I was going to go take a nap, then I found this:
Former Air Force intelligence officer sentenced to 45 month for leaking top-secret drone secrets
The former officer, Daniel Hale, pleaded guilty in March to violating the Espionage Act.
Hale pleaded guilty in March to violating the Espionage Act, saying that he gave over 150 pages of records classified at the top-secret or secret level to a reporter, according to The Hill newspaper (https://thehill.com/policy/technology/565064-drone-whistleblower-sentenced-to-45-months).
Some documents provided by Hale were included in the news outlet’s investigative series “The Drone Papers” from 2015, which detailed former President Obama's use of drone warfare and revealed the degree to which strikes hit unintended targets, The Hill also reports. (https://thehill.com/policy/technology/565064-drone-whistleblower-sentenced-to-45-months)
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.
Prosecutors argued that Hale was motivated more by a desire for fame than a principled stance on drone warfare.
“Hale was motivated not by transparency but by self-aggrandizement. A significant sentence therefore is necessary and appropriate,” they wrote.
Hale was charged and arrested in 2019, five years after this Lorton, Va., home was raided by the FBI.