The disappearance of Daniel Hale is John Kiriakou’s account of what became of the drone whistleblower after his release, given on the DeProgram programme in September 2025 during a discussion of drone warfare.[1]
His view of Hale
Kiriakou’s estimate of Daniel Hale is unreserved. He is “an especially heroic whistleblower” who “went to prison for four and a half years after blowing the whistle on the drone programme”, and who “was extraordinarily brave by refusing to take a plea deal” and going to trial.[2][3]
Kiriakou attended the sentencing, and the contrast he draws is between Hale’s self-assessment and his own. “If you ask Daniel about it, Daniel will say, ‘Oh, I’m weak, I’m soft, I buckled, I’m this, I’m that.’ This guy is a hero — a bona fide American hero who sacrificed literally everything in his life so that the American people could have the truth about the drone programme.”[3][4]
Afterwards
Hale was, in Kiriakou’s account, suicidal at the time of sentencing, and Kiriakou tried to reduce the sentence’s apparent length for him by explaining the credits available.[4]
The release came “a year, year and a half ago” by his reckoning — which places it in 2024 — and produced a brief public reappearance. “He was on Twitter for a minute and I was like, ‘Oh my god, Daniel Hale, welcome home. American hero Daniel Hale.’”[1]
It did not last. “A week later, he had shut down his Twitter account and he’s disappeared.”[1]
The silence since
Kiriakou places himself among a group of people all asking the same question and none of them answering it. “And all of my friends are like, ‘Have you heard from Daniel?’ No, nobody’s heard from Daniel.”[1]
He offers no theory. “I don’t know what happened to him.”[1]
The argument it interrupted
The story was told inside a broader case Kiriakou was making about drone warfare — that killing by drone is morally identical to killing in person, and that its frictionlessness is the danger. His conclusion after the account of Hale was that “if you kill people by drone, it’s the same as walking up to them and shooting them in the head.”[1][5]