U.S. says ex-Army major and his wife tried to leak military health data to Russia

The Daily Mail reported Henry was the U.S. Army's first trans officer.

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WASHINGTON — A former U.S. Army major and his anesthesiologist wife have been criminally charged for allegedly plotting to leak highly sensitive healthcare data about military patients to Russia, the Justice Department revealed on Thursday.

Jamie Lee Henry, the former major who was also a doctor at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and his wife, Dr. Anna Gabrielian, were charged in an unsealed indictment in a federal court in Maryland with conspiracy and the wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information about patients at the Army base.

Reuters could not immediately determine who is representing them in the case.

The indictment alleges that the plot started after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

Prosecutors said the pair wanted to try to help the Russian government by providing them with data to help the Putin regime “gain insights into the medical conditions of individuals associated with the U.S. government and military.”

The two met with someone whom they believed was a Russian official, but in fact was actually an FBI undercover agent, the indictment says.

At a hotel in Baltimore on Aug. 17, Gabrielian told the undercover agent “she was motivated by patriotism toward Russia to provide any assistance she could to Russia, even if it meant being fired or going to jail,” the indictment says.

In the meeting, she volunteered to bring her husband into the scheme, saying he had information about prior military training the United States provided to Ukraine, among other things.

At another meeting later that day, Henry told the undercover agent he too was committed to Russia, and claimed he had even contemplated volunteering to join the Russian army.

“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,” he allegedly told the agent.

The agent in turn urged them to read a book called “Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy,” telling the pair it would help them understand what they were about to do.

“It’s the mentality of sacrificing everything … and loyalty in you from day one,” the agent said. “That’s not something you walked away from.”

The Daily Mail reported Henry was the U.S. Army’s first trans officer. The report added Gabrielian’s Johns Hopkins profile shows that she speaks Russian and earned her medical degree at the University of Pittsburg School of Medicine in 2012. It noted she married Henry in 2015, the same year Henry officially came out as transgender.

Apparently Henry had some reservations about providing healthcare data, saying it would violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the indictment says, but his wife had no hesitations.

In a subsequent Aug. 24 meeting, she told the undercover agent her husband was a “coward” to be concerned about violating HIPAA, but she violated the law “all the time” and she would see to it that they could provide Russia with access to medical records from Fort Bragg patients.

By the end of the month, she had handed over information on current and former military officials and their spouses, it says.

The Daily Mail also reported in May of 2015, the Army granted Henry’s request to officially change her name and gender, with the army using female pronouns in its filings.

It was a first for the Army, which had long maintained that being transgender or being diagnosed with gender dysphoria is incompatible with the military and grounds for dismissal.

Henry had joined ROTC at age 17, and has been treating service members as a doctor and internist for 17 years since her first rotation at Walter Reed, the report noted.