Ilhan Omar Calls on Biden to Pardon
Whistleblower Daniel Hale for Killer Drone Leaks
Ryan Devereaux / The Intercept
(August 26 2021) — Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar is calling on President Joe Biden to pardon Daniel Hale, a former Air Force intelligence analyst who leaked top secret documents revealing the inner workings and civilian consequences of the U.S. military’s drone program. Hale was sentenced to nearly four years in prison last month.
In a letter sent to the White House on Thursday, Omar said the information Hale revealed, “while politically embarrassing to some, has shone a vital light on the legal and moral problems of the drone program and informed the public debate on an issue that has for too many years remained in the shadows.”
Noting that she takes “extremely seriously the prohibition on leaking classified information,” Omar told the president that several facets of Hale’s case merit a full pardon, which would wipe out his conviction. Those include political motivations on the part of the Trump administration, the absence of any harm caused by Hale’s disclosures, and the responsibility he took for his actions, which she argued were clearly and firmly rooted in the public interest.
“Mr. Hale served as an intelligence analyst in the Air Force, and after his service, became one of the most outspoken critics of the drone program in which he had participated,” Omar wrote. “In doing so, he joined a proud American tradition of veterans advocating for peace after their service was complete.”
Hale was sentenced to 45 months behind bars on July 27. In court filings, federal prosecutors strongly implied that The Intercept was the recipient of his leaks. The Intercept, as matter of policy, does not comment on anonymous sources. “These documents revealed the truth about the US government’s secretive, murderous drone war, including that the killing of civilians was far more widespread than previously acknowledged,” Intercept Editor-in-Chief Betsy Reed said at the time. “Whoever brought the documents in question to light undoubtedly served a noble public purpose.”
Prior his sentencing, Hale delivered an 11-page, handwritten letter to the court outlining the reasons for his leak. He described personally witnessing the killing of civilians in drone strikes in Afghanistan and Yemen, and he detailed how “military age males” killed in such operations are routinely labeled “enemies killed in action” unless proven otherwise.
Hale’s “motivation, as outlined in his deeply moving letter to the judge in his case, was profoundly moral,” Omar said in her letter to the president. “As you frequently say, the United States should lead not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example,” she wrote.
“I implore you to read Mr. Hale’s letter to the judge in full, and I believe you will agree that he was motivated by the same thing. Acknowledging where we’ve gone wrong, and telling the truth about our shortcomings, is not only the right thing to do, but also an act of profound patriotism.”
“The legal question of Mr. Hale’s guilt is settled,
but the moral question remains open.”
— from Ilhan Omar’s letter to the president.
Hale’s service in the US military coincided with the first term of the Obama administration, a period of unprecedented expansion in remote US killing operations around the world. According to the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, or TBIJ, Barack Obama oversaw “more strikes in his first year than [George W.] Bush carried out during his entire presidency.”
By the time Obama left office, TBIJ estimates that between 384 and 807 civilians had been killed in strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. With Afghanistan included, TBIJ puts the estimated civilian death toll from US drone strikes between 910 to 2,200 individuals, including as many as 454 children, from 2004 to 2020.
In the wake of Hale’s disclosures and years of advocacy from human rights groups, the Obama administration introduced new requirements for reporting civilian casualties from counterterrorism operations in 2016, which Donald Trump promptly revoked after coming into office. An investigation published this week by Connecting Vets revealed how the loosening of targeting guidelines under the Trump administration led to a staggering rise in civilian casualties in Afghanistan, where the practice that Hale revealed of labeling men killed in drone strikes as “enemies” without evidence remained commonplace as recently as 2019.
Prosecuted under the Espionage Act, a 1917 law designed to punish foreign spies that the Obama and Trump administrations weaponized against journalistic sources, Hale was prohibited from pointing to his motivations for leaking documents on the drone program as a defense. He pleaded guilty to one count under the act in March. The judge overseeing his case dismissed the remaining four charges with prejudice at sentencing, meaning they can’t be filed again.
The New York Times reported earlier this summer that the Biden administration was developing a clemency process and that the president is expected to begin issuing pardons or commutations by next fall.
Hale’s incarceration was preceded by an agonizing multiyear ordeal that featured an FBI raid on his home, long bouts of uncertainty and, for a time, a sense that the Justice Department was uninterested in trying his case.
“Although the investigation of Mr. Hale’s leaks began under the Obama Administration, the Obama Department of Justice declined to prosecute him,” Omar noted in her letter. “It wasn’t until 2019, under President Trump, that he was indicted,” she wrote. “We are all well aware of the severe consequences of the Trump Administration’s chilling crackdown on whistleblowers and other public servants who they deemed insufficiently loyal. I believe that the decision to prosecute Mr. Hale was motivated, at least in part, as a threat to other would-be whistleblowers.”
Hale’s disclosures “did not put any individual in danger,” Omar told the president, echoing a point that a high-ranking CIA expert on classification made in a sworn declaration to the court ahead of Hale’s sentencing. What’s more, Omar added, he “pled guilty and took full responsibility for his actions.”
“The legal question of Mr. Hale’s guilt is settled, but the moral question remains open,” Omar wrote. “I strongly believe that a full pardon, or at least a commutation of his sentence, is warranted. It is for precisely these cases, where the letter of the law does not capture the complex human judgments in difficult situations, that your pardon authority is at its most useful.”
ACTION ALERT: Stop US Use of Killer Drones
Petition: Ban Weaponized Drones from the World
Meticulous researchers have documented that US drones are killing many innocent civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Drones are making the world less stable and creating new enemies. Their remoteness provides those responsible with a sense of immunity.
Weaponized drones are no more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs, or chemical weapons. The world must renounce and forbid their manufacture, possession, or use. Violators must be held accountable.
We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, urge
• the United Nations Secretary General to investigate the concerns of Navi Pillay, the U.N.’s top human rights official, that drone attacks violate international law — and to ultimately pursue sanctions against nations using, possessing, or manufacturing weaponized drones;
• the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate grounds for the criminal prosecution of those responsible for drone attacks;
• the US Secretary of State, and the ambassadors to the United States from the nations of the world, to support a treaty forbidding the possession or use of weaponized drones;
• President Joe Biden, to abandon the use of weaponized drones, and to abandon his “kill list” program regardless of the technology employed;
• the Majority and Minority Leaders of the US House and Senate, to ban the use or sale of weaponized drones.
• the governments of each of our nations around the world, to ban the use or sale of weaponized drones.
ACTION: Add Your Name Here.
Demand for ‘Moratorium on Drone Warfare’
Follows Latest US Killing of Afghan Civilians
(August 30, 2021) — The largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States demanded Monday that the Biden administration immediately put in place a “moratorium on drone warfare” after the US killed at least 10 Afghan civilians — including half a dozen children — with an airstrike in Kabul over the weekend.
“Enough is enough,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement. “For more than ten years, our government’s drone strikes have killed thousands of innocent people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere in the Muslim world — destroying family homes, wedding parties, and even funeral processions. The civilian casualties in Kabul are simply the latest victims of this misused technology.”
Mitchell said the Biden administration should impose a temporary moratorium on the US drone program — which is largely shrouded in secrecy — “until the government establishes strict oversight rules that would prevent these tragedies by severely limiting and transparently accounting for our military’s use of drone warfare.”
According to press reports and accounts from relatives and witnesses, the 10 people reportedly killed by the US airstrike in Kabul on Sunday were all members of a single extended family — and at least three of the child victims were girls just two years old or younger.
“This is the latest in 20 years of innocent lives taken and children orphaned in Afghanistan and covert drone warfare around the world,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said Monday. “Impunity for these attacks continues to create a never-ending cycle of violence and retribution. Where should these victims go to seek justice?”
The Biden administration has yet to take responsibility for killing the civilians with its drone strike, which purportedly targeted an explosive-laden vehicle that the US military claims ISIS-K was planning to use in another attack on Kabul’s international airport.
“The US went into Afghanistan seeking revenge and bombing civilians,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, tweeted Monday. “Twenty years later, the US is leaving Afghanistan seeking revenge and bombing civilians.”
Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, deputy director of the US Joint Staff for Regional Operations, said during a press briefing on Monday that the Pentagon is “aware” of reports of civilian deaths in Kabul and that an investigation is underway.
In a statement, Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien said that the Biden administration “has a responsibility to the families of those killed to name the dead, acknowledge its actions, investigate, and provide reparations.”
The Pentagon is notorious for dramatically undercounting the number of civilians killed in US military operations overseas. And when the US government does admit to killing civilians, it often refuses to provide any compensation to the victims’ families.
“The United States has been killing civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Somalia for years, under the guise of the so-called ‘war on terror,’ with impunity,” said O’Brien. “For two decades, the United States has carried out strikes with no accountability to the public for how many civilians were killed.”
The latest airstrike in Kabul, O’Brien argued, could be “a glimpse into the future US involvement in Afghanistan if the Biden administration pushes ahead with an ‘over the horizon’ counter-terrorism program that does not prioritize civilian protection.”
Earlier this year, the Biden administration quietly implemented temporary restrictions on drone strikes outside of “conventional battlefield zones” such as Afghanistan. But such limits did not stop US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) from launching a lethal drone strike in Somalia in July, the first attack on that country of Joe Biden’s presidency.
As the withdrawal of US troops continues apace ahead of the August 31 exit deadline, it appears that Biden is prepared to keep carrying out drone strikes in Afghanistan in the future. In a statement Friday after the US launched a drone strike targeting two “planners and facilitators” of the deadly attack on Kabul’s airport, Biden declared, “This strike was not the last.”
The largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States demanded Monday that the Biden administration immediately put in place a “moratorium on drone warfare” after the US killed at least 10 Afghan civilians — including half a dozen children — with an airstrike in Kabul over the weekend.
“Enough is enough,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement. “For more than ten years, our government’s drone strikes have killed thousands of innocent people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere in the Muslim world — destroying family homes, wedding parties, and even funeral processions. The civilian casualties in Kabul are simply the latest victims of this misused technology.”
“For two decades, the United States has carried out strikes with no accountability to the public for how many civilians were killed.”
— Paul O’Brien, Amnesty International USA
Mitchell said the Biden administration should impose a temporary moratorium on the US drone program — which is largely shrouded in secrecy — “until the government establishes strict oversight rules that would prevent these tragedies by severely limiting and transparently accounting for our military’s use of drone warfare.”
According to press reports and accounts from relatives and witnesses, the 10 people reportedly killed by the US airstrike in Kabul on Sunday were all members of a single extended family — and at least three of the child victims were girls just two years old or younger.
“This is the latest in 20 years of innocent lives taken and children orphaned in Afghanistan and covert drone warfare around the world,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said Monday. “Impunity for these attacks continues to create a never-ending cycle of violence and retribution. Where should these victims go to seek justice?”
The Biden administration has yet to take responsibility for killing the civilians with its drone strike, which purportedly targeted an explosive-laden vehicle that the US military claims ISIS-K was planning to use in another attack on Kabul’s international airport.
“The US went into Afghanistan seeking revenge and bombing civilians,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, tweeted Monday. “Twenty years later, the US is leaving Afghanistan seeking revenge and bombing civilians.”
Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, deputy director of the US Joint Staff for Regional Operations, said during a press briefing on Monday that the Pentagon is “aware” of reports of civilian deaths in Kabul and that an investigation is underway.
In a statement, Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien said that the Biden administration “has a responsibility to the families of those killed to name the dead, acknowledge its actions, investigate, and provide reparations.”
The Pentagon is notorious for dramatically undercounting the number of civilians killed in US military operations overseas. And when the US government does admit to killing civilians, it often refuses to provide any compensation to the victims’ families.
“The United States has been killing civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Somalia for years, under the guise of the so-called ‘war on terror,’ with impunity,” said O’Brien. “For two decades, the United States has carried out strikes with no accountability to the public for how many civilians were killed.”
The latest airstrike in Kabul, O’Brien argued, could be “a glimpse into the future US involvement in Afghanistan if the Biden administration pushes ahead with an ‘over the horizon’ counter-terrorism program that does not prioritize civilian protection.”
Earlier this year, the Biden administration quietly implemented temporary restrictions on drone strikes outside of “conventional battlefield zones” such as Afghanistan. But such limits did not stop US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) from launching a lethal drone strike in Somalia in July, the first attack on that country of Joe Biden’s presidency.
As the withdrawal of US troops continues apace ahead of the August 31 exit deadline, it appears that Biden is prepared to keep carrying out drone strikes in Afghanistan in the future. In a statement Friday after the US launched a drone strike targeting two “planners and facilitators” of the deadly attack on Kabul’s airport, Biden declared, “This strike was not the last.”
‘Collateral Damage’: US Killer Drone Strike Kills Seven Children
Afghan Children Reportedly Killed in US Drone Strike Targeting ISIS-K
Drone strike on car in Kabul reported to have killed
11 civilians, including 7 children. (Getty Images)
Afghan Children Killed in US Drone Strike Targeting ISIS-K
Scott Neuman and Deepa Shivaram / National Public Radio
(August 30, 2021) — The Pentagon on Monday said US operations in Afghanistan would end “soon,” and that it was looking into reports that ten Afghan civilians, including a number of children, were killed during a drone strike over the weekend that targeted suspected ISIS-K militants.
In a news briefing, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the US military was “continuing to assess” reports of the civilian deaths.
Sunday’s drone strike destroyed an Islamic State car bomb that posed an “imminent” threat to Kabul’s airport, US Central Command said.
However, The Washington Post reported Monday that 10 Afghan civilians, including several children, were also killed in the strike. The dead, all part of the same extended family, were reportedly getting out of a car near the targeted vehicle.
One of the relatives told the Los Angeles Times that no fewer than seven children were among the dead.
NPR has not independently confirmed the reports.
Centcom said in an earlier statement that it was “aware of reports of civilian casualties,” adding: “We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life.”
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
