Statement of Solidarity with U.S. Whistleblower Daniel Hale
DATE: Thursday, April 1, 2021
PRESS CONTACT: For all press inquiries, please contact media@mdcdsa.org.
WASHINGTON, DC: The metro D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America stands in solidarity with Daniel Hale. On March 31, Hale pleaded guilty to giving information about the U.S. drone program to a journalist and admitted to being the anonymous author of a chapter in the book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program.
U.S. drone strikes, euphemistically called “targeted killings,” are a form of extrajudicial executions that violate international law. The information Hale made available contradicted the sanitized image the U.S. government presents of its secretive global assassination program. The documents exposed by Hale reveal that far from being “targeted,” 90 percent of the individuals killed by U.S. drones over one five-month period were not the intended target.
Hale’s decision to inform the public about these crimes is heroic, yet he has been charged under the Espionage Act for doing so. Historically, the Espionage Act was used to crush the Socialist Party by criminalizing opposition to World War I. It has become the government’s go-to weapon against those who expose war crimes and human rights abuses. Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden have all been charged under the Espionage Act.
As socialists, we oppose the U.S. government’s murderous drone program as well as the larger imperialist foreign policy of which it is part. We stand with Hale, who now faces up to a decade in prison for his heroic act of truth-telling.