Daniel Hale Receives 45-Month Sentence for Releasing Drone Documents

https://thedissenter.org/daniel-hale-receives-harshest-sentence-ever-for-a-leak/

by yesenadam • 5 years ago

293 168 5 years ago

amin• 5 years ago

Edward Snowden:

"Daniel Hale, one of the great American Whistleblowers, was just moments ago sentenced to four years in prison. His crime was telling this truth: 90% of those killed by US drones are bystanders, not the intended targets.

He should have been given a medal."

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1420067662823047172

xvector13• 5 years ago

And yet it amazes me that people are still pushing for more government power and more government controlled services.

HN's audience of all people should be keenly aware of the US government's tendency towards authoritarianism.

Mountain_Skies• 5 years ago

As long as its outsourced to tech companies with the right politics, it's cool with a large segment of the posters here, which is rather astonishing.

antonzabirko• 5 years ago

Better than private sector

ransom15382• 5 years ago

We don't want the government to have power! We just want them to be responsible for our education, health care, water, policing, energy, laws, foreign intelligence, taxing, safety, banking, college, protection, transportation, international affairs, court system, prison system, retirement and food supply.

rapind• 5 years ago

I don’t think it’s fair or a good idea to paint all of government (a massive employer) with these numbskulls. Let’s just throw out the bad instead.

sudosysgen3• 5 years ago

Why are we assuming that the private sector is any better?

If you want to see what violence the private sector is capable of, look up the Nisour Square massacre : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisour_Square_massacre

Anyone acquainted deeply with American history would be aware that yes, the government can tend towards authoritarianism, and often goes fully into it. But the American private sector is even more enthusiastic to commit atrocities and enforce the authority of the few on the many.

nemo44x• 5 years ago

We live in a time where so called progressives defend pentagon generals from scrutiny and rally around the FBI.

maybelsyrup2• 5 years ago

He did this stuff as a private contractor.

"Government power", "private power" -- it's power that's the problem, not what we call it.

Why are we still so wrapped up in this Reaganite semantics about "government" decades later?

swayvil• 5 years ago

One strong argument for more government power and control is of course the present "covid crisis". Which is amazingly convenient for the government. And that should definitely make you think.

flamble• 5 years ago

I find it incredible that anyone could have such a cartoonish view of the world that the completely secretive, unaccountable and independent security apparatus, which has totally liberated itself from democratic control or oversight, is simply "the government" in a way undifferentiated from say, the post office.

What is especially galling about it is that the entire monstrosity was constituted specifically in order to maintain the structures of private power and profit and has never deviated from that goal. The entire murder machine exists to benefit the corporate power that you absurdly imagine as some kind of countervailing force.

How do you account for the fact that military and CIA involvement overseas is systematically in the service of imposing minimal-government orthodoxy, from Chile 1973 to the Contras, Grenada, Iraq, Cuba, etc?

trhway• 5 years ago

colleagues at the NGA asked him to join them to watch "war porn" or archived footage of drone strikes

reminds that recent story where police damaged the shoulder joint of a frail woman and were recorded re-watching that bodycam footage at the station joyfully celebrating and congratulating themselves on that popping sound of the joint being damaged while they kept the woman right around the corner waiting for 2 hours for the medical attention.

sneak• 5 years ago

The resulting reporting:

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/

He's paying the price for bringing you the truth; the least you can do is read the articles containing the info he sacrificed so much to bring to publication.

neatze2• 5 years ago

Out of curiosity, what out of the truth he brings did surprised you the most ?

beeboop• 5 years ago

The the US government allows these stats to be researched at all, much less put into writing. It's always been obvious the vast majority of deaths in US involvement overseas are innocents, including a lot of women and children. The 90% figure surprises me not at all.

harry82• 5 years ago

That people will knowingly engage in a murder conspiracy, then support it with a rear-guard action to enhance ... their career.

None of us are morally above reproach. Sure. But we all feel like we draw the line somewhere and say, yep, too far, won't do it.

Killing people, knowingly committing war crimes, covering it up, supporting it, enacting revenge on those who can't play along and want it stopped? That's not the way I think of American citizens. How has it happened? Is it fixable? It must be, surely, right..?

b0tzzzzzzman2• 5 years ago

I recall seeing the video.

Sobering, disillusioned, and morbid. A heavy weight, a bolder. Reality for a few, but shelter for the many. Or is it?

Anyone care to share what he gave up his life for?

anigbrowl2• 5 years ago

You're probably being downvoted because it's hard to make out what you're trying to say. Perhaps rewrite in clearer language at the expense of being less poetic.

b0tzzzzzzman2• 5 years ago

I can see that it is poetic to some, wasn't the intention.

I'll just say, we are so desensitized to murder and violence that a video and additional information can allow us an inexcusable am out of brazen apathy for innocent lifes.

jtsiskin• 5 years ago

Video, what is “the video”?

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 5 years ago

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."

Most people don’t have an established prior relationship with an investigative reporter. I wonder what other stuff he leaked.

yann2• 5 years ago

Why is accountability so primitive in 2021?

As dumb as it might sound, I feel the US still has a big share of honest good people, compared to what I have seen abroad. Sad to watch.

emilsedgh2• 5 years ago

Watch the US government make such examples of every whistleblower and even this level of accountability which is purely driven by personal consciousness of individuals to become ineffective in fear of harsher and harsher prosecutions.

Sad indeed. US intelligence agencies have gone rogue and public doesn't really care.

barbacoa2• 5 years ago

If you gauge public perception by what the media says then that may be true.

Watching the intelligence community go full nuclear to undermine and destroy a democratically elected interloper president in coordination with the media is something that can't be unseen to many Americans.

It is becoming a less controversial view that an inappropriate amount of power is consolidated in the permanent unelected government employees.

xvector13• 5 years ago

public doesn't really care.

The public can't do much because it has given too much power to intelligence agencies already. Today, the left and right almost unanimously hate intelligence agencies, but their power is entrenched.

Case in point: the Constitution is irrelevant to intelligence agencies. They genuinely believe they can operate completely outside of it and face no punishment, so they frequently do. What can an American citizen do at that point?

And who even wants to speak out against an intelligence agency if it'll put you on a list?

chrononaut• 5 years ago

US intelligence agencies have gone rogue

Do you know have examples of situations like this? Most controversies that I am aware of have been enabled by Congressional facilities (e.g., PATRIOT act) or Presidential executive action (e.g., various executive orders).

briefcomment12• 5 years ago

I wonder if there are people who don't view intelligence agencies negatively nowadays.

Ericson2314• 5 years ago

They got a lot of breathless positive press for being a "institutional bullwork against trump" :(

neatze2• 5 years ago

Negatively compared to what specifically ?

vmception3• 5 years ago

lol, go to the DC area. they have lots of convoluted words to abstract the reality of the situation away to be comfortable with that career.

_delirium2• 5 years ago

Yeah, some version of "pro-CIA progressive" is a common political identity in DC. It is very weird.

traloid• 5 years ago

Just go to r/politics, they loved intelligence agencies a lot for fighting against the so-called russian collusion.

stjohnswarts2• 5 years ago

"so-called"? you mean the one where there are multiple connections and convictions related to russians? that "so-called" collusion that was covered up?

staunch• 5 years ago

I view the U.S. intelligence agencies as a necessary evil that should be made less evil over time. We have seen a lot of progress, in large part to whistleblowers like these, and the public reaction they've caused. The agencies are very aware of public perception and do a fairly good job of restraining themselves these days.

One big improvement would be to build up a much larger number of special forces troops to operate these kinds of targeted attacks. They would be much more precise than missile attacks, killing far fewer unarmed women and children (see: the Bin Laden raid).

The trade off is that we would lose a lot more soldiers, but that would be a worthy trade off. These troops could be made up entirely of volunteers. If we're not willing to risk our soldiers, we're probably not confident enough that the enemy is a target worth attacking.

The U.S. military never should have resorted to bombing unarmed women and children in WW2 and beyond. It's time to stop even targeted strikes where unarmed women and children will knowingly be killed.

There's nothing wrong with attacking people who declare themselves deadly enemies through words or actions. But let's have our soldiers go into combat against them head-to-head (with much better gear, of course) and fight it out like an honorable and brave people should.

the_optimist2• 5 years ago

Well, they literally sit in pundit chairs in major “progressive” media outlets nowadays, and they were absolutely celebrated by those same people for their work continually running ops on Trump. Basically the entire neoliberal/neoconservative class cannot get enough dark intel arts into everyone else’s life.

ARandomerDude• 5 years ago

Hale built on that letter with a statement that lasted a little more than 15 minutes. He said, according to POLITICO's Josh Gerstein, "What I’m really here for is for having stolen something that was never mine to take: precious human life."
[Judge Liam] O'Grady responded, “You’re not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons," and, "You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly.”

O'Grady has a fair point here actually.

boomboomsubban4• 5 years ago

So what would have been the correct channel for a "proper" whistleblower and why should we expect it to have had any impact when the "improper" whistleblowing didn't stop the slaughter of innocent people?

OnlineGladiator• 5 years ago

Yeah, this was the same argument that happened with Snowden. The whistleblowers claim they tried to no avail, and then get punished for actually trying to do the right thing. The system is designed to punish those who question it.

infogulch• 5 years ago

Yes, where are all these "proper" whistleblowers at and why don't I know of any of them? For every one that does it "improperly" how many get caught by trying to use the "proper" channels which is actually just a trash chute straight into the abyss?

roenxi6• 5 years ago

I mean, we've seen how the discussion would go then. "Well sure he says there are outrageous murders happening, but if that were true why isn't there any documentation?".

Looks at how the PRISM leak worked. It turns out in hindsight it was a poorly kept secret and people just dismissed the evidence because it was new and there wasn't documentation.

What this looks like to me is while being a whistleblower is legal, owning a whistle, putting your lips to a whistle and exhaling vigorously into a whistle are all illegal. And suspicious noise pollution regulations for disturbing the peace with unnecessarily piercing sounds.

xvector13• 5 years ago

Seriously? No one will believe a whistleblower without an abundance of evidence.

anigbrowl2• 5 years ago

O'Grady responded, “You’re not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons," and, "You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly.”

However, if Hale had spoken to the public about the content of the documents but never taken any of the information, he almost certainly would have still been the target of an Espionage Act prosecution.

Not sure if the writer is naive or obtuse; it's pretty obvious that the judge meant using institutional whistleblowing channels, which would have legally insulated Hale. Of course, it's also that much more likely that the matter would have gone unnoticed by the public and and eventually been buried in red tape.

lambdasquirrel• 5 years ago

It’s really hard to believe we would have heard anything if official channels were used.

It’s really hard not to hear the judge’s statement outside of that context.

JumpCrisscross• 5 years ago

Might the solution be an independent agency which centralises whistleblowing? Whose decisions are appealable to the courts and legally required to balance public interest and national security?

libertyhouse8• 5 years ago

It's likely that the sentence wouldn't have been as harsh had there been evidence that he tried official channels first.

ALittleLight4• 5 years ago

Which intelligence agency connected folks have consequentially blown the whistle through institutional channels?

ummonk• 5 years ago

Imagine how the mainstream media would describe it if say this was in China or Russia. “Dissident sentenced to 45 months imprisonment for blowing the whistle on regime atrocities”

secondaryacct2• 5 years ago

Well we re judging a guy who drove a motorbike into the police in HK and mainstream american media describe it at a crackdown on freedom...

It feels the entire thing is really fake in the US and it s just a giant golden cage where debt-laden poor people look at exagerated external events and told that at least in America they can starve while speaking out.

The US just terrifies me these days honestly

tgragnato• 5 years ago

a giant golden cage where debt-laden poor people look at exagerated external events and told that at least in America they can starve while speaking out

Making the Chinese population believe that by enduring the deprivation of their freedoms they would obtain a better economic condition is what has brought the Chinese Communists where they are.

Seeing this model exported to Hong Kong is already quite depressing, it’d be better to consider this kind of argument for what it is, at least as far as any western country is concerned.

djabatt• 5 years ago

I am not deeply read up on this case, but it seems rather high compared to the recent Jan 6th capital attackers sentence of eight months.

rufus_foreman• 5 years ago

He was convicted of obstructing an official proceeding, I guess that is described as an attack now? Is that some general rule, are people who disrupt official proceedings attackers?

libertyhouse8• 5 years ago

Can somebody please confirm the percentage of bystanders allowed to be killed when fighting war in a moral fashion? I'm assuming no war/technology is perfect, and nobody can reasonably expect it to be so. I'm also assuming most readers here are OK with our Government fighting a moral war. What percentage is morally acceptable to the readers here?

ALittleLight4• 5 years ago

The government didn't even bother to declare war, so we're off the rails before we even look at the question of "moral war".

libertyhouse8• 5 years ago

Assuming some future declared moral war, what would be an acceptable percentage of collateral casualties?

zarzavat• 5 years ago

The problem in this instance is that the percentage is very high on one side and very low on the other, meaning there's little incentive to avoid civilian casualties. Considering that the risk faced by American civilians is approximately zero, the risk to those civilians in other countries that America is at war with should be zero likewise.

libertyhouse8• 5 years ago

This doesn't really answer the question though. What is a reasonable percentage that would be acceptable to most readers here? If it helps we can assume equity in terms of ability to inflict casualties on bystanders by participating combatants?

stjohnswarts2• 5 years ago

I would guess there is no limit due to guilt by association.

libertyhouse8• 5 years ago

I understand you are responding in a flippant manner, but in warfare many innocents are inevitably killed, and it would be best to have a common understanding of an agreeable percentage in order to support decision/policy making, and to determine the merits of this particular case.

abalone2• 5 years ago

You’re assuming the innocents killed were bystanders, not targets.

libertyhouse8• 5 years ago

Yes - the question assumes that innocents are not intentionally targeted.

threatofrain• 5 years ago

Documents Hale revealed showed “more than 40 percent” of the people in the U.S. government’s database of terrorism suspects have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” The “watchlisting guidance” document he shared helped Muslim Americans clear their names and force the government to remove them from the No Fly List.

Daniel Hale Receives 45-Month Sentence for Releasing Drone Documents

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