In June 2025, David Franklin Slater—64, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel turned civilian Air Force employee at U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) pled guilty to conspiring to transmit classified information on a foreign online dating platform. Prosecutors dismissed two additional counts, leaving Slater facing up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. In exchange for his plea, the government recommended a sentence at the low end of the advisory guideline range: 70 to 87 months.
Cyber Romance in Omaha
The mechanics echo classic romance scams targeting seniors—emotional intimacy used as the Trojan horse. Instead of looting bank accounts, “Conspirator A” weaponized affection to extract Top Secret intelligence. Between February and April 2022, Slater was responding to his online paramour, by attending classified briefings on Russia’s war against Ukraine and providing classified information to this individual. The indictment goes into great depth on the amount of counterintelligence training provided to Slater, yet he managed nonetheless to fall prey to an online persona claiming to be a woman in Ukraine.
Human Elicitation via Romance
Court Listener obtained a copy of the 2024 DOJ indictment which lays out how Slater’s defensive cloak was skinned, question by question. Over email and an undisclosed messaging platform, he replied to prompts that fused emotional reinforcement with operational curiosity:
- “You are my secret agent. With love.”
- “You are my secret informant love!”
- “Beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us?”
- “My sweet Dave, thanks for the valuable information…”
- “Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting.”
- “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very unpleasant ‘surprise’ for Putin! Will you tell me?”
- “You have a job in the Operations Center today, I remember, I’m sure there is a lot of interesting news there?”
He transmitted secret-level details on military targets (March 28, 2022) and Russian military capabilities (April 13, 2022). The indictment’s generic reference to “email,” without specifying .mil or personal domains, the salient point to underscore is how adversaries use any inbox as a command-and-control conduit, cloaking coercive prompts in affection to extract sensitive information and tighten their grip on the target. In this case, Slater.
Teachable Moments: Hard Rules vs. Emotional Fault Lines
- Foreign Contact Reporting: Every counterintelligence briefing reminds cleared personnel of the necessity to report any elicitation attempts by a foreign national, even if they were successfully dismissed. Slater opted out. Everyone who ever had a national security clearance answered the SF-86 question about “close and/or continuing contact with a foreign national…with whom you…are bound by affection, influence, common interests, and/or obligations.” Reading the elicitation hooks used by the “Ukrainian woman” with Slater reveals that he had transitioned from a casual relationship to one that was bound by affection.
- Elicitation & Emotional Leverage: Romance-driven probes like “You are my secret agent. With love” aren’t harmless flirtations—they’re formal threat vectors. Training must evolve so that cleared professionals recognize emotional manipulation as a sophisticated adversary tactic.
“Access to classified information comes with great responsibility. 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,” said U.S. Attorney Lesley A. Woods for the District of Nebraska.
Slater’s plea is more than a closed case file; it’s a cautionary blueprint. Just as romance scams exploit loneliness to drain savings, Conspirator A exploited emotional trust to siphon national defense secrets. As deception has moved from dark alleys to inboxes, resilience must evolve from mere tick-box training to genuine emotional vigilance.
It is important to remind you once more that you do not have the ability to choose whether you are a target; that decision is made by the adversary. Your choice is how you respond.
Remember: Love is not an OPSEC plan.
