A retired Army lieutenant colonel who worked as an Air Force civilian employee has pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide classified information through an online dating app to someone claiming to be a person in Ukraine.
On Thursday, 64-year-old David Slater entered his guilty plea, a Justice Department news release said. Slater, after retiring from the Army, was an Air Force employee assigned to U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, where he held a top security clearance.
Between February and April of 2022, Slater is charged with conspiring to share classified national defense information that he learned from Strategic Command briefings about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on a foreign dating website with someone claiming to be in Ukraine, who would refer to Slater as her "secret informant love" and her "secret agent," according to the news release.
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Slater's arrest in early March 2024 came around the same time that Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, then an Air National Guardsman with the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, entered a guilty plea in federal court to disclosing sensitive information online.
Teixeira was sentenced to 15 years in prison in November 2024. He also pleaded guilty to obstructing justice in a court-martial related to the charges earlier this year.
Slater was originally charged with one count of conspiring to transmit and two counts of transmitting classified information related to the national defense. As part of the plea, the two counts of transmitting classified information were dropped.
Some snippets of correspondence between Slater and the individual on the dating website were detailed in the indictment, according to the federal court documents.
The alleged Ukrainian wrote a message to Slater in March 2022: "Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting."
In another message, the individual wrote, "Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very unpleasant 'surprise' for Putin! Will you tell me?"
Slater allegedly responded with information "regarding military targets and Russian military capabilities relating to Russia's invasion of Ukraine."
It was not clear what Slater's current employment status is, and Air Force and Strategic Command spokespeople did not respond to Military.com by publication time.
An attorney for Slater listed in federal court records did not immediately return a Military.com request for comment by phone and email on Monday. Slater could not be reached at phone numbers listed for him in public records and did not immediately respond to an email associated with him.
"Access to classified information comes with great responsibility. David Slater failed in his duty to protect this information by willingly sharing national defense information with an unknown online personality despite having years of military experience that should have caused him to be suspicious of that person's motives," U.S. Attorney for the District of Nebraska Lesley Woods said in a news release.
Slater could face up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 for the conspiracy charge. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 8, according to the Justice Department news release.
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