A 22-year-old Army specialist arrested on espionage charges at a U.S. military base in Alaska is not a spy, U.S. military officials tell NBC News.
Officials say that although Spc. William Colton Millay, who was serving as a military policeman, had a standard security clearance, he did not possess or have access to sensitive classified material.
According to the officials, Millay, of Owensboro, Ky., was reportedly disgruntled because he was not deployed to Afghanistan with his unit. He allegedly offered to sell classified information to an undercover police officer. The FBI was brought into the investigation along with U.S. military counterintelligence, but ultimately declined to pursue the case and turned it back over to the military.
Pentagon and military officials strongly deny speculation and rumors that Millay was somehow connected to WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website that has spilled government secrets in the past. WikiLeaks recently announced that it has temporarily suspended operations because of a financial "blockade" by credit-card processors Visa, MasterCard and other financial institutions.
Millay was taken into custody at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage on Friday by special agents from Army Counterintelligence and Army Criminal Investigation Command, .
"We do expect to prefer charges sometime this week," Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll told Reuters. He said the charges would be brought under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the FBI said the case would be tried in military courts.
Coppernoll did not say what information Millay may have had access to. He said the investigation was ongoing.
Millay is assigned to the 164th Military Police Company, 793rd Military Police Battalion, 2nd Engineer Brigade.
Coppernoll said the 164th Military Police Company, known as the "Arctic Enforcers," was deployed to Afghanistan earlier this year but that Millay did not go.
"He was part of the rear detachment," Coppernoll said. "I don't know why in his particular case he was part of that (rear deployment) but that's not unusual."
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is a combined Army and U.S. Air Force facility near Anchorage.