{"id":5129,"date":"2021-07-23T00:28:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T00:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/07\/23\/ex-airman-guilt-over-drone-strikes-prompted-to-leak-secrets\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T19:59:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T19:59:50","slug":"ex-airman-guilt-over-drone-strikes-prompted-to-leak-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/your-air-force\/2021\/07\/23\/ex-airman-guilt-over-drone-strikes-prompted-to-leak-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-airman: Guilt over drone strikes prompted to leak secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) \u2014 A former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/your-air-force\/2021\/04\/01\/ex-air-force-analyst-pleads-guilty-to-leaking-secrets-about-drone-program\/\" target=\"_blank\">Air Force intelligence analyst<\/a> said his guilt over participating in lethal drone strikes in Afghanistan led him to leak government secrets about the drone program to a reporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Daniel Hale of Nashville, Tennessee, is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria after pleading guilty to violating the Espionage Act by leaking top secret documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In court papers filed Thursday, Hale\u2019s lawyers asked that he receive a 12- to 18-month sentence, which would be well below sentencing guidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In an 11-page handwritten letter from the Alexandria jail where he\u2019s being held, Hale outlines what led him break the law, describing his regret and horror as he saw gruesome videos of Afghans killed in part because his work helped track them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/your-air-force\/2021\/06\/14\/former-air-force-translator-nsa-contractor-in-leak-case-released-from-prison\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"157\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Winner-Reality.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Former Air Force translator, NSA contractor in leak case released from prison<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">Reality Winner was sentenced to five years and three months in prison, which prosecutors said at the time was the longest ever imposed for leaking government information to the news media.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said when he deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, his job was to track down cellphone signals linked to people believed to be enemy combatants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNot a day goes by that I don\u2019t question the justification for my actions,\u201d Hale wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His guilt is compounded by the clinical nature of the drone strike program, in which Afghan targets are killed going about their daily lives \u2014 at times with innocent civilians killed as collateral damage \u2014 rather than on a traditional battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe victorious rifleman, unquestionably remorseful, at least keeps his honor intact by having faced off against his enemy in the battlefield,\u201d Hale wrote. \u201cBut what possibly could I have done to cope with the undeniable cruelties that I perpetrated?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/newsletters\/daily-news-roundup\/2019\/02\/13\/former-air-force-tech-sergeant-who-defected-to-iran-charged-with-spying\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"157\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Witt_uniform.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Former Air Force tech sergeant who defected to Iran charged with spying<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">A former Air Force counterintelligence specialist, a technical sergeant, who defected to Iran about five years after leaving the Air Force, has been charged with espionage.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a result, he said, his conscience compelled him to disclose details about the program to an investigative reporter he had previously met. The documents showed, among other things, that the drone program was not as precise as the government claimed in terms of avoiding civilian deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hale leaked the documents after he left the Air Force and had taken a civilian job with a contractor assigned to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, where he worked for a brief stint in 2014 as a toponymist, using his Chinese language expertise to help label maps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hale\u2019s lawyers argue in court papers that his altruistic motives, and the fact that the government hasn\u2019t shown any actual harm occurred from the leaks, should be taken into account for a light sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe 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\u2019s drone program,\u201d defense attorneys Todd Richman and Cadence Mertz wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Prosecutors, though, say the classified documents\u2019 disclosure had the potential to cause serious damage. In sentencing papers, prosecutors Gordon Kromberg and Alexander Berrang write that documents leaked by Hale were found in an internet compilation of material designed to help Islamic State fighters avoid detection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201c(A)s a result of Hale\u2019s actions, the most vicious terrorists in the world obtained documents classified by the United States as \u201cSecret\u201d and \u201cTop Secret\u201d \u2014 and thought that such documents were valuable enough to disseminate to their own followers in their own manuals,\u201d Kromberg and Berrang wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The prosecutors say that Hale\u2019s leaks were more serious than those made by Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor who received a five-year sentence, the longest given to a whistleblower prosecuted for leaking classified documents to a journalist under the Espionage Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Prosecutors don\u2019t request a specific prison term but say an appropriate sentence would be \u201csignificantly longer\u201d than the 63 months imposed on Winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cNot a day goes by that I don\u2019t question the justification for my actions,\u201d Hale wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":67,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","news","middle-column","home"],"primary_category":"your-military"}}},"categories":[101,23,24,88,89,16,26,67],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3025],"class_list":["post-5129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-disaster","category-home","category-left-column","category-middle-column","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-air-force"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"Y4GYCHS36RCKVO7OY56VXTH73U","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-air-force\/2021\/07\/22\/ex-airman-guilt-over-drone-strikes-prompted-to-leak-secrets\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ex-airman: Guilt over drone strikes prompted to leak secrets - Air Force TImes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cNot a day goes by that I don\u2019t question the justification for my actions,\u201d Hale wrote.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ex-airman: Guilt over drone strikes prompted to leak secrets\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cNot a day goes by that I don\u2019t question the justification for my actions,\u201d Hale wrote.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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