The past year has seen military secrets leak in the dumbest of ways. For example, who could forget the incident in which numerous details about the war in Ukraine were leaked via a Discord server for fans of a Filipino YouTube celebrity?


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That said, in general, espionage involves a little bit of effort. While you’ll always get the occasional idiot with something to prove leaking secrets to seem cool, actually getting the information you need typically requires you to go undercover, sneak around or spend months cultivating a lead.


Or, you just pretend to be a totally normal woman. And as this recent arrest shows, you don’t even need to be good at it!



According to CBS, a retired 63-year-old Army lieutenant colonel named David Franklin Slater was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of “illegally disclosing sensitive national defense information on a foreign dating site.”


Prosecutors allege that Slater “communicated with an unnamed person claiming to be a woman living in Ukraine and sent the individual secret Pentagon documents about Russia’s war in that country,” per CBS. The best part? The “woman” in question was really, really bad at hiding her intentions.




In one message, the “woman” wrote, “Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting.” In another, “she” asked, “Beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us?”


Other messages are even more damning. The “woman” continually refers to Slater as “my secret informant love,” and in one message, the person writes, “You have a job in the Operations Center today, I remember, I’m sure there is a lot of interesting news there?”


Seriously, the lack of subtlety here is pretty wild. Who could see this message — “Sweet Dave, the supply of weapons is completely classified, which is great!" — and not suspect that something was amiss?




According to CBS, “Slater faces one count of conspiracy and two counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information. He is expected to make his initial appearance in a Nebraska courtroom on Tuesday and has not yet been arraigned.”


The news agency could not identify a lawyer for Slater, but thankfully, I have just the right person, and she’s an absolute smokeshow. She just needs you to send a few documents first.