Kevin Charles Luke, 62, of Tampa, pleaded guilty on Oct. 7, 2025, and was sentenced Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, prosecutors said.

Luke served on active duty and in the Army reserves from 1981 until his retirement as a colonel on June 30, 2018. After leaving the military, he worked as a civilian employee at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East and parts of Central and South Asia.

During both his military and civilian service, Luke held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance and signed nondisclosure agreements affirming his responsibility to protect classified information.

In October 2024, prosecutors said Luke sent a woman a text message reading, “sent to my boss earlier, gives you a peek at what I do for a living,” along with a photograph of a computer screen showing a classified email he had sent from a government account. The email contained Secret-level details of a planned U.S. military operation, including targets, execution method, objectives, and the future date of the operation. Luke reportedly added the classification markings himself.

Investigators from the United States Army Office of Special Investigations and the Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that the disclosure could have caused serious damage to national security.

The sentence highlights the risks associated with unauthorized sharing of classified information, even by highly cleared military and civilian personnel.