LEAKER LOCKED UP: Faces Hard Time For Leaking Drone Info … Still Bupkis For Crossfire Hurricane

Air Force Intelligence officer who leaked classified information to reporters faces years in prison. But law enforcement and politicians who lied to hurt a Presidential campaign? Not so much.

Do you know the name Daniel Hale? He was an analyst for the Air Force who, as of last March, pled guilty to a violation of the Espionage Act. His offence was the release of 150 pages of classified documents about drones. He provided that information to the press.

That information was, in turn, used in a 2015 story published by 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. — TheHill

A slapdash website (that erroneously indicated his sentence was for 45 years, not 45 months) supporting Hale has a link to the full content of that letter here. Predictably, it opens with a sob story about his difficult childhood, and goes on to provide a moral framework intended to frame his actions in a noble and sympathetic light.

Hale is a veteran of the US Air Force. During his military service from 2009 to 2013, he participated in the US drone program, working with both the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. After leaving the Air Force, Hale became an outspoken opponent of the US targeted killings program, US foreign policy more generally, and a supporter of whistleblowers.

Democrat activists who use opportunities like this to spout ‘Republican war crimes’ talking points might want to take another look at those dates before you organize that rally. This all happened under your golden boy Obama, and his understudy, the guy now sitting behind the irresolute desk.

The plot thickens further when we find out that CAIR filed an Amicus Brief in the case citing evidence he had provided that the government has arbitrarily added individuals to the no-fly list for the explicit purpose of coercing them into becoming an informant.

Maybe leftists insisting that having your name on the no-fly list should be enough to force a citizen to forfeit his Second Amendment rights should think about the civil rights significance of that little tidbit.

Now, whether our readers find Hale’s line of argument persuasive to justify his actions or not is a separate issue. It really doesn’t matter if his motives are heroic, corrupt, or somewhere in between.

The fact is, he had sensitive information. He shared it illegally. He knew it. And he is now paying a price for it. That’s the risk you take when you go outside the proper chain of command and you devise your own solutions to problems of conscience, real or imagined.

The elephant in the room here is that Hale paid a price because he has no political chips to cash in. He’s not a well-connected Democrat operative like Adam Schiff or Comey. He isn’t the poster child for a cause du jour like Bradley-turned-Chelsea Manning was.

He has no power to make threats or offer promises like Hillary or Joe Biden.

Without any of those protections, he’s just a guy being ground down in the gears of the justice system.

If you are connected to highly-placed Republicans, on the other hand, like General Flynn, you can get litigated into bankruptcy with the DOJ fabricating evidence against you, and knowingly withholding evidence that can prove your innocence. The guy who fabricated that evidence, and the presiding judge that helped it happen will never pay a price.

Meanwhile, will Durham ever hit the people behind Spygate with meaningful criminal charges?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Effeminization Of The American Male
by Doug Giles

Doug Giles, best-selling author of Raising Righteous And Rowdy Girls and Editor-In-Chief of the mega-blog, ClashDaily.com, has just penned a book he guarantees will kick hipster males into the rarefied air of masculinity. That is, if the man-child will put down his frappuccino; shut the hell up and listen and obey everything he instructs them to do in his timely and tornadic tome. Buy Now:The Effeminization Of The American Male