A civilian employee in the U.S. Air Force was charged in federal court with giving classified material about the war in Ukraine to a woman he met on an online dating service, apparently unperturbed by her bizarrely worded requests for information on military targets and Russian capabilities.
David Franklin Slater, 63, of Nebraska, was taken into custody on Saturday on a three-count indictment. He is accused of conspiring to transmit and transmitting classified information relating to the national defense to someone who, claiming to be a single Ukrainian woman, wheedled sensitive information out of him while referring to him as her “secret informant love” and her “secret agent.”
A former U.S. Army officer, Slater retired as a lieutenant colonel before signing up to work with the Air Force as a civilian, according to the Justice Department. He was assigned to U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where he worked in a classified space and held a top secret security clearance from August 2021 until the following April.
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As a part of his duties, he sometimes attended classified briefings on the war in Ukraine. Around February 2022, Slater began “willfully, improperly, and unlawfully” sharing national defense information over a foreign dating platform, prosecutors said. Referred to as Co-Conspirator 1 in Slater’s indictment, the unidentified woman asked him repeatedly to supply her with “non-public, closely held, and classified” information.
“Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting,” she messaged him on March 11.
Four days later, she wrote: “By the way, you were the first to tell me that NATO members are traveling by train and only now (already evening) this was announced on our news. You are my secret informant love! How were your meetings? Successfully?”
Three days after that: “Beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us?”
In more messages the next month, the woman thanked her “sweet Dave” for “the valuable information” and shared her hopes that NATO was preparing “a very unpleasant ‘surprise’ for Putin,” adding, “Will you tell me?”
In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said Slater had acted “in blatant disregard for the security of his country and his oath to safeguard its secrets.
“The Department of Justice will seek to hold accountable those who knowingly and willfully put their country at risk by disclosing classified information,” he added.
Slater will make an initial court appearance on Tuesday. An attorney for him was not immediately identified. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count of conspiracy to transmit and the transmission of national defense information.
