Army’s First Trans Officer Indicted for Spying for Russia
The U.S. Army’s first transgender officer and his wife, a Maryland doctor, were indicted on conspiracy charges Wednesday for allegedly attempting to transfer confidential military medical information to Russia.
The eight-count indictment was unsealed Thursday upon the arrest of the defendants, Major Jamie Lee Henry and anesthesiologist Anna Gabrielian, according to a Department of Justice press release. The Army granted Henry’s request to officially change his name in accordance with his gender preference in 2015. Prior to Henry’s case, identifying as a sex different than the one on one’s birth certificate made a soldier unfit for military service, warranting discharge.
Gabrielian worked at the Johns Hopkins school of medicine, referred to as “Medical Institution 1” in the indictment, located in Baltimore, Md. Henry, who is also a doctor, worked as a staff internist stationed at Fort Bragg, where the headquarters of the United States Army Special Operations Command and the Womack Army Medical Center are based.
The pair are accused of stealing patient health files from Johns Hopkins and Fort Bragg and giving them to an individual they believed to be working for the Russian government. They aimed to show that they could access classified information and readily provide it to Moscow to demonstrate their allegiance, according to the indictment.
However, the individual to whom they hoped to deliver the information was an undercover FBI agent. At a covert August 17 meeting, Gabrielian told the agent that she was devoted to helping Russia’s cause even if it cost her her job or landed her in prison. She arranged a subsequent meeting with Henry and the agent, still believing him to be affiliated with the Kremlin.
That evening, in the agent’s hotel room, Henry expressed that he was committed to supporting Russia and had considered enlisting in the Russian army after the invasion of Ukraine. However, he told the agent he was disqualified because he didn’t have any “combat experience.”
“The way I am viewing what is going on in Ukraine now, is that the United States is using Ukrainians as a proxy for their own hatred toward Russia,” Henry reportedly told the agent.
Henry and Gabrielian then allegedly volunteered to retrieve private medical records from the United States Army and Johns Hopkins in order to assist the Russian government.
If convicted, the two could face up to five years in federal prison for the conspiracy charge, and a maximum of ten years in federal prison for each count of publishing secret military medical records.
