DANIEL HALE is a whistleblower who divulged information about the US drone assassination program. More information, including a petition, is available through the link.
In May 2019, drone whistleblower Daniel Everette Hale was arrested and indicted on allegations that he disclosed classified documents about the U.S. military’s assassination program, believed to have been the source material for a series in The Intercept called “The Drone Papers”. On March 31, 2021, Hale pleaded guilty to a single count under the Espionage Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years. Sentencing is currently scheduled for July 27, 2021.
MAY EDWARDS How May Edwards became the forgotten whistleblower
By the time Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards stood before Judge Gregory Woods in a courtroom in Lower Manhattan last month, she had lost her job, her car, her home and had spent nearly three years on supervised release, awaiting a likely prison sentence.
She explained how she had tried to go through proper whistleblower channels when she witnessed corruption within the Treasury Department and did not hide that she had also gone to the press. “I could not stand by aimlessly,” she said, “as this would have been a violation of my oath of office, which is also a federal crime.”
After she was sentenced to six months in federal prison, she and her family had lunch with Leopold, and she posed for a photo with the journalist at a Lower Manhattan bus stop…She is one of the most important whistleblowers of our era, and yet hardly anyone remembers her name…
Meanwhile, some whistleblowers just seem to get more love than others. And some of that love seems to take time. Daniel Ellsberg, reviled when he was first revealed as the source of the Pentagon Papers, is being hailed as a folk hero upon the 50th anniversary of their publication. Edward Snowden is a household name, the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary and best-selling book. Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner became causes célèbres, while Jeffrey Wigand and Karen Silkwood became Hollywood heroes.
But Edwards — known to her friends as “May” — is largely unknown and mostly forgotten. She is scheduled to report to the Bureau of Prisons in August, and no celebrities are clamoring about the injustice on Twitter…
Branded “The FinCEN Files,” they would tell the tale of how some of the world’s biggest banks facilitate international money laundering and corruption around the world — and how the U.S. government stood back and watched it happened.
By then, Edwards had been under arrest for nearly a year for her role in leaking information for what would prove to be much smaller stories. But “The FinCEN Files” was also based on documents she handed off to Leopold.