A federal grand jury indicted an Air Force veteran on Thursday for unauthorized possession and dissemination of sensitive national security information, including details of the vulnerabilities of U.S. military aircraft.
Paul J. Freeman, 68, of Niceville, Florida, was charged with four counts of illegally retaining information regarding Air Force aircraft and weapon systems and five counts of sharing it with unauthorized personnel, according to a federal indictment unsealed on June 27. If convicted, Freeman would face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison per charge.
“Freeman, on multiple occasions between November 2020 and March 2021, transmitted classified national defense information about United States Air Force aircraft and weapons to people not authorized to access the information,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida said in a statement.
Court documents argue Freeman “had reason to believe [the information] could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” It’s unclear how Freeman accessed those details or with whom they were shared.
Freeman was arrested by the FBI June 27, court documents show. The case is set to head to trial Aug. 5.
The announcement comes as the U.S. military recovers from one of the largest intelligence breaches in recent history.
In March, Jack Teixeira, an airman 1st class who served as a computer technician in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, pleaded guilty in federal court to leaking classified national security documents regarding U.S. assessments of the war in Ukraine and other matters via social media platform Discord. The monthslong breach prompted an Air Force deep-dive into the security failures that enabled the leaks and led the Pentagon to update the military’s policies for handling classified information.
Fifteen people in the chain of command of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron, in which Teixeira served, were reprimanded for their inaction that led to the leak. A Pentagon inspector general report found Teixeira’s supervisors were aware that he was discussing intelligence that a person in his role did not need to know.
Teixeira’s sentencing is scheduled for September. He faces more than 16 years in prison and could incur further punishments if the Air Force opts to begin a military trial as well.
The FBI in 2022 also investigated an Air Force intelligence analyst for allegedly leaking classified information in an anti-government group on Discord, according to federal court documents.
Former Staff Sgt. Jason Gray, a cyber analyst with the 381st Intelligence Squadron at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, was accused of sharing a classified image in a private Discord channel that he “likely obtained” via his access to National Security Agency intelligence. An affidavit did not elaborate on what the image showed.
Gray is currently serving five years in federal prison for child pornography discovered during a probe of his electronics, court records show.
And David Franklin Slater, 63, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who worked as an Air Force civilian at U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska, was arrested in March for allegedly transmitting classified intelligence in early 2022. Federal authorities claim Slater sent information about Russia’s war with Ukraine to a romantic interest through a foreign online dating platform.
Zamone “Z” Perez is a reporter at Military Times. He previously worked at Foreign Policy and Ufahamu Africa. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he researched international ethics and atrocity prevention in his thesis. He can be found on Twitter @zamoneperez.
