On Friday, a former US Army sergeant who allegedly lived in China for several years was detained on charges of retaining national defense information and attempting to share it with the Chinese government.
According to court documents, Joseph Daniel Schmidt was an active-duty soldier in the US Army from 2015 to 2020, where he supervised the "collection operations and the production of intelligence reporting, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence products."
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Schmidt had access to classified intelligence and a top-secret security clearance in his position. According to a Justice Department news release, Schmidt will make his initial judicial appearance in a federal court in California on Friday.
Schmidt faces two offenses, each carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted: attempting to transmit national defense information and retaining national defense information. Schmidt has no counsel listed on the public transcript.
After transitioning to inactive duty in January 2020, Schmidt allegedly traveled to Beijing and Turkey and used Google to search for terms such as "turkey extradition military defection," "soldier defect," "chinese embassy," "iranian embassy," and "can you be extradited for treason."
In February 2020, Schmidt sent an email to the public email address of the Chinese Consulate in Turkey, stating that he wanted to relocate to China and "share information I learned during my career as an interrogator with the Chinese government."Schmidt then created a document titled "Important Information to Share with Chinese Government," according to federal investigators, which contained classified national defense information, as determined by the US Army.
Schmidt returned to China in March 2020 after spending a few days in the United States following his journey to Turkey. According to the Justice Department, he had not returned to the United States until Friday, when he was detained at an airport in San Francisco.
The ex-army sergeant allegedly drew a hand-drawn diagram of an Army computer network as well as other documents describing US Army intelligence practices regarding training, intelligence collection, and interrogation techniques while in China, as per CNN.
He predominantly worked in intelligence at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in western Washington and had access to Top Secret documents, the highest classification of classified information in the United States government.
According to court filings, he allegedly made numerous documents and Google searches describing attempts to provide US national security secrets to China. Investigators said he researched online how to defect to China and offered his services as a "interrogator" to the Chinese consulate in Turkey and China's intelligence agency.
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Schmidt Arrested After Returning to US
In one email to the Istanbul consulate, he allegedly wrote, "I have a current top secret clearance and would like to speak to someone from the government to share this information with you if that is possible."
The accusation is that he created a Microsoft Word document titled "high-level secrets."
The title of the 23-page document, according to prosecutors, was written in Chinese, but "almost all of it is written in English."
After completing his military service, he relocated to Turkey for approximately one month before relocating to China. He did not return to the United States until Friday, when he landed in San Francisco.
Tessa Gorman, the interim US attorney for the Western District of Washington, stated, "Members of our military take an oath to defend our country and the Constitution."
Schmidt has been charged with attempting to transmit and retaining national defense information. If convicted, he faces decades of imprisonment. It is not known if he has hired a counsel who can comment on his behalf.
Per BBC, this detention comes just two months after two active-duty US Navy personnel were apprehended in southern California for spying for China. Both individuals allegedly received thousands of dollars for ship blueprints, technical manuals, and radar system diagrams.
