YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — A military panel sentenced a soldier with Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, to a long prison term Monday for trying to sell classified information.

Spc. William Colton Millay, 24, a military policeman with the 164th Military Police Company, communicated with and transmitted national defense information to an undercover FBI agent whom he believed was a foreign intelligence agent, a U.S. Army Alaska statement said.

On March 19, he pleaded guilty to attempted espionage, failing to obey regulations, issuing a false official statement, soliciting another to commit espionage and communicating national defense information, the statement said.

The panel of eight noncommissioned officers and officers sentenced him to 19 years, reduced to 16 years under a pre-trial agreement with credit for 535 days of pretrial incarceration.

“Today, he is being held accountable for his actions,” Deirdre Fike, special agent in charge of the Anchorage FBI Division, said in the statement.

The Owensboro, Ky., native, who served in South Korea and deployed to Iraq from December 2009 to July 2010, had access to the classified information through the course of his normal duties and believed it could be used to the detriment of the U.S. or the advantage of a foreign nation, officials said.

He also wrongfully solicited a fellow servicemember to obtain classified information for the purpose of delivering it to the undercover agent, officials said.

Millay was apprehended Oct. 28, 2011, on Elmendorf. The charges followed a joint investigation by the FBI, Army Counterintelligence and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Millay was reduced in rank to private and given a dishonorable discharge. He will forfeit all pay and allowances.

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