A retired officer from the army who worked as a civilian for the Air Force declared himself guilty of conspiring to transmit classified information about the Russian War with Ukraine on an online foreign dating platform.
David Slater, 64, who had a maximum authorization in his work in the strategic command of the United States at the base of the Offutt Air Force in Nebraska, declared himself guilty of a single position before a federal magistrate judge in Omaha on Thursday. In exchange for their guilt declaration, two other positions were dropped.
Slater is still free waiting for his sentence, which is scheduled for October 8. Prosecutors and their lawyers agreed that they should turn between five years and 10 months and seven years and three months in prison, and the government will recommend a low end of that range. The position has been a legal maximum of 10 years after bars.
The American district judge Brian Buescher will finally decide whether to accept the guilt agreement and determine the Slater sentence.
“I conspired to deliberately communicate national defense information to an unauthorized person,” Slater said in a handwritten note about his request to change his plea.
Slater had access to some of the most closely owned in the country, said John Eisenberg, a national security attorney general, in a statement.
“Access to classified information comes with great responsibility,” said Lesley Woods, the US prosecutor from Nebraska, in the same statement. “David Slater failed in his duty to protect this information by voluntarily sharing national defense information with an unknown online personality despite having years of military experience that should have made him suspect the reasons for that person.”
Slater retired from the army as Lieutenant Colonel in 2020 and worked in a space classified at the base from around August 2021 to around April 2022. He attended informative sessions about the Russia-Ukraine War that were classified to the maximum secret, judicial documents say. He was arrested in March 2024.
In his guilt agreement, he acknowledged that he conspired to transmit classified information that he learned from those informative sessions through the messages of the foreign dating website to an unnamed coconspirator, who claimed to be a woman who lives in Ukraine. The information, classified as a secret, referred to Russian military and military abilities, in accordance with the guilt agreement.
“The defendant knew and had reasons to believe that such information could be used to the United States injury or the advantage of a foreign nation,” the agreement indicates.
According to the original accusation, the coconspirator regularly asked Slater classified information. She called it: “My secret informant love!” In a message. She closed another saying: “You are my secret agent. With love.” On another, she wrote: “Dave, I hope that tomorrow the NATO prepares a very pleasant ‘surprise’ for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin! Will you tell me? “
Judicial documents do not identify the Coconspirator, nor do they say if I was working for Ukraine or Russia. Nor do they identify the dating platform.
Amy Donato, spokesman for the United States prosecutor’s office in Omaha, said Monday that he could not provide that information. Slater’s lawyer, Stuart Dornan, did not immediately respond a call in search of more details.
