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The first time that I witnessed a drone strike came within days of my arrival to Afghanistan... Early that morning, before dawn, a group of men had g… - Daniel Hale
" "The first time that I witnessed a drone strike came within days of my arrival to Afghanistan... Early that morning, before dawn, a group of men had gathered together in the mountain ranges of Patika province around a campfire carrying weapons and brewing tea. That they carried weapons with them would not have been considered out of the ordinary in the place I grew up, much less within the virtually lawless tribal territories outside the control of the Afghan authorities... Except that among them was a suspected member of the Taliban, given away by the targeted cell phone device in his pocket... As for the remaining individuals, to be armed, of military age, and sitting in the presence of an alleged enemy combatant was enough evidence to place them under suspicion as well... Despite having peacefully assembled, posing no threat, the fate of the now tea drinking men had all but been fulfilled...
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About Daniel Hale
Daniel Hale is a former National Security Agency intelligence analyst who leaked classified information about drone warfare to the press. In 2019, He was indicted on four counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and one count of theft of government property.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Daniel Everette Hale
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Additional quotes by Daniel Hale
I could only look on as I sat by and watched through a computer monitor when a sudden, terrifying flurry of hellfire missiles came crashing down, splattering purple-colored crystal guts on the side of the morning mountain. Since that time and to this day, I continue to recall several such scenes of graphic violence carried out from the cold comfort of a computer chair... Not a day goes by that I don't question the justification for my actions. By the rules of engagement, it may have been permissible 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.
The people who defend drones, and the way they are used, say they protect American lives by not putting them in harm’s way... What they really do is embolden decision makers, because there is no threat, there is no immediate consequence. They can do this strike. They can potentially kill this person they are so desperate to eliminate because of how potentially dangerous they could be to the US. But if it just so happens that they don’t kill that person, or some other people involved in the strike get killed as well, there are no consequences for it. When it comes to high-value targets, every mission you go after one person at a time, but anybody else killed in that strike is blanketly assumed to be an associate of the targeted individual. So as long as they can reasonably identify that all of the people in the field view of the camera are military-aged males, meaning anybody who is believed to be age 16 or older, they are a legitimate target under the rules of engagement. If that strike occurs and kills all of them, they just say they got them all.
It requires an enormous amount of faith in the technology that you’re using. There’s countless instances where I’ve come across intelligence that was faulty...
This outrageous explosion of watch-listing — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong...
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