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[Reason] Daniel Hale Revealed America's Drone Assassinations to the Public. Sentenced to 45 Months

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Os Trigonum, Jul 28, 2021.

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  1. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    https://reason.com/2021/07/28/danie...ic-hes-been-sentenced-to-45-months-in-prison/

    Daniel Hale Revealed America's Drone Assassinations to the Public. He's Been Sentenced to 45 Months in Prison.
    Federal espionage laws are used once again to punish a whistleblower.
    SCOTT SHACKFORD | 7.28.2021 1:00 PM

    A federal judge has sentenced a leaker to prison for helping keep Americans informed about abuses being perpetrated in their name.

    Daniel Hale is a former Air Force intelligence analyst who revealed how America's secret drone assassinations in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia were likely killing untold numbers of innocent people. On Tuesday he was sentenced to 45 months in prison after he previously pleaded guilty to passing along classified documents to a reporter that were subsequently published in 2015.

    It's widely believed that Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept was the recipient of those documents, though The Intercept will not confirm.

    Hale's leaks were intended to show that the drone assassinations under President Barack Obama were not what the American public believed them to be. The government insisted that its secret "kill list" of terrorists was carefully vetted, and the drone strikes were only deployed to kill those the government and military believed it was unfeasible to arrest.

    The reality, Hale revealed, was the drone strikes regularly resulted in the death of innocents, and the government covered it up by automatically classifying anybody killed as "militants" even when they weren't the targets of the strikes. This allowed the government to insist that civilian casualties were being kept to a minimum.

    The documentation Hale provided was published as "The Drone Papers" by Scahill and later as part of a book titled The Assassination Complex.

    The feds finally caught up with Hale in 2019 and arrested him, charging him with espionage. After the arrest, Hale pleaded guilty and essentially threw himself at the mercy of the court, acknowledging that he violated the law while refusing to apologize for it. In a lengthy handwritten letter to U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady, Hale described an incident where a drone strike he helped arrange failed to kill its target (an Afghan man allegedly involved in making car bombs) and instead killed his 5-year-old daughter. He wrote, "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 I could possibly believe that I am a good person, deserving of my life and the right to pursue happiness."

    Remarkably, despite informing the American public that our drone strikes were killing innocent people, prosecutors attempted to argue that Hale's leaks were to boost his own ego and put Americans at risk.

    "Hale did not in any way contribute to the public debate about how we fight wars," Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg said. "All he did was endanger the people who are doing the fighting." The Justice Department sought a nine-year sentence for Hale.

    Fortunately, O'Grady didn't fully buy Kromberg's argument, but he did tell Hale that he could have been a whistleblower and spoken out against the drone tactics without stealing and leaking the documents.

    O'Grady has a pretty naive attitude toward how whistleblowers in the United States in recent years have actually affected change. The documentation is important, and it's abundantly clear that leaving it to the government officials themselves to validate whether they exist won't accomplish much.

    There were stories that hinted at the federal government and the National Security Agency misusing the PATRIOT Act to engage in massive secret domestic collection of Americans' communications years before Edward Snowden leaked documents to Glenn Greenwald. Back in 2006, a lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation helped expose AT&T's Room 641A, where the NSA used technology to intercept and analyze online communications.

    But when Snowden leaked a trove of classified documents in 2013 showing exactly how widespread this surveillance was, that actual evidence blew the doors wide open, and the American public was finally able to grasp how much of their personal information the own government was collecting.

    The documentation matters. The Washington Post notes that Hale's leaking of documentation showing how the government put people on secret terrorism watchlists helped civil rights lawyers fight for due process for their clients.

    Hale is yet another case where the federal government has used espionage laws not to punish spies who reveal classified information to our country's enemies, but to punish people who reveal the government's unethical and illegal behavior to our country's own citizens.




    ​
     
    #1 Os Trigonum, Jul 28, 2021
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  2. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    You can fool people once with Obama, but cant deny the gman going HAM against journalists over the sacred veil of Classifying everything under the sun.

    I mean I get the love for lobbing missiles into some forsaken land by decree. It's politically expedient and you get to look tough on defense. One could say Clinton cemented the culture by making Bosnia capitulate without ground troops but in reality, they do it regardless of results.

    These are the type of ongoing stories where you wonder if people take their freedoms and our soldiers blood, sweat and tears for granted.
     
    #2 Invisible Fan, Jul 28, 2021
  3. pgabriel

    pgabriel Educated Negro

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    Ok I hate to sound cruel but collateral damage is a part of war. The blame for the guy's daughter being killed is himself. I'm sure it was an honest mistake. That's the problem with the"whistle blowing" here. The government didn't intentionally kill her.
     
    #3 pgabriel, Jul 28, 2021
  4. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    Killing her might have been an honest mistake. Choosing to continue drone attacks that were known to kill innocent people and choosing to cover up that fact was not a mistake, however.
     
    #4 durvasa, Jul 28, 2021
  5. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    The Washington Post notes that Hale's leaking of documentation showing how the government put people on secret terrorism watchlists helped civil rights lawyers fight for due process for their clients.​

    The writer doesn't go deeply into it in the article but before the leaks came out, the government was able to win cases on the circuit and in secret court arguing to the extent that "you can't try the case because you can't prove it exists. You can't prove it exists because it's Classified". the Classified designation doesn't even have to be a state secret or related to National Security. There are different levels but the courts didn't care as long as it had the title.

    Sounds like a Dystopian novel or some **** you complain China's doing.
     
    #5 Invisible Fan, Jul 28, 2021
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  6. FrontRunner

    FrontRunner Member

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    #6 FrontRunner, Jul 28, 2021
  7. desi tmac91

    desi tmac91 Member

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    This country is shameful.
     
    #7 desi tmac91, Jul 28, 2021
  8. Rashmon

    Rashmon Contributing Member

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    Hey everyone, look over there...
     
    #8 Rashmon, Jul 28, 2021
  9. rockbox

    rockbox Around before clutchcity.com

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    [​IMG]
     
    #9 rockbox, Jul 28, 2021
  10. fchowd0311

    fchowd0311 Contributing Member

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    Are we the baddies?
     
    #10 fchowd0311, Jul 28, 2021
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2021
  11. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    There is no such thing as a "clean war" or "precision bombing" .
     
    #11 rocketsjudoka, Jul 28, 2021
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  12. pgabriel

    pgabriel Educated Negro

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    Exactly,we all know that. This isn't a debate about war. It's an issue of whistle blowing. We are in a war. The issue isn't the daughter being killed, the issue is outing our strategy
     
    #12 pgabriel, Jul 28, 2021
  13. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I agree there are no real easy solutions to this. There is strong desire to go after "terrorists" but little stomach for using troops so we rely on things like drone strikes and other air strikes. Even if you drop a 1,000 lb bomb on target it's likely going to destroy a lot more than just the target.

    The daughter of the terrorist being killed I don't think should just be ignored which is why it's important to not abstract war. It's a common answer to say that "well if that person didn't want his family killed he shouldn't have made an enemy of the us." Maybe so but that tends to say that we have no agency and are essentially automata. I'm not sure that is such an easy answer especially in the 21st Century.
     
    #13 rocketsjudoka, Jul 28, 2021
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  14. pgabriel

    pgabriel Educated Negro

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    I think the US's argument is about outing the intended target.

    This guy was an intelligence analyst. He is obviously privy to classified information. He is in a unique position where he is obligated to keep his mouth shut.

    As far as killing innonencent people, I'm sure plenty of unfortunate innonencent people die in attacks where the actual target was killed

    Again, this isn't a debate about war and us being there
     
    #14 pgabriel, Jul 28, 2021
  15. pgabriel

    pgabriel Educated Negro

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    Even though for the third time, sorry, this isn't a debate about Afghanistan. Let's remember why we were there. Not playing 9-11 violin strings but most of us supported being there as opposed to Iraq.

    I'm not missing the @Os Trigonum/Republican whataboutism on Obama and drone attacks and prosecuting whistle blowers

    I personally don't have a problem with drone attacks. Warfare essentially is about taking over land. Even in Afghanistan the idea is driving All Queda out of the caves. Drones were inevitable. Why do we need to put actual service men at risk. Even more so, the mistake happens before someone is killed. The mistake is bad information. A human being wouldn't be better at seeing the daughter instead of the father from a fighter jet no more than a drone
     
    #15 pgabriel, Jul 28, 2021
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  16. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    Why should the fact that our drone strikes are killing innocent civilians be classified?

    Basic moral obligations trump occupational obligations. If the US is killing innocent people and hiding this information from the public, that should be exposed.
     
    #16 durvasa, Jul 28, 2021
  17. pgabriel

    pgabriel Educated Negro

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    I said the mission should be classified
     
    #17 pgabriel, Jul 28, 2021
  18. WNBA

    WNBA Member

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    a country of war criminals proudly want their crime to be out in open.
     
    #18 WNBA, Jul 28, 2021
  19. DonatelloLimestone

    DonatelloLimestone Member

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    So whistleblwoing apparently isnt illegal, but if you mess up the process then youcan get more jail time then molestors...wow
     
    #19 DonatelloLimestone, Jul 28, 2021
  20. pgabriel

    pgabriel Educated Negro

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    If you give classified information. The problem is he is addressing what probably is still an objective.

    The daughter isn't a random collateral damage casualty. Obviously she was in a place correctly identified as a place her father could be
     
    #20 pgabriel, Jul 29, 2021
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