Friends,
At the sentencing today, both the judge and the prosecutor made the point that Daniel was being sentenced because he was guilty of stealing paper. And as Hale said in his sentencing statement, he is not going to prison for killing civilians. In fact he got a medal for his work for the Empire. During this part of the sentencing, I thought of the Catonsville Nine and Dan Berrigan's point that they were going to jail for burning paper. Those who used napalm to kill Vietnamese were never charged. In both cases, the war criminals were not prosecuted. In Daniel's situation, he is going to prison for sharing information that we citizens have a right to know. And in Dan's case, they went to prison because they dared to say that the US was committing war crimes in Vietnam. Also note that the Nine's action actually saved the lives of those whose draft records were burnt away in a wire basket. Kagiso, Max
Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale (R) stands next to
CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin outside the White House in Washington, D.C.
in this undated photo. (Photo: Democracy Now!)
Drone
Whistleblower Daniel Hale Sentenced to 45 Months in Prison 'For Exposing US War
Crimes'
"His crime was telling this truth: 90% of those
killed by U.S. drones are bystanders, not the intended targets," said
Edward Snowden. "He should have been given a medal."
July
27, 2021
Human rights and press freedom advocates expressed dismay on Tuesday when whistleblower Daniel Hale, who pled guilty earlier this year to violating the Espionage Act, was sentenced to 45 months in prison for sharing with a journalist classified information about the U.S. military's drone assassination program.
"We believe that rather than harm our country,
Hale's revelations actually enhanced our democracy by providing critical
information about what our government has been doing in our name."
—CodePink
"Whistleblower
Daniel Hale has just been sentenced to 45 months in prison for exposing U.S.
war crimes," said anti-war
group CodePink. "While his sentencing isn't the 10 years we feared, it is
45 months too long."
Hale's
lawyers argued in
court papers that his humanitarian motives, and the lack of harm resulting from
his actions, warranted a lenient sentence.
"He
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 [Barack] Obama regarding the alleged precision of
the United States military's drone program," wrote Defense attorneys Todd
Richman and Cadence Mertz.
Prosecutors,
however, claimed Hale's
leaks posed a greater risk to "national security" than those of
Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower released last
month after serving four years of a 63-month sentence—the longest ever imposed
for disclosing classified government information to the media. They sought a
sentence "significantly longer" than Winner's.
U.S.
District Judge Liam O'Grady said the 45-month prison sentence he gave Hale was
necessary to "deter others from disclosing government secrets,"
the Associated Press reported.
Edward
Snowden, the American whistleblower who has lived in Russia with asylum
protections since leaking classified materials on U.S. government mass
surveillance in 2013, was among those who denounced the judge's decision.
"His
crime was telling this truth: 90% of those killed by U.S. drones are
bystanders, not the intended targets," said Snowden. "He should have
been given a medal."
In May
2019, Hale was charged under
the Espionage Act for leaking secret documents to a reporter widely
believed to be The Intercept's
Jeremy Scahill.
"These
documents detailed a secret, unaccountable process for targeting and killing
people around the world, including U.S. citizens, through drone strikes,"
Betsy Reed, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, said after
Hale's indictment. "They are of vital public importance, and activity
related to their disclosure is protected by the First Amendment."
According
to journalist Kevin Gosztola, Hale's
whistleblowing enabled The Intercept to reveal that
"nearly half of the people on the U.S. government's widely shared database
of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist
group," detail how
assassination targets ended up on Obama's "kill list," and expose new
information about Bilal el-Berjawi, a Briton "who was stripped of his
citizenship before being killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2012."
Hale,
33, of Nashville, Tennessee, was an Air Force intelligence analyst between 2009
and 2013. In 2012, he deployed to Afghanistan to support the U.S. Defense [sic]
Department's Joint Special Operations Task Force and was responsible for
identifying, tracking, and targeting "high-value" terror suspects.
The
following year, when he was assigned to the NSA, Hale began communicating with
a journalist. In 2014, after Hale had been honorably discharged from the Air
Force and started working at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, he
shared documents that contradicted the U.S. military's claims that the drone
assassination program could kill "enemy combatants" with precision
and minimize civilian casualties.
In a
handwritten letter released last week, Hale explained that
his decision to disclose top-secret information about the inner workings of
U.S. drone warfare was motivated by guilt over his role in carrying out
"gruesome" killings of defenseless people "from the cold comfort
of a computer chair."
Meanwhile,
CodePink pointed out Tuesday, "no U.S. official who authorized the murder
of civilians with drones has ever been held accountable."
CodePink
is spearheading a petition asking
President Joe Biden—Obama's vice president—to pardon Hale. The letter states
that:
Daniel
Hale is not a spy, a threat to society, or a bad faith actor. His revelations
were not a threat to national security. If they were, the prosecution would be
able to identify the harm caused directly from the information Hale made
public.
While
the courts have ruled that a defendant's motive in a case related to the
Espionage Act is irrelevant, we recognize that Hale's motive was only to
provide the American people with information about government misconduct. We
believe that rather than harm our country, Hale's revelations actually enhanced
our democracy by providing critical information about what our government has
been doing in our name. We also believe that Hale's revelations help push our
government to reassess its drone program in light of its violations of U.S. and
international law.
First
Amendment advocates have long argued that cracking down on journalists and
their sources dissuades people from sharing information that can help expose
the truth, hold the powerful accountable, and improve the common good.
"Daniel Hale helped the public learn about a lethal
program that never should have been kept secret. He should be thanked, not
sentenced as a spy."
—ACLU
The
Obama and Trump administrations both went to great lengths to prevent leaks and
punish government officials for divulging information to reporters. Before
former President Donald Trump launched a "war on
whistleblowers," the Department of Justice under
Obama prosecuted nine
leak cases, more than all previous administrations combined.
Last
month, the Washington Post's publisher accused Biden's
Justice Department of exacerbating the Trump-era assault on
press freedom, prompting the DOJ last week to prohibit prosecutors
from using secret orders and subpoenas to obtain journalists' phone and email
records.
Nevertheless,
Biden's DOJ continued to prosecute Hale and is also still
pursuing an espionage case against WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange that began under Trump.
The
Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that criminalizes the disclosure of
classified government information to unauthorized viewers, has been used on
several occasions to punish whistleblowers, including Hale, Assange, Snowden, Winner, John
Kiriakou, Chelsea
Manning, Jeffrey
Sterling, and others.
"A
group of First Amendment and media law scholars wrote the court in support of
Hale, calling him 'a classic whistleblower, who acted in good faith to alert
the public of secret government policies that deserved to be debated by the
citizens in a truly functioning democracy,'" the Post reported.
"They argue that the Espionage Act was intended to punish foreign spies,
not those who seek to enlighten the American people."
The
ACLU echoed that message on Tuesday, stating that
"leaks to [the] press in the public interest shouldn't be prosecuted under
the Espionage Act."
"Daniel
Hale helped the public learn about a lethal program that never should have been
kept secret," the organization added. "He should be thanked, not
sentenced as a spy."
Our
work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish
and share widely.
Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to
gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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