A former Air Force intelligence analyst turned whistleblower who leaked America's drone secrets to the press was sentenced to 45 months behind bars in an Alexandria, VA federal court on Tuesday.
33-year old Daniel Hale is now widely understood to be the leaker of classified info to Intercept journalist Jeremy Scahill, who wrote a series of reports on the Obama administration's secretive drone program and the mounting civilian casualties - as well as the flimsy and dubious legal justifications offered based on 'war on terror' rationale.
"I came to believe that the policy of drone assassination was being used to mislead the public," Hale wrote in an eleven page letter to the court.
Hale's superiors were "Alarmed" and feared that the suspect was trying to escape across the border, prompting the car to be targeted with a drone strike.
To Hale's surprise, a woman also stepped out and rushed to the trunk.
In issuing the sentence the Bush-appointed judge appeared to sympathize with Hale's motivations for the leaks, but still said "You're not facing prison for speaking out about the drone program injuring and killing innocent persons... You could have been a whistleblower and garnered all this attention without leaking any of these documents, frankly."
One key line in the Business Insider report strongly suggests Biden is set to continue ramping up his war on both whistleblowers and the press: "The hefty sentence the Biden Justice Department sought for Hale signals that, while the new administration's appointees are eager to make peace with journalists and news outlets, prosecutors will continue to throw the book at the men and women who leak information to the media."
It's becoming increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction, and unfortunately the media has a strong bias. They spin stories to make conservatives look bad and will go to great lengths to avoid reporting on the good that comes from conservative policies. There are a few shining lights in the media landscape-brave conservative outlets that report the truth and offer a different perspective. We must support conservative outlets like this one and ensure that our voices are heard.
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