Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Former Intelligence Analyst Pleads Guilty to Disclosing Classified Information
justice.gov ^ | March 31, 2021 | Department of Justice

Posted on 04/02/2021 1:46:38 AM PDT by ransomnote

WASHINGTON – A former intelligence analyst and former military servicemember pleaded guilty today to illegally obtaining classified national defense information and disclosing it to a reporter.

According to court records, Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, Tennessee, served as an enlisted airman in the U.S. Air Force from July 2009 to July 2013. After receiving language and intelligence training, Hale was assigned to work at the National Security Agency (NSA) and deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst. After leaving the Air Force in July 2013, Hale was employed by a defense contractor and assigned to the NGA, where he worked as a political geography analyst between December 2013 and August 2014. In connection with his active duty service and work for the NSA, and during his time at NGA, Hale held a Top Secret // Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS//SCI) security clearance and was entrusted with access to classified national defense information.

“Hale has now admitted what the evidence at trial would have conclusively shown: that he took classified documents from his work at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), documents he had no right to retain, and that he sent them to a reporter, knowing all along that what he was doing was against the law,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers for the Justice Department's National Security Division. “This conduct undermined the efforts of our Intelligence Community to keep us safe. Hale’s plea is another step in the Department’s ongoing efforts to prosecute and deter leaks of classified information.”

“Those who are entrusted with classified information have a duty to safeguard that information in order to protect our Nation’s security,” said Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “As an analyst for the Intelligence Community, Daniel Hale knowingly took highly classified documents and disclosed them without authorization, thereby violating his solemn obligations to our country. We are firmly committed to seeking equal justice under the law and holding accountable those who betray their oath to safeguard national security information.”

According to court records, beginning in April 2013, while enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and assigned to the NSA, Hale began communicating with a reporter. Hale met with the reporter in person on multiple occasions, and communicated with the reporter via phone, text message, email, and, at times, an encrypted messaging platform. Then, in February 2014, while working as a cleared defense contractor at NGA, Hale printed six classified documents unrelated to his work at NGA and soon after exchanged a series of messages with the reporter. Each of the six documents printed were later published by the reporter’s news outlet.

According to court records, while employed as a cleared defense contractor for NGA, Hale printed 36 documents from his Top Secret computer, including 23 documents unrelated to his work at NGA. Of the 23 documents unrelated to his work at NGA, Hale provided at least 17 to the reporter and/or the reporter’s online news outlet, which published the documents in whole or in part. Eleven of the published documents were marked as Top Secret or Secret.

According to court records, in August 2014, Hale’s cell phone contact list included contact information for the reporter. He also possessed a thumb drive that contained a page marked “SECRET” from a classified document that Hale had printed in February 2014 and had attempted to delete from the thumb drive. In addition, Hale possessed on his home computer another document that he had stolen from NGA.

Hale pleaded guilty to retention and transmission of national defense information, and he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison when sentenced on July 13, 2021. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Jennifer C. Boone, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office made the announcement after the plea was accepted by Senior U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gordon D. Kromberg and Alexander P. Berrang and Senior Trial Attorney Heather M. Schmidt of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case

Topic(s): 
Counterintelligence and Export Control
National Security
Press Release Number: 
21-293


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 04/02/2021 1:46:38 AM PDT by ransomnote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: ransomnote

Begs the questions of “why?”, and “in exchange for what?”.

That matters.


2 posted on 04/02/2021 1:50:56 AM PDT by Manly Warrior (US ARMY (Ret), "No Free Lunches for the Dogs of War" )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Manly Warrior
Begs the questions of “why?”, and “in exchange for what?”.

Was the reporter a female, and if so, did he bed her down? Also, if he did some of this, while in the USAF, I wonder if the USAF can prosecute him too?

3 posted on 04/02/2021 1:59:19 AM PDT by Mark17
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Manly Warrior

As to why or what the pay-back was?

I don’t think he made a single penny off this effort.

On the why, he felt he was personally righting a wrong done by the establishment intelligence and military community.

In the 1980s and 1990s...you rarely saw this type of behavior with military members. Since the 9-11 period, the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan...there’s a growth of people who are second-guessing events, and feel empowered to correct ‘wrongs’.

For every hundred in the military intelligence sector...there’s probably one-percent who have the feeling that ‘correction’ is required. Other than threatening them with a life-long sentence in some remote Montana federal prison....I don’t see how you will motivate this small group to correct their own behavior.


4 posted on 04/02/2021 2:30:32 AM PDT by pepsionice
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

Comment #5 Removed by Moderator

To: ransomnote

I can imagine the punishment for this guy will be extremely severe considering he held a position of trust and divulged classified information.

Under our current administration, will this poor guy be thrown into a room full of Chinese hookers, whose fees will be paid for by Uncle Sam? Will he be tortured by given excess covid relief checks? Or will there be leniency and given his old job back so he can give out more secrets?

For some reason I’m thinking of the Rosenbergs.


6 posted on 04/02/2021 3:20:18 AM PDT by redfreedom (You can vote your way into socialism, but you may have to shoot your way out.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ransomnote

And yet hillary walks free.


7 posted on 04/02/2021 4:25:55 AM PDT by utax
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Manly Warrior

Also begs the question about Who the reporter was and for what “news” outlet.

I don’t think the reporter can be prosecuted but the reporter can be named


8 posted on 04/02/2021 5:10:04 AM PDT by cyclotic (Live your life in such a way that they hate you as much as they hated Rush Limbaugh)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: utax

Frankly, I almost don’t care what this guy did. We have the biggest traitors of all time running a Federal and some state governments, as we speak.


9 posted on 04/02/2021 5:10:43 AM PDT by Stayingawayfromthedarkside (Look, is it America that I see again?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: ransomnote
The FIB is involved?

Guessing there is much more to this story. Seems they left quite a few details out, such as possible motive?

10 posted on 04/02/2021 6:14:39 AM PDT by Pajamajan ( PRAY FOR OUR NATION. I will never be a peaceful slave in a new Socialist America.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Comment #11 Removed by Moderator

To: Stayingawayfromthedarkside

You are correct,sir.


12 posted on 04/02/2021 6:24:54 AM PDT by Marcell
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: pepsionice
"...there’s probably one-percent who have the feeling that ‘correction’ is required..."

They don't seem the sort of people I'd want to hang around with: vane, self-righteous and humorless, I'd expect.

The thing is, we're also indebted to such people for revelations of bad things done in the past, and we need to keep them around for the future.

13 posted on 04/02/2021 11:04:50 AM PDT by tsomer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson