Analyst who leaked drone secrets sentenced to 45 months

A former Air Force intelligence officer was sentenced to 45 months in prison Tuesday for sharing top-secret information about the U.S.’s drone program to the press.

Daniel Hale was sentenced by Judge Liam O’Grady in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., for violating the Espionage Act.

Prosecutors had called for a harsher punishment, suggesting in a filing Monday that nine years would be appropriate for leaking to the media.

“For those like Hale, who unilaterally decide to disclose classified information, the existence of criminal penalties that are theoretically harsh but practically lenient is not sufficient,” prosecutors wrote. “A substantial sentence is needed also to account for Hale’s blatant disregard for the consequences of his conduct.”

Hale pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act in March, saying that he gave more than 150 pages of records classified at the top-secret or secret level to a journalist.

The plea did not specify what reporter, but details in the public court filings and records around the time make it clear that Hale shared the documents with Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept.

Some documents provided by Hale featured in the outlet’s investigative series “The Drone Papers” from 2015, which detailed former President Obama’s embrace of drone warfare and revealed the degree to which strikes hit unintended targets.

Hale wrote in a handwritten note from jail last week that during his time with the Air Force in Afghanistan he “came to believe that the policy of drone assassination was being used to mislead the public that it keep [sic] us safe.”

“By the rules of engagement, it may have been permissable [sic] for me to have helped to kill those men — whose language I did not speak, customs I did not understand, and crimes I could not identify — in the gruesome manner that I did watch them die. But how could it be considered honorable of me,” he continued.

Prosecutors argued that Hale was motivated more by a desire for fame than a principled stance on drone warfare.

“Hale was motivated not by transparency but by self-aggrandizement. A significant sentence therefore is necessary and appropriate,” they wrote.

Hale was charged and arrested in 2019, five years after this Lorton, Va., home was raided by the FBI.