Retired Army officer is arrested for leaking sensitive information over a dating app while he was working for the Air Force

By Andy Wolf

A retired Army lieutenant colonel-turned DoD employee for the US Air Force has been charged with sharing classified information on a dating website.

63-year-old David Franklin Slater, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who held a Top Secret security clearance at US Strategic Command, reportedly shared information with a woman he believed to be of Ukrainian nationality.

Slater attended classified briefings on the war in Ukraine from February through April 2022, and was exposed to sensitive information on the conflict.

Through a foreign dating website and email, Slater then shared the information with the woman he was smitten with.

According to CNN, the co-conspirator referred to Slater as “Sweet Dave” and called him her “secret agent.”

“You are my secret informant love!” the co-conspirator wrote to Slater. “How were your meetings? Successfully?”

Slater “knowingly transmitted classified national defense information to another person in blatant disregard for the security of his country and his oath to safeguard its secrets,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen from the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

The former US Army officer, who retired in 2020, worked at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska— home of US Strategic Command, which oversees command and control of the nuclear weapons stockpile.

Now, Slater is looking at spending what will likely be the rest of his life behind bars.

“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’s Omaha Field Office said in a statement.

If convicted on one count of conspiracy to disclose national defense information and two counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information, Slater faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000.

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