Chris Hedges, Consortium News, July 27, 2021
Daniel Hale, a former intelligence
analyst in the drone program for the Air Force who as a private contractor in
2013 leaked some 17 classified documents about drone strikes to the press,
was sentenced Tuesday to 45 months in prison.
The documents, published by The Intercept on October
15, 2015, exposed that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special
operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the
intended targets. For one five-month period of the operation, according to the
documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the
intended targets. The civilian dead, usually innocent bystanders, were
routinely classified as “enemies killed in action.”
The Justice Department coerced
Hale, who was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, on March 31 to plead guilty to
one count of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed in 1917 designed to
prosecute those who passed on state secrets to a hostile power, not those who
expose to the public government lies and crimes. Hale admitted as part of the
plea deal to “retention and transmission of national security information” and
leaking 11 classified documents to a journalist. If he had refused the plea
deal, he could have spent 50 years in prison.
The sentencing of Hale is one more
potentially mortal blow to the freedom of the press. It follows in the
wake of the prosecutions and imprisonment of other whistleblowers under the
Espionage Act including Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake and
John Kiriakou, who spent two-and-a-half years in prison for exposing the
routine torture of suspects held in black sites.
Those charged under the act are
treated as if they were spies. They are barred from explaining
motivations and intent to the court. They cannot provide evidence to the court
of the government lawlessness and war crimes they exposed. Prominent human
rights organizations, such as the ACLU and PEN, along with mainstream
publications, such as The New York Times and CNN, have largely
remained silent about the prosecution of Hale.
The group Stand with Daniel Hale has called
on President Biden to pardon Hale and end the use of the Espionage Act to
punish whistleblowers. It is also collecting donations for Hale’s legal fund.
The bipartisan onslaught against the press — Barack Obama used the
Espionage Act eight times against whistleblowers, more than all other previous
administrations combined — by criminalizing those within the system
who seek to inform the public is ominous for our democracy. It is
effectively extinguishing all investigations into the inner workings of power.
“Using the analogy of taking out a
sniper, with his sights set on an unassuming crowd of people, the president
likened the use of drones to prevent a would-be terrorist from carrying out his
evil plot. But, as I understood it to be, the unassuming crowd had been those
who lived in fear and the terror of drones in their skies and the sniper in
this scenario had been me.”
Hale, in a handwritten letter to
Judge Liam O’Grady on July 18, explained why he leaked classified information,
writing that the drone attacks and the war in Afghanistan “had little to do
with preventing terror from coming into the United States and a lot more to do
with protecting the profits of weapons manufacturers and so-called defense
contractors.”
At the top of the ten-page letter
Hale quoted U.S. Navy Admiral Gene LaRocque, speaking to a reporter in 1995:
“We now kill people without ever seeing them. Now you push a button thousands
of miles away … Since it’s all done by remote control, there’s no remorse … and
then we come home in triumph.”
“In my capacity as a signals
intelligence analyst stationed at Bagram Airbase, I was made to track down the
geographic location of handset cellphone devices believed to be in the
possession of so-called enemy combatants,” Hale explained to the judge.
“To accomplish this mission
required access to a complex chain of globe-spanning satellites capable of
maintaining an unbroken connection with remotely piloted aircraft, commonly
referred to as drones. Once a steady connection is made and a targeted cell
phone device is acquired, an imagery analyst in the U.S., in coordination with
a drone pilot and camera operator, would take over using information I provided
to surveil everything that occurred within the drone’s field of vision. This
was done, most often, to document the day-to-day lives of suspected militants.
Sometimes, under the right conditions, an attempt at capture would be made.
Other times, a decision to strike and kill them where they stood would be
weighed.”
He recalled the first time he
witnessed a drone strike, a few days after he arrived in Afghanistan.
“Early that morning, before dawn,
a group of men had gathered together in the mountain ranges of Patika province
around a campfire carrying weapons and brewing tea,” he wrote.
“That they carried weapons with
them would not have been considered out of the ordinary in the place I grew up,
much less within the virtually lawless tribal territories outside the control
of the Afghan authorities. Except that among them was a suspected member of the
Taliban, given away by the targeted cell phone device in his pocket. As for the
remaining individuals, to be armed, of military age, and sitting in the
presence of an alleged enemy combatant was enough evidence to place them under
suspicion as well. Despite having peacefully assembled, posing no threat, the
fate of the now tea drinking men had all but been fulfilled. I could only look
on as I sat by and watched through a computer monitor when a sudden, terrifying
flurry of hellfire missiles came crashing down, splattering, purple-colored
crystal guts on the side of the morning mountain.”
This was his first experience with
“scenes of graphic violence carried out from the cold comfort of a computer
chair.” There would be many more. “Not a day goes by that I don’t question the
justification for my actions,” he wrote.
“By the rules of engagement, it
may have been permissible for me to have helped to kill those men — whose
language I did not speak, customs I did not understand, and crimes I could not
identify — in the gruesome manner that I did. Watch them die. But how could it
be considered honorable of me to continuously have laid in wait for the next
opportunity to kill unsuspecting persons, who, more often than not, are posing
no danger to me or any other person at the time. Never mind honorable, how
could it be that any thinking person continued to believe that it was necessary
for the protection of the United States of America to be in Afghanistan and
killing people, not one of whom present was responsible for the September 11th
attacks on our nation. Notwithstanding, in 2012, a full year after the demise
of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was a part of killing misguided young men who
were but mere children on the day of 9/11.”
Daniel Hale was sentenced to 45
months in jail for revealing that 90% of US drone strike casualties were innocent
civilians.
George Bush and Dick Cheney who
knowingly lied about WMDs to start a war in the Middle East were never jailed
This isn't justice.https://t.co/cyuKuKQ5Ea
— Aaron D.
(@MrBrownEyes2020) July
27, 2021
He and other service members were
confronted with the privatization of war where “contract mercenaries
outnumbered uniform wearing soldiers 2 to 1 and earned as much as 10 times
their salary.”
“Meanwhile, it did not matter
whether it was, as I had seen, an Afghan farmer blown in half, yet miraculously
conscious and pointlessly trying to scoop his insides off the ground, or
whether it was an American flag-draped coffin lowered into Arlington National
Cemetery to the sound of a 21-gun salute,” he wrote. “Bang, bang, bang. Both
served to justify the easy flow of capital at the cost of blood — theirs and
ours. When I think about this, I am grief-stricken and ashamed of myself for
the things I’ve done to support it.”
He described to the judge “the
most harrowing day of my life” that took place a few months into his deployment
“when a routine surveillance mission turned into disaster.”
“For weeks we had been tracking
the movements of a ring of car bomb manufacturers living around Jalalabad,” he
wrote. “Car bombs directed at U.S. bases had become an increasingly frequent
and deadly problem that summer, so much effort was put into stopping them. It
was a windy and clouded afternoon when one of the suspects had been discovered
headed eastbound, driving at a high rate of speed. This alarmed my superiors
who believe he might be attempting to escape across the border into Pakistan.”
“Now, whenever I encounter an
individual who thinks that drone warfare is justified and reliably keeps
America safe, I remember that time and ask myself how could I possibly continue
to believe that I am a good person, deserving of my life and the right to
pursue happiness.”— Daniel Hale, of learning about children killed by
indiscriminate U.S. drone attacks he participated in.
“A drone strike was our only
chance and already it began lining up to take the shot,” he continued. “But the
less advanced predator drone found it difficult to see through clouds and
compete against strong headwinds. The single payload MQ-1 failed to connect
with its target, instead missing by a few meters. The vehicle, damaged, but
still driveable, continued on ahead after narrowly avoiding destruction. Eventually,
once the concern of another incoming missile subsided, the driver stopped, got
out of the car, and checked himself as though he could not believe he was still
alive. Out of the passenger side came a woman wearing an unmistakable burka. As
astounding as it was to have just learned there had been a woman, possibly his
wife, there with the man we intended to kill moments ago, I did not have the
chance to see what happened next before the drone diverted its camera when she
began frantically to pull out something from the back of the car.”
He learned a few days later from
his commanding officer what next took place.
“There indeed had been the
suspect’s wife with him in the car,” he wrote.
“And in the back were their two
young daughters, ages 5 and 3 years old. A cadre of Afghan soldiers were sent
to investigate where the car had stopped the following day. It was there they
found them placed in the dumpster nearby. The eldest was found dead due to
unspecified wounds caused by shrapnel that pierced her body. Her younger sister
was alive but severely dehydrated. As my commanding officer relayed this
information to us, she seemed to express disgust, not for the fact that we had
errantly fired on a man and his family, having killed one of his daughters; but
for the suspected bomb maker having ordered his wife to dump the bodies of
their daughters in the trash, so that the two of them could more quickly escape
across the border. Now, whenever I encounter an individual who thinks that
drone warfare is justified and reliably keeps America safe, I remember that
time and ask myself how could I possibly continue to believe that I am a good
person, deserving of my life and the right to pursue happiness.”
“One year later, at a farewell
gathering for those of us who would soon be leaving military service, I sat
alone, transfixed by the television, while others reminisced together,” he
continued.
“On television was breaking news
of the president giving his first public remarks about the policy surrounding
the use of drone technology in warfare. His remarks were made to reassure the
public of reports scrutinizing the death of civilians in drone strikes and the
targeting of American citizens. The president said that a high standard of
‘near certainty’ needed to be met in order to ensure that no civilians were
present. But from what I knew, of the instances where civilians plausibly could
have been present, those killed were nearly always designated enemies killed in
action unless proven otherwise. Nonetheless, I continued to heed his words as
the president went on to explain how a drone could be used to eliminate someone
who posed an ‘imminent threat’ to the United States. Using the analogy of
taking out a sniper, with his sights set on an unassuming crowd of people, the
president likened the use of drones to prevent a would-be terrorist from
carrying out his evil plot. But, as I understood it to be, the unassuming crowd
had been those who lived in fear and the terror of drones in their skies and
the sniper in this scenario had been me. I came to believe that the policy of
drone assassination was being used to mislead the public that it keeps us safe,
and when I finally left the military, still processing what I’d been a part of,
I began to speak out, believing my participation in the drone program to have
been deeply wrong.”
Speaks Out
Hale threw himself into anti-war
activism when he left the military, speaking out about the indiscriminate
killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of noncombatants, including children in
drone strikes. He took part in a peace conference held in Washington, D.C. in
November 2013. The Yemeni Fazil bin Ali Jaber spoke at the conference about the
drone strike that killed his brother, Salem bin Ali Jaber, and their cousin
Waleed. Waleed was a policeman. Salem was an Imam who was an outspoken critic
of the armed attacks carried out by radical jihadists.
“One day in August 2012, local
members of Al Qaeda traveling through Fazil’s village in a car spotted Salem in
the shade, pulled up towards him, and beckoned him to come over and speak to
them,” Hale wrote. “Not one to miss an opportunity to evangelize to the youth,
Salem proceeded cautiously with Waleed by his side. Fazil and other villagers
began looking on from afar. Farther still was an ever present reaper drone
looking too.”
“As Fazil recounted what happened
next, I felt myself transported back in time to where I had been on that day,
2012,” Hale told the judge.
“Unbeknownst to Fazil and those of
his village at the time was that they had not been the only watching Salem
approach the jihadist in the car. From Afghanistan, I and everyone on duty
paused their work to witness the carnage that was about to unfold. At the press
of a button from thousands of miles away, two hellfire missiles screeched out
of the sky, followed by two more. Showing no signs of remorse, I, and those
around me, clapped and cheered triumphantly. In front of a speechless
auditorium, Fazil wept.”
A week after the conference Hale
was offered a job as a government contractor. Desperate for money and
steady employment, hoping to go to college, he took the job, which paid $
80,000 a year. But by then he was disgusted by the drone program.
“For a long time, I was
uncomfortable with myself over the thought of taking advantage of my military
background to land a cushy desk job,” he wrote.
“During that time, I was still
processing what I had been through, and I was starting to wonder if I was
contributing again to the problem of money and war by accepting to return as a
defense contractor. Worse was my growing apprehension that everyone around me
was also taking part in a collective delusion and denial that was used to
justify our exorbitant salaries, for comparatively easy labor. The thing I
feared most at the time was the temptation not to question it.”
“Then it came to be that one day
after work I stuck around to socialize with a pair of co-workers whose talented
work I had come to greatly admire,” he wrote.
“They made me feel welcomed, and I
was happy to have earned their approval. But then, to my dismay, our brand-new
friendship took an unexpectedly dark turn. They elected that we should take a
moment and view together some archived footage of past drone strikes. Such
bonding ceremonies around a computer to watch so-called “war porn” had not been
new to me. I partook in them all the time while deployed to Afghanistan. But on
that day, years after the fact, my new friends gaped and sneered, just as my
old one’s had, at the sight of faceless men in the final moments of their
lives. I sat by watching too; said nothing and felt my heart breaking into pieces.”
“Your Honor,” Hale wrote to the
judge,
“The truest truism that I’ve come
to understand about the nature of war is that war is trauma. I believe that any
person either called-upon or coerced to participate in war against their fellow
man is promised to be exposed to some form of trauma. In that way, no soldier
blessed to have returned home from war does so uninjured. The crux of PTSD is
that it is a moral conundrum that afflicts invisible wounds on the psyche of a
person made to burden the weight of experience after surviving a traumatic
event. How PTSD manifests depends on the circumstances of the event. So how is
the drone operator to process this? The victorious rifleman, unquestioningly
remorseful, at least keeps his honor intact by having faced off against his
enemy on the battlefield. The determined fighter pilot has the luxury of not
having to witness the gruesome aftermath. But what possibly could I have done
to cope with the undeniable cruelties that I perpetuated?”
“My conscience, once held at bay,
came roaring back to life,” he wrote. “At first, I tried to ignore it. Wishing
instead that someone, better placed than I, should come along to take this cup
from me. But this too was folly. Left to decide whether to act, I only could do
that which I ought to do before God and my own conscience. The answer came to
me, that to stop the cycle of violence, I ought to sacrifice my own life and
not that of another person. So, I contacted an investigative reporter, with
whom I had had an established prior relationship, and told him that I had
something the American people needed to know.”
Hale, who has admitted to being
suicidal and depressed, said in the letter he, like many veterans, struggles
with the crippling effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, aggravated by an
impoverished and turbulent childhood.
“Depression is a constant,” he
told the judge.
“Though stress, particularly
stress caused by war, can manifest itself at different times and in different
ways. The tell-tale signs of a person afflicted by PTSD and depression can
often be outwardly observed and are practically universally recognizable. Hard
lines about the face and jaw. Eyes, once bright and wide, now deep-set, and
fearful. And an inexplicably sudden loss of interest in things that used to
spark joy. These are the noticeable changes in my demeanor marked by those who
knew me before and after military service. To say that the period of my life
spent serving in the United States Air Force had an impression on me would be
an understatement. It is more accurate to say that it irreversibly transformed
my identity as an American. Having forever altered the thread of my life’s
story, weaved into the fabric of our nation’s history.”
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The
New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan
bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas
Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host
of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show “On Contact.”
This column is from Scheerpost, for
which Chris Hedges writes a regular column. Click here to sign up for
email alerts.
The views expressed are
solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium
News.
In Pre-Sentencing Letter, Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale Says Crisis of Conscience Motivated Leak
Consortiumnews.com
The former U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst is the first person to face sentencing for an Espionage Act offense during the administration of President Joe Biden.
By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams, July 25, 2021
Attorneys for drone whistleblower Daniel Hale — who faces sentencing this week after
pleading guilty earlier this year to violating the Espionage Act — on Thursday submitted a letter to Judge Liam O’Grady in which the former Air Force intelligence analyst says a crisis of conscience drove him to leak classified information about the U.S. targeted assassination program.
The 11-page handwritten
letter (pdf) begins with a quote from U.S. Admiral Gene La Rocque, who said in 1995 that “we now kill people without ever seeing them. Now you push a button thousands of miles away… Since it’s all done by remote control, there’s no remorse.”
“It is not a secret that I struggle to live with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder,” the 33-year-old Hale wrote in the letter. “Depression is a constant… Stress, particularly stress caused by war, can manifest itself at different times and in different ways.”
“Except that among them was a suspected member of the Taliban, given away by the targeted cell phone device in his pocket,” he wrote. “As for the remaining individuals, to be armed, of military age, and sitting in the presence of an alleged enemy combatant was enough evidence to place them under suspicion as well.”
“The first time that I witnessed a drone strike came within days of my arrival to Afghanistan,” Hale recounted. “Early that morning, before dawn, a group of men had gathered together in the mountain ranges of Patika province around a campfire carrying weapons and brewing tea. That they carried weapons with them would not have been considered out of the ordinary in the place I grew up, much less within the virtually lawless tribal territories outside the control of the Afghan authorities.”
Obama’s Method for Counting Casualties
In 2012 — the same year that Hale deployed to Afghanistan to support the U.S. Defense Department’s Joint Special Operations Task Force and was responsible for identifying, tracking, and targeting “high-value” terror suspects — the New York Times
reported then-President Barack Obama, who
dramatically increased U.S. drone strikes in the so-called War on Terror, “embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties” that effectively “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.”
Critics condemned the policy as an attempt by the administration to artificially lower the war’s civilian casualty figures — which by then already numbered in the
hundreds of thousands, with most victims killed during former President George W. Bush’s tenure.
“Despite having peacefully assembled, posing no threat, the fate of the now tea drinking men had all but been fulfilled,” Hale continued. “I could only look on as I sat by and watched through a computer monitor when a sudden, terrifying flurry of hellfire missiles came crashing down, splattering purple-colored crystal guts on the side of the morning mountain.”
“I could only look on as I sat by and watched through a computer monitor when a sudden, terrifying flurry of hellfire missiles came crashing down.”
“Since that time and to this day, I continue to recall several such scenes of graphic violence carried out from the cold comfort of a computer chair,” he wrote. “Not a day goes by that I don’t question the justification for my actions. By the rules of engagement, it may have been permissible for me to have helped to kill those men — whose language I did not speak, customs I did not understand, and crimes I could not identify — in the gruesome manner that I did.”
“But how could it be considered honorable of me to continuously have laid in wait for the next opportunity to kill unsuspecting persons, who, more often than not, are posing no danger to me or any other person at the time?” Hale asked. “Never mind honorable, how could it be that any thinking person continued to believe that it was necessary for the protection of the United States of America to be in Afghanistan and killing people, not one of whom present was responsible for the September 11th attacks on our nation. Notwithstanding, in 2012, a full year after the demise of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was a part of killing misguided young men who were but mere children on the day of 9/11.”
It Wasn’t Just Men
It wasn’t just men. Hale continued, describing what he called the most harrowing day of his life:
“For weeks we had been tracking the movements of a ring of car bomb manufacturers living around Jalalabad… It was a windy and clouded afternoon when one of the suspects had been discovered… A drone strike was our only chance and already it began lining up to take the shot. But the less advanced Predator drone found it difficult to see through clouds and compete against strong headwinds.
The single payload MQ-1 failed to connect with its target, instead missing by a few meters. The vehicle, damaged, but still drivable, continued on ahead after narrowly avoiding destruction.
The driver stopped, got out of the car, and checked himself as though he could not believe he was still alive. Out of the passenger side came a woman wearing an unmistakable burka… And in the back were their two young daughters, ages 5 and 3 years old…. The eldest was found dead due to unspecified wounds caused by shrapnel that pierced her body. Her younger sister was alive but severely dehydrated.”
“Whenever I encounter an individual who thinks that drone warfare is justified and reliably keeps America safe, I remember that time and ask myself how could I possibly continue to believe that I am a good person, deserving of my life and the right to pursue happiness,” wrote Hale, who said he became “increasingly aware that the war had very little to do with preventing terror from coming into the United States and a lot more to do with protecting the profits of weapons manufacturers and so-called defense contractors.”
“The evidence of this fact was laid bare all around me,” he wrote.
“In the longest or most technologically advanced war in American history, contract mercenaries outnumbered uniform wearing soldiers two to one and earned as much as 10 times their salary. Meanwhile, it did not matter whether it was, as I had seen, an Afghan farmer blown in half, yet miraculously conscious and pointlessly trying to scoop his insides off the ground, or whether it was an American flag-draped coffin lowered into Arlington National Cemetery to the sound of a 21-gun salute.”“But how could it be considered honorable of me to continuously have laid in wait for the next opportunity to kill unsuspecting persons, who, more often than not, are posing no danger to me or any other person at the time?” Hale asked. “Never mind honorable, how could it be that any thinking person continued to believe that it was necessary for the protection of the United States of America to be in Afghanistan and killing people, not one of whom present was responsible for the September 11th attacks on our nation. Notwithstanding, in 2012, a full year after the demise of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was a part of killing misguided young men who were but mere children on the day of 9/11.”
It Wasn’t Just Men
It wasn’t just men. Hale continued, describing what he called the most harrowing day of his life:
“For weeks we had been tracking the movements of a ring of car bomb manufacturers living around Jalalabad… It was a windy and clouded afternoon when one of the suspects had been discovered… A drone strike was our only chance and already it began lining up to take the shot. But the less advanced Predator drone found it difficult to see through clouds and compete against strong headwinds.
The single payload MQ-1 failed to connect with its target, instead missing by a few meters. The vehicle, damaged, but still drivable, continued on ahead after narrowly avoiding destruction.
The driver stopped, got out of the car, and checked himself as though he could not believe he was still alive. Out of the passenger side came a woman wearing an unmistakable burka… And in the back were their two young daughters, ages 5 and 3 years old…. The eldest was found dead due to unspecified wounds caused by shrapnel that pierced her body. Her younger sister was alive but severely dehydrated.”
“Whenever I encounter an individual who thinks that drone warfare is justified and reliably keeps America safe, I remember that time and ask myself how could I possibly continue to believe that I am a good person, deserving of my life and the right to pursue happiness,” wrote Hale, who said he became “increasingly aware that the war had very little to do with preventing terror from coming into the United States and a lot more to do with protecting the profits of weapons manufacturers and so-called defense contractors.”
“The evidence of this fact was laid bare all around me,” he wrote.
“In the longest or most technologically advanced war in American history, contract mercenaries outnumbered uniform wearing soldiers two to one and earned as much as 10 times their salary. Meanwhile, it did not matter whether it was, as I had seen, an Afghan farmer blown in half, yet miraculously conscious and pointlessly trying to scoop his insides off the ground, or whether it was an American flag-draped coffin lowered into Arlington National Cemetery to the sound of a 21-gun salute.”
“Bang, bang, bang. Both served to justify the easy flow of capital at the cost of blood—theirs and ours,” he said. “When I think about this I am grief-stricken and ashamed of myself for the things I’ve done to support it.”
“I came to believe that the policy of drone assassination was being used to mislead the public that it keeps us safe,” Hale continued, “and when I finally left the military, still processing what I’d been a part of, I began to speak out, believing my participation in the drone program to have been deeply wrong.”
“Your Honor, the truest truism that I’ve come to understand about the nature of war is that war is trauma,” he wrote. “No soldier blessed to have returned home from war does so uninjured. The crux of PTSD is that it is a moral conundrum that afflicts invisible wounds on the psyche of a person made to burden the weight of experience after surviving a traumatic event. How PTSD manifests depends on the circumstances of the event. So how is the drone operator to process this?”
“My conscience, once held at bay, came roaring back to life,” said Hale. “At first, I tried to ignore it. Wishing instead that someone, better placed than I, should come along to take this cup from me. But this too was folly.”
“Left to decide whether to act, I only could do that which I ought to do before God and my own conscience,” he concluded. “The answer came to me, that to stop the cycle of violence, I ought to sacrifice my own life and not that of another person. So, I contacted an investigative reporter, with whom I had had an established prior relationship, and told him that I had something the American people needed to know.”
Hale was
charged in 2019 during the Trump administration after leaking the top secret documents to a reporter, who according to court documents, matches the description of The Intercept founding editor Jeremy Scahill. He is the first person to face sentencing for an Espionage Act offense during the administration of President Joe Biden.
Hale’s lawyers argue that his humanitarian motives, and the lack of harm resulting from his actions, warrant a lenient sentence. Defense attorneys Todd Richman and Cadence Mertz said that Hale “committed the offense to bring attention to what he believed to be immoral government conduct committed under the cloak of secrecy and contrary to public statements of then-President Obama regarding the alleged precision of the United States military’s drone program.”
Prosecutors, however,
claim Hale’s leaks were more egregious than those of Reality Winner, the former NSA whistleblower
released last month after serving four years of a 63-month sentence —the longest ever imposed for leaking classified government information to the media. They assert that a suitable sentence for Hale would be “significantly longer” than Winner’s.
[Prosecutors might also argue that the Espionage Act does not allow for a public interest defense, i.e., a defendant explaining motive, such as Hale’s handwritten statement.]
This article is from
Common Dreams.
