A civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force was arrested over the weekend for allegedly conspiring to transmit and transmitting classified information, making him the fifth person over the last year to be arrested on charges of attempting to leak intelligence.
David Franklin Slater, 63, a retired lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Army who later worked in a classified space at U.S. Strategic Command and held a Top Secret security clearance, was arrested in Nebraska on Saturday on a three-count federal indictment. He allegedly sent messages from around August 2021 to April 2022, revealing classified information about the war in Ukraine to a woman claiming to live in Ukraine.
The woman whom Slater provided national defense information to called him her “secret informant love” and her “secret agent,” according to the indictment.
The Department of Justice announced the charges against Slater on Monday, the same day former Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pled guilty to the charges against him for leaking classified documents, which includes a maximum sentence of up to nearly 17 years in jail. Teixeira will serve a minimum of 11 years behind bars.
Teixeira, who had a Top Secret clearance while working in the 102nd Intelligence Wing, admitted responsibility for leaking hundreds of documents on the platform known as Discord over the course of months, some of which also focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine. He was arrested in Dighton, Massachusetts, on April 13 without incident by the FBI.
“As he admitted today, Mr. Teixeira repeatedly and flagrantly discarded those warnings. By the start of 2022, he was unlawfully removing, from a secure location, classified information that was clearly marked as SECRET, TOP SECRET, and [sensitive compartmented information],” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said on Monday.
He had been reprimanded twice for the improper handling of classified material in September and October 2022, and then, in January, he was seen using a Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System machine and the person who saw him said he was viewing documents outside of his purview, according to prosecutors.
Fifteen airmen were disciplined in December following an investigation into Teixeira’s leaks.
Chief petty officer fire controlman Bryce Pedicini, who was based in Japan, was charged with espionage for allegedly sharing classified information with a foreign government employee. He was taken into custody last May. He allegedly gave classified information to a foreign citizen employee of another government at least six different times starting in November 2022.
It’s unclear which foreign government he was seeking to aid.
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Pedecini is “suspected of mishandling classified documents and information,” U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman Arlo Abrahamson said in a statement. “The incident remains under investigation and legal proceedings continue.”
Back in August of 2023, two Navy sailors — Jinchao Wei, aka Patrick Wei, and Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, aka Thomas Zhao — were arrested on charges of transmitting sensitive military information to the People’s Republic of China. Zhao pled guilty and was sentenced to 27 months in prison in January, while Wei has pleaded not guilty and his case is ongoing.
