Ex-NSA official charged with leaking classified drone documents

Daniel Hale is accused of giving top secret files on drone warfare to a journalist at an online news outlet

Jon Swaine in New York
Thu 9 May 2019 15.02 BST Last modified on Thu 9 May 2019 18.28 BST

A former National Security Agency (NSA) official has been charged with giving classified documents on drone warfare to a journalist, amid a crackdown on government leaks by Donald Trump’s administration.

Daniel Hale is accused of leaking top secret files that were published by an online news outlet. The outlet was not identified by prosecutors, but the files described appear to match those published in a series by the Intercept.

Hale, 31, was indicted by a grand jury on five charges relating to the alleged leak. Each charge carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. The US justice department said Hale was arrested on Thursday morning and would appear in court later in the day.

Authorities said Hale, of Nashville, Tennessee, worked as an intelligence analyst in Afghanistan for the NSA while serving as an enlisted airman in the US air force from 2009 to 2013.

He later worked as a contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in Virginia, and allegedly began printing documents unrelated to his work. He allegedly provided at least 17 to the news outlet, 11 of which were marked “secret” or “top secret”.

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