Air Force veteran accused of leaking weapons and plane secrets

Lina Portman5 days ago

0 2 minutes read

A retired Air Force officer was indicted this week on nine counts related to the illegal possession and transmission of classified information on Air Force weapons and aircraft. American air.

Retired Lt. Col. Paul J. Freeman, 68, of Niceville, Fla., is charged with knowingly possessing and then sharing classified information with “persons who had no right to receive it.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida announced the grand jury indictment June 27. The charges cover a five-month period.

“As alleged in the indictment, Freeman transmitted, on multiple occasions between November 2020 and March 2021, classified national defense information about United States Air Force aircraft and weapons to individuals who were not authorized to access the information,” the Justice Department wrote in its press release on the indictments.

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What was specifically disclosed was not disclosed. According to the indictment, Freeman allegedly had “unauthorized possession, access, and control of information related to national defense,” and this related to “vulnerabilities of U.S. Army aircraft.” American air” and “weapons systems”.

It is unclear exactly when authorities, particularly the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began investigating the leaks or Freeman specifically.

Freeman is scheduled to appear for a detention hearing on Monday, July 1, at the United States Courthouse in Pensacola, Florida.

Freeman served in the Air Force from 1975 to 2003. He became an officer in 1984 and served as a development engineer. When he retired, he was serving with the 46th Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, which is just a few miles west of Niceville.

As Air & Space Forces Magazine noted, one Paul J. Freeman of Niceville, Florida, previously sued the Department of the Air Force and lost on appeal in 2019. In that case, Freeman worked there as a civilian employee for the Air Force starting in 2019. in 2003, before becoming a senior engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory. He was deported in 2016 for being absent and negligently sending two emails containing classified information from his home computer. It is not confirmed if they are both the same person.

The alleged leak is one of several that have occurred in recent years. In March, a retired army officer, Lt. Col. David Franklin Slater, was charged with leaking classified information related to Russia and Ukraine through an online dating site, while he worked as a civilian employee of the Air Force within the American Strategic Command. Also in March, Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty to six counts related to leaking classified information on Discord servers, in an attempt to impress others on gaming chat groups. He is due to be sentenced in September.

Freeman is innocent until proven guilty. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison on each of the nine charges against him.