PACAF Airman posthumously awarded intelligence medal

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WASHINGTON --  A Pacific Air Forces Airman killed in action near Kabul, Afghanistan, last year was posthumously awarded the National Intelligence Medal for Valor at a ceremony Jan. 22 here.

First Lt. Roslyn Schulte was an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations officer assigned to the 613th Air and Space Operations Center at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. She died last May in Afghanistan when an improvised explosive device struck her vehicle while en route to a Bagram Airfield meeting.

Lieutenant Schulte, the first woman to receive the decoration, was honored for her courageous efforts teaching Afghan military officials how to gather and interpret military intelligence. Among intelligence community awards, the Medal for Valor is second only to the Intelligence Cross.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair made the announcement at a quarterly National Intelligence Community Awards Ceremony here, where he also recognized 42 other teams and individuals for outstanding accomplishments in the intelligence community.

Lieutenant Schulte's parents, Robert and Susie, and her brother, Todd, attended the event on her behalf.

Mr. Blair said Lieutenant Schulte made a far-reaching impact on how intelligence was taught and shared with the Afghan National Army in only three months of duty in Afghanistan.

"[She was] wise beyond her 25 years, and respected as a leader by all those around her - from general to airman to Afghan tribal leader - regardless of the branch of service, regardless of nationality," Mr. Blair said.

Lieutenant Schulte deployed to Afghanistan in February 2009, serving as part of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan. In addition to her teaching duties, she was the command's foreign disclosure officer, working to enhance information sharing with Afghan forces.

She was often required to travel outside of her main base at Camp Eggers in Kabul, Afghanistan, to more remote parts of the region. Her father said she accepted the known risks of traveling across dangerous terrain, intensely focused on the goal of helping the Afghan military to achieve self sufficiency.

"She wanted to be some place where the action was," Robert Schulte said in an interview after the event.

Originally from the St. Louis, Mo., area, she was the first female graduate of the academy to be killed by an enemy combatant.

Anthony Pascuma, chief of foreign disclosure for the U.S. Central Command, nominated her for the medal.

"She was very vibrant, happy, gung-ho, [and] mission-focused," Mr. Pascuma said in a telephone interview from his Tampa, Fla., office. "She was 150 percent committed to the mission...and wanted to do her part to support operations [in] the war on terrorism."

Lieutenant Schulte spent three hours nearly every day organizing a charity for Afghan refugees. At Camp Pawan, a U.S. training facility in Afghanistan, a building has been named the Schulte School and Clinic in her honor.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence established the Medal for Valor in 2008 to acknowledge the extraordinary and mostly unsung accomplishments of intelligence community professionals. The ODNI oversees 16 federal organizations that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

(Article based on an Office of the Director of National Intelligence news release.)