Military officials say that a 22-year old soldier arrested in an espionage probe did not have access to sensitive intelligence, according to NBC News.
Spc. William Colton Millay, who was stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, was arrested on Friday on suspicion of espionage after he allegedly offered to sell military information to an undercover cop.
According to military officials who spoke to NBC, Millay was a military policeman who had standard clearance, but no access to more sensitive classified information. He was reportedly angry that the rest of his unit, known as the “Arctic Enforcers,” was deployed to Afghanistan but he was not.
“We do expect to prefer charges sometime this week,” said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll, Reuters reports, adding that the charges would be brought under Uniform Code of Military Justice and likely tried in a military court.
Military officials also denied that Millay was connected to Wikileaks in any way. “While we can’t go into any specifics, this is completely different than the Manning case in that it does not involve the transfer of data on computer networks,” Coppernoll said.
The FBI was part of the initial investigation, NBC reports, but turned the case over to Army counterintelligence.
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