Day: March 17, 2024
Pope Francis defends same-sex blessings and dismisses retirement rumors in new memoir America: The Jesuit Review
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Online Sex and the Single Leaker
The February 21 indictment and March 2 arrest of David Franklin Slater elicited quite a few giggles across social media. Slater, a 63-year-old retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel working as a civilian Air Force employee at the United States Strategic Command in Nebraska, had allegedly fallen for an online honey trap on a foreign dating website.
“Beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us?” and similar less than subtle pairings of mawkish endearments and suspiciously pointed questions read like something out of a very bad spy novel or ill-advised reboot of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
However, the terms of affection seemed to have worked. Slater did, in fact, hand over classified documents to his online paramour, who claimed to be a female based in Ukraine, according to the indictment. That she (or perhaps he) knew the documents were classified is without question. In one instance his online love interest responded, “Sweet Dave, the supply of weapons is completely classified, which is great!” The perpetrator’s spy service affiliation, if any, was not identified.
That an experienced military officer would transmit classified documents in such a manner seems absurd, though in the online world, for “men of a certain age” in search of love or a reasonable facsimile, a gift of information often stands in for fancy dinners with good wine or an age-inappropriate sports car. And while Slater’s alleged online affair, which is said to have run from approximately February to April 2022, is easily dismissed under the “no fool like an old fool” doctrine, there is no shortage of young fools as well.