Overview

• David Franklin Slater, a retired Army lieutenant colonel working as a civilian at US Strategic Command’s Offutt Air Force Base, pleaded guilty on July 10 to conspiring to transmit classified national defense information.
• Between February and April 2022, he used a foreign online dating site’s messaging platform to share SECRET-level details on Russian military capabilities and battlefield targets in Ukraine.
• Slater held a Top Secret/TS//SCI clearance and attended sensitive USSTRATCOM briefings on Russia’s war against Ukraine before disclosing the information to someone posing as a Ukrainian woman.
• Prosecutors say the co-conspirator referred to him as her “secret informant love” in messages that exploited emotional manipulation to secure the intelligence.
• He faces up to 10 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine at a sentencing hearing scheduled for October 8, 2025.