Richardson soldier arrested in espionage probe - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Richardson soldier arrested in espionage probe

A soldier stationed in Alaska was arrested Friday on suspicion of espionage, according to an Army official.

Spc. William Colton Millay, a 22-year-old military policeman from Owensboro, Ky., was taken into custody at 6:30 a.m. Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson by special agents from Army Counterintelligence and Army Criminal Investigation Command.

The FBI and Army Counterintelligence are continuing to investigate Millay, assigned to the rear detachment of the 164th Military Police Company, 793rd Military Police Battalion, 2nd Engineer Brigade. The unit, known as the Arctic Enforcers, deployed to Afghanistan in the spring without Millay.

Millay is in the custody of the Alaska Department of Corrections, where he is listed as a federal inmate at the Anchorage Correctional Complex.

A U.S. Army Alaska spokesman said he could not elaborate on whether Millay has been charged, what charges he would face or whether he faces charges outside of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“Today’s arrest was the result of the close working relationship between the FBI and its military partners in Alaska,” Mary Frances Rook, special agent in charge of the FBI in Alaska, said Friday. “Through this ongoing partnership, we are better able to protect our nation.”

The arrest comes as the military continues to reap fallout from the WikiLeaks case, in which former intelligence analyst Pvt. Bradley Manning is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website.

Those documents included Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, confidential State Department cables, and a classified military video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq that killed a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

Manning was transferred in April to a confinement facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., amid claims Manning was mistreated in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. — charges the government denies.