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David Slater was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in
Lincoln to 70 months in prison. Slater, who was 64 when he
pleaded guilty in July to a count of conspiracy to disclose
national defense information, was also fined $25,000 and ordered
to undergo a year of supervision upon his release from prison.
In exchange for his guilty plea, two other counts were dropped.
Slater had top secret clearance at his job at the U.S. Strategic
Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska after retiring from
the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2020. Prosecutors said as
part of his job, which he held from August 2021 until around
April 2022, Slater attended briefings about the Russia-Ukraine
war that were classified up to top secret. He was arrested in
March of 2024.
In his plea agreement, Slater acknowledged that he conspired to
transmit classified information that he learned from those
briefings via a foreign dating website’s messaging platform to
an unnamed coconspirator, who claimed to be a woman living in
Ukraine. The information, classified as secret, pertained to
military targets and Russian military capabilities, according to
the plea agreement.
According to the original indictment, the coconspirator
regularly asked Slater for classified information. She called
him, “my secret informant love!” in one message. She closed
another by saying, “You are my secret agent. With love.” In
another, she wrote, “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a
very pleasant ‘surprise’ for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin!
Will you tell me?”
Court documents don’t identify the coconspirator, or say whether
she was working for Ukraine or Russia. A spokeswoman for the
U.S. attorney's office Friday said the office cannot provide
that information.
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