July 11 (UPI) — A retired lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army has pleaded guilty to transmitting classified national defense information concerning Russia’s war in Ukraine via a foreign dating app to a person claiming to be a woman living in the war-torn country.
The Justice Department said David Slater, 64, of Nebraska pleaded guilty Thursday and faces up to 10 years’ imprisonment, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000 on Oct. 8 when he is scheduled for sentencing.
“David Slater failed in his duty to protect this information by willingly sharing national defense information with an unknown online personality despite having years of military experience that should have caused him to be suspicious of that person’s motives,” U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods of the District of Nebraska said in a statement.
According to federal prosecutors, after retiring from the Army, Slater was hired as a civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force assigned to the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base and held a Top Secret security clearance from August 2021 to April 2022.
Court documents state that in his position, Slater attended top-secret classified briefings on the Russia-Ukraine war and conspired to transmit information he learned over an unnamed foreign dating app to a person who claimed to be a woman living in Ukraine.
The purported woman called Slater her “secret informant lover” and her “secret agent” and asked him to send her sensitive classified information.
The quantity and the frequency with which information was exchanged was not revealed, but the Justice Department did confirm that “Slater did, in fact, transmit classified national defense information to her, including regarding military targets and Russian military capabilities relating to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”