Daniel Hale is, per John Kiriakou, an NSA contractor and drone targeting analyst who recognized “very early on” that the U.S. drone program was carrying out “illegal strikes on civilian targets” across Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia. He took his objections to Jeremy Scahill at The Intercept and appeared in the documentary National Bird, revealing that the program was responsible for an 80% death rate among civilians.[1][2][3] Kiriakou, a friend, calls him “a bona fide American hero.”[3]
The goats that were girls
Hale, trained by the U.S. Air Force as a drone operator, was working a screen from an office park — in some accounts Nevada — while his superior watched the same feed from Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base. Ordered to fire on a target beside two children, Hale protested that he could see two little girls; his superior told him, “Those aren’t kids. Those are goats,” and then, “Fire or be court-martialed.” He fired, killing a 9-year-old and a 12-year-old girl, whose bloody bodies were found two hours later when the team went to confirm the strike.[4][5][6] Hale suffered what Kiriakou describes as the equivalent of a nervous breakdown, telling his girlfriend that night, “I became a child killer today,” and calling himself, in Kiriakou’s words, “a child murderer.” Kiriakou contrasts this with the Pentagon’s practice of awarding medals to drone operators — “medals for killing children.”[7]
Guilty plea and sentencing
On March 31, 2021, on his lawyer’s advice, Hale pleaded guilty to a single count under the Espionage Act — carrying a 10-year maximum — hoping the judge would take pity and dismiss the four other counts; because he pleaded on his own rather than as part of a deal, prosecutors refused to drop them, leaving him facing what Kiriakou called “50 years in prison.”[8][9][10] A court-appointed psychiatrist, fearing Hale was suicidal, had him placed in solitary confinement “for his own safety,” which Kiriakou argues had the opposite effect.[11][12]
Kiriakou describes sitting with fellow whistleblower Tom Drake at Hale’s sentencing hearing, where prosecutors sought nine to eleven years, citing Kiriakou’s own sentence — which prosecutors said, in hindsight, had been “too short” — along with the Jeffrey Sterling and Reality Winner cases as sentencing benchmarks.[13][14][15] The judge referenced Kiriakou’s own 30-month sentence (of which he served 23) as an explicit benchmark, remarking that Jeffrey Sterling — who went to trial rather than plead — had received “Kiriakou plus 12 months,” and that Hale would receive “Kiriakou plus 16 months.”[15] Kiriakou notes prosecutors used the same baseless-motive theory against Hale that had been used against him — that he acted to “ingratiate himself with the media” and build a consulting business.[16]
The judge sentenced Hale to 45 months — less than the sentence given to NSA whistleblower Reality Winner, which prosecutors had tried to use as the baseline.[13] Kiriakou explains the number was no accident: 45 months minus 15 for good behavior comes to about 36 months once time served is credited; minus 12 more months for completing the Residential Drug and Alcohol Program (RDAP) comes to 24; minus another six for halfway-house and home-confinement credit comes to about 18 months — exactly what Hale had hoped for going in.[17] During a closed session at the hearing, after Hale mentioned “the Horn of Africa,” prosecutors objected and a loud white-noise machine — the same type used at Guantanamo military tribunals — was switched on so attorneys could confer privately with the judge.[18]
Outside the courtroom, Kiriakou told journalists that Hale should have been released with time served: “He doesn’t belong in prison. We should be making statues to people like him, not sending them to Communications management units.”[19]
Sentencing statement
Kiriakou describes Hale as painfully introverted and uncomfortable speaking publicly, yet at sentencing he delivered roughly six pages of what Kiriakou called some of the most powerful oration he’d ever heard. Hale identified himself as a descendant of Nathan Hale, quoting the line “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” He told the judge the drone program had made him a “child killer” and “mass murderer” after he was ordered to fire on a car, killing one young girl and severely injuring her sister.[20][21][22]
Communications Management Unit
Hale was placed in a Communications Management Unit (CMU) — a high-security facility Kiriakou says was designed for “the worst of the worst” but is used to silence people whose message is inconvenient for the government — which Kiriakou attributes to the Justice Department being upset at the shortness of Hale’s sentence. Placement in the CMU made him ineligible for RDAP, the program that would otherwise have shortened his time.[23][24] In Hale’s case, classified-information hearings also barred his own lawyer from participation.[25]
Kiriakou stayed in close personal contact through the ordeal, urging the RDAP route and sharing advice from his own imprisonment, and publicized — through Consortium News — a letter-writing campaign, noting Hale could receive mail only on unlined white paper in black ink with no photographs, at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia.[12][26][27][28][29][30]