We are delighted to announce that Mr. Daniel Everette Hale has received the inaugural Ellsberg Whistleblower Award, following the personal wish of Daniel Ellsberg himself.
“No person should have to die for a crime that they did not commit. Just as no person should have to live with the burden of having taken a poor, defenseless, innocent life.”
Daniel Everette Hale, 2019
Daniel Everette Hale
Daniel Everette Hale is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst who informed the public about the severe grievances, civilian casualties, and governmental misconduct regarding the US drone warfare. His whistleblowing raised critical awareness about the balance between national security, the public’s right to know, and ethics in modern warfare. Shortly before his passing, Daniel Ellsberg personally chose Hale to become the very first recipient of the Ellsberg Whistleblowing Award.
Daniel Hale’s Whistleblowing in Detail
Signals Intelligence at the NSA
Daniel Everette Hale is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst who revealed severe grievances and civilian casualties of the US drone warfare. Born 1987 in Tennessee, Hale signed up to the United States Air Force in 2009 out of financial necessity.
He served until 2013, working mainly in signals intelligence, and was later deployed to Afghanistan with the National Security Agency (NSA) where he was personally responsible for identifying potential targets for attack. There, Hale gained firsthand knowledge of the US drone war in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
The US Drone Program
Hale soon recognized that most drone strikes were based on unreliable electronic communications data and only insufficient signals intelligence leading to devastating errors. For example, during one five-months period, approximately nine out of ten individuals killed by drone strikes were not the intended persons. Given that the US treated and counted simply all military age males within a target zone as militants (unless proven innocent after their assassination), these unintended victims were wrongfully branded as EKIA – ‘enemies killed in action’.
Hale later commented on an incident which he described as the most harrowing day of his life when a routine surveillance mission turned into disaster:
‘For weeks we had been tracking the movements of a ring of car bomb manufacturers […]. It was a windy and clouded afternoon when one of the suspects had been discovered headed eastbound, driving at a high rate of speed. This alarmed my superiors who believe he might be attempting to escape across the border into Pakistan. A drone strike was our only chance and […]. But the less advanced predator drone found it difficult to see through the clouds and compete against strong headwinds. The single payload MQ-1 failed to connect with its target, instead missing by a few meters. The vehicle, damaged but still drivable continued ahead after narrowly avoiding destruction. Eventually […] the driver stopped […]. Out of the passenger side came a woman […]. As astounding as it was to have just learned there had been a woman […], I did not have the chance to see what happened next […] when she began frantically to pull out something from the back of the car. A couple of days passed before I finally learned […] what took place. There indeed had been the suspect’s wife with him in the car and in the back were their two young daughters, ages 5 and 3 years old. […] The eldest was found dead.’ (Source)
© (2) CC 2024. Created using AI.
© (3) “Collateral Murder”, Wikileaks
© (4) PD, Afghanistan aerial shot by DVIDS
Change of Mind
© CC BY-NC 2.0, NGA, by Marc Barnes
His responsibility for these and many more wrongful killings quickly turned into a severe emotional burden. During his employment, he tried to distract and detach himself from his role in the assassination program: ‘As a drone operator put it, ‘Do you ever step on ants and never give it another thought?‘ That’s what you’re made to think of the targets. They deserve it. They chose their side. You had to kill a part of your conscience to keep doing your job – ignoring the voice inside telling you ‚this wasn’t right‘. I too ignored the voice inside as I continued walking blindly towards the edge of an abyss.’ (Source).
However, Hale eventually could not ignore his conscience anymore suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. As he put it: ‘Not a day goes by that I don’t question the justification for my actions. I am grief-stricken and ashamed of myself. […] No person should have to die for a crime that they did not commit. Just as no person should have to live with the burden of having taken a poor, defenseless, innocent life […]. When it comes to the drone assassination program the disparity between the guilty and the innocent killed is incalculably higher. In some cases as many as nine out of ten individuals killed are not identifiable.’ (Source).
After his deployment Hale originally intended to pursue a degree but then reluctantly accepted an offer to join the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. There, his new colleagues would ‘gape and sneer’ at archived footage of past drone strikes – so-called ‘war porn’. At that point Hale said nothing but, in his own words, felt his heart breaking into pieces.
Blowing the Whistle: The Drone Papers
Well aware of the personal risks, Hale decided in 2014 to leak classified documents to a journalist whose acquaintance he had made some time ago.
These documents eventually formed the basis of the Drone Papers, a series of investigative reports published by the news outlet The Intercept. The Drone Papers revealed the disturbing realities of the US drone program to the public.
For example, the Drone Papers highlighted how faulty and unreliable signals intelligence data was being used to identify and track targets for assassination. This would very often lead to missed targets, high collateral damage and high numbers of civilian deaths. This stood in stark contrast to public statements asserting that given the accuracy of drone strikes, the killings were ‘targeted’.
Furthermore, the documents detailed the process for approving potential targets for attack, the so-called ‘kill chain’. The description of the kill chain in the Drone Papers contrasted the public statements of then-president Barack Obama with regards to his personal responsibility. While he publicly stated that he was personally authorizing each individual strike, the drone papers revealed that he would only authorize each target, but not when and how that target would be attacked.
Personal Consequences
© (2) CC 2.0 Donald Trump, by Gage Skidmore
© (3) Credo, Ellsberg Archive Project (UMass Amherst)
© (4) CMU Terre Haute by Public Intelligence.net
© (5) Witness against Torture, by Helen Schietinger
Five years after Hale’s whistleblowing, the Trump administration retaliated. In 2019, he was arrested and charged under the US Espionage Act, a law passed during the First World War against spies but later used to retaliate against whistleblowers. Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistleblower of the Pentagon Papers, after whom the Ellsberg Whistleblower Award (EWA) is named, was the first whistleblower to be persecuted on the grounds of this law. Under the Espionage Act whistleblowers are not allowed to elaborate on their motivation to leak information.
In 2021, Hale was left with little choice but to plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act, namely leaking the Drone Papers to The Intercept. He was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison and put in the Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Marion, Illinois. The CMU is notorious for severely restricting any communication with the outsides, making it usually reserved for convicts of terrorism-related offences.
In February 2024, Hale was released from prison after having served 33 months from which he is currently recovering.
Social and Political Impact
Hale’s revelations sparked a public debate over the legality and ethics of drone programs, highlighting the need for a democratic discourse to take place. The ongoing debate needs to balance concerns of national security, the public’s right to know, and the ethical conduct of modern warfare. At the very heart of the debate was and is the question if and how increasingly automated and autonomous weapon systems can lead to an escalation of violence and civilian deaths. Addressing the means and limits of meaningful human control as well as responsibility and accountability for mistakes is therefore indispensable.
At considerable personal cost, Hale blew the whistle at a critical time when drone programs and other (semi-)automated weapon systems became increasingly more prevalent worldwide. He is a powerful example of what an individual is willing to endure for the common good and a stark reminder of the dire need for transparency and accountability in modern warfare.
Daniel Ellsberg was a strong supporter of Daniel Hale and remained in close contact with him throughout his trial and afterwards. Shortly before his passing, Daniel Ellsberg personally chose Hale to become the very first winner of the Ellsberg Whistleblowing Award.
Current Relevance
© ‘‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza’, by +972 magazine
Much like Hale anticipated, the means and deployment of (semi-)automated and autonomous weapon systems have increased since his whistleblowing back in 2014. Technological advancements in artificial intelligence have since drastically impacted warfare, as demonstrated, for example, in the current war in Gaza. However, much of the same concerns and shortcomings remain the same.
On that note, in April 2024, the well-known Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and The Guardian published investigations on the use of an artificial intelligence called ‘Lavender’ to identify potential Hamas-terrorists. The testimonies of six whistleblowers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) suggest that the recommendations generated by Lavender were hardly verified and that high numbers of civilian victims were knowingly tolerated.
Read the comment of Ninon Colneric, former judge at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), here.
Laudatory Speech
Jesselyn Radack is Daniel Hale’s attorney and the head of the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program WHISPeR at ExposeFacts. Continue reading to learn why she believes Daniel Hale rightly won the very first Ellsberg Whistleblower Award.
“I’m humbled to speak before you today on the Inaugural Daniel Ellsberg Whistleblower Award. I remember Dan for his bravery, integrity, wisdom, generosity, and sheer force of humanity. I first learned about him in a college course on ethics and public policy. Later I studied his case in law school, for a class on freedom of speech.
In 2002, as a lawyer at the Justice Department, I blew the whistle on government misconduct in the first terrorism prosecution after 9/11. Because I went to the press, the government placed me under criminal investigation for leaking, tried to disbar me, and put me on a terrorist watch list. I was terrified.
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During my darkest hour, Dan Ellsberg called me at home. THE Dan Ellsberg.I was astonished. He assured me I did the right thing. He helped get the media and Congress to focus on my case. We started a National Security Whistleblower Coalition with other dissenters.
After the case against me closed, I followed Dan’s example and dedicated the rest of my life to helping government whistleblowers. Little did we imagine that the Obama Administration would launch a war on whistleblowers using the exact same law deployed against him: the draconian Espionage Act. It is a World War I-era law that punishes the disclosure of government secrets — even if unclassified — and allows no public interest defense. It is not used to protect national security, but rather to punish dissent against its overreach — and chill others from protesting the government’s worst — and often illegal — behavior.
Dan was selfless and tireless in his support of my clients. He spoke out for whistleblowers from Thomas Drake to Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou, Reality Winner, Julian Assange, and Daniel Hale. He had NO moral *obligation* to take this on. But he had the moral *courage* to do so. He had the back of whistleblowers who revealed the worst sins of this century: torture, secret surveillance, and war crimes. And he literally saved and shaped the lives of countless whistleblowers in extremis and in despair.
One of those people was Daniel Hale. I met Daniel in 2014 after his home was raided. During the next 5 years, the case lay dormant. Then suddenly in 2019, he was charged under the Espionage Act for the unauthorized disclosure of information to a news outlet — the same charges Ellsberg faced. The documents he leaked detailed a secret, un-reviewable, and unaccountable process for targeting and assassinating people around the world, including civilians, U.S. citizens and children. For revealing this information, Hale served nearly four years in prison.
After he got indicted, Daniel lived with my family for 6 months. Like the dozen other U.S. drone program whistleblowers I represent, Daniel was crippled by moral guilt from his participation in targeted assassinations of innocent people. In the film “National Bird,” by German documentarian Sonia Kennebeck, Daniel expressed torment over “the uncertainty of whether anyone I was involved in kill[ing] or captur[ing] was a civilian or not.” He was equally troubled by the fact that, during one particular time period, nearly 90 percent of those killed by drone strikes were not the intended target — and nearly half of the database of terrorist suspects had no recognized terrorist group affiliation.
Daniel is thoughtful, selfless, and has a strong moral compass. It is no surprise that Daniel Ellsberg wanted him to be the first recipient of the posthumous award in his name. Ellsberg consoled Hale over the years of his ordeal, being one of the few people in the world who could understand the gravity of both his actions and the unfairness of the consequences.
Thank you to the Wau Holland Foundation, the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the taz Panther Foundation, and Whistleblower-Network — all institutions fiercely committed to protecting whistleblowers, transparency, technology, investigative journalism, and the precious freedoms of information, speech, and the press — endangered principles in today’s chilling political climate. We are grateful to you for recognizing those who chose their conscience over their career, and especially their very freedom. It’s too high a price to pay for speaking truth to power.
Thank you.“
Watch the video
© Jesselyn Radack (2024). All rights reserved.
Daniel E. Hale’s Words of Thanks
“Dear friends and comrades,
I’m honored to be the first to receive the Ellsberg Whistleblower Award. I am beside myself with gratitude to be considered worthy of an award commemorating the life and legacy of Daniel Ellsberg. I first met Dan in 2013 while stationed at the Ft. Meade military base as a signals intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency. At the time Dan was standing outside the base entrance protesting the military court martial of Chelsea Manning. Our encounter was brief but the impact upon me was profound.
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Dan had been an inspiration since the time I learned of him as a young person. The bravery and integrity he demonstrated was infectious. I stood in awe of his life-long struggle against militarism and the abolition of nuclear weapons.
A decade later I would be in regular contact with my childhood hero from inside a US Penitentiary where I was made to serve a term of imprisonment for an act of whistleblowing. Dan and I formed an immediate bond and spoke frequently throughout the initial years of my incarceration. Unfortunately, as Dan was known to have taken his time clearly laying out his ideas, our brief phone conversations would often end before they began.
During our final call Dan told me of his terminal diagnosis weeks before it was publicly announced. I was devastated to learn I’d never be able to sit down and speak with him at length outside of prison.
Dan believed it was possible to end militarism and avert all possibility of nuclear war in our lifetimes. He was convinced that collective and individual acts of consciousness were the best way to achieve this. Yet knowing well the risks one faces when taking on the US government he was reluctant to ask others to put themselves at the same peril he did.
Dan, instead, would say to any conscientious person willing to listen to not do what he did–to not wait–don’t wait until bombs are falling and bodies are piling. If you have information you believe could prove useful in preventing an injustice then you ought to act before the greater damage is done.
The world is an immeasurably better place because Dan was in it. And despite his stark warnings against the proliferation of militarism and nuclear weapons he swelled with optimism for humanity until the final days of his life. But the world Dan left was totally unlike the one we now inhabit.
I miss Dan dearly but I am thankful he did not live to see any part of the on going Israeli genocide of Palestine made possible with the full-throated diplomatic support of the United States and weapons from nearly every so-called western government in the world. The ceaseless images of children shredded to pieces and burned alive by US made weapons would have broken his spirit and darkened his final days.
Until militarism’s total end the ghost of Daniel Ellsberg will continue to haunt us. If it could speak now I believe it would cry out urging every conscientious person to act. Don’t wait! Now is the time to expose any and all hidden information that might put a stop to the madness.
‘The soul man is the lamp of God’ so goes the Jewish proverb. Man is weak when the light of God does not burn within him. But when it burns, and it burns brightest in the souls of those enlightened faith, man becomes the most powerful creature in the world. And it cannot be otherwise, for what then works in him is not his own strength but the strength of God.
Daniel Ellsberg’s faith in humanity and the possibility of a world without militarism is what made him shine so bright. Dan’s life is a lamp that continues to guide us in times of darkness. Let this award be a reminder to all past, present and future whistleblowers that they are not alone. A light shines, we need only pick it up and carry it with us.”
© Daniel E. Hale (2024). All rights reserved.
Support Daniel Hale
Due to his incarceration, Daniel Hale has lost his veteran benefits. Please consider donating to help him recover from the legal odyssey that has cost him most of his adult life. Check out his official support page “Stand with Daniel Hale” and learn how to donate.
Dive Deeper
Check out these amazing resources to learn more on Daniel Hale and the Drone Papers.
