Drones

Duping A Whistleblower

May 23, 2021 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Drones

What has happened to whistleblower Daniel Hale is very troubling. A former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, he was arrested on May 4 in advance of his July 13 sentencing for blowing the whistle on the U.S. government’s deadly and illegal drone program. Justice Department prosecutors maintain that Hale had “violated the terms of his bail.” In court, his attorneys maintained “there were no violations committed by the defendant as alleged.” They’re right. The government is lying. Daniel explained what happened to me in a phone call from jail. And what happened is yet another injustice against this hero. For the record, Daniel is permitting me to make these details public. Like any whistleblower facing years, or possibly decades, in prison, he is depressed.

Art Against Drones

May 21, 2021 Kathy Kelly, Toward Freedom Resist! Art, Drones, Surveillance

At the High Line, a popular tourist attraction in New York City, visitors to the West side of Lower Manhattan ascend above street level to what was once an elevated freight train line and is now a tranquil and architecturally intriguing promenade. Here walkers enjoy a park-like openness; with fellow strollers they experience urban beauty, art and the wonder of comradeship.

Support Jailed Whistleblower Daniel Hale

May 16, 2021 Stand With Daniel Hale. Resist! Daniel Hale, Drones, Legal System

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. He publicly spoke out at conferences, forums, and public panels. He was featured prominently in the award-winning documentary National Bird, a film about whistleblowers in the US drone program who suffered from moral injury and PTSD. Hale based his criticisms on his own participation in the drone program, which included helping to select targets based on faulty criteria and attacks on unarmed innocent civilians....

Drone Whistleblower Jailed Ahead Of July Sentencing

May 5, 2021 Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof.com. Educate! Daniel Hale, Drones, Legal System

A federal judge ordered drone whistleblower Daniel Hale’s arrest, and United States authorities took him into custody. On April 23, Judge Liam O’Grady signed an order suggesting Hale violated the terms of his supervised release. An arrest warrant was issued, and on April 28, he was jailed. Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan, a different judge than the one who has presided over his case, held a hearing on the alleged “pretrial release violation.” Hale maintained no violation had occurred, yet the court scheduled a bond revocation and detention hearing for May 4. The chain of events came after a “special condition” was added to Hale’s conditions of release—that he submit to “substance abuse testing and/or treatment as directed by pretrial services.”

Whistleblower Daniel Hale, The Drone Program And The War On Our Right To Know

May 3, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Daniel Hale, Drones, International Law

The United States' drone assassination program is illegal under international law, but the whistleblower who exposed it, Daniel Hale, is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights and Dissent describes who Daniel Hale is and why his act of leaking information about the program to a journalist is akin to Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers. Gibbons also places Hale's action in the broader context of FBI surveillance, the war on whistleblowers and other truthtellers, such as Julian Assange, and the assault on our right to know.

Report On Shut Down Creech Actions

April 9, 2021 ToBlomé, Popular Resistance. Resist! Daniel Hale, Drones, Military bases, Wars and Militarism

Las Vegas/Creech Air ForceBase – Demonstrators - after blocking two entrances to the drone base here Monday - will hold a "DRONE MASSACRE MEMORIAL TUESDAY FROM 6:30 A.M. TO 8:30 A.M. - Activists, will display a long series of banners, stretched along the highway, each highlighting details of past U.S. drone massacres, including statistics on civilian deaths. Anti-drone protestors used large banners in the early morning Monday/4-5-21 to nonviolently block two entrances into Creech Air Force Base, a key U.S. Drone Base. It was the first day of a weeklong protest to oppose the illegal U.S. remote targeted killing program. All of the participants participated in the first blockade at the main gate, impeding dozens of cars, while continuously chanting: “Arrest Col. Jones for War Crimes, Not Daniel Hale for Whistleblowing.”

Standing With Daniel Hale, Standing With Whistleblowers

April 8, 2021 Chip Gibbons, Defending Rights and Dissent. Resistance Report Daniel Hale, Drones, Espionage Act

Join us for a special broadcast featuring DRAD Policy Director Chip Gibbons, Jesselyn Radack head of Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts, and whistleblowers who have faced Espionage Act charges. Last week, Daniel Hale, a drone whistleblower, pled guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act. Hale admitted in court that he gave to an investigative reporter documents detailing human rights abuses pertaining to the US’s troubling assassination program. Although this information was in the public interest, the government nonetheless indicted Hale under the Espionage Act. This fits into a troubling pattern where those who expose official abuses of power, including war crimes and unconstitutional surveillance, are charged under the Espionage Act.

Drone Whistleblower Charged With Violating Espionage Act Pleads Guilty

April 2, 2021 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Resist! Barack Obama, Drones, Legal System

Daniel Hale, who blew the whistle on the United States government's targeted assassination program that includes drones, pled guilty to transmitting and retaining "national defense information" in violation of the Espionage Act. The guilty plea by Hale makes him the first whistleblower to be convicted under the Espionage Act during President Joe Biden's administration. A change of plea hearing was held on March 31 in the Eastern District of Virginia, around a week before Hale was scheduled to go to trial. Judge Liam O'Grady permitted Hale to remain under supervision by a probation officer until sentencing on July 13. Though Hale pled guilty, prosecutors from the Justice Department opposed canceling the trial altogether and refused to dismiss the four remaining charges.

Next Indo-Pacific US Commander Warns Of China’s Threat To Taiwan

March 27, 2021 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. Educate! China, Drones, US military, Wars and Militarism

During his confirmation hearing to head the command that covers 51 percent of the globe, U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Admiral John Aquilino told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “the most dangerous concern is that of a military force against Taiwan.” Aquilino told the committee that the “annexation of Taiwan is the number one priority of China” and asked the Senate committee to fund the $27.3 billion Pacific Deterrence Initiative. Aquilino’s comment echoed the March 2, 2021 assessment of retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster, one of the Trump administration’s national security advisers.

Withdrawing US Troops From Afghanistan Is Only A Start

March 7, 2021 Phyllis Bennis, The Nation. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan Papers, Drones, Peace Agreement

In recent months talk of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan has increased once again. It’s not the first time during the course of the nearly two-decades-long war that we’ve heard this, and at several points since the war began in 2001, some troops have actually been withdrawn. But somehow, almost 20 years in, there still isn’t very much talk about what it will actually take to end US actions that kill civilians. We hear talk about the “forever wars,” of which Afghanistan is of course the longest, but not much about what their first perpetrator, President George W. Bush, named the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT)—and the effect that that’s had. The shift in name and definition of war in Afghanistan (and related post-9/11 wars in so many countries) away from GWOT to “forever wars” reflects how the wars have been and continue to be fought.

Why I Support An International Treaty To Ban Weaponized Drones And Drone Surveillance

March 1, 2021 Kathy Kelly, Covert Action Magazine. Resist! Bombs, Drones, extrajudicial murder, Wars and Militarism

At a time in my life when I barely knew drones existed, a young Lebanese mother mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Zainab, helped me understand how monitoring by drones terrified her and her neighbors. It was the summer of 2006, during a war referred to as the Israeli-Hezbollah war. On July 30th, around 1:00 a.m., Israeli warplanes fired missiles at buildings in Qana, Lebanon, a small village in southern Lebanon. One missile, a bunker buster supplied by the U.S. corporation Raytheon, caused a three-story building to collapse, killing an extended family of 27 people. Fifteen of them were children. Two weeks later, with a team of international observers, I visited Qana because of reports of a massacre there.

Yemen: ‘Mission Accomplished’… For Now?

February 12, 2021 Charles Pierson, Counterpunch. Educate! Drones, Joe Biden, Wars and Militarism, Yemen

Beneath a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” President George W. Bush announced that “[m]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” Bush’s May 1, 2003 announcement on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln would turn out to be wildly overoptimistic. The US invaded Iraq in March 2003. US troops would remain in Iraq for the next eight years, until 2011. In 2014, US forces were back, this time to fight the Islamic State. In 2020, US troops left Iraq under pressure from the Iraqi government. US forces were in Afghanistan for nearly two decades after invading in 2001, the longest war in US history. (President Donald Trump withdrew the US from Afghanistan in 2020.)

The Dark Past Of Biden’s Nominee For National Intelligence Director

December 31, 2020 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Drones, Intelligence, Joe Biden, Torture

Former acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who has disingenuously argued for years that he had nothing to do with the agency’s torture program, but who continued to defend it, has taken himself out of the running to be President-elect Joe Biden’s new CIA director. The decision is a victory for the peace group Code Pink, which spearheaded the Stop Morell movement, and it’s a great thing for all Americans. Now, though, we have to turn our attention to Biden’s nominee to be director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines. Haines is certainly qualified on paper to lead the Intelligence Community.

Portland Drone Testing Facility Cancelled

November 11, 2020 Fight for the Future. Resist! Drones, Militarization, Portland, Verizon

Last week, the Port of Portland announced it would cancel a pending lease with Verizon for seven acres of riverfront property in one of Portland, Oregon’s most diverse neighborhoods. Verizon and their Portland-based subsidiary Skyward had sought to lease this area to test drones on Verizon’s 5G network along the Willamette river. “We appreciate the Port responding in support of community members and organizations who organized quickly to oppose this facility,” said Cassie Cohen (she/her), Executive Director of the Portland Harbor Community Coalition.

Alice’s Nightmare In Drone Land

October 30, 2020 World Beyond War. Resist! Drones, Military bases, New York (NY), Wars and Militarism

New York - On Thursday, 33 people from New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts organized by Upstate Drone Action blocked the gates at Hancock Air Field near Syracuse, NY. Prior to Thursday’s action, activists released this statement: “And why are we going to Hancock AFB on October 29? Our country has gone down the rabbit hole — racially, spiritually and economically. COVID 19 has exposed the Pentagon and the Federal government’s inability to do their job: to aid and protect our people. In fact the government has helped spread COVID, denying its severity and denying our people the PPE to combat that scourge.

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