American guilty of leaks about targeted drone assassinations

A former U.S. intelligence investigator was sentenced on Tuesday, July 27, to forty-five months in prison for reporting on a covert military plot to assassinate drones under Barack Obama’s administration.

Daniel Everett Hale worked for the US military intelligence agency NSA in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012, where he participated in several drone strikes, an experience that affected him emotionally.

After leaving the military, he joined the National Geo-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in 2014, which was responsible for collecting geological intelligence from satellite images of Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia.

He stole documents about the project and gave them to a reporter on an online news site Interception Who exposed corruption in 2015 In the big survey of “drone papers”, Which caused a scandal.

Hale, 34, was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

“The guilt of conscience”

Not only were the restrictions delayed due to security secrecy, but he also pleaded guilty during a trial delayed by the Govt-19 epidemic. “Keeping and exchanging information related to national security”. Citing mental problems associated with difficult childhood, he asked that his detention should not exceed twelve to eighteen months.

By sharing these documents, he did not want to harm the United States, but his lawyers assured him in a document submitted to the court that it was one. “The guilt of conscience”. “He wanted to ease his conscience and inform his comrades in the hope that the United States would respect his policies.”, They pleaded.

Knowing that this would do serious harm to the national security of the United States, he was sentenced to nine to eleven years in prison, believing that he had joined the NGA only to steal documents.

Other cases of persons disclosing information to the site Interception Led to legal action. In October 2018, an FBI agent was sentenced to four years in prison for leaking confidential information about federal police recruitment procedures. Before him, a former NSA subcontractor was sentenced to more than five years in prison for leaking a secret statement about Russian hawks during the 2016 presidential election.