A civilian employee at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska was arrested and charged with providing classified information through an online dating app to someone claiming to be a woman in Ukraine, according to federal prosecutors.
David Franklin Slater, a 63-year-old Air Force employee and retired Army lieutenant colonel assigned to U.S. Strategic Command, was arrested Saturday and charged with one count of conspiring to transmit and two counts of transmitting classified information related to the national defense.
The information was shared “on a foreign online dating platform beginning in or around February 2022 until in or around April 2022,” federal officials said in a press release Monday. Slater’s exchanges were detailed in the federal indictment but the recipient, referred to as a co-conspirator, was not identified.
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Slater signed a top secret nondisclosure agreement on Aug. 23, 2021, according to the federal indictment, and had undergone numerous training sessions on handling classified materials.
The alleged co-conspirator wrote a message to Slater in March 2022: “Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting.”
Then, later that month, the person wrote: “Dave, it’s great that you get information about [Specified Country 1] first. I hope you will tell me right away? You are my secret agent. With…
