By Brett Wilkins — CommonDreams.org

“I came to believe that the policy of drone assassination was being used to mislead the public that it keeps us safe… I began to speak out, believing my participation in the drone program to have been deeply wrong.”

Democracy Now!

At a sentencing hearing Tuesday, whistleblower Daniel Hale faces at least nine years in prison for leaking classified information about the U.S. drone and targeted assassination program. During his time in the Air Force from 2009 to 2013, Hale worked with the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he helped identify targets for assassination. He later worked as a contractor for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. In March, Hale pleaded guilty to one count of violating the World War I-era Espionage Act for leaking documents exposing the drone program. “This has been an odyssey that has occupied most of the better part of his adult life for basically committing the truth,” says Jesselyn Radack, an attorney for Daniel Hale. “The U.S. has never contested any of Daniel’s disclosures,” Radack adds. We also speak with Noor Mir, Daniel Hale’s close friend and part of his support team, who describes him as a compassionate person willing to make sacrifices to do the right thing. “I know that when he’s out, he will remain committed to ending suffering in all forms,” Mir says.

Primary Sources Podcast

Passed during World War I, the Espionage Act was President Woodrow Wilson’s “firm hand of repression” that he used to silence antiwar voices.

By Patrick G. Eddington – RightsAndDissent.org

It’s been the better part of a decade since NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden first revealed massive U.S. government surveillance of our phone communications. The additional disclosures that followed led to no meaningful public Congressional hearings into Snowden’s revelations; a cynical, totally ineffectual law that didn’t actually stop much, if any, of the mass telephone surveillance; and lots of attacks on the whistleblower himself—not just from his former government employers, but from multiple House and Senate members, as well as some in the press.

With Democrats in power (for now), powerful funders may be trying to tame or silence progressive peace activists

By Dave Lindorff : Salon.com

Reporting for this article was funded by a grant from the ExposeFacts program of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

During the four years of the Trump administration, resistance and even revolutionary talk were in the air as organizations with names like The Resistance and Our Revolution brought together liberals, Democrats of all stripes and Sandernistas, all opposed to President Donald Trump and to Trumpism in all its manifestations.

It’s unclear precisely why Hale was arrested, and court documents show that his lawyers objected.

Alex Emmons – The Intercept

Daniel Hale, a former Air Force intelligence analyst who pleaded guilty to sharing classified documents about drone strikes with a reporter, has been arrested ahead of his sentencing in July.

By Nina Totenberg : NPR.org

First Amendment groups are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to make public major decisions authorizing government surveillance, opinions that until now have remained almost secret.

PEER.org

For nearly 30 years, Eveline (Evi) Emmenegger has been a microbiologist, working for the U.S. Geological Survey, mainly in its Seattle-based Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC). For more than a decade, she managed its highest biosafety level containment laboratory studying aquatic pathogens.

Defending Rights & Dissent

On March 31, 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.