[BBC] A former US government intelligence analyst has been charged with leaking classified national security information to a reporter.
Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, Tennessee, was arrested after allegedly providing at least 17 top secret documents to an unnamed journalist. According to the indictment, the files related to counterterrorism and were published in whole or in part.
He is expected to make his first court appearance in Nashville on Thursday.
After enlisting with the US Air Force in 2009, Mr Hale went on to work as an analyst with the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), court documents say. In these roles, Mr Hale gained top secret security clearance and had access to classified defence information, according to authorities.
In April 2013, court documents allege, while assigned to the NSA, Mr Hale began communicating with the reporter, speaking in person and using encrypted messaging tools.
According to prosecutors, in February 2014 Mr Hale printed 36 documents from his "Top Secret computer", providing at least 17 to the journalist.
The files included a memo outlining a military campaign against al-Qaeda and a top secret intelligence report on an operative for the extremist group, the indictment said.
Mr Hale also allegedly had a thumb drive with software recommended by the reporter's online news outlet in an article on how to anonymously leak documents.
The indictment details extensive communication between Mr Hale and the journalist, and cites a text message between Mr Hale and a friend saying the reporter "wants me to tell my story about working with drones".
While the outlet is not named in court documents, it is reported to be the Intercept, an online news publication.
In October 2015, the Intercept published "The Drone Papers", which used "a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the US military's assassination program", that was provided to one of its journalists "by a whistleblower".
The Intercept has made no comment on Mr Hale's arrest.
This would be the third time someone has been charged with leaking sensitive information to the media outlet.
Mr Hale is charged under the Espionage Act with five crimes related to stealing and disclosing national defence information.
#3
Treat him as a traitor and hang him and prosecute those the published it as well and put them in jail. If there is no punishment treason will continue.
The reporter that Hale leaked this information to is not named in the indictment, but the charging document identifies him as Jeremy Scahill of the Intercept, an outspoken critic of America’s military activities overseas.
[Telegraph] The economic slowdown has left an even bigger hole in Germany's budget than feared, Angela Merkel’s government admitted on Thursday.
Falling tax revenues as the economy slows have left the country facing a budget shortfall of €124.3bn (£107bn) over the next four years, finance minister Olaf Scholz announced in Berlin.
The shortfall is even worse than a figure of €100bn leaked earlier this week had suggested.
Mr Scholz tried to play down the numbers, telling a press conference: “The government does not see any signs of a crisis in the current situation. We still have economic growth.”
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.