Insider Threat at Foggy Bottom

Michael Charles Schena graduated from Louisiana State University with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2004, and spent the summer of 2005 in Shaoxing, China teaching English before joining the State Department as a graduate student intern.

After working as an analyst for a public affairs firm for more than two years, he was hired by the State Department in January 2007 and remained there in various positions for the next eighteen years up until the time of his arrest in early 2025. Beginning in December 2020, Schena was assigned as a South Caribbean Desk Officer in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, at Department of State Headquarters in Washington, D.C.