For national security reasons, I cannot tell you everything I know about why Gov. Eric Greitens can’t divulge the date upon which he installed the Confide app on his phone.

He and I have worked in a lot of the same hellhole war zones. We’ve encountered some pretty bad dudes. This is one rare instance where I’m going to have to invoke an obscure legal code known as Journalist-Governor Confidentiality to protect what I know he knows about what we all must not know.

You see, there are terrorists out there who want nothing more than to obtain the date when Greitens and his senior staffers installed Confide, an app that automatically deletes text message exchanges. Our nation’s very survival could depend on keeping that installation date out of terrorist hands.

There’s been a lot of irresponsible speculation out there among the fake news media, and it’s time to put a stop to it. Some speculate that the real reason Greitens and his staffers installed Confide was to help them cover up Greitens’ 2015 sexual affair with his hairdresser as he was launching his gubernatorial campaign.

The speculation often focuses on the victim’s recorded assertions that Greitens taped her hands to exercise rings, partially undressed her and photographed her. It is silly to think that this might be the motivation for the governor to install a phone app that would cover up any conversations about a supposed “extramarital affair.” Where speculators see scandal, I see national security.

Others suggest the app helps him coordinate campaign strategies and expenditures with his dark-money nonprofit organization, the one with which he is never supposed to coordinate campaign strategies and expenditures.

Pardon me while I suppress a giggle at this notion. The fake news media is so transparent sometimes. Journalists’ naivete would be endearing if it weren’t so sad. They want to believe the worst of our governor when, in fact, he is on the front lines keeping our nation safe and protecting our First Amendment freedoms.

The installation date for his Confide app contains the key to the freedoms our nation holds near and dear. Give up that date, and you can kiss America goodbye.

Let me fill you in. Back on May 2, 2011, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 (which inexplicably did not include Greitens) raided Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They didn’t just kill the most-wanted terrorist in the world; they also captured the mother lode of electronic documents outlining the strategy with which al-Qaida planned world domination.

The only reason I can discuss this with you now is because the CIA late last year posted 470,000 of those captured documents online. To understand the pieces of this puzzle, it helps to be able to read Arabic. And you have to know what you’re looking for.

I spent hours sifting through them, and I can attest to bin Laden’s brilliance and foresight. Because, buried deep among his saved images from online porn sites and copies of articles about movie stars clipped from various Arabic newspapers, there is a document that reveals the al-Qaida leader’s real plan.

“The governor of Missouri ultimately holds the key,” he advised his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a little-known email exchange just before the Abbottabad raid. “Not that nincompoop Jay Nixon, for I scoff at his infidel existence. No, there will be a future governor, a military man, who will know how to defeat us. We must get to his phone.”

Then comes the key phrase, which seems prophetic in retrospect: “Al-Qaida’s future depends on us obtaining the date when he installs his Confide app.” What’s amazing about this exchange is that Confide didn’t even exist back then.

Then there’s North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. It turns out that his entire program to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles has been a ruse, a distraction to prevent American intelligence agencies from discovering his true goal: to identify the date upon which Gov. Greitens installed Confide on his phone.

Ask any notorious international terrorist leader — Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Boko Haram’s Abubakr Shekau, or Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — and he would tell you that the Holy Grail of world mayhem-sowers is to obtain Greitens’ Confide installation date.

I’ve probably told you much more than I should have, but I just felt it was necessary to add some context to the cryptic statement issued by the governor’s staff attorney, Sarah Madden, in response to a Sunshine Law request.

When asked for information about the downloading date of Confide by the governor and his staffers, Madden cited the exception to the Sunshine Law that allows officials to withhold public information in order to protect against incidents “terrorist in nature.”

Folks, you can’t make this stuff up. The threat is real. The danger is clear and present. Trust me. No, better still, trust Eric Greitens.