Is This 22-Year-Old U.S. Army Soldier the Next Bradley Manning?
A 22-year-old soldier was arrested Friday morning by Army counterintelligence agents in Alaska on suspicion of espionage. Sounds familiar.
According to the Army Times, Spc. William Colton Millay from Owensboro, KY, was arrested on Friday morning at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska where he was stationed as a military policeman.
"Today's arrest was the result of the close working relationship between the FBI and its military partners in Alaska," an FBI spokeswoman told the paper.
Details about Millay's alleged crimes are scant. It's unclear if he's even been charged.
Millay has an equally scant online presence. We turned up his MySpace profile, where he's seen smiling in an "Army" T-shirt next to a girl, and that's about it. It seems he has some interest in Asian culture: He's wearing a conical straw hat in his Facebook profile, above, and has "Kevin" spelled out in Korean on his MySpace profile. When we called Millay's home in Kentucky, the man who answered had no comment.
Millay's case is reminiscent of Pvt. Bradley Manning, the imprisoned 23-year-old army intelligence officer charged with espionage and other crimes for leaking documents to Wikileaks by burning them onto a Lady Gaga CD. Since the Wikileaks fiasco, the Army has been boosting its operational security in the hopes of thwarting another Bradley Manning. Was it enough?
Update: In an updated story, the Army Times suggests Millay will face charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but not Federal criminal charges—his offenses are probably less serious than Manning's. He also used to make funny YouTube videos with his buddies.