By Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, November 17, 2022
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Award Citation for Daniel E. Hale
Know all ye by these presents that Daniel Everette Hale is hereby awarded the Corner-Brightener Candlestick, presented by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.
Sam Adams Associates are proud to honor Mr. Hale’s decision to heed his conscience and give priority to the Common Good over concerns about his own personal future. In doing so, he displayed the kind of moral heroism seldom seen in history.
Daniel’s patriotism, heroism and loyalty to the Constitution parallels that of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and the late CIA analyst Sam Adams, whose legacy this award commemorates. Both demanded of US military and CIA leaders that they cease their lying to the American people during the Vietnam War.
We can only hope that others with similar moral fiber will be inspired by Mr. Hale’s exceptional public service in exposing US war crimes and violations of US law, which have placed the human rights of free citizens everywhere in serious jeopardy.
By heeding the dictates of conscience and patriotism, Mr. Hale knowingly sacrificed his freedom in order to reveal to the public that in one five-month period in Afghanistan, 90 percent of those killed by US air strikes were not the intended targets, but included women, children, and other non-combatants. In addition to classified documents about the US global assassination program, Hale also disclosed unclassified but still publicly unavailable guidelines for the US Terrorism Watch List. As a direct result, many innocent individuals were able to successfully challenge their placement on the so-called “No-Fly List”.
At his mockery of a trial Mr. Hale explained: “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.”
If only US officials would recognize the need for the collective “banality of evil” permeating the US national security apparatus to be exposed for what it is: Criminal!
And just as Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange exposed US war crimes to the public with clear documentary evidence, Mr. Hale’s beacon of light has pierced a thick cloud of deception. As with Assange and other truth tellers whose revelations brought the iron fist of US government repression down upon them, it has resulted in the imprisonment of Mr. Hale and the denial of freedoms that he and every courageous whistleblower like him have the right to enjoy.
Mr. Hale was well aware of the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment to which other courageous officials have been subjected — and that he would likely suffer the same. And yet — in the manner of his famous ancestor Nathan Hale — he put his country first, knowing what awaited him at the hands of those who serve what has become a repressive Perpetual War State wreaking havoc upon much of the world.
Presented this 18th day of October 2022 by admirers of the example set by the late CIA analyst, Sam Adams.
