An employee of the U.S. Air Force thought he was chatting with a Ukrainian woman on a dating website, but it turns out he was sharing classified information with someone about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The 63-year-old David Franklin Slater, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was arrested after allegedly sharing classified information on a foreign online dating platform. He held a top-secret security clearance at the U.S. Strategic Command and attended classified briefings on the war in Ukraine from February to April 2022.
Slater sent classified information to someone claiming to be a woman living in Ukraine who communicated with him through the dating site’s online messaging platform. This person, identified in court documents as “Co-Conspirator 1,” even referred to Slater as “my secret agent” and “Sweet Dave.”
There are also messages that explicitly ask for confidential information such as “Beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us?”
Another message from April 19 reads “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very unpleasant ‘surprise’ for Putin! Will you tell me?”
According to NPR, if convicted, Slater could face up to 10 years in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000 for each of the three counts in the indictment.
