retired Army lieutenant colonel was charged with sending Ukraine war secrets to a ‘woman’ he met with on a foreign dating site, in what appears to have been a classic honeypot intelligence ploy. 

US Air Force employee indicted for leaking secrets on dating app

The 63-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel is accused of transmitting confidential information to a person claiming to be a woman living in Ukraine

Details: https://t.co/9dE5LRosXz pic.twitter.com/n9xNa1pJYX

— RT (@RT_com) March 6, 2024