Data leaked by hackers show that Ashley Madison, the notorious website for those looking to cheat on their spouse, had to dodge at least one subpoena from military officials investigating an extramarital affair–and they tried to use Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to do it.

Affairs can be prosecuted under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as a crime. However, affairs aren’t really investigated or punished unless they are between a superior office and their subordinate, they embarrass the service or they disrupt team morale. If the military subpoenaed Ashley Madison during an investigation, it must have had good reason.

Emails contained in the date dump showed correspondence between trial lawyer 2nd Lt. Austin Booth and Mick Dacks of Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison’s parent company, in April 2012.

“As I informed you this morning, I am a prosecutor detailed to a court-martial involving adultery, which is criminalized in the United States Armed Forces,” Booth wrote. “The accused Marine was an Ashley Madison customer. Through subpoena, we will request all relevant Ashley Madison account data, including but not limited to: profile information, billing history, uploaded or downloaded images, and private message activity with content.”

Dacks and other Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman then exchanged a flurry of emails strategizing how to fight the subpoena.

“I say we fight this and further we can make this a real ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ style issue (like gays),” Dacks wrote.

Based on these emails, the plan was to spin the subpoena as a violation Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which protected sexual minorities from dismissal as long as they never revealed their sexual orientation and their superiors never asked. DADT was repealed in 2010, and its unclear how it was relevant two years later.

“Yes! Can we try to PR this?” Biderman enthusiastically replied.

Subsequent emails indicate that they called Booth back and moved the conversation to in-person meetings. The resolution to this issue is not found in any email records.

About 10,000 military emails were attached to Ashley Madison accounts when the data was leaked. Luckily, that alone isn’t enough to put any military member in danger of prosecution.

Only 12,000 female Ashley Madison accounts out of 5 million were created by real women. The rest were probably faked by Avid Life Media. Assuming a male military user was solely interested in women, he probably didn’t have an affair through the site.

Men looking for men though? That’s a “don’t ask don’t tell style issue (like gays).”