A civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force was arrested on Saturday for allegedly sharing classified information about the Russia-Ukraine war on a foreign dating platform, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
David Franklin Slater, 63, of Nebraska, is charged with conspiring to transmit and send classified National Defense Information (NDI) to an unidentified individual, who claimed to be a woman residing in Ukraine.
The indictment states that Mr. Slater attended classified briefings about Russia’s war against Ukraine from February to April 2022. He is then alleged to have sent classified NDI to his co-conspirator on a foreign dating website.
According to the indictment, the person who communicated with Mr. Slater referred to him as “secret informant love” and “secret agent” in their messages.
The two regularly communicated over email and through an online messaging platform, in which the person asked Mr. Slater to provide “sensitive, non-public, closely held, and classified” information.
On March 7, 2022, he allegedly received a message that said, “American intelligence says that already 100% of Russian troops are located on the territory of Ukraine. Do you think this information can be trusted?”
A week later, the co-conspirator sent another message that said, “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?”
Just three days later, on March 18, 2022, Mr. Slater received another message from his co-conspirator that said, “Beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us?”
On April 19, 2022, the unidentified person sent a message stating, “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very unpleasant ‘surprise’ for Putin! Will you tell me?”
In response to these messages, prosecutors said that Mr. Slater shared classified NDI about military targets in Russia’s war against Ukraine and Russian military capabilities relating to the invasion.
Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Slater had “willfully” and “unlawfully” shared classified NDI, “which he had reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation.”
“When people violate the trust given to them to safeguard our nation’s intelligence, they put our country at risk,” Special Agent in Charge Eugene Kowel of the FBI Omaha Field Office said in a statement.
“We will continue working shoulder to shoulder with our partners to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution by safeguarding our country’s classified information,” he added.
Mr. Slater is expected to make his first court appearance in federal court in Nebraska on March 5, according to the DOJ.
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 NDI.
