National Defense

Retired Army Colonel Who Texted War Plans To Woman Gets 2 Years In Prison

Carl Berkeley/Wikimedia Commons

A U.S. district judge sentenced retired U.S. Army Colonel Kevin Charles Luke to two years in federal prison Wednesday for texting classified information to a woman.

Luke, 62, pleaded guilty in October 2025 to one count of “unauthorized communication of information relating to national defense.” Luke retired in 2018 after serving in the Army for almost 40 years, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release from the following month.

The retired Army officer reportedly sent a picture of a classified email written from a “government email address intended for classified email communications” to an unidentified woman in October 2024. The picture also “revealed targets of a planned U.S. military operation,” “the future date” and “goal” of the operation, per the DOJ.

“The unauthorized release of the information contained within the photograph could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security of the United States,” the press release stated.

After retirement, Luke was hired at United States Central Command (CENTCOM) as a civilian employee, where he held Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance. According to Wednesday DOJ press release, Luke “acknowledged his responsibility to protect classified information by signing a Standard Form 312 Nondisclosure Agreement” on several occasions, “including as recently as February 2019.”

CENTCOM, a unified combatant command of the Department of War, is responsible for U.S. military operations across 21 nations in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, including Israel, Iran and Afghanistan. CENTCOM’s website says the area is “among the least secure and stable places of the world.”