US soldier gets 16 years for espionage

A U.S. military panel sentenced a military police officer to 16 years in prison for attempting to sell classified information to an undercover FBI agent. Spc. William Colton Millay, 24, a military policeman with the 164th Military Police Company at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, admitted to giving national defense information to an FBI agent he believed was a foreign intelligence agent, a statement from U.S. Army Alaska said. He pleaded guilty March 19 to attempted espionage, failing to obey regulations, issuing a false official statement, soliciting another to commit espionage and communicating national defense information, the statement added. The panel of eight noncommissioned officers sentenced him to 19 years in prison, reduced to 16 years under a pre-trial agreement, with credit for 535 days of time served, Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday. Millay, of Owensboro, Ky., served in South Korea and deployed to Iraq from December 2009 to July 2010. He had access to classified information as part of his normal duties, the newspaper said. Millay was arrested Oct. 28, 2011 on Elmendorf, was reduced in rank to private and was given a dishonorable discharge, Stars and Stripes said.